How Capitalism Destroyed The Internet

The internet’s most damaging problems—surveillance, censorship-by-profit, unequal access, and corporate control—trace back to a shift from a public, collaborative network to a capitalist system built to monetize attention and data. That change matters because it turns everyday online activity into a revenue engine, concentrates power in a handful of companies, and makes “fixing” the internet largely dependent on what profitable firms are willing to do.

In the Cold War, the U.S. government created ARPA (later DARPA) in 1958, partly in response to Sputnik and fears of falling behind the Soviet Union. ARPA/DARPA funded early networking work that produced ARPANET, widely treated as the first public computer network. Because it was built as a public project, it faced constraints that shaped the internet’s early DNA: it existed, it was too expensive and slow for private firms to justify, and it was developed collaboratively under shared protocols and open sharing requirements. Contractors had to work together, use universal codes so data could route reliably, and share innovations rather than lock them behind proprietary secrecy. The government also built regional public networks through universities and institutions, placing infrastructure where it was useful rather than where it was most profitable.

As demand surged in the early 1990s—accelerated by user-friendly browsing and the rise of hyperlinks—private-sector leaders reversed course and pushed for privatization. In 1995, during the Clinton administration amid neoliberal ideology, the internet’s physical infrastructure was privatized. The argument centered on competition and innovation, but the outcome was an oligopoly: only a small number of companies control the physical network, while public networks stopped expanding or were shut down. The consequences are stark. Internet service providers have incentives to serve profitable customers, leaving large gaps in broadband access; the transcript cites that about one third of Americans lack broadband, with worse outcomes for poorer communities. It also points to price gouging and high U.S. internet costs alongside slower or worse service.

Privatization then spread into the digital layer. After the mid-1990s website boom and the dot-com crash, surviving platforms adopted “online mall” strategies—renting digital space and, crucially, monetizing user behavior through tracking. In this model, surveillance isn’t an occasional abuse; it becomes a core business function. Content moderation and political outcomes also follow investor and advertiser incentives rather than democratic deliberation, with reactionary material often tolerated because it drives profitable engagement until a crisis triggers a crackdown.

Finally, consolidation tightened control. The transcript highlights major acquisitions and cloud dependencies, arguing that authority over censorship and platform behavior increasingly concentrates in a shrinking set of corporations. Regulation and antitrust are treated as necessary but insufficient because a capitalist incentive structure will keep finding loopholes and consolidating over time.

The proposed alternative is a deprivatized internet: publicly owned or publicly managed broadband at local scales (with an example of Chattanooga, Tennessee) and, by extension, national or international public infrastructure. On the digital side, the transcript calls for running internet services without profit as the organizing motive and using democratic structures so creators and users can shape rules together. The goal isn’t perfection, but an internet that works for ordinary people rather than primarily for profit-seekers.