May 21, 2026
Web dead, comments feral
It is time to build a new internet
One writer declared the web dead — and the comments instantly chose chaos
TLDR: A writer says today’s internet is too polluted by bots, fake hype, and low-quality content to save, and wants a brand-new one built from scratch. Commenters immediately turned it into a brawl: some said a quieter alternative already exists, while others mocked the idea as clueless and unrealistic.
A writer jumped onto Hacker News with a full-on digital doomsday monologue, basically saying the internet has become a rotting mess of bots, fake promotion, spammy nonsense, and joyless scrolling. Their big dream? Throw the whole thing out and build a new internet where people can actually read interesting things and talk like humans again. It’s a dramatic pitch, but honestly, plenty of commenters seemed to feel the same exhausted vibe: today’s web is overcrowded, manipulated, and weirdly hollow.
But the real show was in the replies, where the crowd split into two gloriously internet-brained camps. Team One was like, “Uh, hello? This already exists.” Multiple people pointed to Gemini, a smaller, simpler corner of the web, with one commenter basically saying: stop posting manifestos and just go there. Team Two came in swinging with pure contempt. One especially brutal reply called it “the most dumb article I have ever seen on Hacker News,” roasting the author for wanting a brand-new network without understanding how the current one works. Ouch.
Then there was the philosophical middle group, serving sad-poet energy: “Curation is the cure,” one person wrote, arguing the problem isn’t building a shiny new world, it’s the exhausting human labor of protecting good spaces from being overrun. So the comments delivered the classic internet triple feature: idealism, nerd snark, and a reminder that every utopia eventually gets spammed.
Key Points
- •The article argues that the mainstream internet has become degraded and no longer functions as a true decentralized public commons for discourse.
- •It identifies a few remaining useful spaces or tools, including invite-only forums, Hacker News, Bearblog, and Kagi.
- •The author considers building a private network based on trusted invitations but says profit-seeking actors would eventually undermine it.
- •The article cites Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google as examples of internet platforms or services whose quality has deteriorated.
- •It concludes that moderation is unlikely to solve the problem and calls for building a new internet or protocol rather than relying on the current one.