Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which two-sided online products and servicesdecline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers (such as advertisers), and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders.
Canadian writer Cory Doctorow coined the neologism enshittification in November 2022,[1] though he was not the first to describe and label the concept.[2][3] Doctorow’s term has been widely adopted. The American Dialect Society selected it as its 2023 Word of the Year, with Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary following suit for 2024. Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com also list enshittification as a word.[4][5]