The Private Internet Won't Save You

The private internet is rising — but are micro-platforms freedom, or a new kind of cage? A UX analysis of shifting creator economics, the brand thinkpiece, and Platform Literacy.

the IRRATIONAL TECHNOLOGY blog is part of a wider educational initiative and consultancy aimed at helping people and organisations understand the digital world, from a critical design perspective and an autonomy based approach.

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In the past decade, interactions in the “private internet” — private‑channel shares account for about 84% of shares worldwide,

People are gravitating toward more community-focused online spaces and away from extractive algorithmic control. More online creators now build “micro-platforms,” by offering paid access to Discord, some run paid Substacks, and slowly shift away from public profiles.

But does this shift bring real freedom? Or a new form of exploitation? Is this community-centred internet a real change or simply a new face for old dynamics?

How Affect Becomes Structure

The algorithm revolves around affect. We want to be smart, we want to feel part of something. So, the algorithm takes this on board. We all want community, privacy, a sense of belonging. But how do these desires translate into the invisible rules of online spaces? How do these hidden structures shape our interactions in the digital world?

Byung-Chul Han calls this ‘emotional capitalism,’ which, through social media, creates the illusion of endless possibility. My central argument is that even as the locus shifts from public to private spaces, emotional capitalism persists—sometimes in new forms.

While Han focuses on exploitation through emotional illusions on the public internet, I argue that the private, community-centred internet both continues and transforms these dynamics. It caters to our desire for privacy and community while differently leveraging affective labour, prompting us to reconsider what, if anything, has truly changed.

Online creators perform affective labour, exposing emotions as a survival strategy. Many livestream daily, share stories, respond to comments to maintain emotional bonds, and offer tiered shout-outs. The move to privacy and community has turned this labour into building “community” as a survival.

Features like group chats, channels, and events often serve as marketing funnels rather than true public spaces. Patreon’s membership churn drives creators to engage members mainly to reduce turnover, not build community. Cancel buttons are cleverly hidden. Tiers are constantly upselled, and if you just upgrade one more time you’ll get that community you desire so much.

Developing Platform Literacy

‘Platform Literacy’ is a new kind of media literacy for the platform age, which essentially describes the ability to see what is real. It’s a concept I’ve developed over 3.5 years of working in understanding technology and how it impacts our social systems. It’s closely tied to a lot of the issues with the “private internet” conversation, since it’s designed to give people the literacy to distinguish what is real from what they feel.

You don’t beat the system by hating yourself, as is common in the algorithmic age. You beat it by understanding it. Platform Literacy means being aware of the key aspects that shape these emotional responses.

• Algorithmic awareness is understanding how algorithms shape social media. When you see enraging content, can you recognise, “This appears because the algorithm rewards any engagement, and anger is easy to provoke?”

• Traditional media literacy is just as important for platform literacy. It involves knowing how to look for bias, missing facts, spin, and hidden motives, as well as spotting propaganda, distinguishing reporting from opinion, tracking ownership of media outlets, and understanding which voices are amplified or excluded.

• Hype literacy describes your ability to recognise when something is overhyped. Can you spot hype and understand that it is not always reflective of quality or usefulness?

• Design literacy. It’s very common to think that the behavioural science behind our favourite platforms is extremely advanced — but that’s not true. A lot of it is highly contested and largely depends on the context of each individual’s life. Humans are not so easily manipulated — so why can we still not pull ourselves away? This is exactly how it works. Sometimes when you use social media, you will receive the little rewards in your brain - other times you won’t. This keeps you coming back, thinking that if you just get it right, you’ll access those rewards again.

When Institutions Adopted the Same Logic

The influencer format lends itself to this kind of connection. Unlike individual influencers who can cultivate authentic parasocial connections through personal engagement and storytelling, brands face structural hurdles in achieving the same level of intimacy. So, in comes the Brand Thinkpiece.

Take Figma’s article “Software is culture” as an example. The idea that software or media shapes culture is not new—McLuhan, Parenti, Chomsky, and others have discussed it. The article aims to evoke an emotional—psychopolitical response by doing the following:

(1) Making you feel inspired and as if your world makes that little bit more sense

(2) Making you feel you are someone who understands these things, an educated, learned person committed to reflection and analysis of the world around you

(3) Nudge you to subtly attach this feeling to the brand, creating attachment

Institutions have had to evolve. The old logic of advertising stopped working - and now they need to provide a different emotional service to survive. To make us feel not sold to, to make us feel educated, to make us feel connected. Figma makes you feel inspired, smart, like you get how software shapes culture.

The brand thinkpiece” is an example of how the increasing desire for mere human connection and community is allowing exploitation and extraction to evolve rather than be dismantled.

The Structural Shift

The private internet is not inherently more free - it merely moves us from a public panopticon to a new, smaller one. Affect is the currency everything operates through, whether that is big, showy influencers and flashy experiential marketing, or the sense of “privacy”, community, and conversation.

The move to affect made faux-community inevitable. The constant content, entrepreneurial self, and dreams that responded to inequality were always going to fade. The neoliberal dream was always an illusion based on affect. When it stopped working, a new affect arose.

No one is up in Figma HQ rubbing their hands together and coming up with a cunning plan on how to fool the next generation into buying their products. The system works because it genuinely convinces people that how they feel about something reflects reality, and systematically rewards the watered-down cultural narratives — like the ‘rise of the private internet’ — that enable it to keep going.

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But amidst this understanding, there is room for collective action and experimentation.

We can look to create co-ops and open-source platforms that prioritise genuine community connection over commercial gain. By engaging collaboratively, we have the opportunity to redefine what the internet can be. The invitation is here: innovate, experiment, and challenge the status quo to build an internet that serves all rather than the few. This is how analysis can transform into momentum and lead to genuine change.