The term #enshittification, coined by Cory Doctorow, is a catchy way to describe the decline of digital platforms as they become exploitative and unusable. While it’s an effective pop term, it ultimately obscures the root causes of the problem.

For the past 20 years, I’ve used #dotcons to describe the same issue, but with a clearer critique of the systemic forces behind it. Unlike #enshittification, which frames the issue as an inevitable decline, #dotcons directly points to deliberate deception and enclosure of the #openweb by corporate interests.

Tech as a confidence trick, for over 30 years, the tech industry has been a confidence trick (see scam) dressed up as progress. The early internet was open, decentralized, and full of promise. But over time, corporate enclosures captured these open paths and turned them into walled gardens.

The dot-com boom (#dotcons) wasn’t about building a better web—it was about monetizing control. Liberal elitists and the public bought into this process, handing over control to Silicon Valley under the illusion that private corporations could be trusted with public digital infrastructure. The result? The death of the #openweb as #dotcons turned the internet into a system of surveillance, advertising, and data extraction.

Now, the same liberals who helped build this mess are using #enshittification to describe it, as if the problem is just an unfortunate trend rather than the predictable outcome of capitalism’s extractive logic. This is why #Enshittification misses the bigger picture, the problem, it shifts focus away from responsibility. It frames tech decline as an inevitable process, rather than a deliberate, profit-driven strategy.

🔹 Profit Motive and Diverging Interests, the core issue isn’t just “enshittification”—it’s the profit motive that drives platforms to exploit people. The interests of people and corporations are fundamentally opposed. People want stable, functional platforms; corporations want maximum profits, which means stripping away user benefits over time.

🔹 Lack of Accountability, by using a vague, abstract term, the real actors behind this decline—tech CEOs, venture capitalists, and #neoliberal policymakers—are let off the hook. The problem isn’t that platforms just get worse on their own; it’s that corporations actively degrade them to extract more profit.

🔹 The Liberal Blindspot. Liberals love talking about how things are bad, but they rarely examine how their own ideologies enabled these failures. It was liberal policies that deregulated Big Tech, liberal tech elitists who built the enclosures, and liberal “innovators” who sold out the #openweb. Now, they lament the decline without addressing why it happened in the first place.

🔹 A Call to Action – #Dotcons as a clearer critique as #dotcons isn’t just a description—it’s a call to action. It’s a critique of the corporate hijacking of the internet and a demand for accountability. Unlike #enshittification, which tells us “things got worse,” #dotcons reminds us who is responsible and why we need radical alternatives.

It’s time for critical thinking, using terms without deeper critique allows liberals to continue avoiding responsibility. If we want a better web, we need to stop pretending that this decline is just some natural cycle.

📌 The real issue is corporate control, profit extraction, and the enclosure of digital commons.
📌 The solution isn’t lamenting decline—it’s fighting back against #dotcons and rebuilding the #openweb.

So, let’s ditch vague buzzwords and focus on the real struggle, taking control from #dotcons tech monopolies and thus breaking the cycle of enclosure. And seriously, liberals, try thinking critically about this for once—without being prats about it.

More on this: 🔗 Enshittification – Wikipedia