Our Biggest Fight

1. The Internet's Flawed Design Erodes Humanity

As it currently functions, the internet—despite all the conveniences and connectivity it has unleashed—is the primary cause of a pervasive unease in the United States and other democratic societies.

A broken promise. The internet, once envisioned as a utopian tool for liberation and freedom of information, has instead become a central cause of societal dysfunction. Its current "web-era" design, dominated by a few giant corporations, has led to widespread unease, political toxicity, and a decline in trust across democratic societies. This pervasive problem stems from fundamental flaws in how information is distributed and controlled.

Hidden in plain sight. The core issue isn't the physical infrastructure of the internet, but rather the "application layer" controlled by Big Tech companies like Google, Meta, and TikTok. These platforms scrape and steal our data, hide their proprietary algorithms, and persistently surveil our online activity. This system has chipped away at our humanity, leading to rising youth suicide rates, intractable national arguments, and a "post-truth society."

Digital feudalism. We are now subjected to a new form of "digital feudalism," where our sense of agency has been seized by corporate behemoths. This control over our digital lives, which are increasingly inseparable from our physical existences, undermines our collective ability to drive progress. The situation is urgent, as the rapid rise of artificial intelligence threatens to exacerbate these harms, making the choice between human beings and machines more critical than ever.

2. Digital Feudalism: We've Lost Our Agency and Rights

As of now, you don’t own you. They do.

Stripped of rights. In the internet era, individuals have been stripped of fundamental rights, losing agency and becoming "vassals" beholden to digital feudal overlords. This dehumanized status, antithetical to the principles of citizenship and the "unalienable rights" enshrined in the American Project, is the price we pay for using the internet. The platforms have created dependencies across their services, making a loss of access to one (e.g., Google login) compromise access to many others, like a global "company town" where one entity controls everything.

Theft of identity. Our loss of agency is not merely an inconvenience; it is a violation and, for many, a source of tragedy. Cases like Walker Farriel Montgomery's sextortion suicide highlight how platforms enable dangerous behavior modification, stripping individuals of their rights and leading to unfathomable heartbreak. Even without illegal activity, our identity is stolen by platforms that amass vast amounts of personal data, effectively owning our "digital DNA."

Mental torture. The abuse of online rights manifests as a mental health crisis among young people, with suicide rates rising significantly since social media became ubiquitous. This is not just about specific harmful content, but how algorithms create an addictive dependence on toxic environments, eroding self-esteem and violating the sanctity of the person. The platforms' business model, which prioritizes engagement and profit, actively encourages antisocial behavior, amounting to a form of "mental torture."

3. The Internet's Algorithms Exploit Our Psychology

This “social validation feedback loop,” he said, is “exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology."

Dopamine's dark side. Social media algorithms are expertly designed to exploit the brain's reward pathway, triggering dopamine releases that create addictive feedback loops. Sean Parker, Facebook's first president, admitted this was a conscious design choice, exploiting human psychology for engagement. This constant stimulation, likened to a "digital hypodermic needle," drives people to seek validation, distraction, or anger, leading to a state of perpetual craving.

The addiction trap. Stanford psychiatry professor Anna Lembke explains this through the "seesaw" analogy: pleasure drives one side down, prompting "pain gremlins" to restore balance. Continuous engagement multiplies these gremlins, leading to a state where the "drug of choice" (social media) is needed just to feel normal, not pleasure. This creates a "collective action problem" where individuals might be worse off quitting, even if everyone would benefit from doing so.

Profiting from misery. Social media companies' responsibility for the mental health crisis extends beyond specific content to how their algorithms foster addictive dependence. They "monetize misery" by optimizing for engagement, which often means encouraging toxic, antisocial behavior. This exploitative model, where our data is exchanged for "free" services, has stripped us of our free will, without which neither democracy nor markets can truly function.

4. Our Information System is Designed for Discord

The last thing they want opposing groups to do on their platform is to agree with each other.

Engineered division. The internet's information system is fundamentally designed to sow division and undermine the social contract. Algorithms, driven by profit motives, optimize for engagement by feeding users content that evokes strong emotional responses, particularly anger. This mathematically inevitable process corrals people into echo chambers, reinforcing extreme views and creating a state of "perpetual disagreement across the divide and a concurrent state of perpetual agreement within each side."

Truth's casualty. This environment paralyzes our ability to resolve critical issues, from violent conflicts like the Gaza Strip crisis to global challenges like climate change. Misinformation and disinformation proliferate, making it nearly impossible to discern fact from fiction. The "liar's dividend" grows, as a blanket uncertainty around truth allows fabricated stories to thrive, exemplified by Macedonian teenagers profiting from fake news during the 2016 U.S. elections.

Erosion of trust. The breakdown in trust, mirroring Argentina's societal failures, is a recipe for undermining the social contract. When platforms secretly manipulate our desire for belonging by incentivizing "othering" and outrage, mutual mistrust becomes entrenched. This leads to a vicious feedback loop of bad behavior, neglect, and social division, where empathy is suppressed and constructive dialogue becomes impossible.

5. Big Tech Monopolies Distort the Market Economy

Given the importance of the information economy to everything we do, the fact that we allow a few companies to monopolize people’s data should now be seen as one of the greatest mistakes human civilization has ever made.

Data barons. Today's internet platforms are the "data barons" of our era, wielding unimaginable power by monopolizing our social graph data. Companies like Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta have become omniscient beings, controlling the internet's "front door" (Google Search), e-commerce (Amazon Marketplace), and social networking (Meta's platforms). This dominance gives them insurmountable advantages, allowing them to dictate terms and extract value without true competition.

Anti-capitalist structure. The current internet economy is fundamentally anti-competition and, therefore, anti-capitalist. Platforms profit by exploiting our data, not by genuinely serving our interests. This misalignment of incentives means that while their share prices soar, other businesses pay a high price by relying on these intermediaries for vital data, and users suffer from surveillance and manipulation. The "data-industrial complex" includes data brokers who sell our information, even from children's apps, without our consent.

The illusion of "free." The "free" services offered by Big Tech mask the true cost: our most valuable personal information and the erosion of our free will. The argument that individual data is worthless unless aggregated is a self-serving fallacy designed to maintain their monopolies. This system prevents individuals from participating in the immense value created by their data, hindering true market dynamics and innovation.

6. A New Protocol (DSNP) Can Reclaim Our Data and Rights

By adopting this protocol, individuals would regain authority to decide who gets to see different types of information about them and their social connections.

Re-decentralizing the internet. To fix the internet, we need a "constitutional amendment" to its protocols, ushering in a third generation that safely connects people, not just machines. The Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP) is proposed as this solution, putting individuals in charge of their data and identity. It functions as a universal login, allowing users to retain exclusive authority over their information, rather than surrendering it to platforms.

Your digital wallet, your control. DSNP integrates a decentralized identifier (DID) and uses a digital wallet as a tool to grant selective permission for sharing information. This means you control who sees your medical records, social media posts, or even just proof of age, providing only the bare minimum necessary. This model empowers individuals to be gatekeepers of their own information, fostering trust and preventing exploitation.

Open ecosystem, public good. DSNP treats the aggregated social graph of billions of people's interactions as a public good, not a proprietary resource for centralized platforms. This open-source protocol, combined with distributed ledger technology, ensures transparency and verifiability. It neutralizes the network effect advantage of big platforms, making data portable and interoperable across services, and allowing individuals to build communities of value on their own terms.

7. Decentralized Governance for a Human-Centric Internet

Under the DSNP model we’ve laid out in prior chapters, self-governance arises as people achieve control over their data and content.

Governing ourselves. The internet's "government" is currently in the hands of unaccountable tech companies. A human-centric internet, however, would empower individuals and communities to self-govern. Through DSNP, people can form online communities, agree on rules for information sharing and content moderation, and ensure democratic oversight. This shifts control from corporate gatekeepers to the collective will of the members.

Accountability and transparency. Unlike the opaque, black-box algorithms of Big Tech, DSNP-based apps and communities can establish provable policies and practices, with open-source code allowing for transparency. This means users can choose to interact only with services that align with their values, and easily migrate their data if promises are not met. This "power of the exit" acts as a disciplining force, encouraging accountability.

Beyond traditional government. While some government intervention is needed (e.g., mandating data portability for legacy data), much of the governance can be self-regulated. Models like data cooperatives, where people pool their data to gain bargaining power, and robust online voting systems (protected from Sybil attacks by DSNP's identity proofs) can foster collective decision-making. This approach revitalizes democratic self-governance, making the internet serve the "We the People" foundation.

8. AI Amplifies the Stakes: Choose Human Control or Dystopia

If AI mistreats us, it will be the outcome of design and deployment decisions made by us.

The AI steroid. Generative AI, a more powerful version of existing algorithms, threatens to dramatically amplify the problems of the current internet if integrated into the same flawed model. Trained on massive datasets, these Large Language Models (LLMs) are primarily controlled by the same Big Tech giants, creating an even greater concentration of power. This "tech arms race" risks an "AI oligopoly" that further entrenches digital feudalism.

The real threat. The danger isn't AI itself, but badly incentivized humans who design and deploy it. If AI's mission is to maximize corporate profits by treating humans as products, its autonomous decisions will be detrimental to society. Calls for a pause in AI development, while well-intentioned, could inadvertently freeze development in favor of existing monopolies, unless combined with measures to decentralize data control and open-source algorithms.

Theft of collective genius. LLMs are trained on the collective knowledge, ideas, and wisdom of billions of human beings, effectively monetizing our "digital DNA" and creative output. This is outright theft, as individuals have no control over how their data and content are ingested and repurposed. Without digital property rights and transparency, AI systems will continue to appropriate human essence, leading to a future where "no job is needed" and the meaning of life is questioned.

9. The Path Forward: A Collective Migration to the NewNet

All that’s asked of you in this modern act of rebellion, this push to throw out our digital feudal lords, is that you be a nonconformist.

A new American Dream. Just as Irish immigrants sought a new life in America, we must now "migrate" to a new internet—the "NewNet." This revolution, unlike past ones, requires no bloodshed, only a collective choice to adopt new, human-friendly protocols like DSNP. This shift promises a fresh start, where the internet is structured to incentivize good behavior, foster moderate voices, and address societal challenges as a work in progress.

Defining the NewNet. The NewNet will be characterized by:

• Personal digital identity with one universal login.
• Individual choice over content and services.
• Digital property rights for all created content and social graph data.
• Autonomous permission to control who sees and uses your data.
• Opt-in, not opt-out, information sharing.
• Data portability across platforms.
• Individual terms and conditions for data use.
• Decentralized data storage, breaking corporate monopolies.
• A public network effect, available to all.

The power of collective action. Overcoming the network effect challenge requires a mass migration, spurred by appealing "killer ecosystems" and the support of friendly businesses and institutions. This movement, driven by creatives and storytellers, will inspire people to embrace a new vision of liberty and dignity in the digital age. By reclaiming control over our data and fostering self-governance, we can restore human agency and build a brighter future for all humanity.