How we can make the internet good again
Techdirt founder Mike Masnick has some ideas for how we can make the internet better.
I sometimes ask myself when the internet last felt truly good. For me, as someone who's been on the internet since the mid-1990s, I often say around 2007 or 2008. The internet still felt pretty innocent back then.
Netflix had just started streaming. Facebook had only recently become available to non-college students. Twitter was just starting to take off. YouTube was a place for humor, music and wild videos. Reddit was doing its thing, and there were lots of active forums. It still felt kind of like the Wild West. When politics got involved, we were fighting for our rights, like Aaron Swartz did.
As these companies grew and consolidated power, things took a turn for the worse. Social media became about outrage and holding people's attention at any cost, because that's how the platforms could make more money. Influencers became a thing. We lost our sense of privacy. Politics became more polarized than ever, and disinformation spread.
Suddenly, it felt like you were using the most deranged corporate products imaginable. With the introduction of generative AI, it certainly doesn't seem like we're moving toward something better. It feels like more gasoline is being thrown on the fire. It feels like a captive audience is being taken advantage of—drained of any remaining humanity.
I'd like to see an internet that's more wholesome, joyful and community-oriented. I know we can't go back in time, and I wouldn't necessarily want to, but maybe we can bring back some of the good things that used to define being an internet user. Maybe we can again start enjoying this place where we connect.
"How do we create a positive future?" Mike Masnick, the founder of Techdirt, recently asked me. "I'm talking about getting back to the feeling of innovation being for good, and in the interest of people, not giant corporations that are trying to suck everyone dry."
Masnick, along with several others, recently released something called the Resonant Computing Manifesto. With the growing influence of AI in mind, it's an outline for where we can take the internet next. It's a proposal for an internet that is less extractive, hollow and disorienting.
"There are multiple paths that we can go down in the future—some of which are very evil and bad," Masnick says. "But we can sort of nudge the system in a different direction to one where technology really is to our advantage as people."
If you ask Masnick, he says the internet was really good in 1995 or 1996. He's a bit older than me. He says he doesn't want to go back to that time, but he'd like to bring back some of the feelings that he felt back then.
"The World Wide Web was really taking off, and we were starting to see all of the possibilities," Masnick says. "There were all sorts of things that were suddenly possible—and for anyone. You didn't need some giant company. That was really, really exciting."
This manifesto that Masnick and his co-authors released says that the technology we build shapes us—for better or worse. Lately, it feels like it's mostly been for the worse.
"At its best, it can expand our capacity, our connectedness, our sense of what's possible," it reads.
It says structural incentives have created an environment where technology is doing a lot of harm, but we can change direction and move toward "resonance." That's when we "create environments that enliven us." It's when technology can reflect our values and our genuine desires.
Thor Benson
"After you've used [this] technology, at some point, do you feel good about having used it? Or do you feel regret?" Masnick asks.
The point of the Resonant Computing Manifesto is to guide us back to a positive vision of technology and innovation. To accomplish that, they've laid out some key principles that should be followed while we're building and deploying our AI-influenced technological future.
We suggest these five principles as a starting place:
Private: In the era of AI, whoever controls the context holds the power. While data often involves multiple stakeholders, people must serve as primary stewards of their own context, determining how it's used.
Dedicated: Software should work exclusively for you, ensuring contextual integrity where data use aligns with your expectations. You must be able to trust there are no hidden agendas or conflicting interests.
Plural: No single entity should control the digital spaces we inhabit. Healthy ecosystems require distributed power, interoperability, and meaningful choice for participants.
Adaptable: Software should be open-ended, able to meet the specific, context-dependent needs of each person who uses it.
Prosocial: Technology should enable connection and coordination, helping us become better neighbors, collaborators, and stewards of shared spaces, both online and off.
The manifesto notes that AI is currently being used to personalize our experiences on the internet in many ways, whether that's your social media feed or the advertisements you're seeing. What if it were personalized in a way that actually enriched our experience on the internet?
"Most personalization that you see today is in the interest of one of those big companies," Masnick says. "We're talking about it being personalized and adaptable to you and your interests, not what some big company thinks you want."
We're not going back to whatever we had before, but we are at a transition point as generative AI infects every corner of the internet, and we should be thinking about what kind of future we want while these big changes are happening. An internet that's more privacy-focused, community-oriented, distributed and generally positive sounds pretty good to me.
That's going to take some work, and it'll require tech leaders to think a little more about people, instead of just profits. However, I think it's something that almost everyone would agree would make our lives better, and if enough people demand it, maybe we'll get there.
