There is a reason many of us hesitate to work on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or any of these so‑called “free” online services. It is not because the technology is bad. It is because the model is bad. These services do not just host our content — they quietly learn from our experiences, our decisions, our habits, our mistakes, and even the type of jobs we do. They track everything, no matter how hard you try to hide.
And the worst part? This was never an accident. It was the plan from day one.
Cheap services were never a gift — they were an investment in us as targets
People forget how aggressively governments and large organizations pushed the internet to become cheap, accessible, and sometimes totally free. Infrastructure, subsidies, public programs — all to make sure everyone gets online. Why? Because once the entire population is connected, the data flow becomes unstoppable.
“Think of it like a free bus ride,” someone once told me. “You don’t pay the fare, but the driver still knows exactly where you’re going.”
That is the dynamic of the modern internet. We are not customers. We are raw material.
Online services learn from us — and then replace us
Every click, every search, every message, every hesitation is recorded. These platforms do not just observe; they adapt. They refine their systems based on our behavior. They learn our workflows, our preferences, our shortcuts, our logic. Eventually, they automate the very tasks we used to do manually.
This is not science fiction. This is the natural evolution of any system that feeds on user behavior. And it explains why everything was so cheap at the beginning — because we were the unpaid workforce training the machine.
The illusion of privacy is the biggest joke of the decade
People still believe they can hide. They use tricks, plugins, settings, or “private mode” and think they are invisible. But the truth is simple: if the service is free, the tracking is mandatory. The system must learn, because learning is the product.
“Even a shadow tells a story,” an old friend once said. “And online, your shadow is brighter than you think.”
The real question is: what do we do now?
We cannot undo the past. We cannot un‑teach these systems what they already learned from us. But we can rethink how we engage with them. We can stop pretending these platforms are harmless toys. We can stop assuming they exist for our convenience. We can start designing our workflows around techniques, not tools — the same principle that has always separated mature operations from chaotic ones.
The internet was never free. We just paid with something other than money.