I think I hate the internet

08 Sep, 2026

I’ve just finished reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams and was equally parts shocked and unsurprised by the events she witnessed at Facebook / Meta.

It’s a terrifying, breathless, and gripping read, and pretty much eviscerates Meta and everything it has professed to stand for since about 2012.

I’ve not had a Facebook account for years now, and it’s coming up to a year since I removed my Instagram and WhatsApp accounts too. My Facebook account was the first to go, and looking through my old emails I can see I requested deletion in 2018. I can’t put my finger on the exact reason I binned it, but I suspect it was because it had become increasingly filled with posts and content from people I’d grown distant from since school, college, and university. As well as those people, it was filling with news, groups, promoted adverts and posts, and other general crap. I guess overall it felt low value and just another of those vast online troves of personal data waiting to be monetised.

I kept Instagram and WhatsApp for a lot longer; these were only deleted by me last year. For instagram my reasons were much of the same as with Facebook, but with the added toxicity of Meta and their misdeeds to add fuel to the fire. Brexit, Trump, Myanmar, child suicides, alt-right, and just a whole lot of hate speech, propaganda, fake news, and of course AI slop. WhatsApp was the final Meta service to leave, but I figured that I only maintained contact with a pretty close circle of friends, most of whom I could always text (SMS) or iMessage.

Have I missed any of these platforms? Honestly, no. I definitely recall being concerned that I’d be out of touch with friends and acquaintances, or that I’d miss some hilarious meme or news that was popular, or that I’d not be able to keep others up to date with what I was doing in my personal life. Ultimately though, all that’s happened is I spend far less time consuming low value content, and more time doing other things that interest me. I also make a more conscious effort to meet regularly (in person) with my close friends; an admittedly smaller group of people, but a group that I think I have more rewarding friendships with.

Sorry for the lengthy preamble but I think this all underpins what has been going through my mind after reading Careless People. The internet is all about connectivity (duh), and most social networks have sought to justify their existence with lofty and worthy sounding goals like “connecting people across the world”, and “giving everyone the tools to build new relationships and friendships with people that matter”…blah blah blah.

Sarah Wynn-Williams certainly believed all this too. In her book she describes her idealism and enthusiasm for Facebook especially in her first few years working there. She truly believed that this company was going to “do good”. But even a cursory glance at Facebook’s backstory shows how it was never borne out of these ethical or morally guided desires, it was a way to rate how attractive the classmates at Harvard were. Facebook is an empire of shit built upon a foundation of misogyny and judgemental behaviour.

Mark was never a genius. He was a good coder who got into Harvard, acted like a dick, stumbled upon a half decent idea, and a whole bunch of dumb luck and privilege later ends up with one of the most valuable companies of all time.

And this is what so many of these tech bros and Silicon Valley startups are like. The “move fast and break things” mantra. The exploitative hyper-capitalist mentality. They have all corrupted the internet and now we can see it happening again with AI slop.

The internet was about connection, but the way I see it, it’s become a great way for bad actors to defraud vulnerable people. For racists to find other racists and amplify their unsavoury views. For paedophiles for groom children with anonymity. For governments to manipulate with ease. For companies to advertise with incredibly accurate and exploitative advertising campaigns. The list just goes on and on.

I work in IT, so I feel kind of stuck in this industry and I increasingly feel a revulsion for everything it stands for. I struggle to see the value in the internet and in IT in general. Social networks have become an evil for global societies and I think the negative impacts have far outweighed any positives.

What is the internet now to me? In many ways it’s something that I have to tolerate to do many things that functioned fine before. I have to use an app to pay for parking. I need to create an online account to pay for a family swim at the local leisure centre. I have to submit an online form to book a slot at the local recycling centre. I need an app to check my bank and credit card balances. And to allow this experience to be bearable I have to service and finance a £600 phone, pay a monthly contract and subscription to Apple, I then have to install an adblocker because otherwise sites are just unusable. I have to navigate endless authentication prompts and MFA codes, and generate unique passwords for everything and store them in a password manager. I have to charge a phone daily and apply a screen protector and a case to ensure this delicate glass and metal object doesn’t smash to pieces and remove my access to my own digital life I’m forced to maintain. And this phone itself needs maintenance and demands my attention all the fucking time; I have to turn off notifications, and ensure the apps are up to date, and make sure the iOS version is updated too, and I need to opt out of marketing emails, and ensure I don’t click on a phishing email, and I need to keep my spam filter in check, and run a VPN to maintain a basic level of privacy, and on and on and on…

It’s exhausting, and I’m just gobsmacked that within living memory none of this really existed. I’m a 90s child and I vividly remember being out of the house on days out without a smartphone or even a feature phone. How insane does this feel now? Can you imagine leaving the house without a phone? But I have this yearning for a simpler time and I guess this is what happens as you get older. Maybe it’s all rose tinted glasses I’m wearing but I just look at the internet and every day I think “I fucking hate you. I actually hate everything you’ve done to me and everyone else”.

The internet has stolen innocence, wonder and serendipity out of society.

I’ve been turning my iPhone into a dumb phone so we shall see how that goes. But here I am now, writing a blog post on a tiny iPhone keyboard for some reason. Why didn’t I just get a pen and paper? Does anyone need to read this? The internet needs to piss off, and I mean just back the fuck up. It never needed to be this enmeshed in everyone’s lives. I want to go live in a cottage in the countryside and literally not have an internet connection.