The term “enshittification” describes how digital platforms systematically worsen their products to increase profit and control. Building public concern about technology issues is difficult because harms can feel abstract and distant, becoming urgent only after damage is done. The approach requires raising the salience of these issues early enough for people to act. After years of work framing complex technical, economic, and political dynamics, a vulgar metaphor helped communicate the process effectively. The combination of accessible language and rigorous analysis supports wider understanding of how systems evolve toward extraction rather than service.
"I've worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation for the majority of my adult life. And getting people to care about tech issues is hard. They're very abstract, and the things we worry about are a long way in the future. For extremely good reasons, people are mostly interested in things that are concrete and happening right now. So, you can wait and do nothing, and eventually, those issues will become very concrete, and they will be on your doorstep, but it'll be too late to do anything about it."
"The trick, as with environmental activism, is to find ways to raise the salience of these issues for people before it's too late. I've spent twenty-five years coming up with framing devices and metaphors and similes and parables. I came up with this dirty word, and it caught on. It caught on, I think, for a lot of reasons."
"I think people appreciate a minor licence to vulgarity. It feels nice to have permission to be a bit sweary. I also think that there's a kind of killer combination with the right to be sweary and a good technical, economic, and political analysis of how we got here."
Read at The Walrus
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