Overcoming Enshittification

cartoon drawing of a blue monster with horns gobbling a data and internet content including a digital home. Cartoon created by Christie Solomon to reflect the concept of "enshittification."

Merriam-Webster recently highlighted the word ‘enshittification,’ coined and popularized by writer, activist, and journalist Cory Doctorow. The slang word, referenced by a renowned (and proper) dictionary, naturally caught my attention and piqued my curiosity.

Soon after discovering the concept of enshittification, I read a post by organizational psychologist Adam Grant, who wrote,

“Cursing is rarely a symbol of low class. It’s often a mark of high authenticity. Evidence: Swearing predicts higher rates of honesty and integrity. It signals a willingness to prize candor over courtesy. A little profanity shows that you’re being real and you do give a damn.”

My conclusion? Anyone bold enough to name a problem ‘enshittification’ is serious about the issue.

So, What is Enshittification?

Merriam-Webster defines enshittification as:

“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.”

As funny as the term sounds, “enshittification” describes a real digital dilemma: platforms that once helped small businesses grow now often exploit them. But that doesn’t mean business owners are powerless.

What Do We Do About It?

Suppose online environments, particularly social media platforms, have worsened for users due to advertising, AI, and algorithms prioritizing profits over content quality and user experience. (Think about X/Twitter and Meta.) What can the small business owners who give a damn do?

1) Own Your Own Digital Real Estate

Practice digital asset management: Small business owners should first ensure they own their own digital real estate - specifically, websites, blogs, and newsletters. By maintaining a well-designed and optimized website with regularly updated content that can be delivered directly to your audience via email subscriptions and shared as social media content, business owners have an opportunity to cut through the noise and draw their target audience to their content.

2) Diversify and Decentralize

Create modular content for multiple channels: Develop content (visuals and copy) that can be shared across multiple platforms and channels, reducing reliance on a single platform, and always encourage your audience to explore more on your website.

Explore decentralized social media platforms: Bluesky, a project initiated at Twitter (now X) in 2021, was an experiment with decentralized social media. It is now a standalone company (Bluesky Social) and an app designed to let users create their own algorithms—i.e., determine which content they wish to consume.

As of October 2025, Bluesky had nearly 40 million users, adding a new user every 0.3 seconds. This is still small compared to Facebook, which had 3.07 billion daily users in the same period.

Bluesky’s CEO Jay Graber has promised to avoid platform enshittification with ads. (Compare this to Meta, whose advertising across its family of platforms generated 98.9% of its total revenues in 2024.)

Still, it remains to be seen whether mass adoption of Bluesky occurs, and, if so, whether it will monetize services and become enshittified. In the meantime, the app offers a niche alternative social platform that may help your content stand out with less noise characteristic of a larger platform.

As with any social media platform, use it as a single node in a resilient digital ecosystem, with your website content and newsletter at its core.

3) Build Trust and Loyalty Through Public Relations

Employ public relations: Remain transparent and community-focused with your audiences. If small business owners need to increase prices, they should communicate the cause, whether it be tariffs or other external factors, and the reasoning behind the increase to build loyalty.

Encourage user-generated content (UGC) by sharing contributions, inviting co-creators, spotlighting customers, and building community, rather than chasing content virality dictated by each platform’s unique algorithms.

Provide a clear call-to-action: Offer readers, viewers, and listeners an opportunity to subscribe to your newsletter or visit your company’s website to read more in-depth information to stay connected with your brand if – or when – a social media platform becomes enshittiffied.

Track meaningful metrics rather than vanity measures: Dig into your website traffic (and its sources), time spent on individual pages, click-throughs on newsletter campaigns, and comments on social media posts.

Are people engaging with and following your content rather than simply “liking” it? What type of content (i.e., media, topics, etc.) is your audience responding to the most - and where? 

Creating a Resilient Digital Ecosystem

Enshittification may be inevitable on platforms that prize profit over people — but small business owners don’t have to roll over. By practicing digital asset management, diversifying where you share content with encouragement to visit your website or to subscribe for more, and prioritizing community and transparency, you can keep your marketing authentic and sustainable.

The antidote to enshittification isn’t abandoning technology; it’s stewardship in creating and sharing quality content derived from a platform you own that contributes value to your target audience.


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Christie Solomon

Founder of Elevate Next, Christie has an MBA in International Business from Thunderbird School of Global Management and extensive experience in marketing, public relations, finance, and project management.

https://www.elevate-next.com
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