No man’s web

“The average American, I think, has fewer than three friends. And the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it’s like 15 friends or something, right?”

A striking statistic, to be sure, but not for the reason you think. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg was describing his vision for the future of social life. Gone are the promises that social media will let you see what others are doing and help you find new friends. No, now he has a different idea for filling that hole in your social circle: chatbots.

It’s ironic, in a way. The same companies that have spent decades metaphorically fracking us for dopamine, exploiting our desire for connection for profit, now offer a phony imitation for the same connection they parasitised.

Even compared to 10 years ago, there is very little ‘social’ left in social media. The most recent iteration in the circus of horrors beyond my comprehension is just another incremental development of more ‘traditional’ ways to trick content recommendation algorithms. Gone are the sunny days of search engine optimisation, when users and companies tried to use hashtags and keywords to manipulate how they appear in Google search queries. The modern influencer, political operative, or company aiming to promote its latest product, has access to more refined tools.

By deploying tens of thousands of artificial accounts, PR companies can operate at every level of the social media supply chain

This is the holy grail of social media: manufacturing virality. By deploying tens of thousands of artificial accounts, PR companies can operate at every level of the social media supply chain. ‘Clipping’ accounts post thousands of short-form videos, which the algorithm interprets as an explosion of real user interest. Then both fake and real accounts comment, strengthening the viral whirlwind. Eventually, it ends up on your feed too, and you’re none the wiser.

This evolution (devolution?) of the platform internet is only natural when so much of our taste, interests and yes, political positions are determined by content recommendation algorithms. The incentive to manipulate these algorithms for profit has always existed, it’s just that now the tools have also caught up. So what comes next?

One vision of the future is the ‘agentic internet’. In this line of thought, the modern internet has become polluted beyond repair, so we should filter our intake of information through ‘agents’ – the same AI models being used to pollute it. The model ‘knows’ everything about you, so it browses the internet for you and only recommends what it ‘knows’ you would like. Of course, such a dystopian future would only place more power in the hands of those who own and operate these models, as well as push us even further apart as our interactions are segmented by these ‘agentic’ gatekeepers.

Between the wasteland of social media and the ivory tower of the agentic internet, the only alternative seems to be going offline. Maybe we need to log off, touch grass, and make small talk about the weather. The internet, unfortunately, will be there when we return.