{"id":15996,"date":"2025-11-14T12:11:01","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T12:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/centralized-technology-is-shrinking-the-internet-opinion\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T12:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T12:11:11","slug":"centralized-technology-is-shrinking-the-internet-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/centralized-technology-is-shrinking-the-internet-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Centralized technology is shrinking the internet | Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-detail__content blocks\">\n<div class=\"cn-block-disclaimer\">\n<div class=\"cn-block-disclaimer__icon\">\n            <svg class=\"icon icon-info\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><use xlink:href=\"#icon-info\"><\/use> <\/svg>        <\/div>\n<p class=\"cn-block-disclaimer__content\">\n            Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news\u2019 editorial.        <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .cn-block-disclaimer --><\/p>\n<p>The internet maintains the illusion of an infinite scroll, with more pages of text and hours of video than we could ever consume in 100 lifetimes. The reality is that this \u201cinfinite scroll\u201d occupies a small sliver of the actual internet itself, though. Over <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.group-ib.com\/resources\/knowledge-hub\/deep-web\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">90%<\/a> of the internet is hidden in the Deep Web, making it largely inaccessible to the public, and it certainly is not being indexed by mainstream search engines.<\/p>\n<div id=\"cn-block-summary-block_3bda61479fb5196197e364823a11a48a\" class=\"cn-block-summary\">\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__nav tabs\">\n        <span class=\"tabs__item is-selected\">Summary<\/span>\n    <\/div>\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__content\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Despite the sense of \u201cinfinite scroll,\u201d over 90% of the internet lies in the hidden Deep Web, while a handful of corporate giants increasingly dominate the visible web, driving engagement and profit over substance.<\/li>\n<li>Algorithms now prioritize ad revenue and engagement over quality, marginalizing independent creators and amplifying junk or AI-generated content.<\/li>\n<li>To resist a closed, exploitative, and AI-saturated web, the internet must return to human-centric, privacy-focused, and decentralized models that reward creators, restore agency to users, and preserve the open spirit of discovery that once defined the web.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .cn-block-summary --><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the free and open web we can access has given way in the last few decades to the kind of large corporate control we\u2019ve seen in other media. In the U.S. alone, six major media companies (i.e., AT&amp;T, CBS, Comcast, Disney, NewsCorp, and Viacom) collectively <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/pwestpathfinder.com\/2022\/05\/09\/the-big-sixs-big-media-game\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">control<\/a> 90% of the media.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p>\n<p>Unlike dominant forms of media in the 20th century, like television, though, the internet offers an increasingly invasive feedback loop of desire meant to sell you something. Every networked device, from earbud to smartwatch to smartphone to laptop to Smart TV, is a recorder that can capture your consumption down to the millisecond.<\/p>\n<p>Not only that, equipped with microphones and cameras, these are devices that can capture audio and video recordings of you, whether you are volunteering that data in the form of a selfie or not. With a network controlled only by a few <em>Powers That Be<\/em>, the priorities of that network and how it was turned on us began to shift, with an emphasis on user \u201cengagement,\u201d regardless of the quality of that \u201cengagement,\u201d paired with hyper-targeted advertising that could take advantage of these highly distractive and highly invasive devices.<\/p>\n<p>The problem of the closed, limited, and exploitative web will only grow with the maximization of shareholder value through the direct promotion of AI and the indirect promotion of the computer chips required to power that AI. Get used to a closed web, less in touch with its own humanity, increasingly populated by junk content and junk values.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Choking off the last breaths of the \u201cdead internet\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>How did we get here?<\/p>\n<p>Even before the rise of AI, there has been the terrible problem of content quality control on the internet, a problem that has gotten worse with the prioritization of better advertising through user targeting. The end goal of the internet and the algorithms that now drive it has become selling you something you already bought yesterday. Anything that does not align with that sales pitch either becomes deprioritized or discarded.<\/p>\n<p>A tiny number of players not only control what becomes visible, trending, or remembered, but also sideline divergent or fringe content, not for merit, but simply because it doesn\u2019t fit their algorithmic or commercial priorities. Independent creators, critical voices, and niche information struggle for visibility, often buried beneath sponsored or mainstream content.<\/p>\n<p>The surge of AI-generated content and synthetic media is more than a philosophical dilemma; it\u2019s a dangerous shift that threatens to warp our shared perception of reality. Discerning truth from fabrication was already difficult; now, it\u2019s becoming exponentially harder.<\/p>\n<p>And an internet that is mostly AI might get here much more quickly than we think. A 2024 \u201cBad Bot\u201d report from cybersecurity firm Imperva <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/science\/a65997294\/dead-internet-explained\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">estimated<\/a> that nearly half of all traffic on the internet at the time was automated, with bots making up 42.3 percent of internet traffic in 2021, a number that jumped to 49.6 percent in 2023. Only a few years later, a large-scale AI detection analysis of 900,000 newly created web pages (April 2025) found that <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/thelivinglib.org\/experts-90-of-online-content-will-be-ai-generated-by-2026\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">74.2%<\/a> of them contained AI-generated content.<\/p>\n<p>Other projections suggest that by 2026, up to <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/oodaloop.com\/analysis\/archive\/if-90-of-online-content-will-be-ai-generated-by-2026-we-forecast-a-deeply-human-anti-content-movement-in-response\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">90%<\/a> of online content may be synthetically generated, although this remains speculative.<\/p>\n<p>It may not be very long before we see the \u201ctheory of the dead internet,\u201d when there is more content churned out by bots than actual humans, become the \u201cfact of the dead internet.\u201d The internet as we know it, arguably the most radical tool for mass human expression since the Gutenberg printing press, will rest on a junk heap created by decades of Silicon Valley penny-wisdom and pound-foolishness.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Taking back the web, one human at a time<\/h2>\n<p>By championing human-centric content and advocating for creators with balanced perspectives, not just the perspectives that gin up the most engagement at the least cost, whether they come from actual humans or not, the web can still become a place people want to share, driving a self-reinforcing flywheel where every new tool that unearths the unfound fuels greater discoverability, engagement, and growth.<\/p>\n<p>Decentralization offers one possible way out. It is an incentive structure that is distributed, not hoarded by the very, very few, and it restores agency to users and communities. It offers resilience to the very fabric of the web that extends beyond the benevolence and motivations of the handful of the richest people on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>It is clear that extrapolating the status quo of the last decade will not lead to an internet that remains a free, fair, and interesting place. Content will disappear without recourse, and the boundaries of discovery will be set not by what exists, but by what corporations allow. We must continue to prioritize privacy, permanence, and independence.<\/p>\n<p>Back in the earliest days of the internet, DirecTV had a popular <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_uXtWIg_A7M\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">commercial<\/a> where a web surfer was told, \u201cYou\u2019ve reached the end of the internet.\u201d If these large companies have their way in continuing to needlessly shrink the internet for their own limited and profit-based motivations, it won\u2019t be long before we reach the end of the internet.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p>\n<div class=\"cn-block-author author-card\">\n<div class=\"author-card__photo\"><\/div>\n<p><!-- .author-card__photo --><\/p>\n<div class=\"author-card__content\">\n<div class=\"author-card__name\">\n                Timothy Enneking            <\/div>\n<p><!-- .author-card__name --><\/p>\n<div class=\"author-card__bio\">\n<p><b>Timothy Enneking<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is the CEO of Presearch, a decentralized, privacy-focused, web3 search engine. He was initially invited to join the project seven years ago after he recommended it during a CNBC Asia interview on crypto, and he remained an advisor for four years. He rejoined Presearch in August 2023 when the founder invited him to become the CEO and bring the project to the next level. He is the founder and Principal of Digital Capital Management, LLC (\u201cDCM\u201d), which runs CAF 2017, a crypto trading fund. He is also the founder and managing partner of Psalion, which manages two venture capital funds and a yield farming operation. For nine years ending in June 2024, Mr. Enneking was the Chief Investment Officer of Mana Companies Asset Management, a medium-sized family office (which did not invest in crypto). Prior to those activities, Mr. Enneking founded and managed Tera Capital Fund, a fund of funds focused on Eastern Europe (established in 2004). Simultaneously, in 2013, he was engaged to manage the world\u2019s first Bitcoin fund. Mr. Enneking also has extensive M&amp;A experience, having completed more than 70 transactions with an aggregate transaction value of over US$12 billion. He speaks near-native French and Russian, as well as German. He has five university degrees, all in international business and law.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .author-card__bio --><\/p>\n<div class=\"author-card__social\">\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/timothy-enneking-a725905\/\" class=\"community-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" aria-label=\"LinkedIn\"><\/p>\n<p>    <svg class=\"community-link__icon\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n        <use xlink:href=\"#icon-social-linkedin\"><\/use>\n    <\/svg><\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .author-card__social --><\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .author-card__content --><\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- author-card --><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news\u2019 editorial. The internet maintains the illusion of an&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15998,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15996\/revisions\/15998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}