Let the Internet Die: A Case for Starting Over

Nobody seems to have realized yet, but believe me, the internet died some time ago. A couple of generations of us grew up believing it would be a space for freedom, creativity and open connections, but that illusion faded years ago: first came intrusive advertising strategies, then the algorithms of big corporations like Google and Meta, with their endless list of partners who spied on us, capturing every byte of our attention to resell it to the highest bidder. The web as a refuge for exploration and discovery turned into an endless trap of ads, trackers, and constant manipulation. It was no longer the place we loved.

Today, genAI platforms — a fledgling and far from definitive technology — are hammering the final nail in the coffin. While still fairly primitive, GenAI may help redistribute traffic better than before. Google no longer serves up blue links but auto-completed answers from Gemini or ChatGPT: 60% of all the visits to Google end with no clics. This supposed “convenience” silences the click, destroys traffic, and financially strangles publishers. And while ChatGPT has begun to send some traffic back to media outlets, the numbers remain tiny compared to the traditional torrent: 25 million clicks versus 9.5 billion. In the new world of bots, there are no clicks, and if there are no clicks, there is bankruptcy; without clicks, there is no open web.

In 2022, we wondered how this could happen and began to speculate about the possible death of Google. Now, to all intents and purposes, Google is dead, and some are starting to consider how to artificially save an internet that perhaps isn’t worth saving. The creators of Perplexity are launching AI-based browsers like Comet to challenge Google, but the question remains: if a bot gives us everything we need, why browse? And even if the web survives, who will sustain it? Advertising is evaporating and traffic is fleeing. Major media outlets are already shifting to micropayment models and relying on induced (or self-injected) traffic from social media.

From the perspective I’ve shared on this page for years, the collapse of the web is no tragedy, it’s a rescue. The sad truth is that the old web didn’t deserve to be saved: awash with nauseating ads, data spying and trackers, it became a corporate experiment whose outcome was inevitable. The abuse of cookies turned us into products, while algorithms decided what we could see and when. The web we knew had already died long ago. GenAI and chatbots are merely certifying its burial.

In which case, what do we want from a new web? A regenerated internet, centered on user control, one where our data belongs to us, not as something to be sold to unscrupulous traders. An internet where traffic is redistributed fairly based on merit, where privacy is encouraged, and those who provide value are paid — not those who exploit our attention with spam and surveillance. Here, AI can be an ally: not as a gatekeeper that decides for us, but as a configurable tool aligned with our interests. Systems that assist us without replacing our autonomy, protocols that protect our rights rather than just the profits of a few.

Letting the old web die may be the necessary step for something better to emerge. AI is not the enemy: it is the hammer that smashes what should never have existed, what was clearly a wrong evolutionary path, a system failure. Now, perhaps, we can try to build a network where users stop being products and start becoming citizens with rights — especially if we can stop depending on the profiteers who destroyed the web we wanted. Or at the very least, we can allow ourselves to briefly hope for it.

(En español, aquí)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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