How the Internet Works Today

Welcome to How the Internet Works, a short video series by Alessandra Di Lorenzo's digital twin about the systems shaping what we see online.

In this first episode, we start with a simple but important idea: the internet is not a neutral space.

What shows up first on our screens is often shaped by commercial priorities. Platforms want attention. Advertisers want visibility. Algorithms, ranking systems, recommendation engines, and AI increasingly influence what we see, what we click on, what we trust, and what we buy.

Topics in this episode include: how algorithms rank content, why the internet is not neutral, how platforms shape attention, how advertising influences visibility, why we keep seeing the same brands, how AI changes online discovery, media literacy in the age of algorithms, and why what we see online is often filtered before we choose.

We mention something once, and suddenly it shows up everywhere online.

A trip. Running shoes. A dog.

So is the phone listening?

Sometimes permissions matter. But often the bigger story is prediction.

The system watches signals, spots patterns, and gets surprisingly good at guessing what might matter to us next.