‘Ensh*ttification’ is Australia’s Word of the Year

The tendency of large technology platforms to deteriorate in terms of value to their users (individual and commercial) can be partly explained by the presence of venture capital, loaned early in the lifecycles of online platforms. Eventually, the company’s debts have to be repaid, which are on the whole by this stage, ‘owned’ by the eventual platform owners, the shareholders who bought into the platform.

Doctorow has called for two general principles that users of digital platforms should insist on: the ability to exit from a platform (and take data out of it) if unhappy with the service, and the prioritisation by platforms of the user. In the case of a search engine, for example, that would be showing search results useful to the enquirer positioned above sponsored advertising. To that requirement, this author would add the demotion of un-requested AI-generated results being presented at all.

The author and activist who first coined the phrase enshittification is reportedly pleased that his word is gaining mainstream use. In an email to Gizmodohe said: “If ten million people use the word colloquially, and 10 percent of them go look up what I have to say about it, that’s a million normies that I get a chance to radicalize.”

If radicalization (sic) means going into a subscription or contract with a digital platform armed with some pre-warning about what will happen, then organisations need to get radical.