The internet used to feel like a wide-open field. Messy, unpredictable, alive. It was a place where you could wander endlessly, trip over strange corners of creativity, stumble into conversations with strangers who felt oddly familiar.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was ours. A shared chaos we didn’t try too hard to control. Now it feels… different. Not gone, not ruined. Just smaller, tighter. Like the walls have been quietly moving in while no one was paying attention.
The Gentle Language of Control
Lately I keep hearing the same words. Safety. Protection. For the children. And of course they sound good. They sound right. Who would argue with keeping kids safe? But the thing about words is that they can mean almost anything, depending on who’s holding them.
Age checks. ID scans. Facial recognition. A slow, creeping demand to prove who you are before you’re allowed to exist online. It’s presented as harmless, logical or necessary. But it leaves me wondering: If we need permission to be here, who’s really in charge of the space we’ve built?
Small Losses Add Up Quietly
Control doesn’t always arrive with a bang. Sometimes it slips in quietly, a checkbox here, an extra form there, a policy change buried three clicks deep in a settings menu.
Most people shrug. It’s just one thing. But one thing becomes another, and then another. By the time you notice how heavy it’s gotten, you’re already carrying too much to put it down.
And maybe that’s the scariest part: not the sudden takeover, but the slow erosion you don’t feel until the ground is gone beneath you.
What I Don’t Want to Forget
There’s still freedom here, even now. In the late-night corners of the web where people build things just because they can. In conversations that stretch across time zones, messy and real. In moments when you feel less alone because someone, somewhere, typed something into the void and it reached you.
I don’t want to lose that. Not to algorithms, not to endless verification, not to the quiet hum of systems designed to watch more than they connect.
Final words
I don’t have a grand solution or a manifesto. Just this: a reminder to myself to notice. To pay attention when the walls move, even slightly. To keep seeking the strange, the open or unpolished places that make this whole tangled network worth holding onto.
Because freedom rarely disappears all at once. It slips away, piece by piece—unless someone sees it happening and remembers what it felt like when the field was still wide open.
This post was largely inspired by a thought-provoking article (or passionate rant) by a good friend.