The Internet isn’t Fun Anymore
The Internet used to be my safe space, but now I just feel suffocated.
When I was in elementary school, I would spend hours playing on the family computer. I dressed up girls on GirlsGoGames and played with my pets on Webkinz. I looked forward to seeing my friends’ latest posts on VSCO and following my favorite fandoms on Tumblr. I still remember the day I decided to download Instagram at my friend’s sleepover in 6th grade. These online spaces opened up new worlds for me where I could learn how to express myself and connect with others.
These days, the Internet fills me with more dread than excitement. Any social media app I open forces its latest AI tool onto me, while every website is so rampant with ads and monetized services that I can’t access anything (RIP Webkinz). Opening up my laptop means being smothered by the constant messaging to consume new products and engage with new features that I never asked for. Maybe I just have nostalgia-tinted glasses on, but I truly miss the days when I could explore my online world on my own without feeling the constant pressure of being watched and commoditized.
My Instagram algorithm has become so geared towards creator content, reels, and products that I rarely get to see what my friends post — which was the main reason I even made an account. Instagram’s AI assistant pops up on the search bar every time I open the explore page, trying to place me into whatever box they decide I fit in that day. Their recommendations are often wrong, if not incredibly offensive. The latest trend they’ve been trying to push me towards is the extremely concerning “tradwife” persona, where women are encouraged to leave their jobs, stop voting, focus on childbearing, all to support men like in the “traditional” days. Instagram seems so confident that I cannot figure out what I want to see on my own social media that they don’t even bother providing an opt-out option for me. I, quite literally, can no longer explore online on my own.
On LinkedIn, every post I scroll past now features a small diamond icon in the top right corner offering personalized summaries. Certain posts also include prompts at the bottom for key takeaways. Beyond my primary annoyance at not having any opt-out option to not see these prompts, I also feel confusion at how useful a summary feature is applicable on a platform that prioritizes short-form digestible content. They even have the audacity to promise me I can get full access if I get Linkedin Premium, while neglecting to show me any way to just not interact with their AI at all.
By far, the most concerning example of companies pushing poorly defined AI onto us is Google’s AI Overviews. While Instagram and LinkedIn’s AI feel more like annoyances that I can push through with a bit of critical thinking and a sigh, Google’s AI Overviews is offering straight-up misinformation at the top of their search results. Their generative AI’s training data quality has been completely shot by Reddit shitposts, leading to bizarre recommendations like putting glue on pizza. So not only do I have no way to opt out of using this feature, I also have to accept it as just wrong. Releasing something this inaccurate during an election year when disinformation is one of the topmost concerns is foolish at best and violent at worst. Yet Google’s CEO seems to be shrugging his shoulders and doubling down on forcing this feature onto us, with no real plan to improve it.
Even without big faceless companies making decisions for me, social norms have also made it borderline impossible to express discomfort during an unwanted AI interaction. I often have to grit my teeth and bear it when someone chooses to use Copilot to take notes during a meeting. Sure, there’s always that automated notification that lets you know that the tool is in use, with the option to either leave or accept its usage. But I, and most other people, do not have the agency to leave work calls whenever we feel like it. There is not a genuine way to opt out. I end up settling for 30+ minutes of discomfort — I also inevitably end up spiraling about how badly the U.S. needs to make a comprehensive data privacy law already.
The two most common, yet contradictory, terms I hear when talking about digital environments lately are “enshittification” and “revolutionary”. While individuals continue to get increasingly frustrated with the online experience, companies are still pushing us down a path that none of us really asked for. I might find all of this less annoying if it wasn’t for the lack of agency, I feel. Without the option to opt-out, though, and with all of the opaqueness shrouding personal data collection, I just feel overexposed. That, coupled with the pressure to get on board or be considered a Luddite, makes me wonder how much of a say any of us actually get in this tech “revolution.”
While individuals continue to get increasingly frustrated with the online experience, companies are still pushing us down a path that none of us really asked for.
On one hand, I get it. Companies care about their profits. Monetizing everything, building overly specific algorithms, creating constant subscription services, and forcing beta-stage AI onto users are all part of the game. On the other hand, as the person decompresses on Instagram, networks on LinkedIn, look for resources on Google, and most of all dearly misses playing online for hours, this sucks. Everywhere I click, I run into a new AI feature that is either a nuisance or just plain useless.
I can’t opt out of the Internet entirely — none of us can. The digital world has become a must for maintaining social connections, career development, and general awareness about things. The Internet holds so much weight that it is now becoming considered more and more of a right to have access to the web, rather than a privilege. At the same time, I don’t like the trade-off of having to accept that companies are harvesting every aspect of my being for their profits.
At the same time, I don’t like the trade-off of having to accept that companies are harvesting every aspect of my being for their profits.
Some companies are diverging from the current trends —marketing active refusal of AI as a pro rather than a con. Nikon, for example, held a notable marketing campaign of images of real places shot by real humans, to demonstrate how some things can’t be replicated by generative AI. Dove pledged to not use AI to replace women in their advertising. These types of marketing moves highlight the disconnect between companies who seem to assume AI must only be a blanket positive and those who are acknowledging the very real worries people have about this technology.
It’s fine if you want to interact with AI and even find some of these tools I mentioned useful. The real problem is that I no longer have much of a choice with how I exist online, and neither do you. We all have a right to decide who we want to be, what we want to engage with, and what personal information we are okay with being digitally immortalized. Right now, these choices are being taken away from us. With how hyper-curated everything has become, the main message of the Internet has become
“Don’t think for yourself anymore. Let me do it for you.”
I like to believe people can be smarter than what the current state of the Internet would lead you to think. At the very least, if we aren’t there yet, we can get there. Critical thinking, tolerance, and compassion are all tools that we need to meaningfully engage online — but they aren’t tools that can be developed in an R&D lab. Even if companies claim these features are meant to make life easier for us, we still deserve to decide if that’s what we want for our individual experiences.
What I used to love so much about the Internet was my agency in exploring what I wanted, when I wanted, and with who I wanted. Now, all I want is to get back to that.
