Language is an evolving thing. Doctorow coined the word to specifically apply to marketplaces who control the link between consumers and producers (or multiple such relationships when you add in advertising and/or selling data)

It quickly was expanded to generally refer to user/customer hostile practices we see in late stage capitalism

I think he even spoke about it in an interview with Adam Hanover, once you put a word out there it takes on a life of its own

Enshitification is when a company’s quality decreases in favor of pocketing more money. It’s about greed and projecting the illusion you’re growing as a company. Shareholders like growth. This is exactly what intel is doing.

They cant pocket more money by selling their existing product for more money, as people won’t pay for it and profits will decrease.

They can’t pocket more money by selling a better product as that costs money in itself and won’t guarantee the return you’re looking for.

The only other play is to slim down your existing product and pray no one notices.

Intel chose the last option.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be about pocketing extra money. Lots of companies took a big hit because of Covid and interest rates. Lots of companies that were profitable are now in the red because of interest rates. Supply chain issues also had a strong impact on company growth and profitability. So in desperate attempt to stay “profitable” some companies elect to decrease quality to save money as there is no other way to produce additional profit to keep going.

If you make your product worse over time and it’s at the expense of your customers, then you’re effectively enshitifying.

That doesn’t mean that things that aren’t specifically doing that aren’t being “enshittified”–turned into shit–in other ways. Capitalism would see everything eventually turn to shit in order to squeeze out some more profit or more growth. Nothing can grow forever.