This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Gustavo Graña
Every major wave of technology forces some kind of adaptation.
When mobile took over, we had to rethink design and performance.
When social media grew, we had to learn new ways to reach users.
Now, as AI and automation become part of everyday tools and workflows, we might need to rethink something deeper: how we define a user in the first place.
When Free Stops Being Simple
The freemium model depends on trust — that a real person is using your product, seeing your ads, and maybe converting later. But that trust is starting to erode.
Modern bots and AI agents can now behave like real users: signing up, clicking through, “watching” videos, or even chatting with interfaces. They’re not always malicious — sometimes they’re testing, learning, or scraping data — but they still distort what engagement actually means.
If you’re running a free tier that relies on ad revenue, this becomes a hard problem. Advertisers are already skeptical about fake impressions. As AI agents flood the web, it’ll only get harder to prove that those views and clicks come from humans. The core of the freemium economy — attention as currency — becomes unstable.
Rethinking Trust Without Losing Privacy
One possible path forward is validation.
Maybe not full KYC-level verification, but lightweight ways to prove that someone behind an account is real. That could mean micro-subscriptions (a few dollars per month), or external services that verify real users across multiple platforms — something like “proof of humanity” APIs. Another idea is reputation-based systems, where long-term accounts or verified behavior carry more credibility than new anonymous ones.
But any attempt at validation needs to respect privacy and security. Asking users to share personal identity documents or sensitive data like ID numbers would introduce huge risks — leaks, impersonation, and surveillance. We can’t trade privacy for authenticity. The goal is to confirm that users are real without revealing who they are.
That’s why this shift shouldn’t come from governments or regulation. Governments move slowly and often focus on headlines rather than long-term privacy or security. Centralized identity systems they might propose would likely ignore privacy concerns. Instead, I believe this conversation will emerge naturally within the advertising and technology industries, where the impact is most direct. As non-human traffic increases, ad networks and agencies will need better ways to ensure their ads reach real people — creating the market pressure that will shape how platforms and developers define what a “user” truly is.
AI might push the internet toward a more verified but still private era — one where authenticity and anonymity find a new balance.
The idea of “free” might evolve, but perhaps that’s the necessary cost of keeping trust — and privacy — alive online.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Gustavo Graña