Reddit founder Ohanian: building social networks is no longer "cool," he fears a "dead internet"
Reddit co-founder Ohanian said at the WIRED World Fair event that building social apps has lost its appeal, and expressed concern about the Dead Internet Theory – the growing share of content generated by AI agents on the internet.
Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and now an investor at the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, said at the WIRED World Fair event that building classic social networks no longer looks like an attractive business idea today. According to him, a new form of user-generated content could be replaced by a "better version" of group chats. He is a proponent of the so-called Dead Internet Theory – the idea that a large part of online activity and content today is generated by bots – and according to him, large language models have further accelerated this trend, because AI agents are outpacing human users in sheer volume. He expects the internet will increasingly be built for the needs of agents rather than people, and that today's user interfaces will gradually disappear.
According to the article, the development of generative AI meant both a gain and a loss for Reddit. The company licensed its extensive archive of human conversations to Google and OpenAI for training AI models, which according to Ohanian made platforms like Reddit "very valuable" for LLMs. At the same time, however, Reddit's stock fell 29 percent last week after the company warned that Google's AI search is reducing referral traffic. According to the source, Reddit is therefore introducing mandatory sign-in to limit scraping by third parties; Ohanian did not state whether he agrees with this step, but said the internet needs "provable humanity, without it feeling creepy."
As an early investor in Anthropic, Ohanian remains optimistic about AI, especially regarding its potential for advances in medicine. The source quotes him saying that the technology can cause harm, but at the same time brings things that can "provably improve."
Why it matters
The commentary shows a concrete impact of AI on the business model of platforms dependent on organic search: Reddit's 29 percent stock drop linked to declining referral traffic from Google's AI search is a documented economic effect, not just a theoretical concern. For companies running websites or content platforms, this signals a risk that AI search and agents are changing traditional sources of traffic and monetization. For individuals, the growing share of AI-generated content online is relevant, as it increases the need to verify the credibility of sources.
Two audiences, two different impacts
What this means
For individuals
The share of content generated by AI agents on the internet is growing, according to Ohanian, which reduces the reliability of ordinary online information and interactions.
For a business
Companies dependent on referral traffic from search face a documented risk: Google's AI search reduced traffic to Reddit, and the company's stock fell 29 percent, illustrating the impact on revenue models that depend on organic search traffic.
Risks and complianceCheck the original
Event sources
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