Why all your favorite apps are slowly turning into digital trash

Remember when the internet actually felt like a community? I’m talking about that sweet spot where you could hop onto Twitter and find the smartest commentary, the weirdest memes, and a genuine connection to people who shared your niche hobbies—all without having to dodge a dozen scams or “AI-generated” slop. It was a bit chaotic, sure, but it was our chaos.

Fast forward to today, and opening most social media apps feels like walking into a party where the host has started charging for air and the music has been replaced by someone screaming advertisements into a megaphone. It’s not just you being grumpy; the internet is legitimately getting worse. There’s actually a word for this decline, coined by the legendary tech critic Cory Doctorow: Enshittification.

The bait and switch we all fell for

We’ve all seen it happen. You find a cool new app. It’s free, it works perfectly, and it solves a problem you didn’t even know you had. This is what Doctorow calls the “First Stage.” The platform is being “good” to you because it needs your data and your attention to build a crowd. At this point, it’s all sunshine and rainbows. You tell your friends, they sign up, and suddenly everyone is there.

But then, the vibe shifts. Once the platform has locked us all in, they move to the “Second Stage.” Now, they have to keep the investors happy. To do that, they start being “good” to business customers. Think of Amazon pushing sponsored products to the top of your search results or Facebook showing you more ads than updates from your actual family. You’re no longer the customer; you’re the bait used to catch the advertisers.

Finally, we hit the “Third Stage.” This is where the platform realizes it has a monopoly and decides to screw over everyone. They hike fees for the businesses, make the user experience miserable with endless “suggested” content, and strip away the features that made us love the app in the first place. Why? Because they know you have nowhere else to go. It’s the digital version of Hotel California: you can check out, but your data and your followers are stuck in their basement forever.

Welcome to the age of digital landlords

There’s a fancy term for this that sounds like something out of a history book: Technofeudalism. Back in the middle ages, peasants didn’t own the land they worked; they just paid rent to a lord who sat in a big castle. Today, guys like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg are the new lords. They don’t necessarily “make” anything; they just own the digital ground we stand on.

Take the rebranding of Twitter to X. It’s basically a masterclass in how to burn a community to the ground. By selling blue checks—which used to actually mean something—to anyone with eight bucks, the platform effectively traded credibility for a quick buck. The result? A feed full of bots, rage-bait, and toxicity. But because people spent a decade building their reputations there, they’re terrified to leave. We’re essentially prisoners of our own digital history.

Amazon does the same thing. They lure sellers in with the promise of a massive audience, then slowly raise the “rent” (referral fees, advertising costs, shipping requirements) until the seller is barely making a profit. At that point, Amazon isn’t even a store anymore; it’s a toll booth.

Can we actually fix this mess

It’s easy to get cynical and think we’re doomed to spend the rest of our lives scrolling through AI-generated garbage. But Doctorow reckons there’s a way out. It’s not about “voting with your feet” and moving to a new platform that will eventually just do the same thing. It’s about changing the rules of the game.

1. Let the tech talk to each other Imagine if you could leave X but still see posts from your friends who stayed there. That’s called “interoperability.” Right now, tech companies build giant walls around their platforms to keep us trapped. If we had laws that forced these apps to work together—the same way your Gmail can send an email to a Yahoo account—the “lock-in” effect would vanish.

2. Stop the monopolies before they start We need actual regulation that prevents these tech giants from buying up every tiny competitor that shows promise. If a company gets too big to care about its users, it should be broken up. It’s not “anti-capitalist”; it’s actually making sure competition can actually exist.

3. Power to the people who build it Believe it or not, most of the engineers and designers working at these companies aren’t villains. Most of them hate the “enshittification” process as much as we do. If tech workers had more collective power, they could push back against the “make it worse for profit” orders coming from the C-suite.

The light at the end of the tunnel

The internet doesn’t have to be a giant pile of digital trash. We’ve seen it be good before, which means we know a better version is possible. It’s about moving away from a world where three or four billionaires decide what we see and who we talk to.

The “Enshittoscene” is exhausting, but it’s also a sign that the current model is reaching its breaking point. People are tired of being treated like metrics instead of humans. So, next time you’re frustrated because your favorite app feels like a chore, just remember: it’s not you, it’s the system. And systems can be hacked, regulated, and rebuilt.

Stay curious, stay skeptical, and maybe—just maybe—don’t buy that printer ink that only works with one specific brand. That’s a good place to start.

• Tags:
• Big Tech
• X
• Amazon
• Future of Tech