Violent, sensational, and divisive content is increasingly dominating social media feeds, overshadowing more thoughtful and substantive posts. This decline in online experience has a name: “enshittification,” a term coined to describe the degradation of online platforms.
The concept, theorized by Canadian-British blogger Cory Doctorow in 2022 and detailed in his recently released book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It (Verso), explains how platforms initially benefit users, then cater to businesses, and ultimately prioritize extracting value for themselves, often at the expense of both. Doctorow’s work has garnered attention, being shortlisted for the Financial Times’ best books of the year and sparking discussion within the American Dialect Society, a scholarly organization dedicated to the study of the English language. The phenomenon impacts all social media users, contributing to ideological fragmentation and a more polarized online habitat, as highlighted in a recent Le point debate.
