Enshittification and restoring power to users

Earlier this week I noted about Linkedin pushing video games inside their platform as an 'added value' for their users. Then, I was discussing with Raúl Hernández González about how the essence of Linkedin was changed over time, since the very beginning of the world's largest professional network on the internet. Later, I came accross one term that clearly explains the current status in many online services and products: #enshittification.

According to Wikipedia, enshittification?was coined by Cory Doctorow and is related to the pattern of decreasing quality observed in those services.?

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, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

As samples, it's true this behaviour is becoming increasing common. Facebook broke its promise not to spy on users, created a massive commercial surveillance system, and sold cheap, reliable targeting to advertisers. Google broke its promise not to pollute its search engine with ads and offered great deals to advertisers. Amazon offered below-cost shipping and returns to platform sellers and later shifted the cost onto those sellers. YouTube offered reliable, lucrative income streams to performers and many responded by building their businesses on the platform. Same for Linkedin?

The good deal for users is only temporary: once B2C users -and then B2B advertisers- are dependent on a platform, the platform’s generosity ends and it starts clawing back value for its shareholders.

The solution might be restore power back to the users. Protecting users from this degradation starts with giving users full control over their digital lives. The question is how, because it's probably too late for that.

PS #1. I sometimes miss blogosphere, where the internet used to be a more 'beautiful' place that fostered self-expression.

PS #2. In a 2024 article on Financial Times, Doctorow extended the word with the term "enshittocene" to state that "'enshittification' is coming for absolutely everything".