Online rights campaigners have come together to complain about the propensity of IT companies to make life more difficult for their users. The groups, mainly from Europe but with some from the US, have written to policy makers in the EU/EEA, UK and the US.

The initiative has been spearheaded by Forbrukerrådet (the Norwegian Consumer Council) which complained of the “enshittification” of software. The term was popularized by writer Cory Doctorow, one of the signatories of the letter to the policymakers.

In the letter the groups complain about “the increasing concentration of power and lack of alternatives in digital markets, the push for deregulation, and the urgent need to enforce digital laws to protect our fundamental rights and create a level playing field for competition and innovation.”

They call for a rebalancing between software providers and consumers, the need to tackle the dependency on Big Tech by introducing more competition, greater use of existing laws to help companies fight against restrictive practises and the introduction of a strong Digital Fairness Act.

But the warning applies to any enterprise considering making its own systems harder to use once it has customers locked in.

While there is no evidence that enterprise software companies are deliberately trying make their products worse, many customers have lamented the shift to subscription-only services for software features they previously owned and the cramming of unwanted AI services into every corner of applications.

To illustrate what it’s talking about, Forbrukerrådet has produced a video to demonstrate how enshittification has taken hold, leading to the constant need to upgrade systems, the pervasiveness of ads, and the need to pay subscriptions to access features previously included in the purchase price of a product.