The Internet is not what you Think it is

A grandmother in Layou opens Facebook to check on her grandchildren. Within minutes she is watching a video about a miracle diabetes cure, promoted by a person she has never met. A young man in Georgetown searches Google for advice on starting a small business and the first five results are paid advertisements. A mother in Kingstown, scrolling Amazon for school supplies, buys the item at the top of her search, not knowing the seller paid to put it there, and that a better, cheaper option sat buried on page two.

Each believes they are making free choices in an open marketplace. None of them are. We were told the internet would be the great equalizer. Instead it is reproducing the very inequalities it was supposed to dismantle. The playing field is not level, it is for sale.

The Algorithm Is Not Your Friend!!

Every time you open Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, an algorithm decides what you see. It does not choose what is true or important. It chooses what will keep you scrolling, because your attention is the product being sold. In 2024 Meta earned over US$160 billion in advertising revenue while Google earned US$265 billion. These sums are generated by one mechanism, showing you content designed to hold your gaze long enough to sell it to an advertiser. You are not browsing the internet, the internet is browsing you.

For us this is especially dangerous. Our newsrooms are small and our independent media stretched thin, the paper in your hands among them. When an algorithm buries a report on the national Budget debate beneath a sensational foreign headline, it does not merely waste your time. It poisons the well of public discourse. A fisherman in Barrouallie, a teacher in Mesopotamia, a nurse at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, each deserves information that serves their interests. Instead they are fed what serves a foreign platform’s shareholders.

Paid Voices, Fake Crowds

Then there are the influencers, polished personalities offering product recommendations and political commentary as personal conviction. Behind many are management agencies, brand contracts and scripted narratives built to look spontaneous. When a Caribbean influencer promotes a financial product, offers a view on a national issue, or endorses a candidate, you often cannot tell whether you are hearing genuine opinion or paid performance. The smile is real, the opinion may not be.

Working alongside them are the trolls, not random provocateurs, but coordinated operations deploying fake accounts to shape public conversation. In a nation of a hundred thousand, a single well-funded campaign can dominate social media overnight, manufacturing popular opinion where none exists. We have just come through a general election, ask yourself honestly how much of what you saw online in those weeks was a citizen speaking, and how much was a machine performing as a citizen. The goal is not always to convince you of a particular lie. Often it is to flood the space with so much noise that you stop trusting anything at all. Confusion is not a side effect, it is the strategy.

Pay-to-Play: Where Inequality Lives

Perhaps the most damaging deception hides in plain sight, the pay-to-play architecture of the platforms we trust most. A study by Consumers’ Checkbook found that roughly half of all Amazon search results are now sponsored placements. Amazon’s advertising division alone generated US$56 billion in 2024, nearly double its figure of three years earlier. The item at the top of your search is not the best product or the cheapest, it is the best-funded.

Google operates the same way, the line between paid ads and genuine results blurred to near-invisibility. When a young entrepreneur in Kingstown searches “how to export sea moss,” or a patient in Chateaubelair looks up a symptom, the most visible answer is not the most accurate. It is the one someone paid to place there. Now consider what this means for the Vincentian producer. A woman in Park Hill bottling world-class pepper sauce. A boat-builder in Bequia carving model schooners that collectors abroad prize. A farmer in Union Island with sea moss product the world has finally learned to pay for. A young developer in  Kingstown building an app. None can compete in a US$56 billion advertising auction. Their products may be superior, their ambition fierce but in a system where visibility is purchased rather than earned, talent without capital is invisible. The internet was supposed to open the global market to the small producer. Instead it built a new tollgate, and the toll is one most Vincentian businesses cannot pay.

What You Can Do

I do not write this to counsel despair. The internet remains a powerful tool but a tool you do not understand can be used against you. The next time you scroll, ask three questions. Who placed this in front of me? Is this voice authentic, or performing authenticity for profit? Is this the best answer, or merely the best-funded?

And to our policymakers, here in St Vincent and the Grenadines and across the OECS: take digital governance seriously. Invest in digital literacy from primary school onward. Demand transparency from the platforms that profit from our societies. Support the independent journalism that the algorithms are quietly starving. And find practical ways to help Vincentian entrepreneurs compete in a digital marketplace that was never built with them in mind.

The grandmother in Layou, the young man in Georgetown, the mother in Kingstown they deserve an internet that serves them, not one that merely sells them. Elites in every country benefit from the internet as it is. The rest of us must build the internet we need. It is time to emancipate ourselves from digital slavery.