It started with free lunch and a new friend and finished alone in a digital ghost town

There was a time when Twitter felt like the ultimate digital opportunity for small businesses. It was arguably the easiest social network to manage: mostly open, without the murky grey area between private and public. It offered simple, to-the-point connections. And compared to Facebook, it was relatively unattractive to those prone to writing diatribes—with less obligation to follow friends and family, the odds of being punished by your friend’s “I do my own research” political rants were low.

If you were new to social media, testing the Twitter waters was much easier for a small business than navigating YouTube or Instagram. If you were part of the Toronto food scene ten years ago, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’m choosing that specific example—the Toronto food scene—because I was there, helping a wholesale food distributor (DiLiso’s Fresh 2U Produce) build an online presence. You could follow industry leaders you genuinely admired, reply to posts, and network with relative ease. Discussions unfolded, follow-backs happened organically, and relationships were built on a sense of equality. It wasn’t long before we were being retweeted by Steam Whistle Brewing, having lunch with Daryl D’Souza of Lou Dawg’s Southern BBQ, and meeting Chef Matt Basile of Fidel Gastro’s, the most popular food truck in Toronto at the time, for Cuban sandwiches and a photo op with his bust of Elvis Presley at the Toronto Underground Market (TUM).

Friends were made; business grew. It was explosive, real, and it actually moved the needle for SMBs.

Then, the lights went out.

The lifecycle of a dying platform

What happened to Twitter (and what’s currently happening to X) isn’t a fluke. It’s a documented economic cycle called enshittification. Coined by Cory Doctorow, it describes a three-stage rot that kills every platform you’ve ever loved:

Stage 1: Be good to users. The platform gives everything away for free to lock you in. This is the “Golden Era” of high organic reach.

Stage 2: Pivot to business. Once you and your customers are locked in, the platform starts squeezing. It doesn’t stop showing your content entirely, but it throttles your organic reach. They move your posts to the bottom of your followers’ feeds—underneath ads and “suggested” content—until your reach drops to 1% or 2%. To talk to the audience you already spent years building, the platform now demands you “pay to play.”

Stage 3: The harvest. The platform stops caring about users and businesses. It hoards all remaining value for itself to satisfy owners or shareholders.

The Musk Effect: A ghost town built on rubble

While enshittification is a natural decay, the acquisition of Twitter was an accelerant. It wasn’t just about politics; it was an emotional purchase that dismantled a functional ecosystem. For the SMBs who built their brands there, the “empty-nester” return was devastating. We left for a minute to handle our lives, and when we came back, the landscape was decimated.

The verified paywall: It turned authority into a subscription service, making it impossible to distinguish a trusted industry leader from a bot with $8.

The algorithm of hate: Quality conversations—the kind that led to wholesale deals and restaurant partnerships—were buried under rage-bait designed to keep eyes on the screen at any cost.

The death of referral: X now actively suppresses links that take users off the platform. For a business trying to drive traffic to their own site, it’s a dead end.

A systemic strategy: Google and Facebook

It isn’t just a “Musk problem.” Other giants have followed the same playbook to prioritize their bottom line over your business.

1. Google search: From library to billboard

Google’s mission was once to “organize the world’s information.” Today, it’s in the deep end of Stage 3:

• The zero-click trap: As of 2026, AI Overviews appear on over 60% of searches. Google isn’t sending users to your website; it’s scraping your content to answer the question itself. You do the work; Google keeps the “stay-on-page” time.
• The ad-to-organic ratio: A user now has to scroll through sponsored results, “People Also Ask” boxes, and AI summaries—sometimes two full screens—before finding an actual, deserving website.
• The coercion strategy: Research suggests Google has complicated results to force users into searching multiple times, which simply means showing more ads.

2. Facebook: The great reach bait-and-switch

Facebook is the textbook example of locking in a community and then charging them for the keys.

• The bait: Early on, Facebook promised your “fans” would see your posts. To fuel their aggressive ad engine, they eventually throttled that organic reach to near-zero.
• The squeeze: Today, the “Friends and Family” feed has been replaced by “suggested” AI-generated slop and short-form video (“Reels”) to compete with TikTok.
• Fat fingers: Much of the engagement SMBs pay for is actually accidental clicks on obtrusive mobile ads or bot activity, hiding the fact that the platform’s real value has evaporated.

SMBs are the biggest victims

When a giant like Meta “twiddles” an algorithm, a massive corporation just adjusts its budget. For an SMB, a 20% drop in traffic can be the difference between making payroll and closing the doors.

Platforms leverage lock-in: Users can’t leave because that’s where their memories are; businesses can’t leave because that’s where the customers are. Once you’re stuck, they harvest you, leaving behind what Doctorow calls a “homeopathic residue of value”—just enough utility to keep you from deleting your account while they suck out the profit.

The wake-up call

If you’re waiting for Google or Facebook to “go back to how it was,” stop. They’re functioning exactly as intended. Your goal for 2026 isn’t to “crack the algorithm”—it’s to build a bridge off the sinking ships.

• Optimize for source-worthiness: If Google is going to use AI summaries, make your data so authoritative they have to cite you.
• Modular content: Build content that works as snippets, FAQs, and data tables—the things “machines” like—while keeping the deep value on your own domain.
• Own the relationship: Every click from a third-party platform should be a mission to get that person onto your email list or into a direct relationship.

The takeaway

Don’t build your house on rented land. If your business relies on a billionaire not having an emotional crisis, you aren’t a partner; you’re a tenant. And the landlord is currently burning the building for the insurance money. It’s time to move your community to channels you actually control, because once the enshittification starts, the rubble will soon be all that’s left.

If you like the word enshittification as much as we do, you might be interested to know it was the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year in 2023.