When it comes to our experience of the Internet, Bob Dylan says, “The times are a-changin’.” You may not remember exactly how, but the Internet certainly feels different these days.
For some, it is “less fun and less informative” than before. For others, online search is made up of “cookie cutter” pages that suppress useful information and are filled with fraud, spam, and content generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Your social media feeds are filled with engaging, provocative, hyper-targeted or anger-inducing content, from bizarre AI-generated imagery to robot-like comments. You’re lucky if your video feeds aren’t just inciting “subscribe.”
How did we get here? And can we get back?
dominance of commercial interests
A major factor contributing to the current state of the internet is its over-commercialisation: financial motives drive most content. This has arguably led to a prevalence of sensationalism, with virality prioritised over the quality of information.
Covert and deceptive advertising is widely practiced, blurring the lines between commercial and non-commercial content in order to attract more attention and engagement.
Another driving force is the dominance of tech giants like Google, Meta and Amazon. They reach billions of people worldwide and have enormous power over the content we consume.
Their platforms use advanced tracking technologies and opaque algorithms to produce hyper-targeted media content, powered by extensive user data. This creates filter bubbles, where users are exposed to limited content that reinforces their existing beliefs and biases, and echo chambers where other viewpoints are actively discredited.
Bad actors such as cybercriminals and scammers have been a perennial problem online. However, evolving technologies such as generative AI have further empowered them, enabling them to create highly realistic fake images, deepfake videos, and voice cloning.
AI’s ability to automate content creation has flooded the internet with low-quality, misleading, and harmful content on an unprecedented scale.
In short, the rapidly growing commercialization of the internet, the dominance of media tech giants, and the presence of bad actors have infiltrated the content on the internet. The rise of AI has further intensified this, making the internet more chaotic than ever before.
There’s some ‘good’ internet left
So, what was the “good internet” that some of us look back on as nostalgic?
Initially, the Internet was meant to be a free egalitarian space where people could “surf” and “browse.” Knowledge was created to be shared: sites like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive remain bastions of knowledge.
Before the advent of filter bubbles, the Internet was a creative playground where people explored different ideas, discussed different viewpoints, and collaborated with individuals from “outgroups” – those outside their social circles who might have opposing views.
Early social media platforms were built on the principle of reconnecting with long-lost classmates and family members. Many of us have community groups, acquaintances, and family that we contact via the internet. The “connection” aspect of the internet remains as important as ever – as we all saw during the COVID pandemic.
What else do we want to protect? Privacy. A 1993 New Yorker cartoon joked that “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. Now everyone – especially advertisers – wants to know who you are. To quote the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, one of the principles of privacy is “being able to control who can see or use information about you”.
At the very least, we want to control what big tech companies know about us, especially if they can profit from it.
Can we ever go back?
We can’t control the changing times, but we can retain the good parts as much as possible.
For starters, we can vote with our feet. Users can drive change and bring awareness to problems on existing platforms. In recent times, we’ve seen this in the exodus of users from X (formerly Twitter) to other platforms and platform-wide protests against Reddit after it changed its third-party data access policies.
However, voting with your feet is only possible when there is competition. In the case of X, many other platforms from Mastodon to Threads and BlueSky enable users to choose one according to their preferences, values and social circle. Search engines also have options, such as DuckDuckGo or Ecosia.
However, competition can only be created by moving towards decentralized systems and removing monopolies. This is exactly what happened in the early days of the internet during the “browser wars” of the 1990s, when Microsoft was eventually accused of illegally monopolizing the web browser market in a landmark court case.
As users of technology, we must all be vigilant about threats to our privacy and knowledge. With cheap and ubiquitous generative AI, misleading content and scams are more realistic than ever.
We must practice healthy skepticism and ensure that those most at risk from online threats – such as children and older people – are educated about the potential harm.
Remember, the internet is not optimized for your best interests. It is up to you to decide how much power you give to the tech giants who are promoting their own interests.
Mark Cheong, Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, School of Computing and Information Systems; and (Honorary) Senior Fellow, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne and Wonsan Shin, Associate Professor in Media and Communications, University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
