Talk:Enshittification

Please read this before attempting to redefine or expand the concept of enshittification

"Enshittification" has a specific meaning, and that meaning is NOT "something that got worse".

Something getting worse goes back thousands of years. Romans complained about not being able to get a high quality chariot nowadays. Enshittification is something new. In particular, if it doesn't involve lock-in it isn't an example of enshittification.

Language evolves, and it may come to pass that some time in the future the meaning of the word "enshittification" will change, but as of now we have a definition by the person who invented the word and a bunch of people who ran across this cool new word and are trying to shoehorn whatever it is that they don't like into it.

The definitive definition of "enshittification" is contained in Cory Doctorow's book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (available at https://shop.craphound.com/ ), but if you don't want to spend money, the following web page will do nicely to educate you:

• My McLuhan lecture on enshittification --Cory Doctorow
• Surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free online version of the above, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license

Anyone who comes to this page arguing for a redefinition or expansion of the concept "enshittification" should be prepared to demonstrate that they have read and understood the definition that they are proposing that we change. Reading either of the above sources will give you an understanding of what it is you are trying to replace. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:48, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Duolingo should be added to this page too

Here is one example, but there are many others in the first page of google results for duo lingo and enshittification

https://medium.com/@srujansirela167/the-enshitification-of-duolingo-continues-d1ccc69ef539 ~2026-43889-60 (talk) 14:53, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

This appears to be a self-published source, so it's generally not due for inclusion. Also, the general purpose of the examples section is to illustrate the principle, not collect every example that can be found. So generally, we would want to include examples with significant coverage in reliable sources. ◦ Sibshops (talk) 14:58, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

On Guilded

I was to revert it but came too late. Here's the message I was supposed to append as the edit summary:

Thank you for the addition, however, per WP:NOTEVERYTHING, Wikipedia can't contain every example of this phenomenon, and if an example is only covered in YouTube, it might be inappropriate for inclusion. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 14:56, 10 August 2026 (UTC)