The Demise of Social Media and the Death Rattle of the Internet

We are on the verge of another major victory by the ruling class: the successful attempt by the megacorporation known as “Meta” to lobby the United States government into banning an app- TikTok- that has not been proven by any measure of the word to be “dangerous”. (Not to mention the irony of the US government- killer and exploiter of millions of working people across the planet- declaring other countries to be our enemy.)

In the past few years, we have also seen the total demise of the site formerly known as Twitter. Masquerading around in its corpse is a ghoul of a human named “Elon Musk”, who has attempted to sew a new face onto the decaying flesh that was once the cultural heart of the internet.

And finally, there’s Google. What was once an easily accessible, simple place to find information from all across the internet has become riddled with AI slop and rendered functionally useless. The only real way to find an answer that you need is to attach “Reddit” to the query, and even that is questionable.

I have been on the internet since the late ‘90s, from surfing cyberspace on the family computer with the dial-up modem, to custom-building my own PCs as an edgy teen. I played the original Counter-Strike, chatted on AOL Instant Messenger to countless crushes, and did my own MySpace coding. I like to think I’ve seen it all, the trends that have come and gone. 2025, though, is different. What we’re experiencing isn’t just a Digg-exodus or Vine being bought out and gutted. We’re seeing a concerted effort by people at the highest echelons of government and the richest people to ever exist colluding to destroy the last place on earth that we can gather, free of charge and without being subject to their influence. None of this is an accident, and neither is the timing.

The timing is of particular note, as it’s been clear that these “tech titans”, these billionaire parasites that control the media and the tech companies, have seen the return of Trump and have lined up to kiss the ring. They present to him the keys to their kingdoms without even being asked to do so. Anything he wants, his whims and desires, are theirs to provide, and they are happy to do so. We’ve been saying about so-called “rainbow capitalism” for years that corporations do not and have never valued elevating the needs and wants of oppressed people in our society. They simply value profits, and more than anything else, they value maximizing shareholder value. It’s clear that the right wing grift is better at providing those profits than catering to what the majority of people actually want and need. Corporations are dropping their “commitments” to diversity and equality left and right, along with any semblance of political neutrality.

There does not seem to be any feasible counter to the death spiral of the internet into right wing grift, AI slop, and ultimately, obsolescence. No politician or business is coming to save us. A day is soon approaching where social media and the internet at large has nothing to offer to the average person. At that point- what is to be done?

When this happens, we should look backwards. There was a time long before the internet when people organized, educated each other, and basked in fellowship and community. Working people got together and self-published their own papers and programs, they created their own spaces to gather in the real world. They gathered in their homes, read, wrote, debated, argued, loved. We are identical in all ways to the people that some of us may have even known, like my great-grandmother who was born the year World War I was over (1919) and died when I was a senior in college. Her parents would have been old by the time electricity was commonplace. We are not so distant to the people we should look to for inspiration in this difficult time, and we would do well to understand how they lived their lives, because ours may very well look like theirs soon enough.

Despite my overall pessimistic tone in this article, overall I am optimistic. Our people- working people, exploited and oppressed people- have done so much more with so much less. They killed kings by candlelight, and overthrew empires before while the combustion engine was still new. In this time of the demise of social media and the death rattle of the internet, it’s more important than ever for us to return to gathering in libraries, houses, and breweries. We can read together, exchange information, and engage in community that so many of us lack. The future may be dim, but the working class burns bright as a star- we need only gather.