For much of the past two decades, the defining battle over technology has centered on privacy.
Governments have debated data protection laws. Companies have rewritten privacy policies. Consumers have become increasingly aware of how much personal information is collected every time they open an app, search the web, or purchase a product online.
Privacy remains one of the defining issues of the digital age.
But a new question is beginning to emerge—one that could prove just as significant.
Who controls our digital experience?
The answer has quietly shifted over the past decade.
Early social media platforms largely reflected the choices users made. People decided who to follow, what communities to join, and which conversations to participate in. While algorithms existed, they generally played a supporting role.
Today, recommendation systems have become the primary architects of the online experience.
Artificial intelligence decides which videos appear first. Recommendation engines determine which posts receive attention. Platforms increasingly predict what users might engage with before users have actively chosen it.
These systems have created remarkable opportunities for discovery. They have helped creators reach audiences, connected people with niche communities, and made vast quantities of information easier to navigate.
But they have also created a fundamental imbalance.
Many users no longer feel they are shaping their feeds. Increasingly, their feeds shape them.
This concern has traditionally been discussed through the language of online safety, misinformation, or mental wellbeing. Yet a growing number of researchers, policymakers, and civil society organizations are beginning to describe it differently.
They call it user agency.
Rather than asking only whether online content is safe, the concept asks whether people retain meaningful control over the digital systems influencing what they see, read, and experience.
It is a subtle distinction, but an important one.
A platform can remove harmful content while still leaving users with little understanding of why recommendations appear. It can improve moderation while offering only limited control over how algorithms influence everyday experience.
User agency shifts the debate away from simply asking whether platforms behave responsibly.
Instead, it asks whether users remain genuinely empowered.
One of the nonprofits that has consistently advanced this argument is The Cybersmile Foundation.
In June 2025, the organization started work on their Stop the Forced Feed campaign, which examines how recommendation systems can expose users to harmful or unwanted content without meaningful user choice. Rather than calling for an end to algorithms, the campaign argued that people should have greater transparency and greater influence over the systems shaping their online lives.
Its central message—Content with Consent—was deliberately simple. Digital platforms should not only seek permission to collect data; they should also provide meaningful control over the content environments they create.
At the time, the campaign represented a relatively uncommon way of framing the issue.
Much of the public debate still focused on content moderation and platform responsibility. Cybersmile instead argued that the deeper issue was one of power: who ultimately controls the online experience?
Scott Freeman, Chief Executive of The Cybersmile Foundation, believes that distinction will become increasingly important as artificial intelligence becomes embedded across society.
“Technology should expand human choice, not quietly replace it. User agency isn’t about rejecting innovation—it’s about ensuring people remain active participants in the systems that increasingly shape everyday life.”
Whether that prediction proves correct remains to be seen.
What is already clear is that the wider technology industry is beginning to move in a similar direction.
Major platforms have introduced new recommendation controls, expanded user preference settings, and offered greater visibility into how content is surfaced. Regulators have increased scrutiny of recommender systems, while researchers are exploring concepts such as algorithmic autonomy, digital self-determination, and meaningful user choice.
No single organization can claim responsibility for this broader shift.
Technology evolves through many forces working together: academic research, regulatory pressure, changing public expectations, competition, and sustained advocacy from civil society.
But history also shows that movements often begin when somebody gives a problem a name. Environmentalism gave language to pollution. Privacy gave language to surveillance. Accessibility gave language to exclusion.
User agency may prove to be the language that defines the next generation of digital rights.
Its significance extends well beyond social media.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping education, healthcare, employment, finance, and public services. Intelligent systems recommend treatments, prioritize applications, generate information, and filter opportunities before individuals even know alternatives exist.
These developments promise enormous benefits. They also raise an increasingly urgent question.
How much influence should people retain over systems designed to influence them?
Can users understand why recommendations are made?
Can they challenge inaccurate assumptions?
Can they customize or reject algorithmic decisions?
Can they meaningfully choose different digital experiences?
These questions are likely to become central to the future of public trust in technology.
The next decade may not be defined by how intelligent our systems become. It may be defined by whether people remain meaningfully in control of them. If that proves true, the organizations that first recognized user agency as a fundamental digital issue will have helped shape one of the defining technology debates of the twenty-first century.
The conversation is still in its early stages. But it has unmistakably begun.
