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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17619 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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The Closure of the Internet

I recently started reading Arctotherium’s almost encyclopedic article titled The Closure of the Internet documenting the change starting in the mid-2010s from the internet being a free-speech zone to its current state as a censored environment. I only started reading the article since it is so truly extensive in its documentation, and then I skimmed through and read the highlights of the main article and some of the footnotes.

I was having 2 conflicting reactions: (1) this is not news – as anyone here who remembers the departure of this forum from Reddit or slatestarcodex can attest and (2) this is likely “the most important social phenomenon of the late 2010s” (Arctotherium's words) since it changed the dynamic so completely of the place where most people spend most of their free time and I, and most others, have never thought of it that way. In fact, many young people aren't even aware that it happened.

Why is it both not news and unknown? I think the article contains the answer to this question, without seeming to understand its importance - it doesn't have a name:

There have been countless laments of the decline of intellectual discourse on the Internet. Some attribute it to the natural monopolies and economies of scale of Web 2.0, some to the expansion of the Internet beyond overwhelmingly Western intelligent and often technical users, to normal people and non-Westerners, and some to the inferiority of younger generations. Almost none of them point to the successful society-wide campaign to censor and police the Internet covering all major platforms and the means to find things outside of them. Few seem to even realize this happened. That the closure of the Internet happened and its approximate scope should be common knowledge, and there needs to be a convenient name and narrative for it so that it sticks in people’s heads. (italics in original, bolding added by me)

So I propose that we all start calling it the name Arctotherium used: the closure of the internet.

As a second note, I want to push back on the “Did it Work?” section in the article, which argues that the closure of the internet did not work since it failed at its goal of preserving confidence in traditional institutions. The section is true, as far it goes, but it leaves out that the closure of the internet was effective (at least in my view) on its object-level issues. I would argue there is more immigration and there was more compliance during COVID than there would be if discussion of these issues had remained open, but after spending their political capital on, for example, COVID, they have lost the public trust they need to fight, for example, measles.

That has become one of my "most important reading" articles, for being obviously correct in hindsight, not well-known (at least by me beforehand), and backed by evidence. It's very accurate even with the optimism: the Internet hasn't closed (e.g. here), but is much worse than e.g. the 2010s (which many say are worse than the 2000s, which some say are worse than the 1990s...but post-2015 is special for reasons explained by the article). AI is actually opening the Internet a bit by forcing people to address overwhelming low-quality discourse and shilling, and modern-day cynicism is fueling old internet nostalgia.

I would argue there is more immigration and there was more compliance during COVID than there would be if discussion of these issues had remained open, but after spending their political capital on, for example, COVID, they have lost the public trust they need to fight, for example, measles.

I agree. Personally, I mostly stick to principles to avoid short-term blunders, like this one.

Also, I don't expect or think the entire Internet should be like this site or even 2000s edgy, because most people aren't like that. Part of the reason the Internet became safer when more people joined, and the reason government and business censorship remained quiet (and happened) is because the average person is less taboo violating than the average weird old internet user.

The problem is the "you do not fit in here" meme. The average person is better off without the old internet and the old internet is better off without them. One of my most fundamental beliefs is that today's society desperately needs cultural decentralization (cultural federation): technology and logistics also need decentralized (federated) fallback mechanisms, but everyone using the same uncreative internet (even platforms) presents no intrinsic issues (except keeping it online and cultures separate), while some people cannot coexist with others in the same community.

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