Once, the internet promised freedom. It would decentralise power, spread knowledge, connect people across borders, and enable anyone to publish, participate, and protest. But in the space of two decades, that vision has been captured, colonised, and corporatised.
The internet today is largely shaped by a handful of monopolistic tech platforms, whose logic is not connection but extraction. Every click, swipe, like, post, and pause is monitored, monetised, and used to feed an algorithm optimised not for truth, beauty, or community, but for profit, outrage, and control.
The result is what tech writer Cory Doctorow calls “enshitification”: a process by which platforms start out user-friendly, become business-friendly, then extract value until they collapse in utility.
Dialectical Simplicity challenges us to ask: What is technology for? Who controls it? And what would it look like if we built digital spaces around human needs—not corporate profit?
The Anatomy of Enshitification
The enshitification of the internet follows a predictable pattern:
- A platform begins as a useful tool—for self-expression (Tumblr), community (Reddit), video (YouTube), or connection (Facebook).
- It attracts users, who generate free content and build vibrant networks.
- It then attracts advertisers and investors, who want to extract value from those users.
- The platform shifts its design to serve its real customer: advertisers. Algorithms are tweaked to prioritise “engagement” (which usually means outrage, addiction, or fear).
- Eventually, it starts screwing over creators, users, and even advertisers—saturating feeds with junk, pay-to-play features, and AI spam until the experience collapses.
This cycle isn’t accidental. It’s the product of platform capitalism—where “success” means infinite growth, vertical integration, user lock-in, and monopoly control.
Dialectical Simplicity urges us to strip this back to basics.
What Is the Internet For?
Let’s ask a different set of questions:
- What if the internet were a public good, like a library or park?
- What if social media were designed to foster dialogue, not dopamine?
- What if online communities could be owned and governed by their members?
- What if the goal were connection, not conversion?
These questions aren’t naïve. They’re dialectical. They cut through the ideology of “there is no alternative” and reassert the human over the algorithm.
The Dialectical Web: Simpler, Smaller, Sovereign
What might the internet look like if redesigned through the lens of Dialectical Simplicity?
1. Smaller Is Better
Centralised platforms thrive on mass surveillance and scale. But online life doesn’t need to be massive to be meaningful.
Dialectical Simplicity favours federated, local, and purpose-driven networks—where people know each other, moderate their own spaces, and define their own norms.
Examples:
- Mastodon and the Fediverse allow for decentralised, community-governed microblogging.
- Discourse forums let people run thoughtful discussions with open-source tools.
- Are.na, a slow social network for curation and research, avoids the dopamine treadmill entirely.
2. Public Infrastructure, Not Private Extraction
Just as public libraries provide free access to knowledge, we need public digital infrastructure: non-profit, tax-funded, and protected from enshitification.
Examples:
- Public broadcasters could host forums and social networks grounded in civic values.
- Cities or cooperatives could provide public Wi-Fi and open-source tools for local organising.
- Estonia’s e-government services offer a glimpse of secure, citizen-centred digital tools.
3. Open Standards, Interoperability, and Portability
Corporations trap users in their walled gardens. Dialectical Simplicity demands freedom to leave, freedom to self-host, and freedom to rebuild elsewhere.
- Email still works across providers because it uses open standards.
- RSS feeds let you follow content without an algorithm deciding what you see.
- The Bluesky protocol (AT Protocol) is trying to make decentralised, portable social identity possible again.
4. Cooperative Governance
Why shouldn’t people who use platforms also own and govern them?
Just as we have housing co-ops and credit unions, we can build platform cooperatives—websites and apps collectively owned by their users, workers, or creators.
Examples:
- Resonate is a co-op music streaming platform owned by artists and listeners.
- Signal, the encrypted messaging app, is run by a nonprofit.
- Social.coop is a Mastodon instance governed by its members.
Resisting the Logic of Surveillance Capitalism
Much of the current internet is shaped by surveillance capitalism, a term coined by Shoshana Zuboff. It describes a system that turns your behaviour into data, and that data into profit.
This is not necessary. It is simply profitable.
Dialectical Simplicity says: we do not have to live like this. We can choose a different logic—where data belongs to the person who creates it, not a distant CEO.
We need:
- Data minimisation, not extraction
- Transparent algorithms, not secret feeds
- Consent-based design, not addictive defaults
- Digital literacy, not digital dependency
The Right to Log Off
A human-centred internet is one that doesn’t demand constant presence. It doesn’t punish you for missing a post. It doesn’t exploit fear of missing out.
Dialectical Simplicity recognises that life is not a feed. It’s a garden. It needs pauses. Compost. Seasons. It needs disconnection as much as connection.
A humane online space might:
- Let you opt out of recommendation systems.
- Offer slow modes that throttle replies and promote reflection.
- Encourage off-screen connection and collective action in the real world.
Building New Commons, Together
The internet doesn’t have to be owned by five companies. We built it. We can re-build it.
Digital commons are spaces we collectively own and steward: open-source projects, public archives, shared knowledge. They can be grown and maintained like community gardens—with collective care and clear boundaries.
And like any commons, they require:
- Trust
- Participation
- Stewardship
- Defence against enclosure
The enclosure of the internet has already happened. It is now our job to reclaim it.
Conclusion: From Algorithm to Agora
The internet, as it stands, is a machine for enclosure, extraction, and manipulation. But beneath the noise, seeds of something else are growing.
Dialectical Simplicity calls us to reconnect with the purpose of the web: communication, creativity, solidarity, and joy.
It challenges us to ask: who owns this space? Who shapes the feed? Who decides what is real?
And it invites us to build alternatives—not in isolation, but in federation.
To reject enshitification is not just to leave a platform. It is to reassert what it means to be human in a digital age.
Further Reading:
- Doctorow, C. (2023). The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation
- Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- Scholz, T. (2016). Platform Cooperativism
- Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut Economics (esp. digital commons framing)
- The New Design Congress (2020). Against Platform Universalism