The Enshitification of Everything

How the focus on profit over product has made our lives worse

My wife and I recently took a trip and traveled by air. The experience was not good. The seats were cramped and it’s been years since there’s been enough room to recline. The promised WiFi didn’t work on three of the four flights. We did get a bag of pretzels and a can of soda or water. One flight was delayed by a mechanical issue and then a fuel problem that required a detour through Milwaukee on the way to Chicago. Not the airlines fault, but we were going to miss our connection. Sitting on the ground in Milwaukee I tried to call customer service to book an alternative flight. After about 15 minutes navigating an automated system and then on hold I finally reached an agent who had trouble figuring out what I called for. Luckily we were automatically booked on an alternative flight and eventually received the updated info via the airline’s app (WIN!). When we boarded our return flight we were seated in an aisle and middle seat with another traveler at the window even though there were about ten rows of empty (apparently premium) seats in front of us. The airport was chaotic and of course the airport food was expensive.

In 2024 United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby was paid $33.9M. Is this for delivering an outstanding experience to United customers, or delivering an 8.1% profit margin for investors?

So why is airline travel so bad? Why do I get the feeling that the airline doesn’t really care about my experience and that their primary goal is to maximize their profit? And come to think of it, isn’t that how I feel about my interaction with most large corporations? In a recent presentation at Cloudfest Cory Doctorow described the transformation from a great product or service to a bad extractive relationship as “enshittification”.

Here’s Doctorow’s explanation of how it works.

A new transformative technology is developed and introduced, for instance Google ‘s search engine. At first the experience is amazing. Type in any question and you immediately get a wealth of information on the topic. Based on their initial success, Google spent billions of dollars a year to make sure that they dominated the search space. This is stage one where Google is good to its users.

Once Google had a monopoly on search they started to exploit their users tracking their behavior and selling targeted advertising to businesses and web publishers. At this point their end users become the product. This is stage two.

Stage three happens once the commercial clients are also captive to the monopoly, allowing Google to focus on extracting as much value as possible from the platform while making it a worse experience for their end users and commercial clients.

This three step process has been repeated throughout our economy, enabled by monopolies and technology. Customer ‘service’ no longer includes a human. Self checkout is everywhere. Microsoft and Google watch all of your online activities and sell the data. And it’s all possible because of the combination of a few large corporate monopolies and the ability of technology to manipulate their customers.

The end game appears to be a world built around humanoid robots and AI, eliminating the need for human workers as much as possible. Which leaves the question of how ‘real’ people will get the money to buy whatever the plutocrats are selling.

Monopolies are the Problem

So is there any hope for a future where businesses would return to a business model that is dedicated to serving customers instead of investors? This won’t happen until we get big money out of government and the big monopolies are broken up.

This means stricter limits on campaign contributions, restricting investments by congresspeople, and other reforms to policies that allow the wealthy to purchase influence, like reversing the Citizen’s United decision.

But we can also take action on our own by opting out of the surveillance economy. Here are some examples.

Ditch Safari and Google

A pain free way to start your path to privacy is to start using a browser and search engine that doesn’t allow ads or tracking and doesn’t feed you results based on what it thinks you want to see. Take a look at Brave, Firefox, DuckDuckGo or other browsers that have a focus on privacy. It’s easy to try any of these without making any changes to your existing setup. I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo (I know, stupid name) and haven’t had any issues.

Ditch Apple Mail and Gmail

The next step takes more effort. Switch to an email service that doesn’t allow surveillance to collect and sell your data. This article from PC Magazine provides a good overview of the most popular options. Use your new browser to explore your options. I’m slowly migrating to Proton Mail but will keep my Gmail account for personal contacts until it’s no longer useful.

Ditch MacOS and Microsoft Windows

OK, this is a big step and maybe not practical for many. But if you still use a desktop it can be surprisingly easy to create a desktop on your Mac or PC that will let you explore the Linux experience. This step allows you to escape from the Google/Microsoft/Apple monopoly and work in an environment that is built for the user instead of a corporate monopoly.

Over the last couple of days I’ve managed to set up a dual boot system on my existing Windows PC that lets me choose to run either Windows or Zorin Linux at startup. Here’s what my Linux desktop looks like.

Since I’m mostly using my system for writing and research I haven’t run into any problems and can even access my Gmail, Chrome, and windows files. If most of your desktop interaction is via a browser or office productivity apps it’s an easy transition.

What About Your Mobile Phone?

Of course your biggest exposure to commercial and government surveillance is through your mobile phone, and there are few practical alternatives. But I believe that privacy advocates will make progress in this space as well. A few examples of existing solutions are the Librem 5 from Purism, UP Phone from Unplugged, and a software option based on VoIP called Brax.me.

What’s the Future?

Long term I’d like to see a world where companies once again offer products that are optimized for the benefit of their users rather than their sellers. This can’t happen until our government takes action against monopolies.

But as individuals we can play a role by weaning ourselves from ‘free’ services that make their money by selling our personal information. Stop participating in the theft and join the fight to de-fund the billionaires.