enshittification
/ɪnˌʃɪtɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
16
Letters
6
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The phenomenon of online platforms or services gradually degrading in quality, often by promoting advertisements, recurring payment, and sponsored content, in order to increase profits; (loosely) the process of becoming worse.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Wow. The Onion's AV Club just turned into a pile of hot garbage. Who is behind the ongoing enshittification of web design?"
- "1000000% true. The real cause of the "enshittification" of the UK."
- "Ultimately, it doesn't matter if Amazon's enshittification is because [Jeff] Bezos was a cynic or because he sold out. Once Amazon could make more money by screwing its customers, that screw-job became a fait accompli."
- "Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. ¶ I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them."
- "Both switching costs and network effects tend to lead to enshittification because platform providers see early adopters as an investment in future profits."
- "But it's not just users who are effectively incarcerated by enshittification. The advertisers and vendors who are the real customers of tech platforms are also prisoners."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁én Proto-Italic *en Proto-Italic *en- Latin in- Old French en-bor. Middle English en- English en- Proto-Germanic *skitiz Proto-West Germanic *skiti Proto-West Germanic *-jā Proto-West Germanic *skittjā Old English sċitte Old English *sċite Middle English schite English shit Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *-Hō Proto-Indo-European *-tiHō Proto-Italic *-tiō Latin -ficātiō Old French -ificationbor. Middle English -ificacioun English -ification English enshittification From en- + shit + -ification. The term was popularized and took its specific meaning from the writings of Canadian-British-American blogger, journalist, and science fiction author Cory Doctorow in 2022–2023, although isolated usage exists from 2013 (see quotations below).
Usage
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
Synonyms
Antonyms
deshittification
engoodening