Is the Internet Dying?
Not exactly, but we need to be cautious of what comes next
We live in an age where the Internet crosses a number of territorial boundaries.
This freedom to navigate, so to speak, has produced several unique opportunities for commerce, for the development of new technologies, and for sharing information, cat memes, and videos like the ones I make.
However, with an ascending China, a resurgent Russia, and exponentially increasing threat vectors from cyberspace, are we going to see the end of the free and open Internet?
Alternatively, are we going to see a sort of balkanized (cyberbalkanized) Web, with green zones and no-go zones and walled gardens only certain folks can access, hollowing out the truly open Web we have today?
In places like China, where social credit could become a dominant social force, Internet access might be cut off if you go against the party (and, in many cases, this is a reality today).
In places like the U.S. and Europe, the Internet might become more tightly regulated for fear of the security and crime potential.
Elsewhere, especially in places where free expression is not protected, the Internet could be hollowed out and even made a pointless exercise. Only the party line and the truly unprovoking stuff will be created and accessible.
To complicate matters, AI slop could overwhelm and destroy the beautifully weird and imperfect thing we know as the Internet. (This is often seen as evidence of the so-called Dead Internet Theory.)
Why should we care about the free and open Internet dying?
The technology was the byproduct of the Cold War, and it was let loose on the public to make something truly great and awful. The loss of the Internet, as we know it, could also signal the end of certain geopolitical conditions we’ve taken for granted, and the world that comes after isn’t going to be pleasant one—if we look to history as a guide.
Although it might poison search engines, the AI infiltration problem is mostly solved. Anywhere where a human needs to review registration applications, this isn't massively problematic. Likewise, anywhere protected by a mathematical problem requires a spearfish-equivalent AI attack.
Speaking specifically of social media, large corporate networks (X/twitter, Facebook, etc) are dying, and that's good. This platform (substack) will start dying too. All this due to what Cory Doctorow has called enshittification. (tl;dr: the engagement there is controlled by "the algorithm", and it's irresistible for corps to extract as much profit from them as they can. Go figure, seeing that you are just creating value for shareholders here, 1st of all.)
E.g. here I read you and few other people, but Substack keeps pushing into my timeline irrelevant stuff. (Have you considered moving over to Ghost or a similar platform?)
What is growing are federated networks (Mastodon), and, basically, independent blogs (running Ghost or other similar soft).