From Prime to Pile of Sh*t: The “Enshittification” of Amazon and Online Platforms

Are you tired of endlessly scrolling through irrelevant search results, AI-generated advertisements, and identical products on your favorite online platforms? You’re not alone. The digital landscape, including major players like Amazon, appears to be rapidly deteriorating, turning once-loved services into frustrating, low-quality experiences.

Author and activist Cory Doctorow identified this widespread collapse of online platforms in 2022, coining the term “enshittification.” This concept isn’t just a casual complaint; it’s a critical analysis explaining how and why online services degrade, and the systemic contagion causing this decline across the internet.

Understanding “Enshittification”: The Three Stages of Platform Decay

Doctorow describes “enshittification” as a material phenomenon, akin to a disease with predictable symptoms and progression. Its “natural history” unfolds in three distinct stages:

1. Stage 1: Platforms are beneficial to their users. They offer value, convenience, and often subsidized services to attract a large user base.
2. Stage 2: Platforms leverage their users to benefit their business customers. Once users are locked in, the platform begins extracting value from them to enhance offerings for third-party sellers or advertisers.
3. Stage 3: Platforms abuse both users and business customers, clawing back all value for themselves. This final stage transforms the platform into a “giant pile of shit,” prioritizing its own profit above all else, at the expense of quality for everyone else.

This pattern is now evident everywhere, and Amazon provides a compelling case study.

Amazon’s Journey: From Relentless Customer Service to Digital Quagmire

Amazon, once envisioned by Jeff Bezos as “Relentless” in its commitment to customer satisfaction, has become synonymous with the “enshittification” process. How did a company celebrated for efficient logistics evolve into an e-commerce giant plagued by junk products and confusing search results?

Stage 1: User-Centric Growth and Lock-In

Amazon’s initial strategy involved significant investment in customer attraction and retention. Leveraging substantial capital from investors and its stock market listing, the company subsidized products, offered competitive shipping, and implemented a generous returns policy. This strategy drew millions to the platform.

The introduction of Prime membership further solidified user loyalty. Paying an annual fee for shipping created a powerful incentive for subscribers to make Amazon their primary shopping destination, often bypassing price comparisons elsewhere.

Beyond “soft” lock-in like Prime, Amazon employed “iron chains” through digital rights management (DRM) on audiobooks, movies, and ebooks. This encryption binds digital purchases to Amazon’s ecosystem, meaning users risk losing their entire media library if they leave the platform, creating a substantial switching cost.

Additionally, years of predatory pricing – selling goods below cost – allowed Amazon to decimate brick-and-mortar stores and much of the online competition, making it increasingly inconvenient for consumers to shop elsewhere.

Stage 2: Merchant Exploitation Begins

Initially, Amazon also treated its business customers well. It paid fair prices for goods, subsidized their sales with below-cost offerings to consumers, and maintained a clean search engine that prioritized quality products. This attracted a vast array of merchants eager to access Amazon’s growing customer base.

Once merchants were dependent on the platform, Amazon began to apply pressure. The company calls this its “flywheel” strategy: low prices and vast selection attract users, which attracts merchants. As merchants become more reliant on Amazon’s customer access, Amazon can demand deeper discounts and higher fees, which in turn allows for lower prices and attracts more users, perpetuating the cycle.

This “flywheel” was enabled by a radical shift in antitrust law, the “consumer welfare standard.” This theory, prevalent since the late 1970s, argues that government intervention against monopolies is only justified if they raise prices or lower quality. It assumes large companies are successful due to excellent offerings, thus overlooking other monopolistic behaviors as long as consumer prices appear low. Amazon’s “flywheel” neatly aligns with this framework by proclaiming to lower prices for consumers, even as it squeezes merchants.

Stage 3: The “Pile of Sh*t” Reality

Today, Amazon has perfected tactics to extract maximum value for itself, often at the direct expense of both sellers and end-users. Despite the “low price” narrative, the platform has become a challenging and often frustrating experience:

• Product Cloning: Amazon leverages its data to identify best-selling third-party products, then creates its own versions, effectively relegating the original sellers deep within search results.
• Mandatory Junk Fees: Merchants face a mountain of “optional” yet practically mandatory fees, such as those for Prime eligibility or “Fulfilment by Amazon” (FBA). Opting out results in significantly lower search visibility. These fees can consume 45-51 cents of every dollar a merchant earns.
• “Most-Favored-Nation” Clauses: To compensate for Amazon’s exorbitant fees, merchants are forced to raise their prices. Crucially, Amazon often mandates that sellers maintain these higher prices across all sales channels, including their own websites. This means consumers pay an “Amazon tax” regardless of where they shop.
• Rigged Search Results: Product search results are no longer about finding the “best match.” Amazon makes over $50 billion annually by charging merchants for prime search placement. The top results are often 29% more expensive than the actual best match, which might be buried many positions down the page. Sorting by price is often ineffective due to merchants manipulating quantity listings to appear cheaper.
• Fraud and Low Quality: Amazon underinvests in anti-fraud measures. This leads to top-rated items often being low-quality products bolstered by paid, fake reviews. High-quality sellers are forced to either sink in rankings or engage in similar deceptive practices, further raising prices to cover the cost of “fraud-as-a-service.”

For Amazon, this system works. It profits whether customers are satisfied or furious, with the costs borne by sellers and consumers. This terminal stage of “enshittification” leaves users stuck on a platform that delivers diminishing value, and merchants trapped, earning less from every sale.

Beyond Consumer Choices: The Need for Systemic Reform

While the internet’s current state is critical, Doctorow argues it’s not capitalism itself, but specific policy failures that have led to the “enshitternet.” This degraded digital environment actively hinders efforts to organize against global challenges like climate change, inequality, and authoritarianism.

Individual consumer activism, or “voting with your wallet,” is insufficient to reverse this trend. The problem is systemic, requiring systemic solutions. To fix platforms like Amazon, we need:

• A ban on predatory pricing.
• Structural separation, forcing Amazon to choose between being a platform or competing with its sellers.
• Curbing excessive junk fees.
• Ending “most-favored-nation” clauses.
• Unionization of warehouse workers and drivers.
• Legal action against rigged search results as a form of fraud.

Corporations, lacking a conscience, will only respond to fear induced by effective regulation and collective action. Coalitions of consumers, merchants, workers, competitors, and tax-justice activists are essential to force systemic change and rebuild a free, fair, and open internet vital for addressing humanity’s most pressing issues.

Amazon’s Response

When asked for comment on these assertions, an Amazon spokesman stated that the description of its relationship with independent sellers appeared “inaccurate and misleading.” The spokesman added, “The truth is millions of independent sellers are thriving in Amazon’s store, including many who choose not to use our optional fulfilment services, which are competitively priced and often provide better value than alternatives. Amazon consistently offers customers the lowest prices across the widest selection of products and was recognised in 2024 by independent research firm Profitero as the lowest-priced UK retailer for the fifth year running. Items sold by third-party sellers are backed with our A-to-z Guarantee, enabling customers to request a refund if an item is damaged, defective or not as described.”