Forget user experience, the age of user extraction is here

Does it ever feel like the days of simple, user- and pocket-friendly digital services are now a bygone era? Is everything just a reminder of how things used to be better? Dramatic language and rose-tinted glasses aside, you would be naive not to notice that service providers are becoming increasingly predatory, especially when it comes to monetization. Ads are everywhere, privacy policies are questionable at best, and costs keep rising. So no, you’re not imagining it; things really have gotten worse. Now, we unfortunately find ourselves in the era of user extraction.

Wringing you out like a wet towel

Corporations want to squeeze you for all you’re worth. It’s a classic “miss the forest for the trees” approach—prioritizing short-term returns over long-term customer goodwill and sustainable profitability.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Those user- and pocket-friendly services we fondly remember? They were highly unprofitable and fundamentally unsustainable.

These platforms were bleeding themselves dry to get us hooked, a calculated corporate bait-and-switch. The goal was never to stay generous; it was to capture the market at any cost, then move straight into the extraction phase once users were locked in. There’s no shortage of examples.

Welcome to the age of enshittification

I remember when YouTube wasn’t a massive platform. Content felt more genuine, more organic. Ads were minimal—maybe a single skippable ad at the start of a video. Then came mid-roll ads. Then multiple unskippable ads. All carefully engineered to push you toward a premium subscription.

Even then, you’re not exactly rewarded with a great end product: dislikes quietly removed, search becoming noticeably worse, and discovery feeling increasingly manipulated. Amazon’s Prime Video is just as absurd—paying for a subscription, only to still rent movies and sit through ads. At this point, you might as well go back to cable TV.

In both cases, the pattern is the same. These companies got us hooked. For many of us, it’s genuinely hard to imagine life without YouTube or streaming platforms altogether, which these corporations know. That dependency gives them leverage. Corporations can offer a worse product and get away with it simply because these services have become embedded in our daily lives.

This is textbook enshittification (yes, it’s a crude term, but a perfectly accurate one): Platforms start by being good to users, then shift to abusing users to benefit advertisers, and finally squeeze both to satisfy shareholders—creating an experience that is deliberately worse by design.

Hit them right where it hurts

I’ll admit the hypocrisy here. I still pay for several premium subscriptions while criticizing unfair tech practices. But ultimately, real change lies in the hands of users like you and me. Corporations only really respond when their cash flow is affected; no amount of litigation or regulation can change this. Remember, stop using products or services that treat you with contempt. A boycott is the best way to force positive change. Cash is king, after all.