“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” – Cory Doctorow

Jared Henderson included this quote in a July 2025 video titled “The internet keeps getting worse. Let’s talk about why.” It’s a great video, and like everything he’s been posting lately, well worth the watch.

This quote explains Cory Doctorow’s famous term ‘enshittification,’ referring to the process where an online platform or service gradually degrades in quality, often due to the prioritization of profits over user experience. Essentially, platforms begin with seemingly good intentions to attract users, sometimes even at a loss to themselves. But then, over time, these same platforms begin to abuse users to benefit business clients. Ultimately, though, they gouge both to enrich themselves, before collapse kicks in and they fail. It doesn’t mean they necessarily won’t exist anymore, though; Henderson uses his own work experience at PayPal to show that these platforms, once ‘enshittification’ reaches its later stages, that these companies can still go on for a while, but as shells of their former selves.

On a broader level, Jared’s video points out every online platform now seems laced with sponsorships, ads and bots. It appears to be proof that the ‘good old days’ of fair exchange are long gone and that enshittification is dominating the online world, too. So, with the growing sentiment that most of today’s internet is fake and AI is overloading everything, what’s the solution? It would be a pro‑human internet, in which users, businesses, and platforms collaborate with balance. On top of that, AI should be a scaffold for learning, not a replacement for education or especially for human agency. The hope is that once people wise up, sooner or later, advertisers won’t reach real humans anymore. That collapse in advertiser revenue may be exactly what resets the system.

My hope is that I’m building Obscure Curiosities for that potential pro-human internet, where users go back to just surfing the web digging deep to find answers to their questions or to find interesting and obscure stuff worth investigating. Will this actually happen? Well, I’m here building this digital garden, and whoever happens to stumble upon it, I’ll be grateful. But remember ‘Field of Dreams’ and that famous line, “If you build it they will come.” I’m sure people are already out there building a better internet. Most people, including me, just don’t know what that’s going to look like just yet.