In his article “Enshittification, artificial intelligence, and the privatization of public education,” Dr. Chris Samuel warns that artificial intelligent’s infiltration into education (AIED) will likely mimic the same depressing “enshittification” users saw in platforms like Facebook, Google, and X/Twitter.
First, a platform provides a novel experience and value with big promises of making that experience better and better as more people join and the platform grows. Think of Facebook for example, with its initial promise to show you content generated by your friends (and only content generated by your friends) without spying on you or harvesting your data. As more people joined, Facebook enjoyed a “network effect,” meaning both that the user experience improved (you have more friends to follow, more groups to like!) and that the cost of remaining outside or leaving got higher (you’ll miss out on all those friends and groups!). In effect, friend groups got locked into Facebook. It was time for stage two.
In the second stage of enshittification, platforms sell their user base to advertisers and publishers. Facebook broke its promise to only show you the content you asked for (by following friends and subscribing to groups) and instead began to show you ad content. They also broke their promise not to spy on their users and began harvesting data to sell to advertisers. In doing so, Facebook re-allocated the value of their product away from the user base and toward advertisers and publishers. Soon enough, advertisers and publishers also become hostage to the platforms. Practically the only way to get eyeballs on their ads, videos, and stories is to have the platforms force their content into users’ feeds. At this point, the time is right to re-allocate value again; this time it goes to the platforms’ shareholders.
In third-stage enshittification, advertisers, who had been getting cut-rate deals to show their products to users, start having to compete against each other to be at the top of feeds. Publishers, who used to be able to get users over to their own websites by showing some teaser text with a link, start getting punished (by being sent further down the feed) unless they include full-text articles with no way of redirecting readers off platform.
At this point, enshittification is complete. Platforms no longer function to provide either an optimal user experience or an optimal business experience. They only provide an optimal profit experience for their shareholders.
I can certainly see this happening with AIED. That said, platforms like ChatGPT never thrilled me the way early iterations of Facebook and Twitter did. These made my life better, by bringing me closer to other people.
