Reddit Cofounder Alexis Ohanian Says the Internet Has Gone “Dead” — and He’s Not Wrong

Alexis Ohanian, the man who helped shape the early social web through Reddit, thinks today’s internet has lost its soul.

Appearing on The Business Podcast Network (TBPN), Ohanian praised hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays for their authentic energy — something he says is rare in an online world overrun by bots and AI.

“You all prove the point that so much of the internet is now dead,” Ohanian said bluntly.

According to him, what once felt alive and human now feels “botted” and “quasi-AI.” He pointed to the flood of low-effort “LinkedIn slop” and algorithmic filler that’s turning the web into a hollow echo chamber.

Ohanian even nodded to the dead internet theory — the idea that most online activity today is generated by bots rather than people. The theory, once dismissed as a fringe idea, has recently been getting attention again. Even OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman admitted in September that he’s noticed “a lot of LLM-run Twitter accounts” and is starting to take the concept more seriously.

Our gaze over the internet is not subject to the media created by people anymore. 

To Ohanian, the cure for the “dead” web is bringing back life — real people, real conversations, and real proof of humanity.

“The internet needs to be the opposite of dead,” he said. “It needs live viewers and live content. Proof of life.”

He believes the next generation of social media will revolve around exactly that — spaces that are verifiably human. And for now, that’s happening in small, private corners of the internet.

“It’s all going down in the group chats now,” he said.

Indeed, group chats on apps like Signal, Discord, and even plain old text threads have become the modern-day campfire — where people share thoughts freely without algorithms listening in. Many users have shifted their online presence away from public platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and into these tighter, more authentic spaces.

Still, Ohanian warned that even these refuges aren’t immune. Some users are already letting AI write or polish their messages — another reminder that the bots never sleep.

“There’s got to be some next iteration of that,” Ohanian added. “Because that’s where all of us are getting our best info now.”

In short, the internet may feel half-dead — but the human spark isn’t gone. It’s just gone underground, waiting for its next evolution.