If you’ve felt like your feeds got noisier, your searches got pricier, and your favorite platforms got… grabbier, you’re not imagining it. There’s a tidy way to explain this feeling: a steady pattern of internet platform degradation. It’s not just vibes; it’s a playbook many big platforms seem to run over and over.
Author and longtime internet activist Cory Doctorow gave the trend a spicy, unforgettable name a couple of years back. I’m going to keep things brand-safe here, but you probably saw it everywhere: a tongue-twisting word that basically means “great service slowly turns into hot garbage.” Doctorow’s new book lays out the mechanics behind that slide. And while the term is colorful, the logic underneath is surprisingly straightforward.
Think of it like a three-act story every giant platform tells: be amazing to users, be amazing to businesses, then squeeze both. The details change Facebook, Amazon, Google, rideshare apps, marketplaces—but the arc stays eerily familiar.
Below, I’ll break down the stages in plain language, add what I’ve seen as a user and publisher, and sketch a few practical fixes—some you can use today, others that live in policy land.
Stage 1: Win Our Hearts (And Lock Us In)
Every platform starts with a dream: grow fast. To do that, they shower users with value. Fewer ads. Cleaner feeds. Lower prices. Free shipping. Fewer hoops to jump through. The product feels like it “just works.” Remember those early days on social when your feed was mostly your friends, your groups, and stuff you actually cared about? Or the era when shopping sites showed the best price first, without sponsored clutter pushing it down the page?
That’s Stage 1 in a nutshell. The companies are lighting money on fire (investor cash helps), racing to scale and to trigger network effects—the dynamic where a service gets more useful the more people use it. At the same time, they’re building switching costs. Not just through features, but through soft glue: your social graph, your saved lists, your chat history, that stack of e-books that don’t port anywhere else.
I remember when I first tried a big marketplace’s free shipping program. It felt like a life hack. Suddenly buying cables, coffee pods, a phone tripod—boom, next-day at the door. The platform learned my patterns, and I learned to stop checking anywhere else. Mission accomplished.
Why this works:
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You feel the platform respects your time.
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The best content or products surface naturally.
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Price and convenience beat every alternative.
The catch:
Even in Stage 1, the foundation for internet platform degradation is being poured. We just can’t see it yet because the good stuff is so good.
Stage 2: Be Great… To Business Customers
Once users are hooked, the story shifts. Now the platform courts business customers—advertisers, publishers, third-party sellers, drivers, hosts, you name it. The pitch: “We have the audience. Come make money here. We’ll treat you well.” And for a while, they do.
On social platforms, it often looked like easy reach and low-friction distribution. Post a link, watch traffic spike. On marketplaces, it looked like a clean search: query in, relevant product out. For merchants, returns and logistics were handled generously. For advertisers, targeting felt precise and performance-driven.
I’ve worn the publisher hat, and I still remember a time when posting a new story on a platform meant readers actually saw it—without paying to “boost” it. It was predictable. It was honest. If you published quality, you grew.
Why Stage 2 feels fair:
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Businesses get a clear path to succeed by being relevant.
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The platform still looks user-first because quality tends to rise.
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Everyone believes they’re playing the same game with the same rules.
What quietly changes:
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Businesses invest deeply in platform-specific workflows and ad tools.
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Audiences train themselves to start their searches in one place.
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Alternatives wither. The moat deepens.
Stage 3: Tighten The Screws (On Everyone)
Then comes the hard pivot. Shareholders want profits. Growth slows. The easiest money is… already inside the walls. So the platform starts extracting: more ads in feeds, more sponsored slots in search, higher fees, pay-to-play visibility, new rules that favor the platform’s own products or formats, and constant nudges to keep you from clicking away.
If you’ve ever searched a marketplace and found the “best match” buried under a stack of sponsored look-alikes… or watched a social feed drown in “suggested” posts you didn’t ask for… you’ve met Stage 3.
From the business side, this is when sellers talk about “junk fees” or “the tax” of simply existing on a platform. Maybe advertising used to be optional; now it feels compulsory just to reach the audience that already opted into your page. Maybe search used to reward relevance; now it rewards whoever pays to sit on top.
What users feel:
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More friction to find the thing you actually want.
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Less control over your feed.
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A creeping sense that the platform is yelling at you.
What businesses feel:
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Rising costs and shrinking margins.
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Paywalls around basic reach.
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A treadmill: spend more to stand still.
This is the internet platform degradation moment—the point where the platform optimizes for its own revenue, even if it degrades user trust and business viability. From the platform’s perspective, it’s rational. From everyone else’s perspective, it feels like the floor is tilting.
Why Platforms Slide This Way (And Why It’s Hard To Stop)
Doctorow’s broader argument boils down to two levers:
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Competition is weak. Network effects and switching costs trap users and businesses. Your friends, followers, product listings, reviews, saved media—all tied to one ecosystem. Even if you want to leave, moving is painful. And if your customers don’t move with you, you’ll be shouting into the void.
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Rules are fuzzy or outdated. For years, the prevailing antitrust lens cared mainly about consumer prices. If something looked free or cheap, it passed the smell test—even if it concentrated power and set the stage for later extraction through ads, fees, and lock-in.
I like to picture it as a castle with a deep moat. In Stage 1 and 2, the platform invites everyone in for a feast. In Stage 3, the drawbridge comes up and the toll collectors arrive at every door.
Interoperability, “Right-To-Exit,” And Other Practical Fixes
So, how do you drain the moat without killing the castle?
Make leaving easier. A right-to-exit would let you take what you’ve paid for—your e-books, playlists, social graph, even your seller reviews and bring them to another service. If switching didn’t feel like starting over, platforms would have to win your loyalty daily, not just rent-seek it.
Make services talk to each other. That’s interoperability. Imagine messaging friends across apps, moving a storefront between marketplaces without losing reputation, or installing apps across mobile platforms with fewer walls. When products plug into a broader ecosystem, the platform can’t quietly raise the walls without losing users to open paths.
Give ranking back its integrity. Search that consistently shows the best match first (and labels paid placements crisply) restores trust. Feeds that honor user intent—“show me who I follow”—build loyalty. The platform still makes money; it just doesn’t hide the ball.
Let the market compete on merit, not lock-in. Cleaner disclosures for fees. Simple data portability. Tools for third-party innovation (within privacy and security guardrails). When good products can win, everyone wins.
Some of this needs policy. Some of it can come from user pressure and smart product design. But all of it pushes in the same direction: reducing internet platform degradation by realigning incentives with user value.
What You Can Do Today (Without Waiting For A Law)
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Back up your digital life. Export your contacts, photos, and docs where possible. Use cross-platform tools when you can. The easier you can leave, the more choice you actually have.
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Diversify your discovery. Don’t rely on a single feed for news, shopping, or recommendations. Try newsletters, RSS, indie search tools, and smaller communities.
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Reward services that respect you. If a platform gives you clean ranking, clear labels, and honest controls, spend your time and money there. Vote with your clicks and your wallet.
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Use browser extensions mindfully. Ad and tracker controls can restore signal to noise—but be thoughtful about the creators you want to support. Consider direct subscriptions where it makes sense.
It sounds small, but collectively, these choices send a signal. Platforms read those signals.
Why The Stakes Are Bigger Than Annoying Feeds
It’s easy to treat this like a minor nuisance—“ugh, another sponsored post.” But the internet is the infrastructure for modern life. When discovery tilts toward pay-to-play, small businesses struggle. When search quality slides, prices inch up for all of us. When feeds bury what we ask to see, independent creators lose their audiences. When switching costs trap us, innovation slows.
The real harm of internet platform degradation isn’t just crummy UX. It’s the quiet tax we all pay when the digital commons gets fenced off: fewer choices, higher hidden costs, and a steady erosion of trust.
A Quick Reality Check On The Pushback
Big platforms will argue that fees are optional, targeting is improving, and private-label products or suggested posts exist to give users “more choice.” Sometimes that’s true! Not every change is a shakedown. But the pattern matters more than any one tweak. If ranking gets murkier, if paid beats relevant too often, if the default is “engagement bait” instead of “what you asked for,” users notice even if they can’t articulate it.
And here’s the hopeful bit: when a platform restores integrity—clear labels, genuine control, credible search, users reward it. Trust compounds just as fast as distrust.
Here’s What This Really Means
When you step back, the diagnosis is simple: internet platform degradation is the natural outcome of closed ecosystems with easy levers to pull (fees, ranking, lock-in) and weak pressure to behave. The cure isn’t to hate platforms. It’s to rebalance power so value delivered—not value extracted—wins the day.
That looks like:
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Users who can leave with their stuff.
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Businesses that can compete on relevance, not auction budgets.
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Platforms that earn attention with honest ranking and real controls.
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Policymakers who measure health by more than whether a product looked “free” at signup.
We’ve seen this movie a dozen times. We also know how to rewrite the ending.
My Take: Why This Matters, What You Can Take Away, And How It Hits Real Life
Why it matters: The internet isn’t just entertainment; it’s where we shop, learn, work, and organize our lives. If the dominant gateways tilt toward extraction, everyone pays—especially the smallest players with the least cushion.
What to take away: Watch for the three stages. If your favorite platform starts nudging you toward “suggested” over “selected,” or if search results feel like a bidding war, you’re not imagining it. That’s the playbook running. Balance it by diversifying how you discover, exporting what you can, and rewarding services that keep ranking honest.
How it affects you day-to-day: You might pay more without realizing it (sponsored first, best value buried). You might miss updates from the people and brands you actually chose to follow. And if you run a small shop or newsletter, you may feel forced to buy ads just to reach your own audience. Recognizing the pattern gives you options—practical ones today, and civic ones when you vote or comment on tech policy.
The internet doesn’t have to slide. It can get better—cleaner search, clearer labels, smoother exits, smarter interoperability. That future starts with pressure from users, courage from builders, and rules that reward service over squeeze. If we push there together, the web can feel fresh again not because we forgot the past, but because we finally learned from it.
