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.
I haven’t read Unauthorized bread but you’ve just reminded me of Stallman’s “Right to Read” very short story, which is about a future where, God forbid, you might read someone else’s book without paying a licensing fee. Not the most amazing story, but it perfectly presaged things like scientific journals being paywalled today.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
I’ve seen people consider RMS an overly radical hippy, but man he is a true fucking visionary things he warned us about in the 1990s, 2000s are happening now