Over the past week I ran into something… strange. And honestly, a bit unsettling.

I tried to sign up for several large online services. Mostly AI platforms and one social network. What should have been a routine process turned into a series of bizarre failures:

First case:
I couldn't register at all. After entering my name and date of birth, I either got cryptic errors or was told I violated usage policies. No explanation. No appeal. Just… blocked.
For context: my name is very typical German. Almost generic. And I'm clearly over 16. So… what exactly triggered this?

Second case:
Another AI service offered a free trial. Sounds simple, right?
After signing up successfully, I was suddenly required to enter a credit card and pay $400. With no option (or way) to skip this.
That didn't feel like a business decision. It felt like something broken (because also no real pricing explanation).

Third case:
A larger platform (lets say "Mastodon-like") simply couldn't determine if I'm human.
Again: name + birthdate → failure.
No matter what I tried... clearing cache, different browsers, incognito mode, disabling extensions, different devices, even using a proxy: same result.

So here I am wondering:

Is this just bad luck?
Or are we starting to see the side effects of an internet increasingly shaped by AI?

Because it feels like identity systems are breaking down.
Like automated trust mechanisms are no longer able to reliably distinguish between real users and… whatever else is out there.

We've built layers of anti-abuse systems, bot detection, risk scoring, fraud prevention. All increasingly driven by machine learning.
But what happens when those systems become too aggressive, too opaque, or simply wrong?

What happens when a “normal” human starts looking suspicious to the machine?

Or maybe, in the case of the unskippable subscription dialog, too quickly build/deployed features (by/with AI)?

This week felt like a glimpse into that reality:
An internet where access is quietly denied, not by humans, but by invisible models making unexplainable decisions or just failing to build basic features.

No feedback.
No transparency.
No recourse.

Just: "something went wrong."

Curious if others have seen similar things recently or if I've just been extraordinarily unlucky.

But right now, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence.

#ai