Enshittification: how profit wins over customer experience
If you’ve never heard the term enshittification, you’re in for a treat.
It was coined by author Cory Doctorow, and it perfectly describes what happens when platforms get so big that they slowly turn to...crap.
Instagram turning into a shopping mall
Amazon burying real products under a mountain of ads and “sponsored maybe-it’s-real-maybe-it’s-not” listings
TikTok pushing whatever keeps you scrolling, not whatever you actually care about
Twitter/X… well, everybody knows
Doctorow explains enshittification in three phases:
The platform showers users with value: Everything is free, fun, simple, and frictionless. You think, “Wow, capitalism isn’t so bad after all.”
The platform squeezes users to please business partners: More ads. More promotions. More “recommended for you” content that you did NOT ask for.
The platform squeezes partners to please shareholders: Everyone gets annoyed. The user experience collapses. And the magic disappears. Products that once felt cool now only make you more stressed and dissatisfied.
Enshittification usually happens because companies try to scale endlessly.
More users = more revenue = more ways to treat the product less like a service and more like a slot machine.
This mindset is our personal villain.
We’re intentionally not trying to scale into a mega-agency with 200 clients and a creative factory full of designers, developers, and copywriters.
We want to stay small so that we know our clients personally and can keep human interactions at the center.
Because experience trumps scale, and relationships trump revenue-maximization hacks.
Ever noticed enshittification creeping into your favorite apps or tools?
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