On 6 January, at the New York Times Square Hotel, the 134-year-old American Dialect Society voted that ‘Enshittification’ should be named as the ‘Digital Word of the Year’ for 2023. The decision came after a vote, presided over by Ben Zimmer, chair of the ADS New Words Committee and language columnist for the Wall Stre

Enshittification became popular in 2023 after it was used in a blog post by author of The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow, who used it to describe how digital platforms can become worse and worse:

“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.”

“Enshittification,” Cory Doctorow’s coinage describing the process by which internet media platforms become increasingly unusable and un-quittable, has been named 2023’s “Digital Word of the Year.” Here, we break down what the term means and Doctorow’s solution to the internet’s relentless enshittification.

  • killeronthecorner@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    While someone who hasn’t can at least know its about stuff getting shittier, and guess the rest from context.

    My guy, this is literally the problem I was describing in the root comment - they don’t guess the rest from context, they just continue using it incorrectly and subvert the point of having the word entirely. if you want to call something shit you can say something like this: “this product is getting shittier”.