Imagined internet is the real internet trap
Blog 2/9
If people want the internet to remain open, they must first understand it and then fight for it. The investigation of the internet and the world wide web was supposed to make media monopolies impossible. Instead, tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple now dominate the time we spend online and grab all the profits from the attention economy.
The article “The Internet Trap” by Matthew Hindman describes the difference between the internet people imagine and the internet that is real. When comparing the two, there is a significant gap in the public’s mind. People imagine the internet to be this land of opportunity where anyone can make it big when the reality is a third of web visits go to the top ten firms. The big names are Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. These companies led by Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk are the modern version of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Most small start-up sites can not touch the big guys. The article shows why, even on the internet, there is still no such thing as a free audience. The internet has not reduced the cost of reaching audiences; it has shifted who pays and how.
The article also talked about how news aggregators such as Apple news and Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages are moving news organizations’ content onto their own platforms. This greatly impacts journalism as a whole and is forcing news organizations to compete with these tech giants. The move hurts most news companies, especially small newspapers. People claim that many small news sources that cater to small local audiences are important; however, “on the real internet, small-but-valuable audiences are an oxymoron.” Digital survival depends on stickiness, how to attract users, get them to stay longer, and return again. As discussed in previous readings, algorithms are used to keep users on an app or website longer by showing content crafted according to what that specific person likes based on previous activity. Probably the stickiest app right now is Tiktok. It is the most popular algorithm-run app. Users primarily focus on the “for you” page, not the people they follow. The whole idea of the “for you” is only to show content the app knows that person will like based on their specific activity. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook also do similar things to get users to stick around on their platforms and pay attention to their apps. It all centers around the attention economy and how one site can get more of a person’s attention than others.
Google has created stickiness in a different way. Rather than being just a search engine, it has evolved into a combination of work tools, personal storage, and social media. Instead of trying to keep users on one platform, they just made a variation of everything you need, all connected through your personal Google account. There are Google photos, drive, maps, translate, email, docs, shopping, travel, and a ton more. Google has become a conglomerate of all different types of tools and sites that are all liked together. Before Google, people would have accounts for all the different tools, such as email, word docs, excel, mapquest, etc. With the evolution of Google, users can now stick to a Google site, no matter the variation of the use they want. Google has now become a verb; if you don’t believe me, Google it.
Google is extremely helpful and has improved many people’s lives through its convenience and evolution; however, there is a downside. Google continues to grow bigger every year, reaching new parts of our lives and linking other things to Google accounts. At what point is it too dominant? How long before it reaches and knows too much about people’s lives? Previous readings have discussed AI and the evolution of it being incorporated into everyday life. If AI continually goes unchecked and Google has a robot variation, it could be very problematic with it having access to most parts of people’s lives. I have said for years that Google is Skynet from Terminator and that they will come after me first because I tried to warn everyone.
