this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
1186 points (90.8% liked)
Enshittification
2923 readers
201 users here now
What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I’m on the millennial train here, and am fully onboard with the monopolization angle, but this is taking it a bit far? Chromebooks aren’t that bad.
Stepping back and maybe over generalizing again, I think the problem might be… attention spans? Like kids are so bombarded with feeds and notification spam that, on average, there’s less patience to sit down, look stuff up, and neurotically tinker (which was still the vast minority in my generation). Its the same problem leading to less interest in literature, TV, anything long form.
Learning the bare minimum to function in Windows is not exactly “tech literate” to me, it just happens to be the system so many businesses are stuck with, and some generations were forced to learn by coincidence. Looking back, modern Android and iOS are really accessible by comparison, though of course they have enshittification issues.