Internet was a city waiting to be explored. Now it’s a prison cell

In the early 2000s, as young people suddenly came face to face with the magic of the Internet, it was first and foremost a place to meet people and find information. Of course, not all of those people were great, not all the information was useful, and not all interactions were safe; but the famous New Yorker cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer, saying to another dog, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” captured the zeitgeist of the moment.

The idea was that the Internet was this vast and anonymous space in which there was room to be exactly what you wanted to be. If you wanted to be a dog, you could; but if you wanted to be someone else, that was okay too. You could look up information about the most obscure things, you could learn, discuss, experiment. There was the privacy, and, also, anonymity. These are two related but very different concepts.

Privacy, of which we hear a lot these days, is the capacity to limit the number of people who know a certain thing. For instance, instead of replying to a whole list of people (or a group), you message someone privately. This way, only the intended recipient knows what message you sent. In the case of the Internet and data protection, privacy is a term used to restrict companies from sharing your data with others. Companies have all kinds of data about you; but privacy laws and regulations can prevent them from selling this data to others who might also want to have access to your data.

Anonymity is when no one knows who sent the message. Think of all the anonymous posts during the peak of the #MeToo movement. Women who spoke up did not want their identity revealed; so, they posted messages through anonymous accounts. Your identity is private, but your message has been sent.

In terms of data protection, anonymity can only exist when companies do not collect any data from you. A great example of this is the Tor web browser. It relays and encrypts the traffic on the browser, isolating the website you are trying to visit from any trackers, including your Internet service provider. So, anyone monitoring your browsing will only be able to see that you used Tor, but not what site you visited using their network.

The early Internet was an anonymous space, simply because large corporations had not yet taken over it; and had not yet realised that individuals’ personal behavioural data could be sold for massive profit. The Internet was a space built to make it easier to find ways to learn things know what other people go through and how they see things, find a sense of community, and create a shared universe.

As we’ve moved towards today’s Internet, we’ve reached a point where every click and every search is monetised, where everything you do is behavioural surplus to be used to cajole and convince you to buy and buy into some specific product, ideology, or lifestyle.

The other thing about the Internet today is that most of our interactions with the Internet are mediated through algorithms. These algorithms then curate our experience of most of the Internet — be that search, social media, or even shopping. Even within the same website, social media application, or shopping sites; the algorithm curates a unique site that only you see. For instance, each person’s social media feed — be it on Instagram or Twitter or TikTok or anything else — is different. While you may still see the same sort of reels that your friends with similar interests see; the algorithm is built specifically for you, based on the things that you have seen and liked before.

This means that the algorithm leaves us all wandering a uniquely different Internet: we are all alone in the algorithm. The Internet is no longer a community space. It has become a prison cell with distracting images on the walls to keep us from knowing that we are in separate, isolated silos. Of course, others may see some of what we see, but the algorithm curates a unique feed for every individual. This creates a different Internet for each person.

It’s a curious reversal, really. What once felt like a chaotic commons — messy, noisy, often unruly, but shared — has been transformed into something more like a personalised maze. If the early Internet was a raucous city where you might bump into a radical manifesto, a bad date, or a brilliant idea scrawled on a forum; today’s Internet is more like a hotel hallway with doors that only open if you’ve liked the right things. The room service is prompt, sure, but it only brings you what you already ordered yesterday.

This is what is known as the ‘filter bubble’, but ‘bubble’ is far too delicate a metaphor. This isn’t a gentle float through like-minded content. It’s a prison cell, algorithmically optimised to never challenge you, only to reinforce what those who run the algorithm want you to know, feel, think. Just like those old cartoon dogs at their keyboards, today’s Internet users are still playing pretend — except now, we pretend we have freedom, while the algorithm tightens the leash.

Of course, many argue this personalisation is convenient. Who wants to be overwhelmed by irrelevant content? But the problem is not relevance. It’s that relevance has become a euphemism for manipulation. You’re not just being shown what you want; you’re being taught what to want. You’re being steered, subtly but persistently, until your feed and your worldview collapse into a tautological loop: you see it because you like it, you like it because you see it.

What we’ve lost is the serendipity of the Internet. The intellectual equivalent of getting lost in a foreign city and stumbling upon a strange little shop that sells something you never knew you needed. Today, the GPS is always on. The algorithm is the tour guide, the chaperone, and even the warden.

So, what’s the way out? Maybe it starts with remembering the promise of anonymity. Not the reckless kind that hides trolls, but the kind that protects curiosity. The kind that lets people search, question, and connect without being branded, tracked, and sold. If we can’t bring back the old Internet, maybe we can at least fight for an Internet that still makes room for wonder — and lets us, occasionally, be a dog.

Vidya Subramanian is associate professor at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS). X: @ vidyas42.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.