Key Takeaways Platforms like Facebook show how user-first systems can decay over time. Cory Doctorow calls this ‘enshittification,’ a cycle where platforms shift from serving user interests to serving stakeholder goals.
AI may follow the same path. High compute costs and financial losses are pushing companies toward ads, paywalls, and ‘freemium’ features, weakening the free user experience.
Declining model quality, limited free tiers, embedded ads in chatbots, and opaque ranking systems are among the early signs of the enshittification of AI. This raises concerns on how this AI breakdown would follow the same path seen in old tech platforms like Facebook.
There was a time when Facebook felt warm and personal. You opened the app, and you would see real updates from friends and family.
However, Facebook feeds have changed over the years. Now, it shows irrelevant posts from pages you liked years ago, ads about products you don’t care about, and updates from people whom the platform thinks you should care about.
According to writer and journalist Cory Doctorow, it’s not just Facebook; many of our beloved tech platforms, like Amazon and Uber, have gone bad on the path to higher profits. He coined the term ‘enshittification‘ for this intentional decay of tech platforms.
With AI penetrating every facet of our lives, it’s natural to ask: will AI go down the same path? Even worse, are we ready for that? But let’s first answer a more important question: how exactly does the enshittification happen?
How Platforms Rot on Purpose
Cory Efraim Doctorow said that enshittification happens in three stages:
1. Attracting Users
... continue reading