‘Enshittification’ reaches social media: ‘For Zuckerberg and Musk, your ‘friends’ are a burden. They just want you to see ads’
Analysis Summary
The article argues that big social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X have gotten worse over time, prioritizing ads and profits over users and healthy discourse, using the term 'enshittification' to describe this steady decline. It highlights how these platforms now promote harmful content, bury meaningful interactions, and resist accountability, while suggesting this decay is built into their monopolistic business models. The piece points to regulatory efforts in the EU and U.S. as possible hope for change.
FATE Analysis
Four dimensions of psychological manipulation: how content captures Focus, exploits Authority, triggers Tribal identity, and engineers Emotion.
Focus signals
"coined a term for this phenomenon: 'enshittification.' Named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society in 2023 and by the Australian Macquarie Dictionary in 2024"
The article highlights the novelty of the term 'enshittification' and its recognition by linguistic institutions to signal a new, urgent concept, capturing attention through lexical uniqueness and cultural validation.
"Something seems to have broken down in the functionality of the internet... between Facebook’s erratic algorithm and Google search results now headed by fabricated, AI-generated content"
The framing suggests a systemic, unprecedented collapse of digital infrastructure, portraying the current state as a qualitative break from the past, which serves to heighten attention and concern.
Authority signals
"Cory Doctorow – a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a former observer delegate to the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) – coined a term for this phenomenon: 'enshittification.'"
The article establishes Doctorow’s credibility through institutional affiliations (EFF, WIPO), leveraging his perceived expertise to lend weight to the analysis without independent verification of his claims.
"The activist ironically remarks that he often refers to the president as 'Comrade Trump,' because he’s accelerating the end of the American empire faster than any communist leader could have ever imagined."
While the quote is Doctorow’s, the article does not challenge or contextualize this hyperbolic comparison, allowing a high-profile political metaphor from an activist to pass without scrutiny, subtly reinforcing his interpretive authority.
Tribe signals
"When a company does something and doesn’t tell you, it’s not because they don’t want to spoil the surprise: it’s because they know you’d hate it. And our [political and economic leaders] are increasingly doing things they know you’d hate but you simply don’t have a choice."
This constructs a division between corporate/political elites and ordinary users, framing the latter as victims of secretive, unaccountable power structures, fostering a sense of collective grievance.
Emotion signals
"the Nazi actually earns money from the interaction"
The phrasing evokes moral disgust and anger by suggesting a grotesque financial incentive for hate speech, amplifying emotional response beyond the mere reporting of content moderation failure.
"If Trump wants to steal Greenland, he doesn’t need to send tanks; he can simply shut down all the major Danish companies, ministries and households."
This hyperbolic analogy frames digital control as a tool of geopolitical coercion, inducing fear about the concentration of technological power in state actors' hands, disproportionate to the specific incidents described.
Narrative Analysis (PCP)
How the article reshapes thinking: Perception (what beliefs are targeted), Context (what information is shifted or omitted), and Permission (what behavior is being encouraged).
The article is designed to produce the belief that major digital platforms have systematically degraded in quality and user trust due to profit-driven monopolistic behavior, prioritizing advertising and rent-seeking over user experience and authentic connection. It conveys this not through speculative narrative, but by anchoring the argument in Cory Doctorow’s concept of 'enshittification' and his analysis of platform lifecycle phases, presenting it as an observable, structural decay.
The article shifts context by positioning corporate platform decisions—such as algorithmic prioritization of ads over friends or AI-generated content—as inevitable outcomes of monopolistic structures and rentier capitalism, rather than mere technical choices. This makes the deterioration feel structurally determined, thus normalizing user disillusionment while delegitimizing platform claims of neutrality or public service.
The article omits evidence of competitive alternatives or grassroots digital platforms (e.g., Mastodon, PeerTube, or community-run forums) that operate outside the extractive model, which, if included, might challenge the inevitability of 'enshittification' and suggest viable user-driven exits. Their absence strengthens the perception that all digital spaces are uniformly collapsing under corporate control.
The reader is nudged toward accepting regulatory intervention and systemic change as necessary and justified, while also being granted permission to distrust platform self-governance and reject the inevitability of surveillance and declining digital quality. The closing note on EU and U.S. regulatory efforts invites cautious hope in policy solutions rather than individual resignation.
SMRP Pattern
Four manipulation maintenance tactics: Socializing the idea as normal, Minimizing concerns, Rationalizing with logic, and Projecting blame.
Red Flags
High-severity indicators: silencing dissent, coordinated messaging, or weaponizing identity to shut down debate.
"Cory Doctorow’s quotes are thematically consistent, conceptually polished, and tightly aligned with the central thesis of 'enshittification,' suggesting a coordinated dissemination of an established intellectual framework. While not scripted in tone, the precision and narrative integration resemble a controlled release of a well-rehearsed public argument."
Techniques Found(7)
Specific propaganda techniques identified using the SemEval-2023 academic taxonomy of 23 techniques across 6 categories.
"a giant pile of shit"
Uses emotionally charged and vulgar language ('a giant pile of shit') to describe the final phase of platform degradation, intensifying the negative perception beyond neutral or technical description.
"He’s made it clear that the best way to guarantee national security is to distance oneself as much as possible from the U.S. and its products."
Exaggerates the consequences of Trump's actions by implying a near-total global rejection of U.S. technology is warranted and widespread, which goes beyond documented evidence of specific incidents to a generalized, sweeping claim about international security policy.
"Our politicians should aspire to more than that."
Invokes a shared value of political excellence or dignity to critique the 'Vote Blue No Matter Who' slogan, positioning it as beneath the standards democratic leadership should uphold, thus framing the argument morally rather than analytically.
"poor quality content, poor quality advertising, poor quality music, poor quality emails... it’s like doing homework. We’ve standardized education so much that the goal isn’t learning, but rather the completion of formal requirements... writing, without qualitative aspects, is garbage."
Uses emotionally charged and derogatory terms like 'garbage' and repeated 'poor quality' to cast AI-generated content as inherently worthless, amplifying scorn beyond a dispassionate assessment of its functional or artistic limitations.
"Comrade Trump"
Uses an ironic and ideologically loaded label ('Comrade Trump') to frame Donald Trump as a communist or anti-capitalist figure, which carries strong political connotations not meant literally but to provoke ridicule and link him to an ideological opposite of his stated politics.
"Cory Doctorow – a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a former observer delegate to the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)"
Highlights Doctorow's institutional affiliations (EFF, WIPO) not merely for context but to enhance his credibility and authority on digital rights issues, positioning his analysis as more legitimate than it might otherwise be without those credentials.
"it’s like doing homework... writing, without qualitative aspects, is garbage."
Describes AI-generated writing as 'garbage'—a strong, dismissive term—that evokes disgust and worthlessness, functioning to emotionally discredit AI content rather than offering a measured critique of its stylistic or functional limitations.