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    • The Feeling of Control Slipping Away

    By The Atlantic May 30, 2026
    Back in the web-traffic-obsessed days of 2018, at a time of dawning awareness of how easily audiences online could be manipulated and spoofed by bots, the writer Max Read argued that the internet had crossed a threshold known as “the Inversion.” Not only had bots proliferated across the internet; they had come to constitute it. In outnumbering humans, bots were also loosening everyone’s grasp on the very reality of online experience. “What’s gone from the internet, after all, isn’t ‘truth,’ but trust: the sense that the people and things we encounter are what they represent themselves to be,” Read wrote.
    The Feeling of Control Slipping Away

    The Feeling of Control Slipping Away The proliferation of AI agents and bots is diminishing human agency and trust online, creating a sense of passive consumption and a crisis of purpose. This shift, driven by autonomous AI performing human tasks and black-box algorithms, leads to feelings of manipulation and a questioning of human relevance. The internet’s transformation from a user-generated space to a machine-mediated one negates the human need for consultation and engagement, resulting in a growing unease and a pushback in the physical world.

    • The internet has shifted from human interaction to being constituted by bots and AI agents, eroding trust and blurring reality.
    • Autonomous AI performs human tasks, generates content, and operates within algorithmic systems, leading to human passivity.
    • The flood of AI content and fake accounts fosters paranoia about manipulation and blurs the lines of authenticity.
    • There’s a widespread crisis of agency as humans feel control slipping away, leading to anxiety about their role and purpose.
    • The AI industry’s focus on efficiency and automation negates the human need for consultation and collaboration.
    • Protests against AI, such as opposition to data centers, represent a reclaiming of agency in the physical world.
    • The AI paradigm tasks humans with feeding data into machinery, performing humanity for machines to mimic and surpass.
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