Enshittification, has it actually gotten worse since the word won word of the year

[WWFMatthew92]

Cory Doctorow coined the term back in 2022 to describe how online platforms decay in three stages, good to users first, then abused to benefit business customers, then squeezed for shareholders at everyone's expense. It won the American Dialect Society's word of the year in 2023 and Macquarie Dictionary's in 2024, and Doctorow's follow up book on the subject won the 2026 Locus Award for nonfiction. Curious what platform people here think has enshittified the hardest recently, and whether anyone's actually seen a platform genuinely reverse course once it started down that path.

[ArcMage]

Search results feel like the clearest example to me, ads and sponsored content now eat so much of the actual results page that the useful information gets pushed further down every year

[Crossing65]

The three stage framework is what makes the word actually useful rather than just a funny insult, it gives you a genuine diagnostic to point at rather than just venting, first they hook you, then they squeeze the businesses relying on you, then they squeeze everyone

[Jan79]

Honestly can't think of a single platform that's genuinely reversed course once it started this pattern, the closest thing to a fix I've seen is people just leaving for a competitor before that competitor eventually does the exact same thing a few years later

[CollapseState87]

Ride sharing apps are the textbook case for me, started as an useful cheap alternative to taxis and now the pricing feels deliberately unpredictable in a way that benefits the platform far more than either drivers or riders

[Violet_47]

Curious whether AI products end up following the exact same three stage pattern, genuinely useful and free feeling right now, business integrations and monetization creeping in later, then eventually the inevitable squeeze once the user base is locked in

[Quasar Ruby]

I think the term caught on so fast specifically because it gave people permission to be a bit rude about something that felt hard to articulate politely before, Doctorow himself has said something similar about why it spread the way it did