What is “Enshittification” of Tech Companies? With Author Cory Doctorow

What It Covers

Author Cory Doctorow explains enshittification, his term for how tech platforms decay through a three-stage process: attracting users, locking them in, then extracting value from both users and business customers while thriving financially despite declining quality.

Key Questions Answered

• •Three-stage decay model: Platforms first serve users well while building lock-in, then degrade user experience to attract business customers, finally extract value from both groups while leaving minimal residual value—succeeding financially throughout this process of deliberate deterioration.
• •Policy environment enables extraction: Enshittification occurs when companies mistreat users yet thrive financially due to weakened antitrust enforcement, regulatory capture by consolidated industries, and forty years of neoliberal economic policy that stopped disciplining monopolistic behavior through competition or regulation.
• •Four disciplinary forces weakened: Companies historically faced discipline from competition, regulation, workforce power, and interoperability. All four eroded simultaneously—mergers went unchallenged, regulators were captured, tech workers lost leverage as supply met demand, and IP laws banned reverse engineering.
• •Ulysses pacts prevent future compromise: Organizations must structurally constrain future bad decisions through worker unionization, B-corp or co-op structures, open RSS distribution avoiding platform lock-in, and irrevocable open licenses—relying solely on moral resolve guarantees eventual rationalized compromise under pressure.