One of the first words that comes to mind I think of mobile culture, and technological culture in general, is growth; growth in computing power, growth in user-base, growth in market cap, growth in connectivity, and so on.
A few years ago, Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshitiffication” to describe a host of technologies and mobile-culture-related platforms that were prioritizing growth at the expense of the end-users and business clients of a host of different technologies; think Google, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, and so on.
I give you here a YouTube video of Cory speaking at CloudFest25, explaining his term and the empirical evidence behind it.
Are we as end-users doomed to suffer through the enshitiffication of all burgeoning mobile cultures and products? Is capitalism to blame, or is growth culture the symptom of some larger societal demand?
What a great topic. Yes, I’m afraid that we as end-users really doomed to suffer enshitiffication. And yes, capitalism is absolutely to blame. We’re now seeing ads creeping into our AI chat responses from ChatGPT and I’m sure it won’t be long until there are “promoted” chat responses to our inquiries – not because they’re the best answer, but because they feed the insatiable investor appetite for growth.
A bit of good news on this front is the arrival of vibe coding, which already allows you to create an app for yourself without having to pay the acquisition/subscription cost – except for the AI service you use to supply the tokens. This democratization of the app landscape will allow end-users to punish copmanies for serving up an enshittified and degraded experience because they can fabricate their own DIY apps and utilities that don’t come with cumbersome, ad-riddled interfaces. It isn’t quite ubiquitous or widespread yet but the make-your-own app wave is coming soon and it may enourage companies to put a bit more effort into preserving and maintaining high quality experiences for its users.
That’s a really good question. I think Doctorow’s idea of “enshittification” makes a lot of sense when we look at how platforms start out by being useful, then slowly fill up with ads, paywalls, and features that benefit companies more than users. With the rise of AI, I feel like this process is accelerating even faster. AI can generate huge amounts of content—some helpful, but a lot of it low quality or misleading. That flood of information makes it harder for us as end-users to separate value from “junk.”
I don’t know if we’re doomed, but I do think it means we need stronger digital literacy skills. As users, we have to learn how to judge information critically, filter what we consume, and avoid falling into the traps of algorithm-driven “growth at all costs.” Maybe the real challenge is not just capitalism or growth culture, but how we choose to interact with these systems and demand better ones.