We could argue for months about what qualifies as "the internet".
Anyway, you'll have to pry my cup-on-a-string from my cold dead hands
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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The Internet is too useful. Email, online banking, and the ability to find reasearch materials are essential to me.
However, i have abandoned all social media except the fediverse. I only use youtube for specific instructional videos - not for entertainment. If i am looking for fun, i look somewhere else. One exception: Qobuz for music (they are a French streaming platform).
how'd you land on qobuz? what do you like about it?
Better compensation for artists than spotify or deezer I think. Ethical consumer rates them higher than others of a similar library size.
Qobuz has a big library and I can almost always find what I am looking for. I also tend to listen to whole albums, so I like the way Qobuz is organized. They have human-curated playlists for discovering music, as well as a 'similar to this' section under each artist. Really, their service is very similar to apple music, but I wanted to avoid American services.
If the internet were to completely collapse. I will use the Internet until I cannot use it anymore.
After which it's time to run some cables and connect to my neighbors. Then the rest of the town. And with some help I can run a fiber to the next city over.
I already have the hardware required due to an obscene amount scavenger from work, and I have enough rack space at home to function as a local ISP so that at least my extended neighborhood is covered.
The day internet truly dies, the only reasonable thing to do is to create a new one.
Well... that would be hard. Maintaining, upgrading and extending a corner of the Internet is my day-job.
So I guess the minimum would be that some other international communications network takes over and Swiss tertiary education institutes would all like to be connected to that instead of the Internet.
Then all the multiplayer games I host for my international friend group would also have to support this new stack of protocols, same for my communications channels, most of all chat apps and email. Then I could also move my personal use cases off the Internet.
Then I could be done with it.
The real question is why would we ever do that, it sounds insanely costly, and not that much is wrong with IPv4 and IPv6.
The internet as a network is too useful. It would take the enshitification of the fundamental protocols to make a dent (udp/tcp). Maybe dns too.
I don't think I'll ever be done with the internet. But it's becoming clear to me that the kind of internet experience that I want (no ads, free and open source software, minimal mega-corpo investment in said software) will necessarily require more from me (more technical understanding, more configuring, &c).
Realistically i dont think the internet is going anywhere. But in the future i may spend less time on it.
However some freinds have been building a meshnet (not meshtastic) thats just a bunch of house nodes. Its been fun and theres already tangable benifits:
- No wierd pings from 3rd parties
- We host whatever we want
- We pay next to nothing
- No survalance
- Early internet vibes
- No copyright
Its pretty much the old internet but with housevto house. Im loving it.
So ive wanted to try this. How do you get started on it? Just a friend centric small internet would be awesome. Maybe with an irc server too.
Tailscale ?
I think he's referring to an actual physical mesh network (likely wifi based) rather than something built on top of the internet itself.
Ah I see. My friends are all too far for that
A) How do I do this?
B) How do I get into your friend group?
All of my friends have decided they're ok with the boiling pot and since I won't meet them in the soup I'm not really involved anymore.
A: Learn openwrt, join snbforums, XDA, etc
B: Baked goods
Just about haha.
Go to your local makerspace (if you have one) and start asking questions
What are you using? I study Reticulum a lot recently
I think the moment it becomes impossible to be annonymous on the internet. I wouldn't want all of my internet traffic to be directly associated with my IRL identity. For me the internet has always been a way to explore oneself without having to worry about your school or job learning what you do in your free time.
I have been using the internet less and less because of this, but there are still cool places left, like the Fediverse.
The day VPNs are required to log user data, to provide a backdoor for authorities or something along that line.
My death.
yea, i heard hell has internet but no ad blockers
Can I sign up for fire and brimstone instead?
You should start some hobbies now while you can still find information and supplies, cause that's going to be far more difficult without the Internet
I quit Reddit because cause of the increasingly draconian censorship by mods, and the growing preponderance of AI accounts and AI shills. I looked recently and it’s gotten even worse. The few mods that are resisting the AI account surge are fighting a losing battle, and this will be imo the final nail in Reddit’s coffin.
If that should happen here, I think that would spell the end of any social media presence I have anywhere. And the day that the internet becomes mostly bots, few humans, and it’s hard to distinguish between the two, I’d be done.
If it makes you feel better, bots will be much less of a problem when they have to start paying their own way.
The second thing I'm thinking is that smaller communities will always be both less attractive to bots and harder for bots to infilitrate, so you'll likely be able to find a group of real people to talk to.
Depends on what in using it for. There is no way to fully avoid the Internet anymore. You can't interact with businesses or government without it. So, for that, we're stuck with it.
I work in IT so I'll be stuck with it there. I already have no expectation of privacy at work, though.
For entertainment and engaging with communities like Lemmy, I think losing anonymity through mandatory online id would be the nail in the coffin.
I already moderate myself on social media, but I have an outlet in these communities. I would simply stop using them if I lost that.
I would guess underground networks would rise up to replace them, but I would not want to put myself at risk. I don't trust VPNs enough for that.
To be honest I think I’m nearly already there in terms of using any service that requires interaction with other meat bags. I find having personal opinions that differ (even slightly) from the echo chambers (even when stated as being just an opinion) makes it a constant battle to stay civil, and I’m not sure it will ever get better. Add in all the spam, constant battle against advertising, bot accounts etc and I really can’t be bothered as I don’t really feel like I’m missing out on much.
And the same goes for the offline world too. People need to unplug more.
At some point, the internet will take a back seat in most people's lives. The younger generations are already disconnecting from many of the once very popular platforms. They really don't like where this AI agenda is headed. Just like booze is now more and more unpopular with them, so will all things tech take a very serious and irrevocable dive.
The younger generations are already disconnecting from many of the once very popular platforms
Source? The kids are still nuts about TikTok. If they're leaving popular platforms, are they leaving them to read books and join bands, or to join another platform?
Source : Pay very close attention to the younger generations. Listen to what they have to say, and observe what they're doing. Times are a changin', and tech is dying out . . . 😊✌😎
Since they closed the local malt shop, I haven't had much contact with the younger generation.
Fortunately, there's the internet: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/07/young-people-quiet-revolution-social-media.html
I'm not sure. It might take a lot. Even if they introduce passport verification for internet access and for every website you access, I think people will find a way around it and for example just move to an anonymous network like something on this list
I would say never because banking and such is to convenient but man companies keep making their sites interfaces worse and worse.
EMP or a Coronal Mass Ejection.
Gamma ray bursts are a good, terrifying, black swan event.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst
These extreme electromagnetic emissions are second only to the Big Bang as the most energetic and luminous phenomena known.
A gamma-ray burst in the Milky Way pointed directly at Earth would likely sterilize the planet or cause a mass extinction.[13]
Since GRBs are thought to involve beamed emission along two jets in opposing directions, only planets in the path of these jets would be subjected to the high energy gamma radiation.[145] A GRB could potentially vaporize anything in its beams' paths within a range of around 200 light-years.[146][147]
Oh cool, a new one we can do nothing about... And people worry abut the silliest things these days when this is out there.
I’m FT WFH so the day I’m fired or retired at the earliest
I can’t wait to “retire” and work offline and be away from the screens a lot more.
I could just memorize it, then I wouldn't need it.
You already know all the letters and all the different colours. I'd say you can just improvise most of it.
probably when I have to show ID. at that point, I'm just going to read books and work on hobbies. I mostly use the internet at work anyway. when I'm at home, I'm usually working on something else.
Miyake event
I suggest picking up painting
I’m not sure you can. Most forms are emailed or filled out directly on a site. No job application is submitted on paper, security would likely escort you out of most businesses if you tried to deliver a resume in person.
Filling out benefits “paper”work for a job, also purely digital.
What’s your plan for streaming? A smart tv? That’s just as bad as any browser without ublock.