Cory Doctorow On How Platforms Die

I've just finished reading Cory Doctorow's essay on how platforms like TikTok evolve and die. It's one of the most insightful pieces of writing about the internet and modern technology that I've read in a long time. Also, Cory has coined a new term that I really like: "enshittification". 

If you've been noticing that your Google search results are full of crap, or you can't find anything useful on Amazon, you'll want to read this. 

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, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.