History of the internet is ridden with products, websites and platforms starting out as safe haven for the end users but in the end, only happy people are owners and show runners. Journey of the internet from decentralised, open spaces to capitalistic cut throat platforms makes us think that maybe it’s high time new ways of surfing the internet should be founded.
What is Enshittification
Cory Doctorow, a Canadian blogger, writer and digital rights activist coined the term Enshittification in 2023. Enshittification encapsulates, in itself, a critical definition of the life cycle of online services burgeoning from user-centric existence towards solely commercial loyalties. Companies keep milking their users/customers dry while pretending to not make any money. The uncouth pursuit of profiteering is one of the goals which leads companies to revolutionise a market only to later exploit it.
It’s like building a beautiful jail and advertising it as a gated community. Once the people are lured in, you shut the gates and force them to work for you. The barrier to exist is extremely effective, thanks to monopolisation.
Social media platforms are enchanted by the metrics instead of user experience, privacy and safety of their users. Search Engines are hell bent on pushing sponsored links while the organic content exhausts in a sea of nuisance and digital garbage. Society and users both suffer through the Enshittification of digital products.
During the inception of the early internet, it was a vibrant array of intellectual hermitage and free flowing weird ideas but alas greed and sinister commercial practices moulded it into a horrendous ad-space. Decentralisation and freedom for individual expression was once a hallmark of normal internet experience, which was cheated to death by profit maximisation. Users were the prime operator and flag bearers of the internet, but now they are nothing more than a cluster of data ready to be sold to the highest bidder. Short term gains are the most crucial to the online companies, which destabilise the equilibrium between business customers and users of a platform. When helping the society and people are on the back catalogue of a company’s mind, their customer support becomes synonymous with outsourced and uninterested call centres operatives. When an online platform is completely oblivious of its looming demise, they only cater the diluted, dumbed down and repetitive content to the users.
Are Social Media Prisons of Personal Liberty?
The escape is insurmountable, and digital platforms have become the ungainly crutches for the individuals, without which it has become unimaginable for one to navigate through the thick and thin of life these days. If you want to switch to a niche new platform for a change, it’s almost impossible to convince your friends and acquaintances to accompany you there.Users face extensive consequences of Enshittification in the form of advertisements, invasions of privacy and prohibition on their individual expression. To manipulate and beguile, social media platform runners go to any length for monetary gain.
It is imperative that we resist the forces of Enshittification and reclaim the internet as a public good. We must demand transparency, accountability, and fairness from tech companies. We must support open-source initiatives and decentralised technologies that can challenge the dominance of the digital giants. And we must educate ourselves and others about the dangers of Enshittification and the importance of digital literacy.
The Slump in Better User Experience
Enjoyable user experience attracted the masses towards social media initially. A seamless transition from writing individual emails to a community hall like environment on the internet but alas it went sideways quickly as the marketers and advertisers figured out the ways to monetise user activity on Social media. Being able to connect with friends, family and join discussions with people from far reaching ends of the world was the hallmark of burgeoning Social Media platforms in the late 2000’s. Now the priority is revenue generation for them.
Our social media feeds are curated through algorithms devoid of providing unique experience, instead maximum engagement, rage baiting content pop up in our feeds innumerably until we click on it. Misinformation is prevalent on social media and loaded questions with the expectation of receiving charged responses are mind numbingly ubiquitous.
Death of Privacy
User data is precious to the social media platforms instead of the users themselves. Data breaches, misuse and governments poking around have made the users vulnerable to the sight of disagreeable entities. Facebook’s famous scandal of The Cambridge Analytica is a prime example of how the politicians have used social media to sway the voters and affect the outcomes of elections in America. Unethical political ads with the intent to defame the opponents with misinformation were widespread on Social Media in the mid 2010’s.Moreover, social media platforms have often been criticised for their opaque privacy policies and lack of transparency regarding how user data is collected, used, and shared. This has led to a growing distrust of these platforms and a sense of powerlessness among users.
Few Controls All - The Consolidation of Power
Social Media platforms with enormous user base are rarity. With giant user bases, amassing to billions of monthly users, these mega social media platforms have too much power to wield. The social fabric is in control of proprietary algorithms set forth by these social media giants. A few hands grabbing all the grains exacerbate the Enshittification issue. Facebook now works under the parent organization called, which basically owns a major portion of social media space as they also own Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp besides the Facebook. This way, Meta can dictate what are the choices for users and how will they be serviced on the Internet. Their narrative becomes “the narrative”.The Future of Social Media:
Future of decentralized social networks is inevitably bright. The consistent presence of social media will be shaping our lives in the future and the influencers rise will not plummet anytime soon. The emergence of platforms which are able to detect and scrutinise false information are deeply warranted now.
There is a growing movement for social media reform. Advocates are calling for stricter regulations, increased transparency, and a focus on user well-being. By working together, we can help to ensure that social media platforms remain a valuable tool for connection and communication, rather than a source of exploitation and division.
Solutions to Protect the Public Internet from Enshittification
To reverse the deteriorating affects of this ghastly phenomenon on the internet, efforts must come from everywhere. Whether it be digital rights activists, brands and online business owners, legislators and governments, all must condemn the hazardous effects of Enshittification on the internet.
Strengthened Regulations
Antitrust laws need to address the issue of consolidation of few powerful tech entities and enforce police to adhere user concerns and issues. Better Privacy laws are essential for protecting users from exploitation and misuse of personal data. Internet companies have been allegedly tempering with the bandwidth for years now by favouring certain websites more than the others. Hence corrupting the free flowing nature of the internet and inducing artificially curated internet experience for monetary gain. Favoured content gets more than its fair share of traffic this way, hence messing with the net neutrality. Everyone deeming themselves a stakeholder in the future of the internet should raise their voice to establish net neutrality.
Promotion of Open-Source Software:
Open source software are a great starting point for people to understand technology even if you are not a professional in a technology space. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is inherently about sociological and philosophical implications of software distribution and packaging. In the 1970’s, computer scientists having this debate whether it’s ethical to withhold the code of the software when packaging and distributing a software. Then in the 80’s, likes of Richard Stallman started GNU and Free Software Foundation. In its manifesto, it was considered compulsory to provide the code to the end users along with the packaged software. Open Source Software are just more trustable, since anyone can acquire their code and audit it. If there’s something nefarious in the Open source software, it gets pointed out before it reaches masses. Notable examples of open-source software, which everyone has heard about, are Firefox browser, VLC media player and Linux OS. Firefox is still honest about collecting user data as compared to Google Chrome, Safari or Chromium based browsers. Products like these are still community driven.
Education and User Empowerment
Educated users who are hyper aware of their responsibilities and roles on the internet are paramount for improving the experience for everyone. Online security, misinformation handling, data privacy are few of the areas, which they should learn about.
Government Initiatives:
It would be great if the governments Invested in public internet infrastructure, such as community networks and government-owned fibre optic networks. Increase in competition and reduced dependency on commercial internet service providers would benefit the general public.
Funding in research and development into innovative internet technologies can challenge existing platforms and force them to innovate to stay relevant. This could include exploring new business models, decentralized architectures, and artificial intelligence-based solutions.
By implementing these solutions, we can work towards a more equitable, resilient, and user-centric internet. It is essential to recognize that this is a complex issue that requires a multifaceted approach involving governments, businesses, and individuals.
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