Summary of "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It"

Core Idea

Enshittification is the platform cycle: serve users, then business customers, then squeeze everyone to enrich shareholders.
Lock-in is the danger: platforms get worse once leaving means losing friends, customers, data, tools, or purchases.
Exit, interoperability, repair, privacy, labor power, and antitrust are the practical antidotes.

Build exit paths before you need them: export contacts, download data, back up media, and keep local copies.
Maintain direct channels: email lists, websites, RSS feeds, phone numbers, and customer databases you control.
Mirror communities across multiple platforms so no single company controls your audience or relationships.
Prefer open standards, federated systems, and services that let you migrate accounts, followers, posts, and blocks.
Avoid buying media, apps, or devices locked behind DRM, subscriptions, or vendor-controlled servers.
Treat both free and paid platforms skeptically; payment does not prevent surveillance, manipulation, or future degradation.

Assume platform search, feeds, rankings, and recommendations are manipulated, not neutral.
When shopping, compare beyond Amazon, skip sponsored results, check unit prices, and verify seller credibility.
Do not build a business solely on Facebook, TikTok, X, Amazon, Apple, Google, Unity, or any closed ecosystem.
If you depend on a platform, regularly test whether you can leave without losing your customers, data, or workflow.
Watch for "with an app" excuses; app-based companies still owe consumer protection, labor rights, privacy, and anti-fraud compliance.

Treat SMS as insecure; move sensitive chats and 2FA to true end-to-end encrypted apps.
Verify encryption claims; avoid services where a company or bridge server can access your messages.
Support messaging interoperability so users can communicate securely without being punished for device choice.
Buy smart devices only if they work offline, without subscriptions, vendor servers, or resale of your data.
Avoid cars, appliances, and devices that rent built-in features back to you through software subscriptions.

Insist that ownership means the right to modify, repair, unlock, interoperate, resell, and choose services.
Support right-to-repair campaigns for phones, tractors, cars, wheelchairs, printers, electronics, and medical devices.
Demand bans on parts-pairing, device DRM, remote bricking, and vendor-controlled repair monopolies.
Back right-to-unlock rules requiring companies to release keys and codes when they stop supporting products.
Avoid printers with ink subscriptions, cartridge DRM, remote disabling, or document data-mining.
Favor refillable, repairable, third-party-compatible devices with replaceable parts and accessible diagnostics.

Support antitrust enforcement: breakups, merger scrutiny, predatory-pricing bans, and limits on self-preferencing.
Demand structural separation so platforms cannot compete against sellers, publishers, developers, or workers dependent on them.
Support privacy laws with strong enforcement, private rights of action, and no federal preemption of stronger state laws.
Push for right-to-exit laws requiring exportable contacts, followers, content, blocks, mutes, and social graphs.
Demand end-to-end service rules: platforms must deliver what users request, not paid substitutes or hidden manipulations.
Defend adversarial interoperability: scraping, migration, ad blocking, repair, modification, and bypassing lock-in should be legal.
Reform anti-circumvention laws like DMCA 1201 so repair, accessibility, security research, and interoperability are not criminalized.
Favor clear, enforceable rules over complex compliance systems that only giant companies can afford.

Support tech-worker organizing so employees can resist unethical surveillance, dark patterns, and exploitative product decisions.
Back gig-worker tools that reveal hidden pay, coordinate refusals, compare platforms, and counter algorithmic wage discrimination.
Treat labor and antitrust as linked: weaker corporate concentration gives workers, users, and small businesses more leverage.
Push unions to organize more workers, reject two-tier contracts, coordinate strikes, and oppose mergers that increase corporate power.
Oppose abusive tech early when it targets prisoners, welfare recipients, students, gig workers, or debtors; it often spreads later.

Audit your digital life this week: list every platform where leaving would cost you contacts, income, files, or purchases.
Create exits: export data, start an email list, back up media, mirror communities, and test alternative tools.
Change buying habits: prefer repairable, interoperable, offline-capable products with no DRM or forced subscriptions.
Support policy fights: antitrust, privacy, right to repair, right to exit, interoperability, and anti-DMCA-1201 reform.
Use the word enshittification publicly to name the pattern and recruit others into resisting it.