The rise of the internet in the 1990s was initially shaped by a utopian discourse carrying ideals of democratisation, equality and unlimited information sharing. This early vision was based on the belief that the decentralised structure of the internet held liberating potential. However, with the global spread of neoliberal economic policies and the penetration of capitalist accumulation regimes into the digital sphere, this libertarian discourse underwent a significant transformation.

Four fundamental conceptual frameworks stand out in the analysis of this process. Digital capitalism has transformed the internet into a ‘digital social factory’ where user activities are exploited as ‘free labour’. Surveillance capitalism, meanwhile, commodifies human behaviour by turning it into raw material, establishing a new regime of accumulation. The phenomenon of the digital divide goes beyond technical access issues, deepening in terms of skills, content production and digital literacy, and reproducing existing socio-economic inequalities. Platform capitalism, meanwhile, represents a structure in which monopolistic digital platforms establish hegemonic control in the areas of data, network effects, economics, society and culture.

However, this hegemonic structure is not absolute. Alternative approaches such as hacker movements, collaborative production models and platform cooperativism remain relevant as centres of resistance towards the re-publicisation and democratisation of the digital sphere. These alternative models have the potential to enable the restructuring of digital technologies in line with social benefit and collective interests.

Eventually, the nature of the digital future will be shaped by the course of this struggle between capitalist exploitation mechanisms and collective interests. This process is directly related to the answer given to the question of how the capacity of digital technologies to transform social relations will be directed in line with the principles of democratic control and collective benefit.