The internet is dysfunctional. Riding on the backs of powerful algorithms that are constantly mining data, the internet seems to have acquired a life of its own, guiding not just what we buy but the very governments that come to power.

No matter how secretive the platform designers are about their algorithm design, it is obvious that the algorithms invisibly managing the internet encourage adrenaline-driven toxicity and the platforms more often than not look away from undeniably criminal actions online.

The internet today is not a neutral space—it is an engineered environment shaped by algorithms that reward outrage and amplify conflict, normalising hostility, manipulation, and harm. Telling people to “ignore or block the haters” is not a serious response to a system that is structurally designed to provoke and exploit our worst instincts.
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The internet gradually grew into its current state as the sum of our worst impulses because governance was always trailing far behind its trending uses. And now we have arrived at this stalemate where any attempt to govern the internet makes people worry, not without reason, about government overreach.

It is understandable that calls for stronger governance are met with a familiar and justified fear: that any attempt to regulate the internet will become a tool for state overreach. This fear is real. But allowing it to paralyse action has effectively handed control to corporations whose incentives are no less troubling. An ungoverned internet is not a free one—it is simply governed by opaque algorithms and profit motives.

The debate around anonymity captures this tension. The push for identity verification is certainly led by platforms that have been built on data harvesting and privacy violations. Yet rejecting these proposals outright should not mean defending unconditional anonymity in a space rife with abuse, exploitation, and organised harm. Absolute anonymity, like absolute control, creates its own dangers. This is no way for a civilised society to deal with abuse.

Yes, the push for ID verification for internet use is ominous. What, then, are the rules that would guarantee, uncompromisingly, an internet free of abuse as well as government and corporate control? Why can’t this conversation be had?

Mental, emotional, and sexual abuse on the internet is often trivialised because it seems distant from real life and thus different from real violence. But the very real manifestations of the internet’s role in violence are many – from doxing and stalking to recruiting terrorists and drumming up support for wars. All the ways in which the internet is used to cause harm to people should be looked at as a continuum. We have yet to deal with the breakdown of communication on our largest and allegedly most democratised communication channel.

How can one of the most lucrative businesses on the planet be largely ungoverned in this way? Any comparison of virtual spaces and the real world makes it clear that the two are beholden to very different standards when it comes to what is permissible social behaviour. This is nothing short of bizarre, as the virtual world is still very much a part of the real world.

We do not have to choose between governing the internet and having governments that do not abuse their powers. The two are very much the same thing. An effective and responsible government should not abuse its power to govern the internet or any other sphere of life.

Yes, we should have an internet free of unwarranted meddling by corporations and governments. But the current internet is far from being such an internet. Arguing for keeping the internet the way it is does not solve the problem of the existing and continuing misuse of the internet by governments, corporations, and individuals. This is a bad model for the present as well as for the future.

Governing the international commons that is the internet is not optional.

The choice, then, is not between freedom and regulation. A functional society cannot afford to abandon its largest communication infrastructure to either unchecked state power or unregulated private systems. The harder task is to design rules that curb harm without concentrating authority. Avoiding that task just maintains the status quo. And the current status quo – either online or offline – is most definitely not what freedom looks like.