Please Let the Internet Die. It's Time to Start Over

The internet has become a system that rewards manipulation, outrage, and volume over meaningful exchange. Social platforms face lawsuits over privacy and mental-health harms, governments and schools are restricting young people’s access, and generative AI is flooding feeds with low-quality material. Relaxed moderation has also enabled hate speech and conspiracy content designed to provoke engagement. Drawing on technologist John West’s book, the piece argues that the web is less vast and permanent than people imagine: it is fragile infrastructure that repeatedly changes, with commercial incentives deciding which parts thrive and which disappear. The result is an attention economy that sidelines older, more personal online communities in favor of algorithmic content and influencer competition.

West’s examples show how unreliable the web is as a lasting archive: personal sites can become spam-filled remnants, posts vanish when domains lapse, and research links often break or change. This impermanence undermines the idea that the internet preserves a stable record of knowledge and can weaken confidence in shared facts. It also encourages users to chase metrics rather than pursue interests for their own sake. The proposed response is not to wait for a catastrophic shutdown, but to withdraw attention from mainstream platforms and invest in overlooked, noncommercial spaces where people create and connect without profit motives. The present internet is rotting, but its decay could provide the conditions for a more organic, creative web to grow.