BURNING CHROME | The internet: From information superhighway to a lonely back road
In the early 1990s, the phrase information superhighway captured the imagination of policymakers, technologists, and journalists alike. It was the rallying cry of an age when dial-up tones and clunky desktops promised a new democratic era of knowledge. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore became its unofficial salesman, declaring that a highway of information would connect everyone, everywhere. The image was irresistible: fast lanes of ideas, open to all, free of borders, designed to shrink inequality.
Three decades later, the road is still there. But the asphalt has cracked, toll booths have sprouted, cameras monitor every turn, and billboards spew propaganda. What began as a public highway has become a lonely, often hostile back road. And the dream of universal connection has mutated into something more fragmented, more surveilled, and more alienating.
The promise and the paradox
The first great promise was connection. By the mid-2000s, social networks like Friendster, MySpace, then Facebook, claimed they would bring us closer. They did—at least on the surface. A high school crush, an old friend now living in Zamboanga, a former bandmate could suddenly reappear on your screen. For a while, it felt like magic.
But psychologists began to sound alarms. Sherry Turkle of MIT, often called the “Margaret Mead of digital culture,” pointed out that we were trading conversation for connection. In her books and essays, Turkle chronicled how smartphones and social media reduced messy, intimate human interaction into likes, shares, and emojis. We weren’t talking—we were performing. And that performance eroded empathy.
This paradox has only deepened. Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey on teens and mental health reveals that while young people find comfort in online groups, they also feel more anxious, more isolated, and less in control. The American Psychological Association issued similar warnings: Social media is not inherently harmful, but without strong boundaries it magnifies insecurities and worsens sleep, focus, and self-esteem.
In the Philippines, where internet penetration is among the highest in Southeast Asia, the paradox is sharper. Filipino users spend nearly nine hours a day online, much of it on social media. For a people famous for close-knit family ties, it is bitter irony that these networks leave so many feeling alone in a crowd.
Anonymity was supposed to be another great gift of the network. For dissidents under authoritarian regimes, for whistleblowers exposing corruption, for LGBTQ+ youth seeking refuge, it is the digital equivalent of shelter. In 2015, UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye made it clear: Encryption and anonymity are not luxuries, but essential to privacy and free expression.
Civil society groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation continue to defend this principle. Without anonymity, they argue, dissent is stifled, surveillance becomes unbearable, and freedom shrinks. Ask the activists in Myanmar or Hong Kong, who rely on pseudonyms and encrypted apps to evade persecution.
Yet anonymity cuts both ways. It shields the vulnerable, but it also emboldens the cruel. Trolling, harassment, and mob shaming thrive in the dark corners of anonymous boards and comment sections. As early as the 2000s, Philippine forums like PinoyExchange had their share of flame wars. Today, anonymous Facebook groups and TikTok accounts spread rumor and malice at industrial scale.
The truth is not that anonymity is dangerous, but that ungoverned spaces are. Without moderation, anonymity becomes a license for abuse. With safeguards, it can remain a tool of liberation.
Disinformation as business model
The darker turn of the information highway has been the professionalization of disinformation. It’s no longer just a handful of pranksters pushing hoaxes. It’s an industry.
Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project has mapped “cyber troops” across 80 countries—organized groups of state-sponsored or party-affiliated actors using bots, fake accounts, and paid influencers to distort online conversations. In the Philippines, this has become tragically familiar. Keyboard armies have been mobilized for elections, public relations campaigns, even against journalists.
Rappler’s Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, documented how Facebook was weaponized in the Philippines. Coordinated networks of fake accounts pushed divisive narratives and smeared critics of those in power. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exploded in 2018, traced part of its testing ground to the Philippines—where harvested data was allegedly used to micro-target political ads.
Globally, the Cambridge Analytica affair, revealed by The Guardian, The Observer, and The New York Times, was the smoking gun. Tens of millions of Facebook profiles were mined without consent, building psychological dossiers to manipulate voters. It was proof that surveillance capitalism and political propaganda had merged into one toxic system.
Now, if disinformation was the new business, surveillance became the new infrastructure. Edward Snowden’s leaks in 2013 exposed the vast reach of the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program, which vacuumed data from major tech companies. While those firms disputed details, the disclosures confirmed what many suspected: Mass, suspicionless surveillance had become normalized.
Since then, dozens of governments have imitated or expanded similar programs. Freedom House’s 2024 “Freedom on the Net” report notes that internet freedom has declined globally for 14 consecutive years. Authoritarian regimes deploy spyware, democracies quietly expand monitoring powers, and ordinary citizens live under invisible scrutiny.
Here at home, surveillance also grows quietly. The Philippines passed the SIM Card Registration Act in 2022, mandating registration of mobile numbers with government ID. Officials said it was meant to combat scams and fraud, but critics warned it could enable state surveillance and compromise anonymity. Just this year, civil liberties advocates pointed out data leaks exposing registered users. Meanwhile, the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 remains controversial for its vague definitions and surveillance provisions.
When the state can monitor without transparency, and platforms collect data without consent, we are not drivers on the superhighway. We are cargo.
The social disconnection machine
Why does a world of infinite connection feel so disconnected? The answer lies in platform design. Social media companies optimize for engagement, not community. The endless scroll is designed to keep eyes glued, not to build empathy. Notifications are engineered to trigger dopamine, not solidarity.
The results are predictable. Outrage spreads faster than nuance. Envy spreads faster than contentment. Misinformation spreads faster than correction.
Turkle describes this as confusing performance for intimacy. Online, we curate our identities, polish our selfies, stage our meals. We chase likes and call it friendship. We compare ourselves to endless others and call it connection. But the psycho-social effect is more akin to self-surveillance. We become actors on an invisible stage, performing for an audience that is everywhere and nowhere.
In the Philippines, this is amplified by our cultural emphasis on pakikisama and social approval. Facebook isn’t just a platform here—it’s the internet. The hunger for likes merges with cultural pressures to conform. The result is a cycle of hyper-visibility and hidden loneliness.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, the internet amplifies the superego—the internalized voice of judgment. Every selfie posted, every status updated, is subject to immediate scrutiny. The constant gaze of others, even anonymous, drives anxiety and rumination. Instead of binding communities, it fragments them into tribal silos, each echoing its own biases.
Adolescents, still forming their identities, are especially vulnerable. Global studies confirm that while social media can provide belonging, it can also magnify body image issues, depression, and sleep deprivation. For adults, parasocial relationships—with influencers, celebrities, even politicians—replace genuine bonds.
The superhighway, meant to connect, now produces a loneliness epidemic. Studies from the U.S., UK, and Japan warn of rising “social disconnection,” where users report being more alone despite being constantly online. The Philippines is not immune: Psychologists here note increases in reported anxiety and depression, especially during and after the pandemic lockdowns when digital life became the only life.
What then is to be done? The metaphor still serves. We wanted a public superhighway, but we have ended up on privatized toll roads owned by corporations, monitored by states, plastered with propaganda. If we want a truly public road again, we need both rules and redesigns.
First, human rights must be the compass. Protect end-to-end encryption. Defend anonymity. Outlaw mass, suspicionless surveillance. Enact real privacy laws—something the Philippines still lacks in comprehensive form—that punish data hoarding and leaks.
Second, platforms must be forced to redesign. Chronological feeds instead of black-box algorithms. Transparency about political ads. Friction against viral disinformation, such as limits on reshares or fact-check interstitials. Independent audits of algorithmic harms.
Third, civic life must be rebuilt offline. Strengthen schools, libraries, and local forums. Invest in digital literacy that teaches not only how to spot fake news, but how propaganda systems work. Support independent journalism that can follow the money and expose manipulation networks.
Finally, users must demand accountability. We must refuse to be only cargo in someone else’s business model. Connection must be reclaimed as solidarity, not surveillance.
A Pinoy reckoning
The Philippines, once labeled “the social media capital of the world,” is both warning and opportunity. We have seen how digital platforms can sway elections, spread hate, and intimidate journalists. But we have also seen how they can raise money for disaster relief, connect migrant workers to their families, and amplify marginalized voices.
Our task is not to abandon the highway, but to rebuild it. To carve out public lanes where rights are respected, where data is safe, where propaganda is resisted, and where connection means more than curated performance.
The information superhighway was supposed to lead us somewhere better. It still can—but only if we wrestle control back from the corporations and states that have hijacked it. Otherwise, we remain passengers on a lonely, surveilled back road, hurtling toward a future where connection is measured in engagement metrics, not human bonds.
The internet should be the last bastion of freedom. And that bastion must remain free—not only free to connect, but free from tyranny.
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