Member-only story
Fighting the good fight: I will continue doing my bit to keep the internet human
A good article in The Atlantic, “Is This How Reddit Ends?” reflects my concerns about an increasingly alien internet; plagued by spam, optimized for Google searches, awash with clickbait advertorials and infotainment, along with advertisements and God-knows what else generated by AI. Visiting some sites is little more than a cruel joke or a pointless obstacle course, and even more so via smartphone.
Every day, I receive between five and 10 emails asking me to accept sponsored articles on my page and dofollow links (this is 2025, for goodness’ sake!) from all kinds from agencies, freelancers, scammers and spammers, offering me the moon and the stars. The same goes for inserting ads — “top brands, mind you” — on my Facebook page, which I only access once a day to share my article and which I only keep up because every now and then one of my followers there shows signs of life. I systematically block all these emails, but every day five or 10 new ones come in. Searching on Amazon has long since involved wading through reams of stuff I didn’t ask to see, and social networks are a cesspit.
As the Atlantic article notes, Reddit’s position as one of the few reservoirs of humanity on the internet is under mounting threat.“Tell me something I don’t know,” I thought after reading it: I sit in…