How to prevent product enshittification
How to Keep Your Product from Rotting
The silent killer of digital growth has a name: enshittification.
There’s a reason why so many apps, platforms, and products we once loved now feel frustrating, annoying — or worse, irrelevant.
It’s not that they changed on the outside.
It’s that they rotted from within.
This isn’t just a metaphor.
It has a name: enshittification.
What is enshittification?
Coined by Cory Doctorow, the term describes the slow but relentless process by which products degrade over time as they grow:
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LinkedIn hides your posts unless you pay.
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Google shows ads and summaries before real results.
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Duolingo becomes more of a game than a tool for learning.
The most dangerous part?
It doesn’t happen all at once.
A tiny popup.
little extra friction.
KPI that gets optimized at the expense of the user experience…
And suddenly, what you built to help people has become a system designed to extract value — not to deliver it.
Can this happen to you?
Yes.
Because once your product starts growing, your incentives change.
And if you don’t protect the original vision — what made it clear, useful, and human — you’ll end up making short-term decisions that silently destroy long-term value.
The good news?
You can fight it.
Here are 4 practical strategies to protect your product from enshittification:
1. Document your vision like it’s company policy
Who is your product really for?
What will you never do, even if it improves a metric?
This becomes your internal compass when decisions get tough.
Prompt for AI:
“Help me write a product vision statement that acts as a strategic filter. It should be short, actionable, and something I can refer to whenever I’m torn between growth and protecting user experience.”
2. Measure what really matters
Clicks and conversions are easy to track — but often misleading.
Start tracking:
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% of users who recommend you without incentives
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Number of repeated support tickets
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Qualitative positive feedback (track it and review it)
Bad metrics create bad decisions.
3. If something converts well but feels wrong… pause
Let’s say a button doubles your leads… but also spikes your cancellations.
That’s not success — that’s slow damage.
Prompt for AI:
“Analyze the risks of implementing [describe specific tactic]. Calculate:
Likely cancellation/return rate
Impact on negative reviews
Cost of reacquiring lost customers
Estimated reputational damage
Compare short-term gains vs long-term customer lifetime value (LTV).”
4. Talk to your community before they tune out
Don’t wait until users leave.
Ask them directly what’s starting to feel off.
Prompt for AI:
“Create a 3-question survey to detect whether users feel something has changed for the worse in their experience.”
It’s not about bad intentions. It’s about forgetting.
Enshittification doesn’t happen because you’re evil.
It happens when you stop designing with intention.
And if you’re not designing for your users, you’ll end up designing for algorithms, metrics, or stakeholders.
And when that happens…
your users leave.
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