Enshittification is a term coined by Cory Doctorow, a prolific author, and Canadian pioneer in the digital freedom space.
He describes it as a three stage process in technology
- 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.
The meaning has expanded over the past few years, and colloquially, it now describes the fact that the majority of the goods and services that we use have been degraded in some way in the relentless pursuit of profit at all costs.
You can see this everywhere in the modern world – particularly since the pandemic caused all of the Business Idiots to lose their minds with avarice – from the terrible “AI” chatbots that have replaced customer service, to the two-year warranty on a $5,000 appliance.
Enshittification is, fundamentally, a result of the failures of laize-faire capitalism which have allowed for rampant income inequality to poison the minds of business majors, who have turned every screw they can find to wring an extra fraction of a penny per unit out of everything you buy or sell.
Unshittification is how we take technology back from the enshittifiers. Unshittification is how we turn a frustrating experience back into an experience that you barely notice. Unshittification is how we tell the tech CEOs to FUCK OFF!