Enshittification also includes the misuse of algorithms to maximize outrage, appeal to users' vanity and thus exploit the worst impulses in people - a Meta speciality. It's very real.
You're providing both a definition of enshittification and cherry-picking a use case domain (Facebook & Instagram) that suits your statement. FB and Instagram are already free products for consumers. You're mentioning whatever features and algorithm changes as 'people complaining' without discussing the now constant barrage of ads across every feature they provide.
Domestic US Airlines nickle-and-diming for everything, ads in increasing number of places across streaming services with price increases (and increases to the basic plan price as a higher floor) etc. is exactly enshittification. There are many products and businesses where quality is on a monotonic decrease and new ways to charge for previously free experiences are introduced. Ridiculous
Airlines are a great example because specific brands have lower satisfaction from user surveys (ACSI 2025 vs 2026 for Southwest) but the same is not true for Facebook (+3%) or Instagram (0%)
People don't feel as negatively about social media as they do about specific airlines
Didn't Facebook / Meta hide the stats on the harm their programs do to young people. I don't believe for one iota that Facebook's satisfaction rate is up for actual users. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some bot system inflating positive feedback.
But, then, do you think the same tactics that target when young women delete a selfie to bombard them with beauty products because it indicates a possibility of negative self image should be similarly applied to women of all ages? What about filtering out bots that spam posts about political candidates to hone and echo lies to manipulate users' ethos? Why cherry pick your response to ignore the other underlying flaws in major social media platforms contributing to their demise? User accounts might be up but, as we learn in academia, quantity doesn't equate to quality.
From the perspective of end users, it’s Enshitification. This really isn’t debatable. Ads are brutal now, algorithms maximize engagement at detriment of users sanity.
From the company perspective of course things are on the up and up, but addicting people to poor experiences will end poorly for everyone.
Why don't they then report lessened satisfaction? they report decreases for certain airlines (Southwest for instance). We should expect the same for Facebook or Instagram.
Do you think people who take drugs report on satisfaction? Why do we even care, they’re drug takers! Brain rotting and algo maxxing isn’t good for people and addicting them to things is not great. It’s akin to being a tv addicts back in the day. Airline flights are much more objective to judge by the consumer than something free and addictive offered digitally.
People who leave or stop using the platforms for these declining subjective experiences don't generally report anything, they just drop off. They aren't measured by the company at that point outside of Monthly active user churn.
People who repeatedly get dragged back in are of course louder proponents of their resentment towards the new changes and their social entanglement.
If they platform is doing well, it continues to optimize it's usage patterns according to it's growing body of users, which is why a company would often see this as improvement over time. They don't care about how many people are gone, just how much of an active user base they are sustaining now and next quarter, YoY, because that feeds their ad revenue business.
Very interesting points and perspective. Thank you. I don't know much, but a couple thoughts:
1) Social media are addictive. Increased usage is expected.
2) Cognitive dissonance might explain why satisfaction is stagnant rather than declining.
For many years in a row, cigarette consumption increased. That didn't mean cigarettes weren't getting worse or doing harm to people.
Would be really interesting to see these analyses by user segment or cohort. Perhaps the folks who feel platforms have gotten worse are those who joined early and held more positive initial thoughts about the platform? And that those folks' dissatisfaction is outweighed by later joiners who are perhaps less discerning? One theory, might be wrong, is potentially testable.
Social media, in fact, all media that is driven by advertising is designed to hold your attention. That isn't "addicting". It's a business model feature to maximize revenue. Many don't seem to understand this.
I take your point that social media might not be addictive in a strict definitional sense. But two thoughts:
1) Whether addictive or not, social media are designed to retain attention. So regardless, we would expect usage to go up regardless of the quality of the platform, which was my challenge to the author's original claim.
@Jojo “Meth, in fact, all substances … isn’t ‘addicting’. It’s a business model feature designed to maximise revenue. Many don’t seem to understand this.”
I apologise for being facetious but the argument is absurd.
But it is YOU that keeps YOU addicted to anything. Ultimately, it is YOUR responsibility to control your addictive impulses, not a company whose service you partake of.
An example: I was "addicted" to cigarettes for many years, until I decided not to be addicted any longer and quit cold turkey.
You only know to quit cigarettes because we regulated the industry. Before ample research and regulation, the tobacco industry claimed cigarettes were good for you. They also tried to block research into the relationship to lung cancer for years
And also, the fact that people are getting themselves addicted doesn’t address the original point: addictive products are absolutely a business model. The fact that it is a business model doesn’t make things less addictive. It makes them more dangerous, because there’s an incentive structure to making people addicted to the product
You're missing the entire point of the term. Enshittification isn't 'the UI changed and I don't like it', it's a specific mechanism: platforms subsidise users to build lock-in, then extract from users to serve business customers, then extract from business customers to serve shareholders. Literally no one is saying "social media platforms are just so much better now than they were in 2016". It's like altering the addictive ingredients in ciggs and asking smokers why they aren't less satisfied. It's the wrong question.
It's absurd to make no mention of the monetization or financial incentives of the platforms and to onlly use one example. Author really did miss the whole point
Written by AI 😂 Obviously, neither the “writer” nor their AI bot actually read the book - no significant discussion of the financial incentives and manipulation that lie at the center of Doctorow’s thesis, rather a pedantic whataboutism through extremely lazy use of statistics and strawman arguments. It’s really quite humiliating that a multi billion dollar investment firm can’t even produce an AI that can argue a point on the merits. But of course these bots only reflect their masters’ most sycophantic and misanthropic attitudes, so why should I expect anything more than a mouth breathing grifter who vocally disdains introspection and critical thought? Classic a16z arrogance and gaslighting - and evidence that Substack is on its way to enshitification. 🆒
I’m not buying it. Mainly because “the platforms one uses should continue to respond to one’s idiosyncratic user needs” is Silicon Valley gospel! I’m building a platform myself, but I think we should be honest about things. Trying to flip it to “narcissism” just to serve your point is manipulative and dishonest.
I can guess why someone affiliated with a16z would publish this drivel: the enshittification argument points directly to extractive investor interests being the primary driver of the phenomenon.
While it is interesting to read a competently written propaganda piece, I much prefer the articles this Substack publishes that deal with real economic insights as seen through the eyes of investors.
Have you ever really liked a band that hardly anyone listened to, and then they start releasing albums that are more tailored to a broader audience, and suddenly they're making highly popular music whose main appeal is that it's catchy? The music is worse, but they're more popular than ever, because vast throngs of people don't want music to enrich their lives; they want something that just makes them feel a little good on their way to work. You would have every right to feel betrayed and saddened by the quiet loss of your favorite band, who has been replaced by a mass-appeal machine.
But at least you can always go back and listen to their old albums. You can't get old-Facebook back. Facebook doesn't release in versions. There's no Facebook 1 community keeping the old servers alive. Facebook was killed and replaced with a broad-appeal version, a cashcow that doesn't enrich anyone's lives the way old Facebook actually managed to. It just hosts addictive algorithms.
Of course the data shows satisfaction and engagement rising. That's the whole strategy, to make the averages go up. But that doesn't mean people are being narcissistic for grieving something they lost. The band they loved sold out, and it's not selfish to say the music is worse, because it obviously is.
This is by far the worst article a16z I have ever read. Cherry picking at all levels, quite surreal. Keep it simple :
- on Instagram a user CAN NOT stop video streaming ; can NOT choose to only see posts from his network. I tried. Can NOT see how algorithms work. NOT change the algorithms preferences. There is ABSOLUTELY ZERO agency for the user. Saying otherwise is intellectual dishonesty.
- Social medias have network effects which give them DE FACTO oligopolist positions. Am still waiting for the anti-monopoly laws, oh, but wait, Jesus, such a coincidence, the big tech bros including A16Z keep sending money to political parties, I guess we all will have to wait.
Your article is so full of bias it is embarrassing for you.
Do NOT come surprised when big government get elected to regulate your industries. It will be well deserved. While supportive of innovation and the startup scene, I could easily vote socialist just to get this nonsense regulated.
enshittification (for me) is very real, but not really when it comes to online platforms. Maybe that is where the term has crossed from it was termed for and has spread to other services.
It is the fast food outlets that are no longer fast, the retail stores that hire the absolute bare minimum number of staff so you have to wait longer to be served. The shrinkflation of groceries, or packing them with cheap, terrible ingredients after building a brand and customer loyalty with superior ingredients.
Basically anything and everything now seems to be companies seeing what they can get away with in order to maximize profits without bleeding too many customers.
tbh, I didn't realize the term was meant to be specific to tech platforms.
Useful counterfactual is a lot of unicorn-perceived companies are heavily subsidised by their fund. They’re not profitable but are focused only on growth. Then their investors start pushing profitability and there is dislocation between the customers’ needs and expectations, and the business model of the company. Case in point is Uber. Used to be dirt cheap, convenient and always useful to have. Then prices were pushed sky high without meaningful product benefits. UberEats similarly, except they hid the fact that their price was raised and the consumer rudely discovered that the ubereats price was sometimes double that of the stores normal price. Pursuit of profitability not via value-creation for target consumers but via carving out the profits from the value proposition. This is not Ikea deciding to not provide customisation and delivery service so they could focus on value creation via design and a new form factor — a clear strategy aimed at value-creation for customers who are not as interested in customisation and service ad they are interested in price, base quality and design.
The phenomenon claimed to be false is very very real and happens all over the place wherever the decision makers are unable, unwilling to or short-term in their thinking, such that they do not pursue value-additive solutions and strategies for profit expansion and instead overly focussed pursuing margin expansion via internal cost-revenue structure optimisation.
Take YouTube. Has the technology improved and the quantity and quality of product available improved? Yes. The tech was Google but the latter two were the creators. Good job for creating an incentive structure for the creators. How was further margin expansion pursued? Via Adverts, increasing number and eventually so brazenly designed to irritate customers into subscribing. This is not value add. I have never in my life, nor have I met someone who has bought something because of a YouTube advert. Yes YouTube tried to add additional features, but they were so damn late to the music streaming party it was frankly pathetic, and faces the continual structural headwind that people have their music elsewhere.
The above article is a good example of making data fit your story instead of examining the data to see what it’s saying.
On the VC funded unicorn perceived companies: some of them have business models that are not good. The only way they exist is through the huge subsidy phase where the price is dropped below the economic value required to provide the product. People buy it because it’s cheaper than it should be, and happens to be somewhat useful. Not because its useful and happens to cheap. The VC is happy to do this as the IPO is huge and I applaud their ability to make insane returns on their dollars. But often the company leftover is not great.
Facebook and Instagram have become terrible. I quit them both, but apparently most people can’t because they are addicted. There is no reason to be on those stupid apps unless you are an influencer. Even LinkedIn is starting to go down the bad path. Please Substack don’t follow them!
Enshittification also includes the misuse of algorithms to maximize outrage, appeal to users' vanity and thus exploit the worst impulses in people - a Meta speciality. It's very real.
You're providing both a definition of enshittification and cherry-picking a use case domain (Facebook & Instagram) that suits your statement. FB and Instagram are already free products for consumers. You're mentioning whatever features and algorithm changes as 'people complaining' without discussing the now constant barrage of ads across every feature they provide.
Domestic US Airlines nickle-and-diming for everything, ads in increasing number of places across streaming services with price increases (and increases to the basic plan price as a higher floor) etc. is exactly enshittification. There are many products and businesses where quality is on a monotonic decrease and new ways to charge for previously free experiences are introduced. Ridiculous
Airlines are a great example because specific brands have lower satisfaction from user surveys (ACSI 2025 vs 2026 for Southwest) but the same is not true for Facebook (+3%) or Instagram (0%)
People don't feel as negatively about social media as they do about specific airlines
I do not think this means what you think it means.
Didn't Facebook / Meta hide the stats on the harm their programs do to young people. I don't believe for one iota that Facebook's satisfaction rate is up for actual users. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some bot system inflating positive feedback.
i do not believe children should be on social media
But, then, do you think the same tactics that target when young women delete a selfie to bombard them with beauty products because it indicates a possibility of negative self image should be similarly applied to women of all ages? What about filtering out bots that spam posts about political candidates to hone and echo lies to manipulate users' ethos? Why cherry pick your response to ignore the other underlying flaws in major social media platforms contributing to their demise? User accounts might be up but, as we learn in academia, quantity doesn't equate to quality.
i don't think being on social media is particularly good - i personally refrain from it
https://beingonline.substack.com/p/my-media-consumption-rules-for-2025
however, i do think people like it (specifically they report liking it) (my point here!)
moreover, my other point is for the average user the platforms have not gotten worse (though the platforms may have negative externalities)
Doesn’t mean it hasn’t gotten worse by the definition of the term you are fighting so hard against
If you're viewing ads on the net, then your bad. There are plenty of ad blockers available.
From the perspective of end users, it’s Enshitification. This really isn’t debatable. Ads are brutal now, algorithms maximize engagement at detriment of users sanity.
From the company perspective of course things are on the up and up, but addicting people to poor experiences will end poorly for everyone.
Why don't they then report lessened satisfaction? they report decreases for certain airlines (Southwest for instance). We should expect the same for Facebook or Instagram.
Do you think people who take drugs report on satisfaction? Why do we even care, they’re drug takers! Brain rotting and algo maxxing isn’t good for people and addicting them to things is not great. It’s akin to being a tv addicts back in the day. Airline flights are much more objective to judge by the consumer than something free and addictive offered digitally.
People who leave or stop using the platforms for these declining subjective experiences don't generally report anything, they just drop off. They aren't measured by the company at that point outside of Monthly active user churn.
People who repeatedly get dragged back in are of course louder proponents of their resentment towards the new changes and their social entanglement.
If they platform is doing well, it continues to optimize it's usage patterns according to it's growing body of users, which is why a company would often see this as improvement over time. They don't care about how many people are gone, just how much of an active user base they are sustaining now and next quarter, YoY, because that feeds their ad revenue business.
Very interesting points and perspective. Thank you. I don't know much, but a couple thoughts:
1) Social media are addictive. Increased usage is expected.
2) Cognitive dissonance might explain why satisfaction is stagnant rather than declining.
For many years in a row, cigarette consumption increased. That didn't mean cigarettes weren't getting worse or doing harm to people.
Would be really interesting to see these analyses by user segment or cohort. Perhaps the folks who feel platforms have gotten worse are those who joined early and held more positive initial thoughts about the platform? And that those folks' dissatisfaction is outweighed by later joiners who are perhaps less discerning? One theory, might be wrong, is potentially testable.
I hypothesise that one day we will treat social media like we treat cigarettes today.
Social media, in fact, all media that is driven by advertising is designed to hold your attention. That isn't "addicting". It's a business model feature to maximize revenue. Many don't seem to understand this.
I take your point that social media might not be addictive in a strict definitional sense. But two thoughts:
1) Whether addictive or not, social media are designed to retain attention. So regardless, we would expect usage to go up regardless of the quality of the platform, which was my challenge to the author's original claim.
2) Take a look at this article from Stanford Med School about addictive potential of social media. Not the same as being addictive in the strictest sense, but useful nonetheless. https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2021/10/addictive-potential-of-social-media-explained.html
If you want to take exception with my use of "addictive", I understand and am fine with that.
@Jojo “Meth, in fact, all substances … isn’t ‘addicting’. It’s a business model feature designed to maximise revenue. Many don’t seem to understand this.”
I apologise for being facetious but the argument is absurd.
"I apologise for being facetious but the argument is absurd."
---
Can you translate this to simple English? I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Keeping users addicted is an excellent business model to maximize revenue. The two are not mutually exclusive
Just read up on the McKinsey and Purdue Pharma case. It’s a prime example of it
But it is YOU that keeps YOU addicted to anything. Ultimately, it is YOUR responsibility to control your addictive impulses, not a company whose service you partake of.
An example: I was "addicted" to cigarettes for many years, until I decided not to be addicted any longer and quit cold turkey.
Everything is ultimately up to you.
Hard disagree, man
You only know to quit cigarettes because we regulated the industry. Before ample research and regulation, the tobacco industry claimed cigarettes were good for you. They also tried to block research into the relationship to lung cancer for years
And also, the fact that people are getting themselves addicted doesn’t address the original point: addictive products are absolutely a business model. The fact that it is a business model doesn’t make things less addictive. It makes them more dangerous, because there’s an incentive structure to making people addicted to the product
You're missing the entire point of the term. Enshittification isn't 'the UI changed and I don't like it', it's a specific mechanism: platforms subsidise users to build lock-in, then extract from users to serve business customers, then extract from business customers to serve shareholders. Literally no one is saying "social media platforms are just so much better now than they were in 2016". It's like altering the addictive ingredients in ciggs and asking smokers why they aren't less satisfied. It's the wrong question.
It's absurd to make no mention of the monetization or financial incentives of the platforms and to onlly use one example. Author really did miss the whole point
Agreed
Yikes! Strawman strawman Strawman, cherrypick cherrypick cherrypick, broad sweeping generalization
This essay is such a great example of the whole idea.
Written by AI 😂 Obviously, neither the “writer” nor their AI bot actually read the book - no significant discussion of the financial incentives and manipulation that lie at the center of Doctorow’s thesis, rather a pedantic whataboutism through extremely lazy use of statistics and strawman arguments. It’s really quite humiliating that a multi billion dollar investment firm can’t even produce an AI that can argue a point on the merits. But of course these bots only reflect their masters’ most sycophantic and misanthropic attitudes, so why should I expect anything more than a mouth breathing grifter who vocally disdains introspection and critical thought? Classic a16z arrogance and gaslighting - and evidence that Substack is on its way to enshitification. 🆒
You think AI would say “crying-worse” lol - run the Substack Pangram
thanks i didnt plan on reading the blog and now I am sure I wont.
I’m not buying it. Mainly because “the platforms one uses should continue to respond to one’s idiosyncratic user needs” is Silicon Valley gospel! I’m building a platform myself, but I think we should be honest about things. Trying to flip it to “narcissism” just to serve your point is manipulative and dishonest.
I can guess why someone affiliated with a16z would publish this drivel: the enshittification argument points directly to extractive investor interests being the primary driver of the phenomenon.
While it is interesting to read a competently written propaganda piece, I much prefer the articles this Substack publishes that deal with real economic insights as seen through the eyes of investors.
Have you ever really liked a band that hardly anyone listened to, and then they start releasing albums that are more tailored to a broader audience, and suddenly they're making highly popular music whose main appeal is that it's catchy? The music is worse, but they're more popular than ever, because vast throngs of people don't want music to enrich their lives; they want something that just makes them feel a little good on their way to work. You would have every right to feel betrayed and saddened by the quiet loss of your favorite band, who has been replaced by a mass-appeal machine.
But at least you can always go back and listen to their old albums. You can't get old-Facebook back. Facebook doesn't release in versions. There's no Facebook 1 community keeping the old servers alive. Facebook was killed and replaced with a broad-appeal version, a cashcow that doesn't enrich anyone's lives the way old Facebook actually managed to. It just hosts addictive algorithms.
Of course the data shows satisfaction and engagement rising. That's the whole strategy, to make the averages go up. But that doesn't mean people are being narcissistic for grieving something they lost. The band they loved sold out, and it's not selfish to say the music is worse, because it obviously is.
This is by far the worst article a16z I have ever read. Cherry picking at all levels, quite surreal. Keep it simple :
- on Instagram a user CAN NOT stop video streaming ; can NOT choose to only see posts from his network. I tried. Can NOT see how algorithms work. NOT change the algorithms preferences. There is ABSOLUTELY ZERO agency for the user. Saying otherwise is intellectual dishonesty.
- Social medias have network effects which give them DE FACTO oligopolist positions. Am still waiting for the anti-monopoly laws, oh, but wait, Jesus, such a coincidence, the big tech bros including A16Z keep sending money to political parties, I guess we all will have to wait.
Your article is so full of bias it is embarrassing for you.
Do NOT come surprised when big government get elected to regulate your industries. It will be well deserved. While supportive of innovation and the startup scene, I could easily vote socialist just to get this nonsense regulated.
Meta AI inside whatsapp is a great thing.
The inability to disable Reels in Instagram is another great thing.
The utter inability to flick a switch and not see any AI content is an even greater thing.
Adding functionality and not letting people disable said functionality is the pinnacle of great things
This is just MS-OFFICE on steroids.
Actually on MS-Office I can hide features, configure toolbars etc.
So this is worse than MS-Office.
Definitely not enshittification
enshittification (for me) is very real, but not really when it comes to online platforms. Maybe that is where the term has crossed from it was termed for and has spread to other services.
It is the fast food outlets that are no longer fast, the retail stores that hire the absolute bare minimum number of staff so you have to wait longer to be served. The shrinkflation of groceries, or packing them with cheap, terrible ingredients after building a brand and customer loyalty with superior ingredients.
Basically anything and everything now seems to be companies seeing what they can get away with in order to maximize profits without bleeding too many customers.
tbh, I didn't realize the term was meant to be specific to tech platforms.
the term can be applied to other industries, this focuses mainly on social media which is often the target
The problem is human workers. Once we have AI/robots doing all work, the concept of enshitification will disappear.
P.S. I think Doctorow is generally full of dung.
Useful counterfactual is a lot of unicorn-perceived companies are heavily subsidised by their fund. They’re not profitable but are focused only on growth. Then their investors start pushing profitability and there is dislocation between the customers’ needs and expectations, and the business model of the company. Case in point is Uber. Used to be dirt cheap, convenient and always useful to have. Then prices were pushed sky high without meaningful product benefits. UberEats similarly, except they hid the fact that their price was raised and the consumer rudely discovered that the ubereats price was sometimes double that of the stores normal price. Pursuit of profitability not via value-creation for target consumers but via carving out the profits from the value proposition. This is not Ikea deciding to not provide customisation and delivery service so they could focus on value creation via design and a new form factor — a clear strategy aimed at value-creation for customers who are not as interested in customisation and service ad they are interested in price, base quality and design.
The phenomenon claimed to be false is very very real and happens all over the place wherever the decision makers are unable, unwilling to or short-term in their thinking, such that they do not pursue value-additive solutions and strategies for profit expansion and instead overly focussed pursuing margin expansion via internal cost-revenue structure optimisation.
Take YouTube. Has the technology improved and the quantity and quality of product available improved? Yes. The tech was Google but the latter two were the creators. Good job for creating an incentive structure for the creators. How was further margin expansion pursued? Via Adverts, increasing number and eventually so brazenly designed to irritate customers into subscribing. This is not value add. I have never in my life, nor have I met someone who has bought something because of a YouTube advert. Yes YouTube tried to add additional features, but they were so damn late to the music streaming party it was frankly pathetic, and faces the continual structural headwind that people have their music elsewhere.
The above article is a good example of making data fit your story instead of examining the data to see what it’s saying.
On the VC funded unicorn perceived companies: some of them have business models that are not good. The only way they exist is through the huge subsidy phase where the price is dropped below the economic value required to provide the product. People buy it because it’s cheaper than it should be, and happens to be somewhat useful. Not because its useful and happens to cheap. The VC is happy to do this as the IPO is huge and I applaud their ability to make insane returns on their dollars. But often the company leftover is not great.
Facebook and Instagram have become terrible. I quit them both, but apparently most people can’t because they are addicted. There is no reason to be on those stupid apps unless you are an influencer. Even LinkedIn is starting to go down the bad path. Please Substack don’t follow them!
Kind of like trying to defend BigAg, BigFood and addictive ultra processed food.