Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, says the internet is dying. The network is flooded with bots, and real users escape to closed groups. Sounds like a conspiracy theory? Not necessarily. The Dead Internet theory is starting to come true before our eyes. Will Internet users have to create a place “only for people”?
The dead internet theory is no longer paranoia
The Dead Internet theory is no longer the domain of tinfoil hats. The science channel Kurzgesagt devoted an entire material to it, Sam Altman noticed the growing presence of bots (and proposes the WORLD token instead), and now Ohanian is ringing the same bell again.
In a three-hour-long TBPN podcast, Ohanian stated bluntly that the vast majority of networks had been “botted.” Content on LinkedIn? He called it sewage. The culprit is obvious – artificial intelligence systematically replaces people from the Internet.
According to Ohanian, we need new social media capable of verifying whether there is a human on the other side of the screen. This is the only way the network can regain its human nature. Currently, real users hide in private group chats, which paradoxically exacerbates the decline of the network. Although it sounds like a sci-fi movie script, you only need to look at social media to see that the bot traffic there is overwhelming.
Will internet forums come back to the game?
In 2024, there were voices that this was a chance for old internet forums. Internet users yearn for authentic human interaction. However, opinions are divided. Some see a chance for a renaissance, although without its former glory. Others warn: nothing can resist the flood of AI-generated content.
Ohanian is perhaps the most persistent advocate of the Dead Internet Theory. He recently reacted to an X under a post about an obese cat who lost weight. Plot twist? The cat never existed – it was the creation of AI.
Is this the moment when I have to remind you again about the dead internet theory?
– he asked rhetorically.
In June, he admitted that he had agreed with this theory for a decade, when it was still considered a conspiracy concept. Recent years, however, provide evidence: bots and AI are systematically displacing people from the network, which is becoming more and more synthetic and there is nothing we can do about it.
Ironically, the Internet’s greatest boom occurred at the turn of the millennium. At that time, the Internet was full of blogs and websites created by hobbyists of the new, virtual reality. It was the turn of the millennium that Morpheus spoke about in a memorable monologue from The Matrix 1999 and suggested that AI locked people up in the 1990s, because that was when technology was the most human-friendly, and later he invented artificial intelligence. Sound familiar? 😉
