{“lastseen”:”2026-01-12T06:05:11″,”description”:”_This week on the Lock and Code podcast \u2026_\\n\\nThere’s a bizarre thing happening online right now where everything is getting worse. \\n\\nYour Google results have become so bad that you\u2019ve likely typed what you\u2019re looking for, plus the word \u201cReddit,\u201d so you can find discussion from actual humans. If you didn\u2019t take this route, you might get served AI results from Google Gemini, which once recommended that every person should eat \u201cat least one small rock per day.\u201d Your Amazon results are a slog, filled with products that have surreptitiously paid reviews. Your Facebook feed could be entirely irrelevant because the company decided years ago that you didn\u2019t want to see what your friends posted, you wanted to see what _brands_ posted, because brands _pay_ Facebook, and you don\u2019t, so brands are more important than your friends.\\n\\nBut, according to digital rights activist and award-winning author Cory Doctorow, this wave of online deterioration isn’t an accident\u2014it’s a business strategy, and it can be summed up in a word he coined a couple of years ago: Enshittification. \\n\\nEnshittification is the process by which an online platform\u2014like Facebook, Google, or Amazon\u2014harms its own services and products for short-term gain while managing to avoid any meaningful consequences, like the loss of customers or the impact of meaningful government regulation. It begins with an online platform treating new users with care, offering services, products, or connectivity that they may not find elsewhere. Then, the platform invites businesses on board that want to sell things _to_ those users. This means businesses become the priority and the everyday user experience is hindered. But then, in the final stage, the platform _also_ makes things worse for its business customers, making things better only for itself.\\n\\nThis is how a company like Amazon went from helping you find nearly anything you wanted to buy online to helping businesses sell you anything you wanted to buy online to making those businesses pay increasingly high fees to even be discovered online. Everyone, from buyers to sellers, is pretty much entrenched in the platform, so Amazon gets to dictate the terms.\\n\\nToday, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Doctorow about enshittification’s fast damage across the internet, how to fight back, and where it all started.\\n\\n\\u003e \\”Once these laws were established, the tech companies were able to take advantage of them. And today we have a bunch of companies that aren’t tech companies that are nevertheless using technology to rig the game in ways that the tech companies pioneered.\\”\\n\\nTune in today to listen to the full conversation. \\n\\n_Show notes and credits:_ \\n \\nIntro Music: \u201cSpellbound\u201d by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) \\nLicensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License \\nhttp:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/ \\nOutro Music: \u201cGood God\u201d by Wowa (unminus.com)\\n\\n* * *\\n\\n**Listen up\u2014Malwarebytes doesn\u2019t just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.**\\n\\nProtect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium Security for Lock and Code listeners.”,”published”:”2026-01-12T05:03:55″,”modified”:”2026-01-12T05:03:55″,”type”:”malwarebytes”,”title”:”Enshittification is ruining everything online (Lock and Code S07E01)”,”source”:””,”references”:””,”id”:”MALWAREBYTES:01EB7DD8E08BBBA139764EA8807D5347″,”bulletinFamily”:”blog”,”cwe”:null,”cvelist”:[],”sourceData”:””,”sourceHref”:””,”cvss”:{“score”:0,”severity”:”NONE”,”vector”:”NONE”,”version”:”NONE”},”cvss2″:{},”cvss3″:{“version”:””,”vectorString”:””,”baseScore”:0,”baseSeverity”:””,”attackVector”:””,”attackComplexity”:””,”privilegesRequired”:””,”userInteraction”:””,”scope”:””,”confidentialityImpact”:””,”integrityImpact”:””,”availabilityImpact”:””,”cvssV3″:{“version”:””,”vectorString”:””,”baseScore”:0,”baseSeverity”:””,”attackVector”:””,”attackComplexity”:””,”privilegesRequired”:””,”userInteraction”:””,”scope”:””,”confidentialityImpact”:””,”integrityImpact”:””,”availabilityImpact”:””}},”href”:”https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/podcast\/2026\/01\/enshittification-is-ruining-everything-online-lock-and-code-s07e01″,”category_name”:”News”,”post_link”:””,”product”:””,”version”:””,”vendor”:””,”ai_description”:””,”ai_severity”:””,”ai_vendor”:””,”ai_product”:””,”ai_version”:””,”ai_score”:0}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{“lastseen”:”2026-01-12T06:05:11″,”description”:”_This week on the Lock and Code podcast \u2026_\\n\\nThere’s a bizarre thing happening online right now where everything is getting worse. \\n\\nYour Google results have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,8,12,115,13,33,7,11,5],"class_list":["post-35094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-category_news","tag-cve","tag-cvss","tag-exploit","tag-malwarebytes","tag-news","tag-none","tag-security","tag-tapic","tag-vulnerability"],"yoast_head":"\n