The End of One Internet

Who remembers Bandersnatch? The Black Mirror movie released by Netflix in 2018. Chances are that you and I saw a very different movie, including a different outcome. For the people who haven’t seen it, the whole idea of the movie was your ability to create your own story because you could make decisions while watching. Based on your decisions, you would get to see a different version of the story. The result was that based on the different options and endings, there were 10-12 stories possible. Hence my point that you and I have possibly seen a different movie.

Back then it looked like a fun, interactive new way of watching a movie. I did not expect that seven years later we would possibly look back at this as a sign of what is to come.

I already talked about this phenomena a bit in my article about the future of at-home entertainment, the fact that we will definitely see fully personalized movies in the (near) future. This is because AI will have the ability to generate a specific movie, just for me, on the spot.

But there was a bigger question that popped in my mind when I heard Mark Zuckerberg talking about his ambition for the ad-industry. Zuckerberg’s vision is not building better tools for marketers. He’s trying to remove them from the loop entirely.

What this could potentially mean in practice:

• You say: “Sell this shoe.”
• Meta generates infinite video/image/copy combos with AI.
• It runs those ads across Instagram and Facebook, tuned per person.
• It tracks performance, adjusts _creative, shifts budget, all autonomously.
• Users buy the product without ever leaving the platform.

Would this be the end of the advertising industry? I don’t think immediately (although I do believe that not many agencies will survive..) but that is a discussion for another time, what I am more interested in for this article is the “tuned per person” element of this announcement.

When the AI train started in 2023, the first thing everyone (including myself) started shouting was “hyper personalization at scale”. What we meant back then was: create 10x or even 50x more ads for a client, with the same budget. The result was that we could create way more specific ads with mixed copy, languages, moods, backgrounds and so forth. See here an example of what we did (with Meta actually):

This already feels old now, listening to Zuckerberg. As in this case we still had humans create all these ads using Gen AI tools. The next step is completely taking out the human in this process.

Fully handing this over to an algorithm would mean a massive acceleration of the personalization element. We humans can’t handle so much data on every person, which we would then turn into ads. An AI can and the optimizations won’t end, it will becomes an insane flywheel:

1. AI generates endless ad variations

2. Each one gets real-time feedback: clicks, conversions, scroll time

3. The system learns instantly what works for each individual

4. It adjusts the next wave of content automatically per person

5. The process repeats, 24/7, at global scale

The result of this could be that you and I would see compleeeeetely different ads for the exact same product. I don’t think many big brands will dare to actually hand it all over to AI (yet), if there aren’t strict controls. But then again, those controls could hinder sales directly. But I do believe that the smaller ecommerce brands (and hustlers) will jump on this immediately. There will be many people who will not care how their product will be advertised as long as it leads to a sale..

But what if this isn’t just about advertising?

What if this is the model the entire internet is shifting toward? An internet where every experience, product, piece of content, or interaction is dynamically generated just for you?

News headlines that shift tone depending on your beliefs, the same story is framed differently depending on your worldview.. Angry or optimistic, left or right, crisis or opportunity. You will be reading your version of it, which can differ from all those around you.

Entertainment adapts based on your mood or behavior. One person gets a tighter, upbeat movie edit; another sees a slower, more reflective version, all generated on the fly to match your emotional state.

Automated influencer and creator content specifically to what you want to hear at that exact moment. Or even the content of your friends, only shown to you if the mood of their post reflects your current state?

Your version of the internet is no longer the internet..

I mean, half of it sounds horrible 😅 and I don’t know how to really feel about this. What could the possible effects of this be? An obvious challenge is the, already problematic, echo chambers. (which is the main reason I try to force myself to read/listen to opinions from different sides about big topics, and ill admit that is sometimes very hard to do 🥲)

Echo chambers form when personalization filters out opposing views, so you mostly see content that reinforces what you already believe. Over time, this narrows your perspective and makes disagreement feel not just wrong but unbelievable. The rise of echo chambers began when social platforms started optimizing content for engagement. Algorithms learned that people are more likely to click, like, or share things they already agree with so they kept showing more of the same.

Why did they do that? That goes to another fundamental problem with our current internet and that is its business model. I strongly believe this is one of the biggest reasons why our world has become so polarized and negative. Algorithms optimize for engagement, because the better the engagement, the more ad revenue they can generate. What gets most engagement? The emotion that is stronger than anything else: hate. This is why negative, hateful, news always goes further and much faster than anything positive. This is also the reason why I push as much optimism as I can, because the negative outlook is automatically getting way more attention already.

I do believe that we also have some responsibility here. Almost nobody wants to pay for services, such as social platforms or other.. The result is that we ended up with a internet full of advertising as that is kinda the only way to make money. The services we want, still cost money, so let’s not go to anti capitalism route please.. But who knows, big changes come with big opportunities and this might create the opportunity for a platform that charges 1, or 5, or 10 euros a month but without ads and personalization algorithms. Would you pay for it knowing what is coming?

What happens to shared cultural moments?

When every feed, ad, and even piece of content is personalized, we stop experiencing things together. There’s no common trailer everyone’s seen, no viral video we all quote, no Super Bowl ad we all debate the next day. Culture fragments into parallel micro-worlds, optimized for engagement but stripped of shared meaning. We lose the “did you see that?” moment, because no, we didn’t.

Remember Barbenheimer? Two completely different movies, Barbie and Oppenheimer, dropped on the same weekend, and the internet turned it into a global meme event. Pink meets nuclear physics. Everyone got the joke. Everyone chose a side (or watched both). It was absurd, viral, and completely shared. In a fully personalized internet, that combo might never have existed. You’d be fed only your niche trailer, your version of hype and the cultural moment would vanish.

Or what about Squid Game? People dressed as guards for Halloween. Red light, green light became a TikTok challenge. The entire internet spoke the same visual language for a few months. In a hyper-personalized future, the show might never go viral. Or we would all have seen different versions with different colors, different actors, different games. No mass moment. No collective hype. Just fragmented buzz in private feeds.

My question to myself, and all of you, now is: is this inevitable? Can we stop this?

I do believe there are such strong, business, incentives for the major companies that it feels like something that will happen no matter what. Or will there be a massive movement AGAINST all of this and will people actually put their money where their mouth is and stop buying from companies who do this, or are ready to pay for a social media alternative without ads?

There’s a good analogy for this kind of problem: You’re at a stadium. One person stands up to get a better view. Now the person behind them can’t see, so they stand too. Nobody wants to stand. It’s less comfortable. But once one person does it, everyone else has to follow.

And suddenly, the whole stadium is standing, yet no one can see any better than before.

That’s what philosopher Scott Alexander calls a Moloch Trap: A system where individual actions make sense, but the collective outcome is worse for everyone.

It feels like this is where we might be heading for brands when it comes to hyper (HYPER) personalization.

Once one player hands full control of their creative, targeting, and optimization to AI and sees results, everyone else is forced to follow. Not because they believe in it. Not because it fits their brand. But because if they don’t, they risk falling behind in efficiency, reach, and relevance. I also don’t think it is just the fear of falling behind, but also the nature of most companies that are lead by people who always want to perform better. If news of this opportunity starts to spread, with the real results of some brand, there will be pressure from senior leadership for better conversion numbers. And off we go…

Suddenly, the pressure isn’t just to do better. It’s to automate faster. To personalize more. To optimize more aggressively. Even if that means handing over parts of your brand voice, identity, or ethical lines.

And the deeper you go, the harder it becomes to pull back. Your brand starts to morph, quietly, incrementally, into whatever the algorithm thinks will perform best.

Which raises the question(s):

What happens when performance wins, but meaning disappears? Will people care? Will there be a real split between the ones that do and don’t?

As with many topics, I don’t have direct answers for this and I don’t always think that it will make our world better. What I do think, when it comes to brands, is that real relationships will matter more than ever. Both for brands, as for creators. Building your community, the connection you have with them, that they will keep supporting you/your brand and what you stand for, will keep buying even though they won’t see your “perfect” ad.

It reconfirms my idea that brand marketing will, eventually, will become more important than performance marketing. Because if everything is perfected, at every moment, the only way to make a conscious decision to choose something else comes from within. A connection, shared values or beliefs, which can only really be developed by community building and brand marketing.

Do I see benefits to hyper personalization? Definitely. Especially when it comes to education and health. Hyper-personalization could unlock every student’s potential by adapting lessons to their learning style, pace, and curiosity and bringing high-quality education to every kid in the world, regardless of background, income, or status. It makes learning more inclusive, engaging, and effective at scale.

In healthcare, it means proactive, tailored care, think AI-powered health plans, early detection based on your unique data, and treatments optimized for you, not the average patient. It opens the door to more precise, preventative, and empowering healthcare for everyone. Let’s just make sure the benefits outweigh the bad concequences!

A lot of big topics, a lot of big questions, a lot of big challenges.

I want to end this week’s article with a call to action, a personal one for all of you. Each and everyone of us has responsibility in this. It is too easy to just blame capitalism and big tech for all of it but in the meantime not wanting to pay a bit extra or are ok with a, not-so-perfect, solution. The market is never wrong, in the end people decide what works for them and what doesn't.

We can’t wait for regulation to solve this for us so let’s build and support the version of the internet we actually want to use. ❤️ 

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^{Over the years, I’ve navigated industries like advertising, music, sports, and gaming, always chasing what’s next and figuring out how to make it work for brands, businesses, and myself. From strategizing for global companies to experimenting with the latest tech, I’ve been on a constant journey of learning and sharing.}

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