{"id":582984,"date":"2026-04-03T13:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T13:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/582984\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T13:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T13:53:12","slug":"lock-in-fans-then-make-everything-worse-f1-risks-falling-into-big-tech-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/582984\/","title":{"rendered":"Lock in fans, then make everything worse: F1 risks falling into Big Tech trap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cory Doctorow has a word for what happens to platforms that stop putting the people who use them first. The term is \u2018enshittification\u2019 and, clearly, it is not a very polite word.<\/p>\n

Doctorow, a Canadian author and technology critic, coined the term in 2022 and it has since escaped the confines of tech talk to describe something more universal: the slow, incremental degradation of a product or service that once worked well, carried out by the very institutions responsible for protecting it.<\/p>\n

You will be familiar with plenty of platforms that have embraced enshittification: Twitter, Google, Microsoft, any streaming service that plays ads despite making you pay for a monthly subscription\u2026 to name a few.<\/p>\n

The mechanism Doctorow describes in his latest book (appropriately titled Enshittification) has three stages.<\/p>\n

First, a platform is good to its users; it builds loyalty, grows its audience, and justifies its existence through the quality of what it offers.<\/p>\n

Second, it begins to abuse those users in order to serve its business customers: the advertisers, the broadcasters, the sponsors, and the corporations that pay for access to the audience that the platform has already captured.<\/p>\n

Third, it abuses the business customers too, extracting maximum value for itself until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own decisions.<\/p>\n

Doctorow calls the mechanism \u2018twiddling\u2019: the continual, barely perceptible adjustment of parameters that, taken individually, seem trivial, but that accumulate over time into a product the original audience no longer recognises.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Rules tweaks may be planned for the month-long break after Japan<\/p>\n

\n Grand Prix Photo\n <\/p>\n

The process is enabled by one simple precondition: locked-in users. Once people can\u2019t easily leave, the degradation can begin. The cost of switching is too high. The emotional investment is too deep. And so they stay, even as things get worse.<\/p>\n

If you are still using some of those products mentioned above, you know what we are talking about here.<\/p>\n

Doctorow\u2019s term originally referred to Big Tech products, but there\u2019s a certain, growing connection to Formula 1.<\/p>\n

Good to its users<\/p>\n

It is tempting, and immediately flawed, to invoke a golden age, because Formula 1 has never been perfect, regardless of how nostalgic one might feel about the \u2018good old days\u2019.<\/p>\n

F1 has produced processional races, politically driven rule changes, poorly thought-out technical regulations, and periods of one-sided dominance so complete that the sporting contest became almost irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Anyone who tells you it was \u2018better back then\u2019 is usually measuring from a starting point that flatters their own nostalgia.<\/p>\n

But we don\u2019t need a golden age to make our point. All it takes is looking at the direction of travel.<\/p>\n

In that sense, the direction Formula 1 was travelling before the hybrid era began in 2014, however imperfectly, was, or at least felt, oriented primarily around the race, and the on-track contest was the main product.<\/p>\n

There was a greater feeling that it all existed in service of what happened on track for 90 minutes on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The race was the thing, the drivers were the stars, and fans were the audience upon whom everything else depended.<\/p>\n

\"Lewis<\/p>\n

The hybrid era kicked off in 2014<\/p>\n

\n Grand Prix Photo\n <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t paradise. It wasn\u2019t without fault. But, looking back now, it does feel like the interests of the championship and the interests of the fans and drivers were aligned. Or at least more aligned than they are now.<\/p>\n

Serving the business customers<\/p>\n

Liberty Media acquired Formula 1 in 2017, and the transformation since then has been massively impressive by most commercial standards.<\/p>\n

Global revenues have increased, global audiences have grown, and the American public has been captured in a way that eluded F1 for decades.<\/p>\n

Drive to Survive brought F1 into the living rooms of people who had never watched a race, turning drivers into characters and races into episodes of a weekly show.<\/p>\n

As a brand, Formula 1 has never been more visible.<\/p>\n

But the growth, like any growth, has not come cost-free.<\/p>\n

Sprint races were introduced, fragmenting race weekends and subordinating the integrity of the format to the demand for more content.<\/p>\n

The calendar has expanded to 24 rounds, with circuits selected at least partly on the basis of hosting fees and new audiences rather than racing heritage.<\/p>\n

Races like the Las Vegas Grand Prix have such commercial intent behind them that it\u2019s hard not to laugh.<\/p>\n

The paddock, and this is not exclusive to F1, has become content.<\/p>\n

None of this is inherently wrong, and to some, all of that may even be positives.<\/p>\n

Businesses grow, and audiences diversify as the world changes, and almost no sport that a new viewer consumes on a streaming platform is the same sport that the 30-year fan watches.<\/p>\n

And there is no reason it should be, really. The world, and so consumer habits, is very different.<\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

Fans continue to be loyal to F1 in 2026<\/p>\n

\n Grand Prix Photo\n <\/p>\n

But Doctorow\u2019s framework identifies what happens in the middle stage: the original fan, the sporting purist, the person who was there before the all the growth and before Drive to Survive, becomes a secondary concern.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about endless growth and about attracting more people.<\/p>\n

The original fan\u2019s loyalty is taken for granted because they are already locked in. This applies to both tech products and to a sport like Formula 1.<\/p>\n

The product is increasingly designed around the new audience: the casual fan, the business customer, not the loyal fan who was there from the start.<\/p>\n

Formula 1 has been twiddling, incrementally and persistently, and most of its original audience has stayed, because, well\u2026 where else would they go?<\/p>\n

Going a step too far?<\/p>\n

The 2026 technical regulations were supposed to be F1\u2019s most ambitious reinvention. A new power unit philosophy, centred on an equal split between internal combustion and electrical power.<\/p>\n

An active aerodynamics framework designed to make following another car easier, eliminating the dirty air problem that has plagued racing quality for decades.<\/p>\n

The promises made during the design process were explicit.<\/p>\n

The reality, through the opening races of 2026, has been considerably more complicated, leading to anger from both drivers and fans alike.<\/p>\n

The power unit architecture has led not only to safety concerns but to a kind of racing that most drivers are not enjoying and that fans are struggling to understand.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s already talk of changing the rules to solve some of the issues, so there is an acknowledgement that something is not completely right.<\/p>\n

You only need to look back at 2023 to see hints of something not having gone as expected.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, Mercedes<\/a> boss Toto Wolff said: \u201cDo you think that, in all reality, we are not innovative in this sport to come up with chassis, engine regulations, that can avoid drivers shifting down on the straight? It just isn\u2019t real.<\/p>\n

\"Mohammed<\/p>\n

In 2023, Wolff said suer-clipping wouldn\u2019t exist<\/p>\n

\n Grand Prix Photo\n <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to give anybody ideas that we really need to downshift. That\u2019s not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

That has happened.<\/p>\n

One of the most uncomfortable arguments in Doctorow\u2019s book is that enshittification is very often not accidental.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t happen because platforms become incompetent, or because the people running them stop caring. It happens because of specific policy choices made by people in charge who heard the warnings about the consequences and overrode them anyway.<\/p>\n

The 2026 rules were not produced in a vacuum. They were the output of years of negotiation between the FIA, Formula 1\u2019s commercial rights holder, and the manufacturers who lobbied for a framework that suited their road car programmes and sustainability narratives.<\/p>\n

They are the product of a regulatory process that had, by design, to satisfy too many competing interests simultaneously.<\/p>\n

The on-track product, the thing that the original fan came for and that drivers were used to, was not at the top of that list of interests.<\/p>\n

It would be somewhat delusional to argue that the on-track product was the only priority above anything else in the \u2018good old days\u2019, but, as drivers and fans have argued at the start of the season, there appears to be a bigger disconnect between the commercial interests and the racing product now, as if a line had been crossed.<\/p>\n

It would also be unfair to deny that part of the audience has enjoyed what F1 has offered so far in 2026.<\/p>\n

But Max Verstappen<\/a>, disillusioned with the racing and his Red Bull<\/a>\u2018s poor form, is threatening to leave F1.<\/p>\n

\"Fernando<\/p>\n

Should F1 listen to what drivers like Alonso are saying?<\/p>\n

\n Aston Martin\n <\/p>\n

Reigning world champion Lando Norris<\/a> answered \u201cClearly not\u201d when asked during the Japanese GP if the drivers needed to enjoy the racing.<\/p>\n

Fernando Alonso<\/a>, the most experienced driver in the history of Formula 1, said on the Suzuka<\/a> grid that the current racing was \u201cno fun at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere\u2019s the fun in overtaking accidentally? The overtakings we have now are accidental,\u201d he told Spanish TV. \u201cYou suddenly find yourself with a superior battery than the car in front, so you either crash into him or you overtake him. It\u2019s an evasion manoeuvre more than an overtake.\u201d<\/p>\n

That all points to a fundamental problem that it\u2019s impossible to ignore, regardless of how many people tune in to watch.<\/p>\n

The switching cost\u00a0<\/p>\n

The condition that makes enshittification possible is the absence of a credible alternative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cory Doctorow has a word for what happens to platforms that stop putting the people who use them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,210359,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-582984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-f1-2026","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}