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Could the internet go offline? Inside the fragile system holding the modern world together
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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The Internet originally was designed to be able to survive and keep on going because by its original design, there wouldn't be major key points to take out.
This is something that happened when major companies were allowed to run crazy unchecked and centralize everything. There are even parts of the world where people think that (for example) Facebook IS the Internet, as that is all that they can see.
This is an obvious bad thing yet it was allowed to go unchecked for decades now and here we are.
Could the current Internet completely break? Oh hells yes. Would it be a bad thing? Oh hells no. Let it die. The current Internet is a shit show that should have been aborted before it became what it is today.
what mostly will go down are last sites and large providers. Smaller or distributed sites like Lemmy will survive
The Internet is fine. It's not going anywhere and working as intended. The services over it, however, are centralized and crappy, and in part that's due to the Internet being built for the big centers - militaries, corporations, - to impose their policy. It's by design that it's no use to you if the big guys don't want it to be.
if you want something else, you need to reinvent the Internet, this one was made with a clear purpose. For militaries and universities, both quite hierarchical structures. I guess a Lemmy instance is a bit similar to such a thing.
Anything connection-oriented creates chokepoints in attempts to make it a truly open system. So if you want that, you need a data-oriented system. Such worked over the Internet once (technically still works), meaning Usenet. It was hierarchical, but its architectural principles don't mandate hierarchy.
It's just the way the world is.
People at some point hoped to make radio communication what the Internet was in the 90s. Yet radio eventually settled on being for one-way stations serving many people first, for professionals in aviation, military and hiking second, and for ham enthusiasts third.
People at some point dreamed of videophones, before anything digital became common, and there were such two-way communication solutions built and demonstrated even in 60s. Yet analog video settled on cable TV. Sometimes radio.
While the open and alive communication happened, like before, in public places like libraries, parks, thematic events.
It feels nice to type this comment here, but some kinds of magic just don't work. Today's possession of some people, me included, with digital communication being a liberating tool to change everything is similar to early XX century possession with flying machines. The machines are real and change the world, but the possession is irrational.
You're acting like the 'internet' (mostly Facebook, Google, Discord, a few apps, insular siloes) isn't utterly dominating people's lives. Or that its original purpose (portals for institutions like universities or militaries) hasn't been smashed to smithereens. Go out on the street, and watch how regular folks access information and spend their time.
It's not fine. It's mostly an attention optimized monster designed to suck and lock people in, and siphon them away from actual portals.
Never has radio or TV or anything intruded in so many people's psyche and taken over other institutions like this. If the US military knew any better, they'd see it for the national security threat it is, though I'm sure some sects already do.
That's all true, but there have been a few things similarly widespread and harmful, which weren't solved until their turn came. Like lead in everything (not that nobody knew lead is poisonous or that things containing lead end up in the air and in the water and so on), or like child labor in factories, or like slavery (slavery was considered barbaric and gradually outlawed in Europe in the Middle Ages, then it made a comeback during the triangle trade, and for all its time of relevance people argued about its social effect, and that of racial segregation, still it lasted long enough).
This is a problem. It will eventually be seen as a threat. But it's not that much different from radio.
The internet as it currently is is quite far from fine and less and less working as it was originally designed, and as it currently stands it's not too hard to take down various sections for a prolonged period
That is as it was originally designed. Nobody promised freedom to people starting to use a system the development of which was paid for with military budget. It's resilient enough. It's not intended to protect people like us willing to not be controlled by bigger services.