The Internet is too useful. Email, online banking, and the ability to find reasearch materials are essential to me.

However, i have abandoned all social media except the fediverse. I only use youtube for specific instructional videos - not for entertainment. If i am looking for fun, i look somewhere else. One exception: Qobuz for music (they are a French streaming platform).

If the internet were to completely collapse. I will use the Internet until I cannot use it anymore.

Well… that would be hard. Maintaining, upgrading and extending a corner of the Internet is my day-job.

So I guess the minimum would be that some other international communications network takes over and Swiss tertiary education institutes would all like to be connected to that instead of the Internet.

Then all the multiplayer games I host for my international friend group would also have to support this new stack of protocols, same for my communications channels, most of all chat apps and email. Then I could also move my personal use cases off the Internet.

Then I could be done with it.

The real question is why would we ever do that, it sounds insanely costly, and not that much is wrong with IPv4 and IPv6.

The internet as a network is too useful. It would take the enshitification of the fundamental protocols to make a dent (udp/tcp). Maybe dns too.

Probably when something better replaces it, unfortunately. I depend on the Internet for my job as well as all my socializing, so it would be pretty hard for me to live without it.

I don’t think I’ll ever be done with the internet. But it’s becoming clear to me that the kind of internet experience that I want (no ads, free and open source software, minimal mega-corpo investment in said software) will necessarily require more from me (more technical understanding, more configuring, &c).

Realistically i dont think the internet is going anywhere. But in the future i may spend less time on it.

However some freinds have been building a meshnet (not meshtastic) thats just a bunch of house nodes. Its been fun and theres already tangable benifits:

1. No wierd pings from 3rd parties
2. We host whatever we want
3. We pay next to nothing
4. No survalance
5. Early internet vibes
6. No copyright

Its pretty much the old internet but with housevto house. Im loving it.

I think the moment it becomes impossible to be annonymous on the internet. I wouldn’t want all of my internet traffic to be directly associated with my IRL identity. For me the internet has always been a way to explore oneself without having to worry about your school or job learning what you do in your free time.

I have been using the internet less and less because of this, but there are still cool places left, like the Fediverse.

The day VPNs are required to log user data, to provide a backdoor for authorities or something along that line.

My death.

You should start some hobbies now while you can still find information and supplies, cause that’s going to be far more difficult without the Internet

I quit Reddit because cause of the increasingly draconian censorship by mods, and the growing preponderance of AI accounts and AI shills. I looked recently and it’s gotten even worse. The few mods that are resisting the AI account surge are fighting a losing battle, and this will be imo the final nail in Reddit’s coffin.

If that should happen here, I think that would spell the end of any social media presence I have anywhere. And the day that the internet becomes mostly bots, few humans, and it’s hard to distinguish between the two, I’d be done.

Depends on what in using it for. There is no way to fully avoid the Internet anymore. You can’t interact with businesses or government without it. So, for that, we’re stuck with it.

I work in IT so I’ll be stuck with it there. I already have no expectation of privacy at work, though.

For entertainment and engaging with communities like Lemmy, I think losing anonymity through mandatory online id would be the nail in the coffin.

I already moderate myself on social media, but I have an outlet in these communities. I would simply stop using them if I lost that.

I would guess underground networks would rise up to replace them, but I would not want to put myself at risk. I don’t trust VPNs enough for that.

To be honest I think I’m nearly already there in terms of using any service that requires interaction with other meat bags. I find having personal opinions that differ (even slightly) from the echo chambers (even when stated as being just an opinion) makes it a constant battle to stay civil, and I’m not sure it will ever get better. Add in all the spam, constant battle against advertising, bot accounts etc and I really can’t be bothered as I don’t really feel like I’m missing out on much.

And the same goes for the offline world too. People need to unplug more.

At some point, the internet will take a back seat in most people’s lives. The younger generations are already disconnecting from many of the once very popular platforms. They really don’t like where this AI agenda is headed. Just like booze is now more and more unpopular with them, so will all things tech take a very serious and irrevocable dive.