Instead of decisions by company boards, governance models that allow all community members to vote. Instead of private databases, the decentralised blockchain with no single point of control. Everything will have to be owned by everyone, starting with their digital identities, as opposed to identities being owned by platforms and then sold to advertisers without our consent. A power of life and death in the virtual world, but how virtual is it?Īs for Web3, the project is just beginning, but its intent is clear: to replace the feudal rule of the platforms with something approaching a democratic order. More remarkably, we now accept that these platforms have the power to delete our virtual selves if we violate what they regard as acceptable behaviour. Suddenly we were all living on the internet, but Facebook owned the data defining our identities, and the world where our lives took place was powered by targeted advertising: the springs of community life now had to serve the purpose of maximising profits for Facebook and its advertisers. Money from the real world had to be replaced with something else, so advertising filled the gap. In a virtual world, everyone needs an identity or avatar. The disagreement is over what went wrong and what to try next.Īs the internet grew, it was left to the private sector to provide the missing parts. Musk claims that the internet has lost its way and promises to return Twitter to a lost age when everyone could freely share ideas and access information. Twitter is particularly dismal, seemingly designed to promote shallow discussions and a rabid inquisitorial spirit. Advertising corrupts thought and expression for the sake of maximum engagement. Algorithms are used surreptitiously to manipulate public opinion and create echo chambers. What has happened since then? The large platforms – Google, Facebook, Twitter and others – are no longer neutral arbiters between different world-views but impose their own values. When Elon Musk announced on 14 April that he is planning to acquire Twitter and turn it into a privately owned company, the message was that he wants to go back to those prelapsarian times when the internet was supposed to make us better. We have been trying to return to grace ever since. Those old enough still remember when sin entered the internet.
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