The internet isn’t dead, the human parts just aren’t concentrated on a few megaplatforms anymore. They’re scattered across personal blogs, niche communities, indie sites, and small networks that don’t optimize for infinite scale. The web feels worse because the default surfaces are worse, not because humans left.
Calling it dead risks turning a discoverability problem into a nihilistic one. The interesting work is figuring out how to surface and grow the human corners, not declaring the whole system a loss.
I wrote a short piece expanding on this idea: https://cauenapier.com/blog/the-internet-is-not-quite-dead/
I love your piece though and the call to action: “Make the internet more human again.”
It’s really inspiring, I hope it works, but I also feel like we should try multiple things at the same time just to be safe.
And what if you do want a place where you can just go and have one feed for your friends and family?
Maybe my essay should be titled “social media is dead” instead.
Apps and their related platforms are not the internet. The internet works almost like it did decades ago, just faster and more resilient.
Some of the platforms on the internet may feel fake however. When platforms get big they get infiltrated by people that wish to impose their grift, beliefs and cultures on the people using said platforms. These people automate their efforts via bots and try to start conversations between people and bots. This is why we can't have nice things. I think it is that simple.
Oh and the internet itself is far from dead. If anything it is faster and more stable than ever. The internet, not platforms. Platforms can be replaced or rendered a ghost town. Motivate those that run your platforms to block all the bots even if it means the platform may feel less active. Not just block but get creative and punish the botters.
I think the core idea probably will benefit from the increased focus. Your nicely phrased clarification of the problem as a matter of scale and trust of good humans is also, I think, addressed by the model I propose.
I can envision a new platform marketing themselves on the concept of "Bot Free" or "Only Humans" if they could manage to pull that off without invading privacy.
The tl;dr is I'm saddened and scared in equal measure by the rise of bots, and I think we need to do something new in order to preserve any vestige of human-to-human digital communication.
My proposal is that we create invite-only networks where every account traces back through a chain of human trust. If a bot gets in, you prune the branch: remove it and every account it invited. The threat of losing your account (and your invitees losing theirs) creates real social accountability and makes moderation at scale practical.
There are kinks with the idea of course like the risk of false flags, witch hunts, and slow growth, but AI detection and CAPTCHAS are in a losing arms race with LLMs.