The Internet Is Rotting—and That Might Be Exactly What It Needs
Please Let the Internet Die. It's Time to Start Over
The web in 2026 is overrun by oligarchs, AI slop, and rage bait, with bots now outnumbering humans. Drawing on John West's book The Internet Will Die, and So Will You, Miles Klee argues the internet is far smaller and more fragile than we imagine—a quarter of New York Times links are already dead. Rather than mourn, we could let the platforms fall and let the rot become compost for something better.
Look, the internet is rotting. The question is, where are we going to put our energy?
- dipierro
- brink
The problem isn't the web, the problem is greed is becoming more and more acceptable with every passing year. It's consuming everything.
But really who can blame them? Housing, health, cars, everything is unaffordable. Who can afford to be not greedy? People who would have otherwise lived quiet, content lives are now clamoring to get to the top of the hill just to survive before it all topples over.
- GaryBluto
It's always amusing to me when I see people who only interact with a tiny percentage of the web saying that it's time to burn everything down and start again. Do these people know other websites exist? I would hope a tech journalist would.
- paxy
Any piece that starts off by conflating the internet and the web isn’t worth reading.
- stuff4ben
I thought Reddit could have been the next generation of the web (not the internet which is just a bunch of tubes). A human moderated forum and community segregated by interests. Unfortunately humans aren't perfect and moderation is imperfect. And then there's the bot problem.
Perhaps what we need is a new community, tied to an actual human being from birth or you could become naturalized into it. But no more randomness at the core-level which weeds out the bots. And moderation is for CSAM or other illegal things at the government level. But the community moderates its own, either through voting on posts, or perhaps the community elects its own moderators to serve a term. A constitutional republic if you will...