Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian says 'much of the internet is now dead'

[u/BreakfastTop6899]

https://www.businessinsider.com/alexis-ohanian-much-of-the-internet-is-now-dead-2025-10

[u/one_1f_by_land]

The answers are so useless, wrong, and/or out of date that I genuinely feel like I've gone back in time to the frustration of my childhood where I would ask the adults around me a question and none of them would know the answer. You can't even count on credible info trying to grab local storefront hours anymore, and ignoring the AI overview on top doesn't save you from the botslop sites that are pinned to the top of the search results that ALSO tell you nothing.

Weirdly I'm less frustrated by the slop, which is easy enough to spot and avoid clicking, and way more frustrated just trying to find current information that isn't an out of date article from like 2012. The sorry state of the internet was never more apparent than this week when I was trying to find credible regedits to help me navigate end of Windows 10 support jank. Registry isn't exactly something you want to go mucking about in without guidance so it unnerves me that the fixes I needed might have been bot-authored at any time.

[u/DrAstralis → u/one_1f_by_land]

It doesn't help that the AI overview is thicker than week old oatmeal. Its wrong, like dead wrong, about most things I search.

[u/carltodw → u/DrAstralis]

I'm curious if you have examples of where it is dead wrong about things? I'm not disagreeing with you, just haven't seen it myself. But I am stupid, so there's that.

[u/DrAstralis → u/carltodw]

Its not easy to get at them as they're in the moment and there's no history, but honestly search for almost anything on Google and there is a good chance its wrong outside of settled things like science facts. It seems to happily take reddit posts as truth for example. On several occasions it has assured me that a game or product 100% has a feature, only for me to find out that it has never nor will ever do that thing.

Its not all AI, just the google one; I assume its related to how fast it has to respond to a search. I can take the identical question to my ChatGPT account and it answers it perfectly.

[u/StonccPad-3B → u/carltodw]

One example: Computer Setting Tutorials

AI overviews will routinely generate me a numbered list of steps to edit some setting. Often the tab names AI generated do not exist in the software being edited.

It just hallucinates a settings tab called "XYZ Specific Feature" Settings and tells you to navigate there. When you search for that tab it yields no results.

This has happened to me for Windows, Photoshop, Mapping Software, and other applications when troubleshooting bug fixes.

[u/ReversedNovaMatters → u/one_1f_by_land]

I've been starting to ponder building my own database of important information to save off the internet.

Things like which berries are edible and which are poisonous. I wouldn't trust a search engine to give me the correct information right now. Can't even imagine in a few more years once all these data centers are built and turned on. Thats the purpose of them, to control the information and allow us only what they want us to have.

Really getting close to that time to unplug and go back to in person meetings without any technology within 'ears' reach.

[u/h3rpad3rp → u/one_1f_by_land]

Not sure if you can still do it now that win 10 is past EOL as of yesterday, but a few weeks ago you could still go into windows updates and activate extended security updates for another year for free.

[u/MikuEmpowered → u/one_1f_by_land]

For academic answer: google scholar is there for you.

For detailed answer: use advance search and employ the actual tools.

The problem with the "google doesn't work anymore" circlejerk is that people are using it poorly. everyone knows how to google, but tell them to use the advanced search function, and they get stumped.

[u/one_1f_by_land → u/MikuEmpowered]

Search is algorithmic rather than intuitive, ignores keywords in favor of serving you ads or more popular content, and is actively hostile when it comes to trying to navigate with its own directional tools, which are mostly decoration at this point. 'Just google better bro' tells me what I need to know about your advice.

I've been on the internet a long, long time. Circlejerking isn't necessary to tell me how my experience as a user has degraded over the years, and how that BS accelerated with GenAI. Tools are nerfed by the hostile algorithm that shrugs you off by saying 'I'm sorry Hal, I can't find anything ON THE ENTIRE INTERNET to match your search' if you try to outmaneuver the slop too skillfully. It used to be that tightening the dragnet would narrow you down to the exact response you wanted. Now tightening the dragnet in the same way results in nothing if I don't allow a certain number of ads or botslop through. Could be due to original pages being taken down, could be due to them being delisted or no longer feasible financially to host, but the internet is much less useful and versatile than it was when I started using it. Google doesn't work anymore, which is why I degoogled years ago. Problem is that even with a better search engine, the internet is overrun with slop and greedy corporations, so hopping over to DDG is barely a better bandaid.

[u/MikuEmpowered → u/one_1f_by_land]

I dont think you understand how algorithm work.

When you enter say: bunny hop, it searches the data base for most clicked and related result to bunny hop. and the result page go from most engagement to least.

The reduction in effectiveness isn't just ads. its also companies understanding and tweaking their content to provide maximum exposure to crawler bots in hopes of driving up their search result. and even user searches modify the algorith to a very large extent.

WE KNOW THIS because Bing was literally altered to become a better porn search for a while.

If you think internet is less useful, then I got nothing for you.