‘We can have a better digital world’: Global campaign targets ‘enshitification’ of social media
A viral video by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) is drawing attention to a growing concern about the decline in quality across popular digital platforms.
A self-described “professional enshitificator” deliberately adds pop-ups to websites, schedules ad breaks into YouTube videos, and installs disruptive phone updates.
The video, which has amassed millions of views, is part of a wider global campaign warning about “enshitification,” the degradation of online platforms or services that were once user-friendly.
Over 70 advocacy groups from the United States, the European Union, and Norway sent letters to politicians in over 14 countries, asking for stronger enforcement against “enshitification”.
“We can have a better digital world,” a February letter from the NCC to EU officials reads. “We must rebalance power between consumers, Big Tech and alternative service providers.”
What is enshitification?
Journalist Cory Doctorow was the first to coin the term ‘enshitification’ in 2023. He argued that platforms are first good to their users, then abuse them to make things better for their business customers.
Eventually, platforms will then abuse their business partners to claw back all the money for themselves.
In practice, this means a handful of platforms expose users to advertising, paywalls or subscriptions for features that were once free, said Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, the NCC’s director of digital policy.
”It’s a deliberate process, a deliberate choice by companies to take advantage of the fact that we're locked in and that we then don't have other choices,” Myrstad said.
There is no universally agreed threshold for when a service becomes “enshitified,” making it a matter of personal judgement, Myrstad added.
The NCC report points to Facebook as one example, arguing that the platform has changed its original purpose of connecting friends and family in favour of prioritising promoted content and advertising in a “deliberate effort to increase profits”.
The Facebook feed “now includes forced advertisement breaks, vast amounts of AI slop, and various other content,” the report said.
‘Enshitification’ is easier to do with digital products because they can be easily modified in ways that physical products cannot, Myrstad said. That means many digital products have seen anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices proliferate.
Platforms are not worsening user experience on purpose, but if they have to choose between better service and monetisation, they will put profits first, according to Paul Richter, a fellow at the Bruegel think tank.
“Every single time that competition decreases I think that just makes it easier for these platforms to provide a lower standard of service to users,” Richter said.
Platforms ‘lock the consumer in’
In the early days of social media, intense competition forced platforms to appeal simultaneously to users, creators and advertisers. Over time, however, mergers and acquisitions concentrated the market, reducing the pressure to compete, both Myrstad and Richter said.
Both point to Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012 as a pivotal moment. One that, had it been blocked, might have preserved stronger competition between platforms.
A key driver of this dynamic is the so-called network effect, where a platform’s value increases as more people use it, the NCC report found..
Social media users are reluctant to leave if their favourite creators are not elsewhere, while creators hesitate to move without an audience, Richter said.
There are also practical ties keeping users on big social media platforms, such as staying in touch with family or following local groups and events, with few viable alternative platforms that they can move to, the report notes.
As a result, users have limited ability to “vote with their feet” and switch to better services, Myrstad and Richter said.
Companies also introduce switching costs, which are the time, effort or money required to move to a competitor, the report said.
“If they had allowed, for example, users to more easily move from the service, they would be much more responsive to consumer dissatisfaction,” Myrstad said. “They do everything they can to both lock the consumers in.”
To break this cycle, Myrstad and Richter said platforms need incentives to prioritise users again, which could include the emergence of viable alternative platforms.
However, Richter warns that market forces alone are unlikely to do this and that governments will need to step in.
What already exists to counter enshitification?
Europe has some existing legislation that covers some issues brought up by ‘enshitification’. The Digital Markets Act (DMA), for example, includes interoperability requirements that force major “gatekeepers” such as Apple and Google to open up key operating system features to competitors, Richter said.
This could help create a more competitive social media environment, allowing users on new platforms to interact with contacts on established ones such as Facebook, he added.
However, he warned that these interoperability rules alone will not fully lower the barriers to entry for new players.
That is where the Digital Services Act (DSA) comes in. The EU’s rules for online platforms require companies to share data, assess how their design choices impact society, and work with regulators to mitigate risks.
Companies that fail to comply can face fines of up to 6 percent of their global turnover, which Richter argues is enough financial incentive to follow the rules.
Existing laws like data protection and consumer protection regulations have the potential to address enshitification, but enforcement has been too weak and slow, Myrstad said.
“There needs to be a big price to pay for anti-competitive practices,” he said. “What we see is that the fines that are being levied are not functioning as a deterrent.”
Myrstad said he is hopeful that the upcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA) will provide legal protections against “deceptive design, addictive mechanisms, and a few other challenges that are part of enshitification.”
The council has not heard back from the European politicians it contacted regarding its enshitificaiton campaign, though Myrstad noted some action in North America.
He encouraged more governments to take on the issue.
“Just reading the [online] comments [on the video] there is overwhelming support for this,” Myrstad said. “This should really create the political momentum for politicians to really address this problem, because there’s clearly huge interest in this.”
Euronews Next reached out to the Commission to see whether any action to counter enshitification is happening, but did not receive a reply.
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