The Internet Was Supposed to Free Us... Instead, It Built New Prisons

The internet removed geography. But it built walls in our minds instead.

I remember the early promise. The internet was supposed to democratize information, connect humanity, and dissolve borders. Anyone could publish. Anyone could learn. Anyone could reach anyone else, anywhere in the world.

We were told this was the great equalizer. The tool that would free us from gatekeepers, from geographic limitations, from the control of traditional institutions.

And for a brief moment, it felt true.

Then the algorithms arrived. The platforms are consolidated. The venture capital poured in. And slowly, imperceptibly, the open internet became a series of walled gardens—each one designed not to free us, but to trap our attention and extract our data.

We traded physical borders for digital ones. And somehow, the new prisons feel even harder to escape.

The Algorithm Is the New Border

Borders don't just exist on maps. They exist wherever something controls what you can see, where you can go, and who you can talk to.

And that's exactly what recommendation algorithms do.

YouTube's algorithm decides what videos you watch next. Not you—the algorithm. It learns what keeps you clicking, what triggers your emotions, and what makes you stay on the platform longer. Then it feeds you more of that. Not what's true. Not what's important. Not even what you consciously want. Just what keeps you engaged.

Instagram curates your feed based on what you've liked before, creating an endless loop of the same aesthetic, the same opinions, the same worldview reflected back at you. You think you're exploring, but you're actually walking in circles inside an invisible fence.

TikTok is even more aggressive. The For You Page is so precisely tuned to your psychology that it can predict what you want to see before you know you want to see it. It's not showing you the world. It's showing you a simulation of the world designed to keep you scrolling.

These aren't tools for discovery. They're sophisticated containment systems.

The early internet let you wander. You could stumble onto weird corners, discover obscure communities, and follow random links down rabbit holes. There was chaos, but there was also genuine serendipity.

Now? The algorithm decides. And the algorithm has one job: keep you inside the platform, clicking, watching, engaging, generating data that can be sold to advertisers.

We've gone from infinite possibility to infinite repetition. The walls are invisible, but they're there.

Platform Monopolies Are the New Nation-States

Google, Meta, Amazon—these aren't just companies. They're digital empires with more power than most governments.

Google controls what information you can find. If something doesn't rank on Google, it functionally doesn't exist for most people. They decide what's credible, what's spam, and what gets seen. That's not a search engine. That's a gatekeeper.

Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) controls how billions of people communicate and what news they see. They've literally influenced elections, incited violence, and manipulated public opinion—all while claiming they're just a "neutral platform."

Amazon controls e-commerce so completely that small businesses have to sell through them to survive—even though Amazon uses their sales data to create competing products and undercut them. It's not a marketplace. It's a feudal system.

These platforms have borders. They have rules. They have enforcement mechanisms. And just like nation-states, they can exile you.

Get banned from a platform, and you lose access to your audience, your income, and your community. There's no due process. No appeal that matters. No democratic accountability.

Digital nomads—people who thought the internet would let them live anywhere, work anywhere, belong anywhere—are learning they're not free citizens of a borderless world. They're subjects of platform empires. And when those platforms decide you're not welcome, you become a refugee with nowhere to go.

We thought the internet would dissolve power structures. Instead, it just concentrated them in the hands of a few tech giants who answer to no one.

The Engagement Economy Built Prisons of Distraction

The early internet had websites. You went to them intentionally. You read. You explored. You left.

The modern internet has feeds. Infinite feeds. Designed to be addictive. Engineered to hijack your attention and never give it back.

Every feature is optimized for engagement: autoplay, infinite scroll, push notifications, badges, streaks. It's not about serving you. It's about keeping you.

And the cost? Your time. Your focus. Your autonomy.

You open Twitter (X) to check one thing and emerge an hour later with no memory of what you actually learned—just a vague sense of anxiety and outrage. That's not connection. That's captivity.

You open Instagram to post a photo and spend thirty minutes comparing your life to everyone else's highlight reel. That's not community. That's a carefully designed misery machine.

TikTok promised entertainment but delivered an IV drip of dopamine hits so precisely calibrated that people lose hours without realizing it. That's not leisure. That's addiction masquerading as fun.

The internet didn't free us. It gave us new ways to imprison ourselves. And we call it "staying connected."

Decentralization Was Supposed to Save Us (But It Didn't)

There have been attempts to escape. Decentralized platforms. Blockchain. Web3. Mastodon. Protocols instead of platforms.

The vision was beautiful: return power to users. No central authority. No algorithmic manipulation. No corporate overlords.

And yet, these alternatives struggle.

Why? Because most people don't want freedom—they want convenience. And centralized platforms are convenient. All your friends are already there. The interface is polished. The algorithm serves you content without effort.

Decentralized platforms require intentionality. You have to choose what to follow. You have to curate your own experience. There's friction.

And friction, it turns out, is what most people are trying to avoid.

So we stay in the walled gardens. We complain about the algorithms, the bans, the manipulation—but we don't leave. Because leaving means starting over. It means losing the audience we built, the connections we made, the convenience we've grown dependent on.

The platforms know this. That's why they can do whatever they want. We're not customers. We're captives. And the doors aren't even locked—we just choose not to walk through them.

The Illusion of Connection

The cruelest part of these digital prisons is that they feel like freedom.

You can talk to anyone in the world! (Through a platform that monetizes every interaction.)
You can access infinite information! (Curated by an algorithm with its own agenda.)
You can build an audience! (That the platform can take away at any moment.)

We're more "connected" than ever and lonelier than ever. We have more "information" than ever and less understanding than ever. We have more "freedom" than ever and less autonomy than ever.

The early internet promised borderlessness. But all we got was a different kind of border—one that runs through our minds instead of across the land.

The algorithm knows you better than you know yourself. It predicts your behavior, shapes your desires, and guides your choices. And you feel like you're making free decisions the whole time.

That's not liberation. That's the most sophisticated form of control ever invented.

What Would Freedom Actually Look Like?

Real internet freedom wouldn't be an algorithm telling you what to see. It would be you deciding what to explore.

It wouldn't be engagement metrics dictating what gets amplified. It would be genuine human curation, serendipity, discovery.

It wouldn't be a handful of corporations controlling digital infrastructure. It would be open protocols, interoperability, and actual user ownership.

It wouldn't be platforms designed to trap your attention. It would be tools designed to serve your intentions.

But that internet is dead. Or maybe it was never really alive. Maybe it was always headed toward consolidation, extraction, control.

Maybe the internet's promise of freedom was always a lie—not because the technology couldn't deliver it, but because the people who controlled the technology never wanted to.

Breaking Free (Or At Least Trying)

I'm not going to pretend I've escaped these digital prisons. I haven't. I still use social media. I still get sucked into feeds. I still let algorithms shape what I see.

But I'm aware now. And awareness is the first step toward autonomy.

I set boundaries. I turn off notifications. I use tools that block recommendations and strip away algorithmic feeds. I intentionally seek out sources outside my bubble. I read books instead of threads. I have conversations instead of scrolling.

It's not perfect. But it's resistance.

Because the internet was supposed to free us. And just because it failed doesn't mean we have to stay imprisoned.

We just have to remember that the walls are made of code, not concrete. And code can be rewritten—or walked away from entirely.

The question is: are we ready to leave the comfort of our cages?

Or have we been inside so long that freedom feels more frightening than captivity?