{"slug": "the-enshaittification-of-day-one", "title": "The EnshAIttification of Day One", "summary": "Aleem Shaun reports that the journaling app Day One has introduced a new AI-driven subscription tier, Gold, without consulting existing users, demoting Premium subscribers to Silver and prompting them to upgrade within the app even after disabling the AI features. Shaun, a decade-long user, criticizes the intrusive upsell as an example of 'enshittification' that degrades the user experience.", "body_md": "[Snippet: The EnshAIttification of Day One](https://aleemshaun.com/posts/the-enshaittification-of-day-one)[ ☇](https://schwarztech.net/snippets/the-enshaittification-of-day-one)\n\nAleem Shaun:\n\nI’ve used Day One for more than a decade. It was an excellent journalling app. Private, minimal, easy to use, with excellent features such as geolocation, weather, ‘On this Day’, and book printing. Features that got out of the way and either worked quietly in the background or appeared only when you summoned them. That’s changed.\n\nNow there are new subscription tiers. Previously, the tiers were Free and Premium. Simple. Premium included sync and a few other things that I can’t remember, but it was compelling enough that I’ve been a Premium subscriber from the beginning. Now, without consultation, I’m Silver (not Premium), and there’s a new, more expensive AI-driven tier, Gold. I don’t object solely on that basis. You would think I could just choose to remain on ‘Silver’ and all would be well. But no. Even with these features turned off in settings, I’m visually prompted in the app to upgrade to Gold and use the Daily Chat (with AI), which I’ve turned off and can only use if I upgrade. And yet, there it is, taunting me.\n\nSadly, this is all too relatable—the amount of products and services that constantly push an upsell long after you’ve dismissed it (or are giving them money for a lower tier) seem to be increasing. Even Apple is guilty of doing this in the Settings app and the former iWork apps.\n\n[Snippets](/category/snippets)are posts that share a linked item with a bit of commentary.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-enshaittification-of-day-one", "canonical_source": "https://schwarztech.net/snippets/the-enshaittification-of-day-one", "published_at": "2026-07-22 08:40:38+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-22 08:52:09.950193+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-products", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Day One", "Aleem Shaun", "Apple"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-enshaittification-of-day-one", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-enshaittification-of-day-one.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-enshaittification-of-day-one.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-enshaittification-of-day-one.jsonld"}}