Enshittification is an inescapable fact of life. Apps and services that were once good fall foul of the constant need to maximize shareholder profits, which comes at the cost of user experience. Very few apps escape the march of enshittification, but there are some that have gotten significantly worse this year.
Reddit has had a lot of hate this year on *checks notes* Reddit. Most of that hate has not been unjustified. The app is now plagued with ads, with Reddit now including ads in the comment section that are easy to mistake for genuine comments if you miss the small “promoted” tag under the username.
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Users have also been complaining about subreddits being auto-translated using AI without any indication or warning. This has caused users to comment on posts in their own language, unaware that the rest of the comments are in a completely different language.
Reddit has recently started rolling out a beta feature that removes the ability to sort comments for any user who isn’t logged into an account. Removing vital features is always a good way to keep your users onside, right?
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Sometimes, best just isn’t good enough.
Amazon
Amazon could be the poster boy for enshittification. What started life as a simple way to buy books online has grown into a monster. The constant imperative to maximize profits has turned Amazon into a company that sells almost everything, but the user experience has never been worse.
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Trying to find the product you actually want to buy is now a major challenge. Even if you type a specific product name, the first few results will be sponsored products, meaning that the product you want will be further down the page, often completely off the screen. Instead of returning the product that you want as the top result, Amazon returns the result that will make the company the most money, making it abundantly clear where the customers stand in Amazon’s list of priorities.
Amazon’s other products are no better. Echo Show smart displays have shown an increase in the number of ads that are displayed on the home screen, much to the annoyance of Echo Show users. Prime Video isn’t immune, either, with ads now a fact of life for standard Prime subscribers, and the number of ads has significantly increased this year. If you’re sick of Amazon, there are plenty of independent retailers who would love your business.
Duolingo
This one really gets my goat. I have a streak of nearly five years in Duolingo, and have been using the free, ad-supported version of the app throughout that time. Up until this year, the ads were annoying, but it felt like a fair trade-off to be able to use the app for free.
Credit: Duolingo
All that changed this year when Duolingo replaced the time-honored heart system with a new system based on energy. With the original system, as long as you didn’t make more than five mistakes and lose all your hearts, you could continue doing as many lessons as you wanted. With the new energy system, the energy depletes with each question you answer, even if you get it right. It can run out after as few as three lessons, even if you get nothing wrong, blocking you from completing any more lessons without watching ads, using gems, or giving in and signing up for a subscription.
The change has made the app significantly worse. I’ve resorted to skipping questions that require speaking or listening, which reduces the number of questions per lesson and ekes the energy out a little longer, but this is hardly a good way to learn. There are plenty of alternative language-learning apps that you might want to use instead.
Netflix
Netflix used to be so good; it had a great catalog of licensed TV shows and movies from all the major studios. Sadly, the studios got wise to the idea and set up their own streaming services, leaving users having to pay multiple subscriptions if they want to watch all the big shows and movies.
As Netflix’s user numbers started to plateau, it had to find other ways to keep growing, which inevitably led to enshittification. In 2023, Netflix started cracking down on password sharing, and it’s been getting worse ever since.
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The latest nail in the coffin is that Netflix has removed casting from its mobile apps for all but a tiny handful of supported devices. Previously, you could stream a show or movie on your phone and cast the show to the TV to watch it on a bigger screen. Now it’s only possible on older Chromecast devices and TVs that support Google Cast, and often only if you’re on an ad-free plan.
The best part is Netflix’s advice: “Please use the remote that came with your device to navigate and watch instead.” In other words, you’re forced to use the smart TV app, whether you like it or not. It’s reached the point where many of us are deciding whether keeping Netflix is worth it anymore.
Spotify
Spotify added audiobooks in 2023. If you’re a paying subscriber, you get 15 hours of audiobook listening time every month. If you want more listening time, you have to pay for an additional add-on. Adding something extra for no additional cost doesn’t sound like enshittification.
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However, there’s a dark side. By adding audiobooks to its music streaming subscription, Spotify was able to reclassify its Premium subscription as a “bundle”. The benefit for Spotify is that, thanks to a 2022 legal settlement, bundled services are allowed to pay a lower mechanical royalty to publishers and songwriters in the US. Spotify successfully fought off a lawsuit challenging this in January of 2025, meaning that by adding audiobooks, Spotify can now pay publishers and musicians even less than they already were.
The app itself is also getting worse. AI music is everywhere, with AI songs now making it to the top of many Spotify charts, so it’s almost impossible to escape the slop. While Spotify does attempt to remove spam tracks, the app is still flooded with them. There are plenty of alternative music-streaming services you can try if your Spotify experience is too awful to bear, or you could even roll your own.
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Enshittification is a sad fact of life. If an app or service is good, the chances are that it’s only going to get worse in the long term. The best course of action is to vote with your feet and just stop using apps when they become too awful.