Legal & Compliance

Enshittification

A man in Norway goes to work every morning. His official job title: Enshittificator. “You can call me a

By Conor Healy

April 10, 2026

A man in Norway goes to work every morning. His official job title: Enshittificator. “You can call me a shitmaker,” he says proudly. “My job is to make things shitty.”

The Norwegian Consumer Council released a four-minute comedy sketch in December 2025 showing this fictional employee making apps deliberately worse. Adding extra steps to simple processes. He hides features behind paywalls. He introduces pop-ups and ads. Making perfectly functional products annoying.

It’s satire. But it describes exactly how platforms actually operate.

Cory Doctorow coined “enshittification” in November 2022 to describe this pattern. The American Dialect Society named it Word of the Year for 2023. Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary did the same for 2024. Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com both list it as an official word.

It won word of the year because everyone immediately recognized what Doctorow described. You know enshittification. You feel it every time you use the internet.

The Three-Stage Process

Platforms start good. Facebook in 2007 showed you posts from friends and family. No ads. No algorithm. Just a reverse-chronological feed of what people you actually knew were doing.

Google in 2004 delivered relevant search results with minimal ads. The page loaded fast. The first result usually answered your question. You searched, found what you needed, left.

Amazon in the early 2000s sold products efficiently. Search worked. Recommendations were accurate. Shipping was cheap.

Then platforms lock you in. Network effects make it impossible to leave. All your friends use Facebook. Switching messaging apps requires convincing everyone you know to switch too.

Google becomes synonymous with search. Alternatives exist but nobody uses them. Your muscle memory types “google.com” automatically.

Amazon has the Prime ecosystem. You paid for shipping. Canceling feels like wasting money. Plus all your payment info is saved. Starting over elsewhere seems exhausting.

Once you’re locked in, stage two begins. Platforms betray users to serve business customers.

Facebook fills your feed with ads and promoted content instead of posts from people you know. The algorithm shows you whatever keeps you scrolling longest, not what you want to see.

Google search results fill with ads disguised as organic results. Paid placement appears at the top. Actual search results get pushed down. Google rigged ad auctions through deals like Jedi Blue to extract maximum money.

Amazon search prioritizes products that pay for placement. Genuine reviews get buried under fake ones. Third-party sellers complain about fees but can’t leave because that’s where customers are.

Stage three: platforms betray business customers too. They squeeze everyone to extract maximum shareholder value.

Facebook charges businesses more for worse ad performance. Organic reach collapsed. Pages that once reached 100% of followers now reach 5%. You must pay to reach people who explicitly chose to follow you.

Google ad costs increased while quality decreased. Click fraud runs rampant. Advertisers pay for fake clicks from bots. Google’s response is slow because they profit from it.

Amazon raised fees on third-party sellers repeatedly. Fulfillment fees increased. Storage fees increased. Referral fees increased. Sellers can’t afford to leave because Amazon controls access to customers.

This is enshittification. Not entropy or natural decay. Deliberate choices to extract money at user expense.

Real Examples

Google Search became useless. Searches that once delivered answers now deliver pages of ads, SEO spam, and AI-generated garbage. The first page rarely contains what you’re looking for.

Internal Google memos revealed in DOJ antitrust cases showed the company deliberately degraded search to increase query counts. If users need multiple searches to find answers, they see more ads.

Facebook promised never to spy on users. Then it reneged to build the most comprehensive surveillance apparatus in history. Every action tracked. Every click monetized. The promise of connecting people became a machine for selling attention to advertisers.

Facebook’s 2024 video metrics controversy showed the company inflated view counts, leading media companies to over-invest in video content and collapse financially.

Amazon used to display third-party products fairly. Now it prioritizes its own Amazon Basics products over superior third-party options. Sellers complain about being copied and undercut by the platform that hosts them.

Twitter under Elon Musk speedran enshittification. Verification became a paid feature anyone could buy. The algorithm changed to promote Musk’s tweets and paid subscribers. The timeline filled with engagement bait.

Why Is It Happening?

Weakened competition law allowed platforms to consolidate power. Regulators approved mergers that created monopolies. Once monopolies formed, platforms stopped innovating to please users.

No competition means no alternatives. Where do you go when Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp? When Google controls 90% of search? When Amazon dominates e-commerce?

Network effects create lock-in. The platform’s value comes from other people using it. You can’t leave without losing access to everyone else.

Section 1201 of the DMCA made modifying platforms illegal. You can’t install ad blockers on apps. You can’t create third-party clients that work better. Companies use legal threats to prevent users from improving products.

Doctorow argues this comes from specific policy choices, not inevitability. Regulators chose not to enforce antitrust. Legislators chose to pass laws protecting platforms from competition.

Smart Devices Enshittify Physical Objects

Doctorow’s example: his garage door opener shows seven ads every time he uses it. The company knows designing around the app is illegal under DMCA Section 1201.

Apps are websites wrapped in enough intellectual property protection to make it a felony to improve them. Companies want you to use apps instead of websites because apps give them more control.

Every company wants you to conduct business through their app. Banks. Airlines. Restaurants. Retailers. Apps let them track more, control more, and enshittify more than websites allow.

Smart thermostats, locks, refrigerators – all collect data and serve ads. The internet of things becomes an iron cage extending enshittification from digital into physical life.

The Norwegian Video

The Norwegian Consumer Council’s “Enshittificator” video dramatizes these practices. The fictional employee performs enshittification as a day job. He’s measured on how much worse he makes things.

“First we make it good, so people start using it,” he explains. “Then we make it worse, so we can make more money.”

He demonstrates adding steps to simple processes. Introduces pop-ups. He hides free features behind paywalls. He makes things complicated deliberately.

The video ends with a reminder that this isn’t how things have to be. Enshittification results from choices. Different choices create different outcomes.

How to Fight Back

Doctorow advocates for interoperability. Open systems let users escape. If you could use Facebook’s social graph with a third-party app, Facebook couldn’t degrade their app without losing users.

Reverse-engineering should be legal. Users should be able to improve products without permission. Ad blockers, third-party clients, and modifications that make things work better should all be allowed.

Right to repair extends this principle to hardware. You own your devices. You should be able to fix them, modify them, and control how they work.

Modern antitrust enforcement could break up monopolies. Platforms only get away with enshittification because users can’t leave. Competition prevents enshittification.

Europe leads on tech regulation. The EU forced Apple to adopt USB-C. It required interoperability for messaging apps. American regulators under Trump protect tech monopolies instead.

Will It Get Better

Doctorow sees a reckoning coming. Not from American regulators but from users and European lawmakers.

Platforms can’t keep degrading forever. Eventually users quit. When network effects reverse, platforms collapse fast. MySpace, Friendster, Vine – dominant platforms can die.

But new platforms follow the same enshittification pattern. TikTok started good. Now it’s filling with ads and promoted content. The cycle repeats.

Breaking the cycle requires changing the rules. Interoperability. Legal reverse-engineering. Antitrust enforcement. Right to repair. Without structural changes, every new platform eventually enshittifies.

The Norwegian video got one thing right: someone has a job making your apps worse. Not literally one person at a desk. But product managers, executives, shareholders – all incentivized to extract value at your expense.

Enshittification isn’t a bug. It’s the business model.