If We Want a People’s Internet, We Have to Socialise Big Tech

From digital commons to corporate fiefdom — it’s time to end the enshittification.

The internet was once a place of promise. It was open, curious, and a little chaotic. People built communities, shared ideas, and created things for the joy of it. Then came the platforms. The same systems that democratised creation slowly enclosed it. The so-called “free” internet became fenced off by corporate interests, its corners smoothed and sanitised for profit.

The process has a name now: enshittification. Platforms start by being good to users, then to business customers, and finally, they serve only shareholders. It’s not an accident; it’s the logical outcome of unrestrained capitalism applied to the digital commons. When profit is the sole metric of success, the user becomes the product, and the community becomes the resource to be strip-mined.

You can’t build a truly democratic space on top of private empires. A “people’s internet” can’t exist when a handful of corporations control the platforms, the algorithms, the infrastructure, and even the culture of communication. Facebook dictates social life, Google mediates truth, and Amazon controls access to the market. It’s feudalism dressed in UX design.

Socialising big tech doesn’t mean nationalising Facebook or forcing coders into government jobs. It means treating the digital sphere as essential infrastructure, like electricity or water. That could look like open-source platforms funded publicly, cooperative ownership models where users are stakeholders, or strict antitrust measures that break up monopolies and open the pipes.

Profit has its place, but when it drives the architecture of knowledge, communication, and community, it distorts human priorities. The result is an internet that serves the few, not the many, optimised for engagement rather than understanding, addiction rather than connection.

If we want the internet to serve humanity again, not harvest it, we have to reclaim it. We have to design systems around people, not profit. In short: if we want a people’s internet, we have to socialise big tech.