The internet four years from now

I'm ... not abundantly optimistic, somehow

Last week, The Boston Globe asked me and five other writers to respond to a rather unappetizing prompt: Imagine it’s the end of Trump’s second term. How does the world look different now? I tackled internet culture, natch, and my forecast was not optimistic. (I’m also not optimistic about my predictive powers, though, so maybe take a smidgeon of heart from that!)

Below, I’m sharing a longer and slightly spicier version of the piece I wrote for the Globe’s project. Scroll to the bottom for some other writing that’s informed how I think about these subjects. And if you have your own predictions for what the internet will look like in four years, I’d of course love to read them in the comments. Let’s plan on reconvening in 2029 and seeing how we did (!!).

We once talked about the internet as a shared, open space: a “digital commons,” a vast “worldwide web.” A video “went viral” when everyone you knew had seen it; a “meme” described a joke so omnipresent it became a shorthand. But there is no “omnipresent” on the internet now — and there arguably isn’t one “internet,” either. Instead, we all exist on a fractured archipelago of semi-gated, self-segregating sites according to our political and cultural predilections.

X, formerly Twitter, is the redpilled realm of reactionary crypto-bros. Facebook hosts the “just asking questions” crowd and some Boomer moms who never realized they could bolt. Bluesky and Mastodon are generally for lefties, though that of course varies by server. And TikTok, shuttered in the United States since early 2025, is home to no one at all anymore¹ … though its devotees found new roosts on Instagram, YouTube and private messaging apps, much as they did in India five years earlier.

The splintering of social media predates the second Trump administration, though there’s little doubt that Trump’s rhetoric and political cult accelerated the trend. From roughly 2010 to 2025, a handful of mega-platforms dominated — some might even say monopolized — the mainstream social media ecosystem. But that began to change in the early 2020s, as right-wing social media users grew increasingly aggrieved by big platforms’ attempts to hold them accountable for their anti-vaxxing, election-denying or otherwise antisocial bullshit. Some insisted that interventions like blandly worded fact checks constituted literal oppression.

In response, many fled to safer digital havens, like Trump’s own Truth Social. Trump himself sued Google, Twitter and Facebook for “censorship” in 2021, then roared back into office threatening to rain further hell down on mainstream social platforms.

Rather than risk new regulation or lawsuits — and likely sensing a lucrative opportunity to add yet more zeroes to their ballooning net worths — tech CEOs instead overhauled their sites to actually allow more lies and slurs. But that had the effect of making scrolling both less pleasant and less useful for a whole lot of users. Have you braved Facebook lately? It’s an endless digital dust bowl of hyper-targeted engagement bait and pro-Trump AI slop, peppered with the occasional, discordant photo of somebody’s grandchild.²

Now most of us congregate in smaller, siloed online spaces: niche platforms, group chats, self-hosted servers. It’s nice, in that these spaces tend to match your values. And it’s easy to leave, should they ever diverge.

But small, decentralized communities also come with their own dangers. For one thing, it’s difficult to police criminal or harmful behavior across millions of digital islands. It’s also difficult, verging on senseless, to reach anything resembling political consensus or a shared understanding of the world. Most Americans once had at least “a few” friends with different politics from them, but today we rarely share physical or digital space with anyone who holds conflicting views.

Did our politics or internet fragment first? It’s impossible to say, even looking backwards.

Further reading

• “The Great Social Media Diaspora,” by Renee DiResta for Noema (2025)

• “Meta Courted Trump. Now Comes the Backlash from Facebook, Instagram Users,” by Tatum Hunter and Heather Kelly for the Washington Post (2025 $, unlocked below paywall)

• “Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy,” by Jason Koebler for 404 Media (2025)

• “The Bright Side of TikTok’s Downfall,” by Adam Clark Estes for Vox (2025)

• “How Group Chats Rule the World,” by Sophie Haigney for the New York Times Magazine (2024 $, unlocked below paywall)

• “The Age of Social Media Is Ending,” by Ian Bogost for The Atlantic (2022 $, unlocked below paywall)