Few predictions have aged as badly as those made about the emancipatory power of the internet. Newspaper columnists fawned over “Twitter revolutions” taking place in the Middle East, open-source software breaking down traditional property relations, and “massive open online courses” replacing outmoded education systems around the world.

That era is over. There are no more calls for Mark Zuckerberg to run for president. Today, it is difficult to find anyone who disagrees with the idea that there is something deeply wrong with the way the internet functions in our society. And whatever specific criticism they have, it can usually be traced to one of the tech giants that now dominate the marketplace — Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Twitter.

The fashionable solution to this problem is “web3.” Those using this term argue that the internet’s future is one based around cryptocurrency, which they contrast with “web 1.0” and “web 2.0,” terms that broadly describe phases in internet history.