書名很粗俗，在 Shit（大便）的基礎上發展而成，主題是社交媒體或網上平台的營商手法和商業模式，解釋它們如何走上仆街之路。
仆街三部曲
社交媒體或網上平台走上仆街之路，可以分為三個階段：
首先，社交媒體 (Social Media) 或網上平台 (Online
platform) 會在虧本的情況下，推出優質服務吸引使用者。建立了客戶基礎（累積了足夠數量的個人客戶）之後，就想辦法鎖定或捆綁客戶（例如：令客戶上癮的演算法），令客戶流連忘返或難以轉場。
第二步是剝削第一批客戶（個人客戶），用來孝敬第二批客戶（企業客戶）。可以是讓企業客戶得到個人客戶的個人資料，也可以是迫個人客戶觀看企業客戶提供的廣告，同時想辦法鎖定或捆綁企業客戶。原因？向企業客戶提供收費服務，才能收回部份成本。
第三步是把創造的價值或利潤轉移至創辦人或大股東身上。成功之後，社交媒體或網上平台再沒有動機維持優質服務，下一步是步向死亡，或處於半死不活的喪屍狀態。在第三個階段，個人客戶覺得服務質素下降，原本免費的服務開始要收費，帶來的壞處多過好處，紛紛離開。那個社交媒體或網上平台負評如潮，用戶經驗大便化（所以叫 Enshittification）、垃圾化、劣質化。平台開始崩壞，無法吸引新客戶，但創辦人或大股東不在乎，因為目標已達，數錢離場。簡單地說：蝕頭賺尾，飽食遠揚。
這三部曲，被作者 Cory Doctorow 形容為 Enshittification (Having been made shittier)。他描述的三個階段，充份體現資本主義的掠奪本質以及追求利潤最大化的精神。這個過程，如果要翻譯成港式粵語，便是社交媒體或網上平台如何走上仆街之路。起初是受歡迎的新玩意，最後變成死不足惜的壞蛋。這種故事，可以叫《科網企業興衰史》或《仆街是怎麼煉成的》（提示：紅色經典《鋼鐵是怎麼煉成的》）。之後 Cory Doctorow 把 Enshittification 這個字擴展到其他範疇，即是開始 Buzzword 化。
真實個案：Facebook
眼前的好例子，是 Facebook。它正處於第三個階段，即是惡評如潮和使用者經驗劣質化。這時候，被社交媒體搶飯碗（廣告收入）的舊媒體發功，揭發 Facebook 有 10% 的網上廣告是詐騙廣告，即是創辦人用不道德的手法賺錢。潛台詞：Mark Zuckerberg 應該受譴責或懲罰。欲知詳情，請參考《延伸閱讀》部份提供的 Reuters 調查報導。新舊媒體的關係，是狗咬狗。新媒體出事，舊媒體補刀，就是這樣。
正所謂禍不單行，同一時間，官府出手，加強監管社群媒體。澳洲政府由今年 12 月 10 日開始，對社交媒體設定年齡限制，十六歲以下的青少年及兒童不得開設帳戶。此舉是西方國家的先例，備受關注。其他西方國家會觀察成效，看看是否可以參考澳洲的做法，發展出一套針對社交媒體的監管制度。社交媒體方面，就要想辦法應付官府推出的監管法規，否則無法吸收年輕人客戶，影響生存發展。
結論：走勢向下，不可依賴，切勿沉迷。 Enshittification 這個概念，其實亦適用於 KOL (Key Opinion Leader) 或 YouTuber 身上。眼前就有幾位港產的名嘴，開始踏入第三個階段，即是變仆街。傳媒是偏門行業，新舊媒體都一樣。玩得越久，名氣越大，越難抽身，最後突然崩壞，成為全城喊打的仆街，死得很難看。
延伸閱讀／參考資料：
Merriam-Webster
Dictionary - Enshittification
https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/enshittification
Excerpt: What does enshittification
mean?
Enshittification is an informal
word used to criticize the degradation in the quality and experience of online
platforms over time, due to an increase in advertisements, costs, or features. It can also refer more generally to any
state of deterioration, especially in politics or society. Similar forms
include enshittify and enshittified.
Where does enshittification come from?
Enshittification is an archly elaborate
formation for “having been made shittier,”
or “worsened.” It combines the vulgarism shit, the prefix en- (“cause to
be”), and -ification (a noun combining form meaning “making” or “producing”).
Several independent coinages of enshittification are found online in the 2010s,
with evidence for the similar shittification seen even earlier.
The term was popularized by the
Canadian writer Cory Doctorow starting in 2022, when he suggested a patterned
decline in the quality of online platforms resulted from capitalistic
incentives. Doctorow explained the decline as a process in which a
platform first offers value to users, then to other businesses, then back to
themselves and shareholders after it dominates the market. He notably applied
the word enshittification in critiques of Big Tech companies and social media
sites.
Enshittification received considerable
attention in 2023, after the American Dialect Society chose it as its Word of
the Year (followed by Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary doing so in 2024).
How is enshittification used?
Enshittification is most commonly used to
call out degraded user experiences of tech platforms, especially social media,
streaming sites, and on-demand services. The word is also used to voice concerns
about the erosion of social conditions, especially when thought to be worsened
by capitalism or conservatism.
Wikipedia - Enshittification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Enshittification, also known as
crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which two-sided online
products and services decline in quality over time. Initially,
vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those
offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their
services to users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for
shareholders.
Canadian writer Cory Doctorow coined the
neologism enshittification in November 2022. Though he was not the first to
describe the concept, his term has been widely adopted. The American Dialect Society selected it
as its 2023 Word of the Year, with Australia's Macquarie Dictionary following
suit for 2024. Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com also list enshittification as
a word.
Doctorow advocates for two ways to reduce
enshittification: upholding the end-to-end principle, which asserts that platforms should
transmit data in response to user requests rather than algorithm-driven
decisions; and guaranteeing the right of exit—that is, enabling a user
to leave a platform without losing access to data, which requires
interoperability. These moves aim to uphold the standards and trustworthiness
of online platforms, emphasize user satisfaction, and encourage market
competition.
History and definition
The use of scatological terminology with a
-fication suffix was in occasional use in the late 2010s and early 2020s,
including with reference to degrading software systems. A 2018 Naked Capitalism
post referred to the "crapification" of software used by Boeing, and
Wendy A. Woloson used the term "encrappification" to describe the
proliferation of cheap goods in American economic history. However, Cory
Doctorow was the first specifically to use enshittification as a descriptor of
service degradation and to formalize its meaning, in a November 2022 blog post
that was republished three months later in Locus. He expanded on the concept
in another blog post that was republished in the January 2023 edition of Wired:
Here is how platforms die: first,
they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better
for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to
claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a
seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of
changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a
"two-sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and
sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the
value that passes between them.
In a 2024 op-ed in the Financial
Times, Doctorow argued that "'enshittification' is coming for absolutely
everything" with
"enshittificatory" platforms leaving humanity in an
"enshittocene".
Doctorow argues that new
platforms offer useful products and services at a loss, as a way to gain new
users. Once users are locked in, the platform then offers access to the
userbase to suppliers at a loss; once suppliers are locked in, the platform
shifts surpluses to shareholders. Once the platform is fundamentally focused on
the shareholders, and the users and vendors are locked in, the platform no
longer has any incentive to maintain quality. Enshittified platforms that act as
intermediaries can act as both a monopoly on services and a monopsony on
customers, as high switching costs prevent either from leaving even when
alternatives technically exist. Doctorow has described the process of
enshittification as happening through "twiddling": the continual adjustment
of the parameters of the system in search of marginal improvements of profits,
without regard to any other goal. Enshittification
can be seen as a form of rent-seeking.
To solve the problem, Doctorow has called
for two general principles to be followed:
The first is a respect of the end-to-end
principle, which holds
that the role of a network is to reliably deliver data from willing senders to
willing receivers. When applied to platforms, this entails users being given
what they asked for, not what the platform prefers to present. For example,
users would see all content from users they subscribed to, allowing content
creators to reach their audience without going through an opaque algorithm; and
in search engines, exact matches for search queries would be shown before
sponsored results, rather than afterwards.
The second is the right of exit, which holds that users of a platform can
easily go elsewhere if they are dissatisfied with it. For social media, this
requires interoperability, countering the network effects that "lock
in" users and prevent market competition between platforms. For digital
media platforms, it means enabling users to switch platforms without losing the
content they purchased that is locked by digital rights management.
In October 2025, Doctorow
released a book titled Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and
What To Do About It.
维基百科：垃圾化
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%9E%83%E5%9C%BE%E5%8C%96
節錄：垃圾化（英語：enshittification），又稱為平台劣化（英語：platform decay），是一種雙邊線上平台服務品質隨著時間推移而下降的現象。起初平台業者會推出高品質的服務來吸引使用者，接著開始降低使用者服務品質以服務商業客戶（例如廣告商）；最終平台業者會對使用者和商業客戶雙雙降低服務水準，以為股東追求最大利潤。
加拿大小說家科里·達克特羅（Cory Doctorow）於 2022 年 11 月創造了「垃圾化」這個新詞。雖然垃圾化的概念在更早之前就有人提出，但達克特羅使用的詞彙獲得社會大眾的廣泛採用：美國方言學會將其選為 2023 年年度詞彙，澳洲的麥考瑞字典隨後也將其選為 2024 年年度詞彙。韋氏詞典和Dictionary.com網站也有收錄「垃圾化」一詞。
達克特羅主張透過兩種方式來減少垃圾化：一是維護端對端原則（end-to-end principle），主張平台應根據使用者的請求而非演算法驅動的決策來傳輸資料；二是保障退出權（right of exit），即藉由確保平台間的互通性（interoperability），讓使用者在選擇轉移或離開平台時不會遺失資料。這些舉措旨在維護線上平台的標準和可信度、強調使用者體驗、並鼓勵市場競爭。
語源與定義
科里·達克特羅是第一位將這種詞彙特定於描述服務品質下降並定義其內涵的人。達克特羅首先在 2022 年 11 月的部落格文章中提出「enshittification」（直譯「大便化」）的概念，該文章於三個月後轉載於 Locus 雜誌；其後他在另外一篇日後刊登於 2023 年 1 月號 Wired 雜誌的部落格文章中將概念發展得更為明確：
平台是這樣走向死亡的：首先，它們對使用者很好；接著，它們開始濫用使用者，讓事情對商業客戶更有利；最後，它們濫用這些商業客戶，為自己收回所有的價值。然後，它們就死了。我稱這個過程為垃圾化。由於平台能夠輕易改變其價值權衡的方式，再加上「雙邊市場」的本質——平台處於買方與賣方之間，將雙方互相挾持，並從兩者之間流通的價值中攫取越來越大的份額——這似乎是無可避免的後果。
在 2024 年《金融時報》的一篇社論中，達克特羅認為「『垃圾化』正席捲一切」，而這些造成「垃圾化」的平台將會把人類棄於一個「垃圾世」（enshittocene）之中。
達克特羅主張，新平台起初會以虧本的方式提供有用的產品和服務，作為吸引新使用者的手段。一旦使用者被綁定（locked in），平台便會以虧本的方式向供應商提供使用者群的存取權；當供應商也被綁定，平台便會將盈餘轉移給股東。而一旦平台將重心轉向股東、且使用者和供應商都被綁定，平台就沒有任何維持服務品質的誘因。垃圾化的平台作為中介者，既可以成為服務的壟斷者（monopoly）也可以成為客戶的獨買者（monopsony），縱使理論上有其他平台可以作為替代品，使用者或供應商往往卻因為高轉換成本而難以脫離平台。達克特羅將垃圾化描述為透過「微調」（twiddling）而發生，即不斷調整系統的參數以追求利潤的邊際改善，而不考慮任何其他目標。垃圾化也可以視為一種尋租形式。
為了解決這個問題，達克特羅呼籲平台遵守兩大原則：
第一項是尊重端對端原則，即認為網路的角色是可靠地將資料從有意發送者傳遞給有意接收者。在平台上，這指的是使用者應得到他們所要求的內容，而非平台希望呈現的內容。例如，使用者能看到他們訂閱的所有內容，讓內容創作者無需經過不透明的演算法即可接觸到他們的受眾；在搜尋引擎上，搜尋結果應優先顯示與查詢相符的結果，而非優先呈現贊助連結。
第二項是退出權，即若平台的使用者如果對服務不滿意，應當能輕鬆地轉移到其他平台。對於社群媒體，這需要互通性來對抗綁架使用者且阻攔競爭的網路效應（network effects）。對於數位媒體平台，這意味著允許使用者能自由地轉換平台，而不會因此而喪失數位版權管理保護的多媒體內容。
Investopedia – Rent Seeking
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rentseeking.asp
Key Points:
- Rent seeking involves gaining wealth
without contributing to societal wealth, often by manipulating political
systems.
- Lobbying for subsidies or regulation
changes is a common form of rent seeking.
- Rent seeking can disrupt market efficiency,
creating disadvantages for consumers and new companies.
- Originating from the work of Gordon Tullock
and Anne Krueger, the concept highlights the economic definition of
"rent."
- Rent seeking relies heavily on legislation
and government funding distributions that may perpetuate economic imbalance.
The General Theory of Enshittification
It isn’t a new phenomenon, but it seems to
matter more
Paul Krugman
Jul 24, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-general-theory-of-enshittification
Excerpt: Here is
how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their
users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse
those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they
die.
I argued earlier this week that
enshittification has a lot to do with the way the tech industry has fallen out
of public favor. But without detracting from the brilliance of Doctorow’s
discussion, I’ve become convinced that his analysis is too narrow, focusing
only on certain kinds of social platforms. In fact,
the basic logic of enshittification — in which businesses start out being very
good to their customers, then switch to ruthless exploitation — applies to any
business characterized by network effects. It may go under different names like
“penetration pricing,” but the logic is the same.
Doctorow’s final stage — “Then,
they die” — may also be wishful thinking. So let me talk a bit about the
economics of enshittification, as I see it, then follow up by talking about how enshittification can
mess with our heads in several ways. The title of this post is, of course,
facetious. I don’t have a general theory to offer, just some hopefully
clarifying ideas.
Suppose you run a business whose product,
whatever it may be, is subject to network effects: the more people using it,
the more attractive it is to other current or potential users. Social media
platforms like Facebook or TikTok are the currently obvious examples, but the logic works for services like Uber
or physical goods like electric vehicles too.
What’s the profit-maximizing strategy for
your business? The answer seems obvious: offer really
good value to your customers at first, to build up the size of your network,
then enshittify — soak the customer base you’ve built. The enshittification
could take the form of charging higher prices, but it could also involve
reducing quality, forcing people to watch ads, etc. Or it could involve all of
the above.
（推介原因：經濟學家 Paul Krugman 的補充說明。）
Infinite Scroll
The Age of Enshittification
In a new book, the technology critic Cory
Doctorow expands on a coinage that has become bleakly relevant, in Silicon
Valley and beyond.
By Kyle Chayka
The New Yorker
October 1, 2025
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-age-of-enshittification
Key Points:
- Doctorow came up with the phrase, in 2022,
to describe how all the digital services that increasingly dominated our
daily lives seemed to be getting worse at the same time. The embrace of the
term reflected a sense of collective frustration. Technology was improving,
after a fashion, but too often those improvements made platforms more adept at extracting
value from users and clients, driving profit and engagement for the companies
themselves.
- In Doctorow’s argument, enshittification
was an intentional pattern on the part of the tech companies. In his new book of the same name, he
expands his various blog posts and articles on the subject into an over-all
theory of “why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it,” as the
subtitle puts it.
- Enshittification unfolds in three phases:
first, a company is “good to users,” Doctorow writes, drawing people in
droves, as funnel traps do Japanese beetles, with the promise of connection or
convenience. Second, with that mass audience consolidated, the company is
“good to business customers,” compromising some of its features so that the
most lucrative clients, usually advertisers, can thrive on the platform. This
second phase is the point at which, say, our Facebook feeds fill with ads and
posts from brands. Third, the company turns the user experience into “a
giant pile of shit,” making the platform worse for users and businesses alike
in order to further enrich the company’s owners and executives.
- Perhaps we were expecting too much from the
digital platforms that we inhabit. The experiences we enjoyed in the early days
of social media and on-demand apps turned out to be unsustainable; the services that were initially free
or subsidized would have to pay for themselves eventually. The dream of the
early, more open internet was that people would connect with one another with
minimal mediation, and Doctorow enumerates the structural factors that guarded
against enshittification in that era.
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT
Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fradulent ads, documents show
Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. And the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day. Among its reponses to suspected rogue marketers: charging them a premium for ads - and issuing reports on "Scammiest Scamers."
By Jeff Horwitz
November 6, 2025
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/
Intro: Meta internally projected late
last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16
billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company
documents show.
A cache of previously unreported documents
reviewed by Reuters also shows that the social-media giant for at least three
years failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads that exposed Facebook,
Instagram and WhatsApp’s billions of users to fraudulent e-commerce and
investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned medical
products.
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT
Meta’s “Trusted Experts” Helps me run scam
ads on Facebook and Instagram
By Jeff Horwitz
December 15, 2025
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/metas-trusted-experts-helped-me-run-scam-ads-facebook-instagram-2025-12-15/
Intro: SAN FRANCISCO - For a week in
November, Facebook and Instagram featured ads that showed cash and
cryptocurrency raining down on a man at his computer. The ads asked viewers if
they wanted to make a weekly return of 10% on their money – a highly improbable
annualized rate of more than 14,000%.
The ads tested policies at Meta, owner of
the social media platforms, against promotions for get-rich-quick schemes. But
they ran anyway. They appeared in the feeds of more than 20,000 users in the
United States, Europe, India and Brazil, according to statistics Meta provided
the person who placed the ads, and prompted dozens of inquiries about the
promo.
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT
Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China
to safeguard billions in revenue
By Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham
December 15, 2025
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-tolerates-rampant-ad-fraud-china-safeguard-billions-revenue-2025-12-15/
Intro: SAN FRANCISCO - Last year, Meta had
to reckon with an ugly conclusion about its Chinese advertising customers: They
were defrauding Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users worldwide.
Though China’s authoritarian government
bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies
advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning platforms. As a result,
Meta’s advertising business was thriving in China, ultimately reaching over $18
billion in annual sales in 2024, more than a tenth of the company’s global
revenue.
But Meta calculated that about 19% of that
money – more than $3 billion – was coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling,
pornography and other banned content, according to internal Meta documents
reviewed by Reuters.
Australia
has banned social media for kids under 16. How will it work?
Helen
Livingstone
BBC,
Sydney
December
10, 2025
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo
Intro: Under-16s
in Australia are now banned from using major social media services including
Tiktok, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Threads. They cannot set
up new accounts and existing profiles are being deactivated. The ban is the
first of its kind and is being watched closely by other countries.
Focus on
the Family Australia
Social
Media Ban for Under 16s: What Parents Need to Know
https://families.org.au/article/social-media-ban-for-under-16s-what-parents-need-to-know/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=10034198570&gbraid=0AAAAADKJf3FbWPdpkx1nLnl97mSTVrxiH&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwsvQ55_JkQMVP20PAh13thL5EAAYASAAEgIjaPD_BwE
Intro: From
December 10, the Australian Federal Government will introduce a world-first
restriction preventing children under 16 from holding accounts on most major
social media platforms. While some details are still being finalised, the
goal is clear: reducing risks such as cyberbullying, online predators, exposure
to inappropriate content, and the rising rates of anxiety and depression linked
to extended social media use. Below is a simple guide to what’s happening,
what’s changing, and how you can support your child through it.
Which
Platforms Are Affected?
Platforms
included in the ban
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