The early internet of the 1990s was slow, unreliable, and full of amateurs building niche websites about their interests with no business model in mind, according to Stephen Diehl. While scams and predatory behavior existed on the periphery, they were aberrations rather than the norm.
Today, that has fundamentally inverted. According to Diehl, predation has moved from the margins to the center of how the internet operates. Platforms now systematize the process: they detect human vulnerability, amplify it, profile weaknesses, optimize pitches, process payments, and recommend the next scheme. “The modern internet is now a highly optimised machine for detecting human vulnerability, amplifying it, and placing a payment link beside it,” Diehl writes.
What distinguishes the current system, according to Diehl, is its participatory nature. A large and growing share of the population devotes waking hours to recruiting others into schemes they barely understand—cryptocurrency investments, courses about affiliate marketing, wellness products, and political conspiracy theories. Many earn nothing and function as unpaid distributors for someone higher in the pyramid. “The consumer, salesman, and product have collapsed into the same exhausted person,” Diehl observes.
Platform recommendation systems drive this cycle by continuously experimenting on human psychology. According to Diehl, these systems optimize for attention, retention, and conversion through reinforcement learning loops. Calm accuracy loses in this environment. Sensationalism, transgression, and impossible promises win. “Threat, transgression, humiliation, and impossible promises win,” he notes.
Diehl describes the mechanics as dopaminergic: users scroll in anticipation of variable rewards, uncertain whether the next refresh will bring approval, profit, or nothing—which makes scrolling again more urgent. This structure fused what Diehl calls the “Skinner box” with commission incentives. Social media addicts receive referral codes and are told they are small business owners.
According to Diehl, cryptocurrency exemplifies this system. It combines technological mystification with financial incentives that make every participant a publicist for their own investment position. Price movements create proof of adoption, which recruits new buyers, whose money generates more price movement. “Every participant has a direct financial incentive to become a publicist for his own position,” Diehl writes.
The system cannot function if people feel satisfied. According to Diehl, this creates perverse incentives: the grievance merchant must preserve grievance, the wellness influencer must prevent wellness, and the trading guru must prevent financial security. Misery becomes recurring revenue.
Key facts
- According to Diehl, predation has shifted from an abuse of the network to the network’s organizing principle
- Platforms detect vulnerability, amplify it, and place payment links beside it, according to Diehl
- Diehl describes many online grifters as marks themselves, believing their own pitches because admitting falsehood would require admitting wasted years
- According to Diehl, platform recommendation systems optimize for attention and conversion, not accuracy or social benefit
- Diehl argues the system creates incentives where honesty loses to sensationalism and impossible promises in reach and engagement