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Remember when the internet felt like an endless frontier of discovery? A space where curious minds could explore without gatekeepers? That internet is dead. As Enrique Dans powerfully argues in Let the internet die: a case for starting over, what began as a revolution in open connection has been systematically dismantled—first by advertising trackers and algorithmic manipulation, now by generative AI's silent extraction of user engagement.

The Unraveling of a Dream

The web's golden age collapsed under the weight of surveillance capitalism. Tech giants transformed browsers into behavior-tracking engines, converting human curiosity into data points sold to advertisers. Google and Meta built empires by making the internet increasingly hostile to exploration—replacing serendipity with engagement-optimized feeds that narrowed perspectives while maximizing ad revenue.

GenAI: The Final Nail in the Coffin

Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini appear to offer convenience but operate as black holes for web traffic. Dans reveals a critical statistic: 60% of Google searches now end without a single click as AI answers replace blue links. This seemingly small behavioral shift has catastrophic consequences:

| Traffic Source       | Clicks to Publishers | 
|----------------------|----------------------|
| Traditional Google   | 9.5 billion          |
| ChatGPT (all links)  | 25 million           |

The math is brutal. When users get answers without visiting websites, publishers lose ad revenue and subscription opportunities. The "open web"—blogs, independent media, technical documentation—starves while AI companies ingest their content without compensation. As Dans starkly warns: "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."

Implications for Developers and the Tech Ecosystem

  1. Publisher Extinction: Content creators face impossible economics. Why produce in-depth technical tutorials or analyses when AI summarizes them without attribution?
  2. Centralization Acceleration: Power consolidates with AI gatekeepers who control both queries and answers, reducing the internet to a few corporate portals.
  3. Innovation Stagnation: The feedback loop of discovery → engagement → monetization that fueled web innovation is broken.

Beyond Obituary: Is Rebirth Possible?

The solution isn't reforming the current system but rebuilding from first principles. Decentralized protocols (ActivityPub, IPFS), verified content provenance, and alternative monetization models (microtransactions, decentralized autonomous organizations) offer paths forward. However, this requires collective acknowledgment that today's internet—a manipulated landscape where bots outnumber humans—is beyond saving. The question isn't whether the old web dies, but whether we'll architect something better from its ashes.