The Internet Didn’t Get Worse by Accident

Why the Internet Feels Broken: The Rise of User Extraction

If it feels like the internet is working against you lately, you’re not imagining it.

Searching for basic information now takes longer. Online shopping feels cluttered and manipulative. Streaming services cost more while offering less. Dating apps promise connection but seem designed to keep people endlessly swiping rather than actually meeting.

This isn’t nostalgia, and it isn’t personal failure.
It’s the result of a fundamental shift in how much of the digital economy operates.

Over the past decade, we’ve moved from a user experience economy to a user extraction economy—and once you see the pattern, it’s hard to unsee.

The “Good Internet” Was Subsidized

From roughly 2010 to the late 2010s, technology appeared to make everyday life cheaper and easier.

You could cross a city for the price of a sandwich.
Order almost anything with free two-day shipping.
Stream massive libraries of content without ads.
Use tools that felt genuinely designed to help you.

This era wasn’t proof that technology had magically eliminated costs. It was proof that venture capital was willing to absorb them.

Companies like Uber, Amazon, Netflix, and others operated at significant losses to grow quickly, undercut competitors, and lock in user habits. Cheap prices and frictionless design weren’t sustainable efficiencies—they were investments in dependency.

Once competitors weakened and users were fully embedded, the subsidy ended.

When Growth Stops, Extraction Begins

After platforms reach saturation, incentives change.

They no longer need to delight users.
They only need to keep them from leaving.

This is where monetization quietly turns into extraction.

Search engines begin prioritizing paid placement over relevance. Marketplaces blur the line between ads and organic results. Subscription services raise prices, introduce ads, or carve core features into premium tiers. Apps add friction, fees, and psychological pressure precisely where users are most vulnerable.

Writer and technologist Cory Doctorow coined a term for this progression: enshittification—the gradual degradation of platforms as value is shifted away from users and toward advertisers and shareholders.

The word is crude. The process is systematic.

Friction Becomes the Product

In the early internet, friction signaled failure.
Today, friction is often the business model.

Confusion keeps users scrolling. Delays increase ad exposure. Obstacles create opportunities to sell relief.

A cluttered marketplace isn’t a mistake—it’s a bidding war.
A confusing checkout isn’t an error—it’s margin expansion.

The same logic explains why streaming services have recreated the economics of cable: rising prices, stacked subscriptions, and ads layered onto plans that were once ad-free. What was sold as liberation quietly became consolidation.

The experience worsens not because companies forgot how to build good products, but because worse experiences convert better under extraction models.

When Platforms Stop Optimizing for Success

The most damaging stage arrives when platforms stop optimizing for user outcomes at all.

Dating apps offer a clear example. Their stated purpose is connection. Their economic incentive is retention. A user who finds love and deletes the app is no longer a customer.

Recent lawsuits allege that major dating platforms use game mechanics designed to prolong engagement rather than facilitate matches—drip-feeding attention, hiding compatibility behind paywalls, and engineering reward loops that resemble gambling systems more than matchmaking.

The same conflict appears elsewhere:
• Search engines that profit when answers are harder to find
• Social platforms that reward outrage over resolution
• Marketplaces that favor sellers who pay rather than sellers who perform

When success for the user conflicts with success for the platform, the user consistently loses.

Lock-In Is the Endgame

In a healthy market, declining quality creates room for competitors. But many technology platforms are no longer just products—they are infrastructure.

Leaving isn’t simple when:
• Local alternatives have disappeared
• Social relationships are trapped on a single network
• Personal data, history, and access can’t move with you

This is where extraction accelerates. Prices rise. Service declines. Terms worsen. Users tolerate it because the cost of leaving feels higher than the cost of staying.

Not because alternatives are impossible—but because exit has been deliberately engineered to be painful.

A Sign of Weakness, Not Strength

Despite their apparent dominance, platforms that aggressively extract value are rarely at their creative peak.

History is full of companies that once seemed untouchable—AOL, Yahoo, MySpace—only to decline after they stopped building and started looting their own ecosystems.

Enshittification isn’t confidence.
It’s defensive behavior.

It signals stalled growth, exhausted innovation, and a shift from long-term value creation to short-term return protection.

Quiet Storm: When Music and Story Meet the Night — **Quiet Storm**: When Music and Story Meet the Night

What Actually Improves the Internet

Deleting bad apps may feel satisfying, but lasting improvement requires structural change:
• Interoperability, so users can leave without losing everything
• Data portability, so people retain ownership of their digital lives
• Clear separation between advertising and results
• Antitrust enforcement where platforms function as utilities
• Support for open standards, not closed ecosystems

When users regain real exit power, platforms are forced to compete on quality again.