How the erosion of competition, regulation, self-help, and worker power ushered in the “enshittocene” era, or the slow decay of online platforms like Facebook
to stop video clerks leaking your rental history, incentivised after a Supreme Court nominee had his leaked. @doctorow of @EFF writes in @FTMag Mag on enshittification https://www.ft.com/... Why we need digital privacy👇 [image] Peter Oborne / @obornetweets : Anyone wishing to understand the depraved world we live in, and the long term dangers it presents, might wish to study this article in today's Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/... via @ft Malcolm Harris / @bigmeaninternet : I do not like this term or this analysis, though the problem it's trying to talk about (declining quality) is very important https://www.ft.com/... Gareth Brown / @forager_gareth : This article starts funny then goes deep. Worth a read. ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything https://www.ft.com/... @gingersamurai : 'Software doesn't eat the world, it just enshittifies it.' ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything https://www.ft.com/... via @ft Tom C. Avendaño / @tcavendano : The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulationand worker power. One by one, each of these constraints was eroded @doctorow https://www.ft.com/... @aysezarakol : ‘The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crap gadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand names and cryptocurrency scams.’ https://www.ft.com/... LinkedIn: Gregory Sims : I mostly limit my LinkedIn posts and shares to national security and intelligence topics since those are areas in which I have some expertise. … Regina Phelps : Dr. Jeffrey Funk, a great share and spot on. I would squeeze another stage in there - destruction. … Laura MacCleery : In addition to Doctorow's colorful description of the extractive mechanics destroying tech, I would like to suggest expanding our use of an existing term … Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic : “So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonised by platforms … Forums: Ptman / Lobsters : ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything
Context & Ripple Effects
Doctorow’s argument extends a recurring critique in the coverage: concentrated tech power was previously tied to weak oversight, pressure on workers and suppression of rivals in accounts of Big Tech’s rise. It shifts the focus from any one platform failure to the conditions that let user experience deteriorate over time.
The policy backdrop is contested. Earlier coverage proposed mandated interoperability as a route to user choice and competition, while another warned that social-platform rules can strengthen incumbents rather than resolve underlying harms.
First-order effects
- The article gives Facebook and comparable platforms a single causal frame—declining competitive pressure, regulation, user recourse and worker power—rather than treating poorer service as isolated product decisions.
- It strengthens the case for privacy and platform-governance interventions by connecting everyday data exposure and service decline to the same imbalance of power.
Second-order effects
- Policymakers and advocates face a sharper design test: remedies that merely add compliance burdens may entrench large platforms, whereas measures that improve switching or user leverage could alter incentives.
- Platforms seeking to defend product changes may face more scrutiny over whether those changes reduce user control or trust, not just whether they meet narrow rules.
Third-order effects
- If this diagnosis gains traction, platform governance will increasingly be judged by whether it preserves contestability, user exit and meaningful accountability—not solely by content moderation or privacy compliance.
- The unresolved issue is whether interventions can redistribute power without reinforcing incumbent scale, a tension already visible in the coverage’s competing views of regulation.
The trend: The story is part of a broader shift from viewing platform decline as a product-quality problem to treating it as an outcome of market power and governance design.