What is Enshittification?
And why does it matter for this directory?
The Definition
Enshittification (also called platform decay or crapification) is the systematic process by which digital platforms degrade in quality over time. Canadian author and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term in November 2022. The American Dialect Society named it Word of the Year for 2023.
The mechanism is lock-in: technical (no data export), social (your whole network is there), or economic (sunk costs). Once users can't easily leave, the original bargain gets rewritten — indefinitely and in the platform's favor. Doctorow describes this as "twiddling": the continual adjustment of the system's parameters in search of marginal profit improvements, without regard to any other goal.
The Three Stages
Good to Users
Platforms provide genuine value to attract users and build switching costs. Think of Google's early years: minimal ads, maximized engineering for high-quality results. Trust is built, and users are locked in.
Abuse Users for Business Customers
Once users are locked in, the platform degrades their experience to extract value for advertisers and business partners. More ads, darker patterns, degraded features — the user becomes the product, not the customer.
Squeeze Everyone for Shareholders
After business customers are also locked in, the platform claws back value from everyone, leaving only a "homeopathic residue of value" — just enough to prevent mass exodus while maximizing extraction for executives and shareholders.
Listing Criteria
An app must meet these standards to be listed on Unshitty. These are the questions we ask during review.
Transparent business model
Revenue comes from users directly (subscriptions, one-time purchase, donations), not from selling user data or attention to third parties.
No dark patterns
No manipulative UI/UX: no hidden cancellation flows, no guilt-tripping, no deceptive defaults, no manufactured urgency or fake countdowns.
Privacy by design
Collects only data required to function. Does not sell, broker, or share user data with advertisers. Has a clear and honest privacy policy.
User data portability
Users can export their data in standard, interoperable formats and are not held hostage by proprietary lock-in.
No artificial lock-in
The software does not deliberately restrict interoperability with competing tools or make migration unnecessarily difficult.
Genuine, sustained value
Provides real utility that has not been significantly degraded over time to push users toward paid tiers or to extract more data.
No surveillance advertising
The software does not fund itself by building behavioral profiles on users and targeting them with ads based on who they are, not what they searched for.
Open source or independently auditable
Preferably open source. Closed-source tools must have independently verifiable privacy and security claims through audits or certifications.
Sustainable model
Has a funding model that doesn't create incentives to enshittify over time. Preferably community-owned, non-profit, or user-subscription funded.
Respects the end-to-end principle
Delivers what users asked for, not what algorithmic manipulation or commercial incentives decide to show them. Your feed, your files, your search results — unfiltered.