Let’s be clear: the internet itself isn’t the problem. We knew how to build decentralised, humane, empowering networks long before the #dotcons turned everything into a behavioural extraction machine. The original internet – messy, permissionless, #4opens by default – can’t addict you. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t optimise. It just connects.
What addicts you are, the enclosure layers capitalism built on top of the internet, the sticky walls, velvet handcuffs, the slick, dopamine-juiced engagement loops that the #dotcons built precisely because an open common is unprofitable to their shareholders.
The tragedy is that we’ve let that thin commercial crust redefine what people think the internet is. And because people can’t see the difference any more, they blame “technology” or “the internet” instead of the actual problem, #dotcons pushing corporate capture of communications.
This misframing is not an accident, it’s a political success for Silicon Valley. We need to call out this #techshit as the compost layer we need to break down and return to the soil, a first step is don’t mistake it for the internet. One is a common, the other is a shopping mall with mirrors.
And this matters, because if we accept the framing that the entire internet is toxic, addictive, and inherently harmful, we give up the ground needed to fight for a public-first, #openweb future. We surrender the commons to the #dotcons by default. It’s classic #deathcult logic: destroy the shared world, declare it unfixable, then sell the gated alternative.
The #KISS path is still there under this mess, just harder to see, covered with sludge. Simple tools, open protocols, people over platforms, and messy, real community instead of “curated engagement.” Can grow in this compost, even #techshit, especially #techshit.
The task now is helping people tell the difference between the internet and the systems designed to trap them, and then getting them out into the open air again.
