The term “Enshittification,” coined with surgical precision by Cory Doctorow, has moved from a clever observation to a dominant market reality. As we navigate through the early months of 2026, the “Rot Economy” isn’t just a catchy phrase—it’s a systemic failure that every C-suite leader needs to confront. We are seeing a predictable, yet painful, cycle where platforms first attract users by being useful, then exploit those users to benefit business customers, and finally, strip away all value to satisfy shareholders. But why are we still so surprised?
Having witnessed the mobile revolution from inside Nokia and the stratospheric rise of eCommerce at easyJet, I’ve seen this movie before. The pattern is always the same: a technological leap followed by a gold rush, then a consolidation that prioritises extraction over innovation. Today, however, we have a new accelerant: Generative AI. And if we aren’t careful, we are about to build the most efficient “slop” engines the world has ever seen.
The Generative Slop: When Content Becomes a Liability
In the last year, the internet has become noticeably noisier and significantly less useful. The Register recently highlighted how “AI slop”—low-quality, AI-generated content—is flooding search results and social feeds. This isn’t just an annoyance for users; it’s a strategic risk for companies. When the cost of marginal content creation hits zero, the value of that content follows suit. We are entering an era of “Ethical Debt,” a term gaining traction among architects as a sibling to technical debt.
For Product Leaders, the challenge is no longer about shipping faster—it’s about shipping with transparency and soul. If your product strategy relies on filling gaps with uncurated AI outputs, you aren’t innovating; you’re contributing to the Rot. Look at the recent backlash against Adobe regarding their terms of service and AI training—users are hyper-aware of when they are being harvested rather than served. The circular economy of AI training on AI-generated data is already showing signs of model collapse. Why would we build our businesses on such brittle foundations?
Beyond the Efficiency Trap
Innovation often dies in the name of efficiency. I saw this during the dot-com bust and again during the transition to smartphones. Companies that focused solely on optimising their existing “cash cow” funnels were decimated by those who understood that the user’s context had shifted. During my time at EDF Energy, we realised that digital transformation wasn’t about putting a web front-end on a legacy billing system—it was about rethinking the relationship between a utility and a home.
Today, the efficiency trap is “Agentic AI.” Everyone wants to replace their customer service with a bot. But as TechCrunch reports, the most successful brands in 2026 are those using AI to empower their human frontline, not to hide from their customers behind a wall of “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.” Total automation is often a euphemism for “we don’t want to talk to you anymore.” That is the hallmark of the Rot.
The Antidote: Meaningful Product Management
How do we guard against this? It starts with empowered, autonomous product teams. Not “feature factories” that measure success by the number of tickets closed, but cross-functional groups of designers, engineers, and product people who are incentivised by user outcomes. When I advise startups, I look for “Product-Led Growth” that is rooted in genuine utility, not dark patterns designed to pump metrics for the next funding round.
Consider the “Long View.” The Luddites weren’t anti-technology; they were anti-exploitation. They didn’t hate the looms; they hated the way the looms were used to bypass their livelihoods and debase their craft. In 2026, we are the new craftsmen. Our “craft” is the digital experience. If we allow our platforms to become “enshittified,” we are the ones holding the shuttle.
- Prioritise “Ethical Observability”: Build systems to track not just if a feature is used, but if it is actually helpful.
- Defend Your Distinctiveness: If AI can generate your entire value proposition, you don’t have a moat; you have a mirage.
- Institutionalise Empathy: Get your product teams out of the office and into the world. If you don’t see the pain your “optimised” funnel causes a real human, you’ll never fix it.
Rethinking the Value Exchange
The cycle of the Rot Economy is not inevitable. It is a choice made by leaders who prioritise short-term extraction over long-term resilience. As we look at data visualisations from Visual Capitalist, the technology adoption curves are getting steeper. This means we have less time to fix our mistakes before they become systemic.
We need to move away from the “move fast and break things” mantra—which has effectively become “move fast and break the internet”—and move toward a model of “Sustainable Digital Growth.” This means being honest about when a product has reached maturity and resisting the urge to enshittify it to find that last 2% of growth. Sometimes, the most innovative thing a leader can do is protect the integrity of a service that already works.
Take a hard look at your product roadmap. Are you adding features that solve a human problem, or are you just greasing the wheels of a extraction machine? The market is starting to correct itself. Users are migrating toward platforms that offer privacy, clarity, and genuine value. The question isn’t whether the Rot Economy will claim more victims—it will. The question is whether you will have the courage to build something that lasts.
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