In relation to our expertise of the web, “the occasions, they’re a-changin’“, as Bob Dylan would say. You possibly can’t fairly recall how, however the web definitely feels completely different nowadays.
To some, it’s “much less enjoyable and fewer informative” than it was. To others, on-line searches are made up of “cookie cutter” pages that drown out helpful data and are saturated with scams, spam and content material generated by synthetic intelligence (AI).
Your social media feeds are stuffed with eye-catching, provocative, hyper-targeted, or anger-inducing content material, from weird AI-generated imagery to robot-like feedback. You are fortunate in case your video feeds usually are not solely made up of exhortations to “subscribe”.
How did we get right here? And might we claw our manner again?
Industrial pursuits rule
One main issue contributing to the present state of the web is its over-commercialisation: monetary motives drive a lot of the content material. This has arguably led to the prevalence of sensationalism, prioritising virality over data high quality.
Covert and misleading promoting is widespread, blurring the road between business and non-commercial content material to draw extra consideration and engagement.
One other driving drive is the dominance of tech giants like Google, Meta and Amazon. They attain billions worldwide and wield immense energy over the content material we devour.
Their platforms use superior monitoring applied sciences and opaque algorithms to generate hyper-targeted media content material, powered by in depth consumer knowledge. This creates filter bubbles, the place customers are uncovered to restricted content material that reinforces their current beliefs and biases, and echo chambers the place different viewpoints are actively discredited.
Unhealthy actors like cyber criminals and scammers have been an everlasting drawback on-line. Nevertheless, evolving know-how like generative AI has additional empowered them, enabling them to create extremely lifelike pretend pictures, deepfake movies and voice cloning.
AI’s skill to automate content material creation has additionally flooded the web with low-quality, deceptive and dangerous materials at an unprecedented scale.
In sum, the accelerated commercialisation of the web, the dominance of media tech giants and the presence of unhealthy actors have infiltrated content material on the web. The rise of AI additional intensifies this, making the web extra chaotic than ever.
Among the ‘good’ web stays
So, what was the “good internet” a few of us lengthy for with nostalgia?
On the outset, the web was meant to be a free egalitarian area folks have been meant to “surf” and “browse”. Data was meant to be shared: websites similar to Wikipedia and The Web Archive are persevering with bastions of information.
Earlier than the arrival of filter bubbles, the web was a artistic playground the place folks explored completely different concepts, mentioned various views, and collaborated with people from “outgroups” – these exterior their social circles who might maintain opposing views.
Early social media platforms have been constructed on the ethos of reconnecting with long-lost classmates and members of the family. Many people have group teams, acquaintances and household we attain out to through the web. The “connection” facet of the web stays as essential as ever – as all of us noticed in the course of the COVID pandemic.
What else can we need to protect? Privateness. A New Yorker cartoon joke in 1993 acknowledged that “on the web, no one is aware of you are a canine“. Now everybody – particularly advertisers – desires to know who you might be. To cite the Workplace of the Australian Info Commissioner, one of many tenets of privateness is “to be able to control who can see or use information about you”.
On the very least, we need to management what large tech is aware of about us, particularly if they might stand to revenue from it.
Can we ever return?
We won’t management “a changin'” occasions, however we will preserve as a lot of the nice components as we will.
For starters, we will vote with our ft. Customers can enact change and convey consciousness to issues on current platforms. In current occasions, we have now seen this with the exodus of customers from X (previously Twitter) to different platforms, and the platform-wide protest towards Reddit for altering its third-party knowledge entry insurance policies.
Nevertheless, voting with our ft is simply doable when there’s competitors. Within the case of X, numerous different platforms – from Mastodon to Threads to Bluesky – allow customers to select one which aligns with their preferences, values and social circles. Serps have alternate options, too, similar to DuckDuckGo or Ecosia.
However competitors can solely be created by shifting to decentralised programs and eradicating monopolies. This really occurred within the early days of the web in the course of the Nineties “browser wars“, when Microsoft was ultimately accused of illegally monopolising the online browser market in a landmark courtroom case.
As customers of know-how, all of us should stay vigilant about threats to our privateness and data. With low cost and ubiquitous generative AI, deceptive content material and scams are extra lifelike as ever.
We should train wholesome scepticism and guarantee these most in danger from on-line threats – similar to youngsters and older folks – are educated about potential harms.
Keep in mind, the web will not be optimised on your finest pursuits. It is as much as you to determine how a lot energy you give to the tech giants who’re fuelling theirs.
Marc Cheong, Senior Lecturer of Info Methods, Faculty of Computing and Info Methods; and (Honorary) Senior Fellow, Melbourne Legislation Faculty, The College of Melbourne and Wonsun Shin, Affiliate Professor in Media and Communications, The College of Melbourne
This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the authentic article.
