Source: Wired
by Henry Farrell & Abraham L Newman
“Back in 2022, Cory Doctorow coined the term ‘enshittification’ to describe a cycle that has played out again and again in the online economy. Entrepreneurs start off making high-minded promises to get new users to try their platforms. But once users, vendors, and advertisers have been locked in — by network effects, insurmountable collective action problems, high switching costs — the tactics change. The platform owners start squeezing their users for everything they can get, even as the platform fills with ever more low-quality slop. Then they start squeezing vendors and advertisers too. People don’t usually think of military hardware, the US dollar, and satellite constellations as platforms. But that’s what they are.” (07/15/25)