The Dark Future of the Online World. Part I. The Descent From Web1 to Web4.

Welcome to Tomorrow You Never Asked For

They promised us a decentralized utopia. They delivered a dystopia where your refrigerator owns more of your data than you do.

Remember when the Internet was going to save us all? And when blockchain was the answer to every question, including ones nobody asked? Well, congratulations, we’re about to do it all over again, except this time with more AI, more biometrics, and somehow even less privacy. Welcome to Web, where the Web doesn’t just track you! It predicts, preempts, and probably judges you for that 3 AM pizza order. Well, at least the ads will be really accurate.

The “Good Old Times”

Let’s start our journey by taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane, back when the Internet was merely bad, not apocalyptically terrible.

Perhaps, Web1 could be considered the digital equivalent of reading a newspaper that never updates. Static pages, slow modems, and the comforting sound of your phone line dying every time someone wanted to call…You’d wait seventeen minutes for a single image to load, one agonizing pixel row at a time. Websites looked like they were designed by someone who just discovered the font menu and couldn’t help themselves.

But here’s the thing: it was honest in its limitations. A website couldn’t track you because it was barely functional to begin with, as cookies were things you ate, and not things that followed you across the web for years. Your data was safe because nobody had figured out how to monetize it yet. In its essence, the old Internet was more like a library where nothing moved and everything was under construction (remember those eternal “under construction” GIFs?), but at least the library wasn’t reporting your browsing history to advertisers.

You could visit a website and leave. Just… leave. Close the browser. The website didn’t care, it didn’t remember you, and didn’t try to re-engage you. It just sat there, static and lonely, waiting for the next visitor. Simpler times. Dumber times. Better times that are forever gone now.

The 2000s Way

Then came Web2, and everything went to hell in a very profitable handbasket. Suddenly, everyone became a “content creator,” which is corporate-speak for “unpaid laborer generating data for billionaires while we gaslight you into thinking it’s empowerment.” Meh. You weren’t working for Facebook, you were “sharing your life.” You weren’t generating revenue for YouTube. Instead, you were “building your brand.” And of course, you weren’t surrendering your privacy for convenience as you were “joining the conversation.” Indeed.

The platforms were initially free, which should have been the first red flag. When you’re not paying for the product, you are the product — a cliché old as dirt that everyone repeated and nobody took seriously enough. Facebook knew your political leanings before you did, Google finished your sentences and read your emails to serve you better ads, and Amazon recommended products before you knew you needed them, or more accurately, before they made you think you needed them through algorithmic manipulation so subtle you believed the desire was your own.

We called it the “attention economy,” which sounds so much better than “weaponized psychology for profit” or “industrial-scale addiction engineering.” Infinite scroll wasn’t designed for your convenience, but rather to …well, just keep you scrolling! Notifications weren’t keeping you informed, but they were keeping you anxious and checking for sure, 16/7. Every interface element was A/B tested thousands of times to find the exact design that would maximize engagement from your limited conscious awareness! The list can go on.

So, the social networks figured out that anger drives engagement, so they algorithmically promoted content that made you angry. Misinformation spreads faster than truth because lies are more interesting than the actual reality. Your best friend became a conspiracy theorist not because he’s stupid, but because the algorithm learned that conspiracy content kept him on the platform seventeen minutes longer per session, and seventeen minutes equals more ad impressions equals X3 more money.

And we all just…accepted it, because the convenience was undeniable. Why remember phone numbers when your contacts are synced? Or print directions when GPS exists? Why meet people in person when you can swipe right? Each compromise seemed reasonable, and each surrender of privacy came with a certain benefit. At the end of the day, we sold ourselves for free email and next-day shipping, and we pretended we got the better end of the deal.

Here Comes the “Revolution” You Didn’t Ask For

Now, the most fascinating part starts! Then Web3 crashed through the door like a drunk relative at Thanksgiving, shouting about revolution.

Decentralization! Blockchain! Cryptocurrencies that would definitely replace fiat currency any day now! NFTs that would undoubtedly hold their value and were absolutely not just digital Beanie Babies for people who learned nothing from previous bubbles! The pitches were quite intoxicating: take power back from Big Tech, own your data, control your digital destiny, stick it to The Man!

Remember when people paid six figures for pixel art of bored apes last time? Or when Twitter execs put laser eyes in their profile pictures. When every conversation somehow ended up being about whether you understood what blockchain really was. (Narrator: Nobody understood what blockchain really was, including the people explaining it.)

The future was supposed to be financial sovereignty and digital ownership. Own your data, own your identity, and your tweets. In 2025, what we’ve got is financial casinos with worse odds than Vegas, scams operating in broad daylight because “code is law” apparently, and environmental destruction as a feature… not a bug, because apparently burning enough electricity to power a small nation per transaction was the price of decentralization.

The crypto bros promised that blockchain would eliminate the need for trust. They were technically correct as you definitely couldn’t trust them since the NFT market was 95% wash trading and self-dealing. The “play-to-earn” games turned out to be pyramid schemes with better graphics, while the majority of DAOs (or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) turned out to be regular organizations, except slower, more expensive, and with worse and sometimes really crazy, governance.

And the VCs loved it! Billions poured into projects that were either vaporware or solutions looking for problems. Do you need blockchain for supply chain management? No. For voting? Certainly not. For anything other than speculative mania and illicit transactions? The jury’s still out, and by “out,” we mean “has rendered a verdict of no, but people keep appealing it.”

Web3 was supposed to save us from Web2’s surveillance capitalism, but instead, it added financial speculation on top of it. Every transaction on a public blockchain is permanent and visible, and your wallet address becomes your identity, linkable to your real identity through numerous vectors. It’s surveillance, but now it’s decentralized and permanent. Call it the Progress!

Welcome to the Future You Unimagined

Now here comes Web4, stumbling onto the scene like it’s trying to prove that third strikes and fourth strikes are both possible... And oh boy, have we learned nothing.

The pitch sounds familiar because it’s essentially Web3’s greatest hits album, except now with AI doing the scamming for us, automating the dystopia for efficiency. And it promises an “intelligent” web that anticipates your needs through predictive algorithms that definitely won’t be biased or creepy. Powered by quantum computing (whatever that means this week — the definition changes depending on who’s trying to raise venture capital) and neural interfaces, it will let you browse the web with your thoughts (because typing was apparently too much effort, and privacy was overrated anyway).

Marketeers say that hyper-personalized experiences will be tailored to you by AI that knows you better than you know yourself. Furthermore, it might be seamlessly integrated with the physical world as they claim — your smart home, smart car, smart clothes, smart toothbrush, smart toilet paper whatsoever, all talking to each other and sharing data about you. The future of human-computer interaction, they swear, and by “interaction” they mean “the computer makes decisions for you.”

Web4 proponents talk about the “spatial web,” and “ambient computing,” and “the embodied Internet.” What they mean is: cameras everywhere, sensors everywhere, your every movement and biometric reading captured and analyzed. They mean: AI agents making decisions on your behalf, whether you want them to or not. They also mean: the final merger of physical and digital space, such that opting out of the digital panopticon means opting out of participating in society.

The reality? It will feel more like Web2’s surveillance apparatus merged with Web3’s speculative mania and cryptographic false promises, wrapped in an AI that makes decisions you can’t understand, can’t appeal, and definitely can’t escape. It’s machine learning models trained on humanity’s worst impulses, given authority over life-altering decisions. Likewise, it’s smart contracts that execute automatically based on conditions determined by algorithms, enforcing rules written by people who didn’t consider edge cases because they were too busy raising Series B funding.

Feels like somebody watched every Black Mirror episode, took notes, and thought, “Yes, but what if we made it mandatory and integrated it into every aspect of daily life? What if we made it impossible to opt out? What if we made the dystopia the default setting?”

And the most terrifying part? We’re going to accept it. Not all at once, no one would accept that, no sir! But piece by piece, convenience by convenience, efficiency by efficiency. Each step will seem reasonable in isolation, every new intrusion will come with a benefit, so in the end, each surrender will be justified by the improvements to the user experience.

We’re not building Web4 because we want it. Corporations see it as profitable. After all, the technology makes it possible, and because we’ve already demonstrated that we’ll accept anything if you make it convenient enough and roll it out slowly enough that we don’t notice the cage being built around us.

Welcome to the future. It’s going to be so much worse than you imagine, and you’re going to pay a subscription fee for it.

The Dark Future of the Online World. Part I. The Descent From Web1 to Web4. was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.