This term coined by Cory Doctorow embodies a theory that explains the accelerating decay of the things that matter to us.
When Facebook started out, it was good to users. It gathered a large popularity, and when a lot of the users were locked in to its platform and there was not a lot more business value to get from more gaining more users on the platform, the next phase started: being good to business customers. This meant implementing advertisements, and using recommendations to do so. Eventually, because the emphasis on getting the right ads to the right customers was getting so important, people's feeds were becoming more and more filled with boosted content, influencers, and ads.
Enshittification thus follows usually the same three-step pattern:
- An app/service/business gets so popular to people are locked in, meaning that not only you and your friends use it, but also your neighbor and your aunt.
- This give the company a lot of power to use the large audience as a business-model to gain money from, by introducing other businesses and investors to profit from the audience. It starts getting more commercial.
- The business gets too dependent on the commercial part, forcing them to make decisions that are harmful to their user base. Either by raising prices, including more ads, and other shit.