Where it sits
Doctorow's model is a one-way journey along this line.
Tell it apart
| Aspect | Enshittification | Planned obsolescence |
|---|---|---|
| Target | A platform position | A product |
| You can leave | Technically | Yes |
| Needs two sides | Yes | No |
| Ends in | Collapse | A new purchase |
Planned obsolescence degrades a product you own. Enshittification degrades a position you are locked into. The lock-in, not the decay, is the actual mechanism — you stay because leaving costs you your data, your audience or your history.
What it doesn't mean
Doctorow's model is specifically about TWO-SIDED MARKETS. A platform must have both users and business customers, because the mechanism is value being shuttled between them and then withdrawn from both. A site that simply declines in quality is not enshittifying in Doctorow's strict sense — though the looser sense, a platform or service just getting worse, is now the recorded dictionary one, and Doctorow has welcomed it.
The opposite. He has explicitly permitted and celebrated its broadening to games, television and beyond — unusual behaviour for a coiner, and part of why the word spread so fast.
What it really means
Most people use this word to mean a website got worse. The actual model is far more specific, and the specificity is what makes it predictive.
Cory Doctorow first published the word on 15 November 2022, and pinned the definition on 21 January 2023. Three stages, in order:
One. The platform is good to its users, to attract them.
Two. It abuses its users to make things better for its business customers — the advertisers, sellers, publishers who pay.
Three. It abuses those business customers to claw back all the value for itself.
The crucial word in that sequence is customers. Enshittification is a theory of two-sided markets. It needs users on one side and paying businesses on the other, because the mechanism is value being shuttled from one to the other and then withdrawn from both. A site that simply gets worse — bad redesign, neglect, incompetence — is not enshittifying in the strict sense. It is just declining. The loose sense is real, recorded and blessed by Doctorow himself; the strict one is the one that predicts.
What makes the model bite is the second half of the argument: why nobody leaves. The answer is lock-in. Your data, your audience, your purchase history, your friends, your reviews, your job applications. The platform can degrade a long way before leaving is cheaper than staying, and stage two is the process of finding out exactly how far.
That is also why the ending is fixed. Once both sides are locked in and the value that attracted each has been taken back, there is nothing left to give. The only remaining move is extraction, and extraction has a floor.
One last detail that says something about the word's success: Doctorow has explicitly welcomed people broadening it — to games, to television, to anything. Coiners usually spend their time policing their own terms. He handed his over.
Where it comes from
English prefix — to cause to become
an existing informal noun, alongside 'crapification'
Doctorow built the word on an existing base rather than inventing it whole — Wiktionary analyses it as en- + shittification, 'becoming shitty'. The OED records uses of the word back to 2013 and says Doctorow later popularised it.
- 2013
Earliest recorded use, in a social-media post complaining about the enshittification of web design; Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary both date the word to 2013.
- 15 November 2022
Cory Doctorow's first published use of the word, in the post 'Social Quitting'.
- 21 January 2023
The Pluralistic post that fixes the three-stage definition — good to users, then abusive to users for business customers, then clawing all the value back.
In real life
- 'Remember when this app just showed you what your friends posted? Now it's adverts, suggested videos and one friend every twenty scrolls.'
- A small seller who once reached customers for free through a marketplace's search now pays for adverts just to appear on the first page — and pays a little more every year.
- The looser sense, which Doctorow welcomes: 'The streaming service I joined for its back catalogue now has adverts and half the films.'
Questions
Q01When exactly was it coined?
An isolated use from 2013 is on record (Merriam-Webster, the OED); Doctorow's first published use is dated 15 November 2022. The famous three-stage definition post is 21 January 2023.
Q02Why does it always end the same way?
Because in the model the platform has nothing left to give away once both sides are locked in. The value that attracted each side has already been withdrawn, so the only remaining move is extraction, and the only outcome is collapse.
Q03Has it won any awards?
American Dialect Society Word of the Year 2023 and Macquarie Dictionary 2024 — only the third time since 2006 that a word took both Macquarie's committee vote and its people's choice.
Sources
- Enshittification — Wikipedia.
- Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, 21 January 2023.
- enshittification (etymology) — Wiktionary.
- Merriam-Webster — enshittification (first known use 2013).