Predictions for the next phase of the internet

A computer being sucked into a black hole, as interpreted by DALL-E 2

(At a recent USC event, I was asked about the major issues/topics that I see shaping the future of digital media. The discussion got me thinking about the specifics of how the internet will evolve over its next generation.)

The idea of the splinternet - the concept that political, cultural and geographic forces will create a variety of different internet experiences - is not new. A March 1997 paper by Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT introduced the idea that “digital tribes” could eventually “Balkanize” the internet. Jeff Rosen presciently wrote for New York Magazine in 2008 about the issues of trusting entities like Google as global arbiters of information. Derek Thompson observed more emerging trends of the splinternet for The Atlantic in 2010.

For the uninitiated, the origin story of the splinternet goes something like this: in the early days of the internet, singular platforms became monoliths, pillars that at times seemed to hold up the entirety of the online world. This put an enormous amount of power in the hands of very few - namely, the white, California-based, and (mostly) liberal CEOs of Silicon Valley technology companies. Their platforms attracted such a wide audience so quickly, that at first, almost everyone was forced to live with these platforms - Democrats, Republicans, dictators, criminals, and everyone else. Most of the conflicts between platforms and politics were attempts to force the platforms to bend to the wants and needs of various powerful interests, rather than those powerful interests (successfully) developing their own platforms.

Now into its second, or even third generation, I believe the digital information era will soon shift in irreversible and seismic ways that build on these ideas.

A generation-plus of technology-centric education means that quality technology talent need not be liberal, white, or located in the Bay Area. As non-liberal wealthy elites witnessed the power of technology, they wanted in on the act - for the money, and for the control of deciding who gets to say what. And non-liberal government regimes, having spent a decade or more investing in technology to free themselves from the influence of liberal American social media companies, now have experienced (and at times, American educated) technology workforces to work within government infrastructures or ideologies that seek to put technology under their control.

But geographic and ideological forces changing the internet at an infrastructural level aren’t the only wedges breaking apart the internet. Niche interests (which the internet empowers like no other technology ever before) as well as new generations of internet users (like Gen Z) have chafed under a digital monoculture helmed by a few powerful apps used by “older people,” and like any young person or anyone with niche interests, sought new homes - new platforms - away from everyone.

For the first time, at least two different generations of humanity (depending on how you define the split of age groups) can claim to have grown up never knowing a world without internet. And many of Gen Z, having seen the internet built by Millennials, want little part of their platforms - those existing, or those yet to come - and thus, shape what matters on the internet through a language, mindset and playbook that makes it painfully obvious when a “Boomer” (which, for Gen Z, is, anyone over the age of 40) treads on their turf. 

While most of these inter-generational, inter-interest differences will play out at a cultural level, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for some to rise to the level of infrastructural change. More on that in a sec.

Combined, this means multiple age groups, geographic areas, corporate entities, ideological parties, governments, and niche interests each are creating their own internets and/or platforms within those internets, with several groups successfully pushing for infrastructural change. And there’s a good chance that many infrastructures, many internets, will attract a big enough audience to survive.

To summarize: I don’t think we’re ready for the atomization that will occur over the next decade-plus. There is no comparison in human history to match what is about to happen. These internets won’t merely change street signs and accents, like meandering between the 60ish neighborhoods in New York City. Hopping from internet to internet could mean alternative sets of facts, histories, languages, rules of engagement, ways of communicating, tools required to participate, and more that we haven’t considered yet, all instantaneously accessible, and pushed to prospective users through either government infrastructure, the wealthy, or both.

I don’t think the world will drastically change from every internet to another. But after 20ish years where everything happened mostly on the same platforms, operating by liberally-driven and American-housed ways of working, where (almost) everyone had access to the entire known library of human history, it is dangerous to assume that style of internet will remain the same for mostly everyone.

What will this mean? In the short term, the atomization will almost certainly harden filter bubbles and polarization. But long term, every other question about our future will be impacted by this coming atomization.

I fully agree with Joan Donovan et al.’s assertion in Meme Wars: while Andrew Breitbart may have been right that politics is downstream from culture, culture is downstream from infrastructure. The atomization of the most important communications technology in human will have massive, reverberating consequences.

The possible infrastructural outcomes are almost too numerous and too chaotic to predict. We might soon see a light flavor of the “many internets” in the United States; if you squint, you could see how the internet in California might differ from the internet in Texas, which might also differ from the internet in Virginia, which could also differ from the internet in Colorado, and so on.

The framework of such an atomization is being laid as we speak. On January 1, 2023, California’s updated data privacy regulations, the CPRA, will go into effect. Ditto for Virginia’s VCDPA, and for Colorado’s CPA, which will take effect July 1, 2023. They differ in minor, but important, ways, from each other, as well as the European Union’s GDPR.

Perhaps these privacy laws don’t differ enough to cause literal separate internets to occur. But, compare that to a world where, in Texas, the fundamentals of allowable internet speech differ drastically - which could happen. There are few, if any, good options for social media platforms to exist as they currently do if this law passes - which, if it does, you can count on other states (or even countries) to follow with similar, or even tougher, legislation. 

Such stark differences likely dash hopes for a federal approach to data privacy and speech regulation, likely placing such decisions in the hands of states for years to come. As the Washington Post article linked to above, points out, some of the options available to social media companies appear untenable, for either their users, or the company’s ability to make money. And this is the first US state to attempt its first version of such a law.

We haven’t yet seen a company pull out of a geographic area yet due to how that territory manages its internet. But just wait until some huge brand or platform pulls out of California, Virginia, Texas, Florida, or Europe; it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, and when it does, it will open a vacuum for some version of that service to appear on that internet, offering some remixed slice of that company’s service, made to fit that specific internet. 10-15 years from now, such internet-specific offerings will become more of a normal way of working.

And that only considers the decisions made by brands. Conversely, I expect to see emboldened states test their ability to further shape their internets outside of specific content or data decisions. What would it look like if Texas tried to ban TikTok due to its ties to China? (For the “it can’t happen here” crowd, remember: Austin, TX once banned Uber and Lyft.) What if Florida banned Facebook and Twitter, with their leadership instead recommending Parler or Truth Social? (Don’t say “it can’t happen here” when a sitting president formed a media company while still in office, and when our Congress already has a serious insider trading problem.)

Culturally, these shifts will completely alter how people connect. Already, the move toward community-based platforms, like Discord, Facebook groups, WhatsApp, Telegram, and others, accelerated during the pandemic. Short-lived fads like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces got the trend broadly right, but were too “old guard” to make it in today’s internet.

As a result, most of the community-based apps succeeding today revolve around text, interestingly, as most of the internet expands to video and audio. I expect this is the case because the concept of a community-driven internet is much newer than that of the open internet, where platforms have been “pivoting to video” for nearly a decade.

What will it look like, then, when a Discord-like community emerges for video - when “mass community” platforms with rich features and tech integrations, combines with the ideas of embodied memes and the quick transmission of complex information? How will this change organizing, group action, the spread of ideas and memes, etc.?

I’m a full believer in community video, which today, is actually more like single-person video with a lot of people talking over audio or text (like Twitch), or really meant for one-to-many communication (like group FaceTime or Zooms). I’m looking for a platform where many people can connect at once, with subgroups and DMs, with the technology integrations and features of a Discord.

Such a vision incorporates ideas of a metaverse-like platform, which, short of fully-immersive real-time 3D video, will provide a pretty good facsimile of video and presence that takes the concept of TikTok to another level. While I’m skeptical that the Metaverse being produced and marketed by Meta will, as it stands now, be the de facto platform for immersive, embodied community connection, some kind of Discord-for-video will emerge and drastically accelerate the speed and context of how ideas get shared. 

Who will make these platforms, and where will they be located? What kind of laws and regulations will govern how people connect? Will it operate similar to Discord does today, where servers can run almost without any outside interruption or influence?

Such a vision also builds on concepts of a DAO. While I haven’t yet mentioned crypto, it’s not because I don’t think it’s important. In fact, I think crypto will, over the course of the next generation, redefine the flow of data, and play a role in assessing trustworthiness across internets. 

However, I don’t yet think crypto’s impact rises to the level of infrastructure, or even culture - which explains to me, in part, why its 2021 hype fizzled. (In my opinion, crypto in its current form was, largely, culturally rejected outside of the crypto audience; check out the number of companies, especially in gaming, who announced and quickly un-announced or “clarified” crypto projects.)

Sure, games will, in the future, have some measure of crypto within them. (It remains to be seen whether crypto concepts can support games on their own, long-term.) Gaming will be far from the only consumer-facing use case where gobs of money will be made. And I’m not the first person to say that the real use cases for crypto will be seen in data privacy/portability, security, assessing ownership of content, etc.

Crypto is a tool (a really important, critical feature or tool, to be clear), with far-ranging implications. And like the wielding of most tools, how it gets deployed will happen downstream of policy and politics. (Crypto helped accelerate this outcome by quickly becoming popular in the world of finance, a surefire place to start if you want to get regulated.)

Because of crypto’s (potential) roles in macro- and microeconomics, data privacy, data governance, and assessing content authenticity and ownership, governments with interests in such concepts will want to closely monitor how crypto-embued products impact what kind of content and ideas can be circulated within their borders, and how crypto impacts the financial health of their currency and economy.

Crypto underscores many of the politically driven questions that will define the future of many internets: who will be allowed to access what? Who controls data, and how data flows? And who gets to decide what is authentic and right on which internet?

What I also find very interesting is a question that happens even further downstream from the politics: how will brands make money in a world of many internets? I worry that this future state of many internets will empower the mega-corporations, and make it even harder for small companies and startups to prosper. 

For one, as a career marketing person, I’m sensitive to the agility required from companies to bounce from platform to platform as technologies evolve and audience tastes shift. The atomization of the internet will, eventually, effectively end an era for brands where reaching their target audiences happened on a small handful of platforms. Companies with huge teams and massive budgets will undoubtedly have a competitive advantage, with resources to test and learn across dozens of platforms and adapt to new rules and regulations. But smaller teams - many of whom already barely have the resources, headcount and personnel to properly reach audiences across TikTok, Instagram, SEO, paid media, etc.- could struggle in such a complex and ever-changing landscape.

Somewhat related, the era of data privacy laws, including but not limited to, GDPR, CPRA, VCDPA, FERPA and others, are already about to force the advertising industry into a period of roaming the wilderness. While Apple ATT was rumored to cost Facebook $10 billion in advertising revenue (which is rumored to have rebounded), the end of cookies and general tightening of cross-app, cross-platform consumer trackability over the next few years will bring about a massive shift in advertising online, which will fundamentally alter who makes money and how.

We’re seeing this transition at work already: one of the reasons influencers have become such a popular marketing tactic isn’t because celebrities are effective at pushing product. It’s because nano- and micro-influencers, who are considered highly trustworthy and authentic, are effective at reaching into niche audiences and convincing them to act, in ways that are data-privacy safe. And now, technology tools are rising that allow brands to conduct this kind of marketing at scale. (Disclaimer: I run the brand portfolio at one such influencer marketing company that helps brands scale working with nano- and micro-influencers.)

So, what will happen?

• Large platforms and companies will win in the short- and medium term, but less than they’re used to. Google, Meta and the like aren’t going anywhere; their definitions of the future of the internet (and the future of advertising) will still suck up a lot of the available dollars, especially while smaller players adjust to a new landscape.

• But the era of monolithic technology platforms is coming to an end: the platform explosion is coming. Facebook (and its platforms) and Twitter largely went unchallenged for social media eyeballs for nearly a decade. TikTok, BeReal, Discord, Clubhouse, Twitch, Telegram, Parler, and many others command enough eyeballs to matter, and more will come.

• Large platforms will exit key markets - either on their own, or be forced out - and their replacements will step into the vacuum and turn into billion-dollar companies.

• One of the next, huge social media apps will combine video with the community aspects of Discord.

• It’s going to happen in the United States; it’s already happening.

• The pendulum of trust will swing even further toward trustworthy voices and away from data, since data will become atomized, incomplete and messy due to the splintering of the internet.

I promise that I do not predict forever doom and gloom for the internet. This upcoming phase of the internet is a natural reaction to 20ish years of open, liberal led, American owned internet that made trillions of dollars and wielded enormous economic power. It will be, at the same time, confusing, inconvenient, expensive, exclusionary, inequitable, business-as-usual for many (especially upper/middle class Americans), and opportunities to both consolidate and resist entrenched powers. And when a generation grows up within this internet, who knows? Maybe some sort of grand rebundling will occur. But under which flavor of internet remains to be seen.