The Enshittification of... everything?

Dec 5, 2025

Delve into the concept of 'enshittification' as a lens on modern society. Discover how platforms shift from serving users to exploiting both them and businesses for profit. The discussion links this model to democracy and higher education, revealing their current struggles. Explore resistance strategies, from creative sabotage to union organizing, and ponder the importance of demanding higher standards. Join in on a captivating analysis that critiques the commodification of our attention and data in today’s world.

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INSIGHT

Three‑Stage Extraction Model

Cory Doctorow's "enshittification" describes a three-stage extractive arc where platforms first woo users, then advertisers, then squeeze everyone for shareholders.
This frames many institutions beyond tech — democracy, universities, and healthcare follow the same logic.

INSIGHT

Attention As The New Commodity

The internet intensifies old capitalist extraction by monetizing attention and producing data about users as the product.
Lock‑in is now powerful because platforms bundle social life, livelihoods, and services into single closed systems.

INSIGHT

Democracy As A Platform

Democracy can be 'platformized': voters act like users, donors like business customers, and elites function as shareholders.
Preserving the form of democracy while hollowing out substance lets power shift without losing legitimacy.

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This week’s episode takes Cory Doctorow’s term “enshittification” and uses it as a diagnostic for late-capitalist life, not just for tech platforms but for democracy, higher education, and work more broadly. Our co-hosts unpack Doctorow’s three-stage model—platforms start out good to users, then pivot to serving business customers, and finally squeeze both users and customers to extract maximum value for shareholders—and argue about whether this is really a new “platform logic” or just old-school Marxist exploitation and alienation under a punchier name.

We connect this logic to the attention economy and datafication (“we are the product”), then extend it to U.S. democracy, where voters are treated as performers in a hollowed-out system, and to universities, where administrative bloat, metrics, and “students as customers” have produced an enshittified version of higher education, while students are locked-in by massive student debt. What is left for us in terms of resistance?

We look at some real options: exiting platforms, Labor organizing and union drives, “quiet quitting” and malicious compliance (“Bartleby”-esque moves), creative sabotage, and maybe even “enshittification from below.”

Our co-hosts ultimately advocate for insisting on higher standards, rather than accepting the slow boil of lowered expectations. Join us for the shit-show!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-enshittification-of-everything/

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