Reddit’s Co-Founder Says Social Apps Have Lost Their Cool as AI Rewrites the Internet

Alexis Ohanian says the era of simply building another social media app is fading fast, arguing that the internet has been reshaped by bots, algorithms and AI-generated content. Speaking at the inaugural WIRED World Fair on November 5, the Reddit co-founder said the next big wave of user-generated content may look less like a public feed and more like a smarter, more private version of the group chat.

The comments mark a striking update from one of the internet’s best-known community builders. Ohanian, who stepped away from Reddit in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd and amid renewed scrutiny of the platform’s moderation practices, is now describing a digital landscape he believes is increasingly “manipulated” and no longer designed primarily for people.

At the same time, he is not rejecting AI outright. Through his venture firm Seven Seven Six, which he says now oversees more than $1.3 billion in assets, Ohanian is investing in the technologies that are changing the web he once helped define. He remains bullish on AI’s potential in health care, even as he warns that the same tools can distort online life.

His message is blunt: the social internet as it existed for the past two decades is giving way to something more fragmented, less authentic and increasingly machine-mediated. That shift matters not just for platforms like Reddit, but for advertisers, creators, search engines and the millions of people who still rely on online communities to talk to one another.

Why does Alexis Ohanian think social media is losing its appeal?

He thinks the market is saturated, the incentives are broken and the online environment has become too polluted to support the old playbook. Ohanian told WIRED senior correspondent Lauren Goode that launching a new social app is “not cool anymore,” suggesting the category no longer carries the same creative or cultural energy it once did.

His broader point is that user-generated content is still valuable, but the format is changing. In his view, the next evolution will be less about one giant public town square and more about smaller, more useful spaces where people interact directly. He described a “better version of the group chat” as the likely successor to today’s social platforms.

That idea reflects a wider trend in consumer internet behavior. Public feeds have become noisy and politically charged, while group chats, private servers and closed communities have become the places where many users actually spend time. For founders, that means the future may belong to products that prioritize trust, intimacy and utility rather than scale alone.

From feeds to private communities

Ohanian’s comments align with a broader shift in how people communicate online. A generation of users that once posted status updates and public comments has increasingly moved toward smaller spaces where conversations feel more controlled and less performative.

This shift has been visible across messaging apps, subscription communities and invite-only networks. It also reflects a social reality: people often want to share with friends, peers or niche communities rather than with the entire internet.

For founders, that creates an opening for products that feel more personal and less exposed to the chaos of algorithmic discovery. For legacy social platforms, it raises a harder question about whether the age of mass public posting is declining.

How has Reddit changed since Ohanian left?

Reddit has become both more valuable and more vulnerable in the AI era. Ohanian left the company in 2020 after announcing his resignation in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, saying he wanted to make room for a Black board member and push the company toward stronger moderation reforms.

At the time, Reddit faced long-running criticism for allowing hate speech, harassment and other harmful content to spread in its communities. Ohanian’s departure was widely interpreted as both a personal and symbolic response to those failures.

Now, Reddit sits in a different position: its archive of human conversations has become a prized asset for AI companies. The platform has licensed its data to firms including Google and OpenAI, underscoring the paradox of modern social media: the same content that once fueled community participation is now being used to train machines.

Ohanian said platforms like Reddit became “very, very valuable” to large language models because they contain large volumes of human conversation, even as he warned that commercializing those discussions can make them feel full of “bullshit.”

That tension captures the double-edged nature of today’s internet economy. Human conversation is no longer just a social product. It is also raw material for AI systems, advertising networks and search engines.

What is the “Dead Internet Theory” and why does Ohanian mention it?

The “Dead Internet Theory” is the idea that a growing share of online activity is generated by bots rather than humans, making the web feel less real than it once did. Ohanian said he is sympathetic to that view, arguing that large language models and AI agents have accelerated the trend.

He said the internet he grew up with was “built for humans first,” but that the design logic is changing. In his view, user interfaces and experiences created for people will matter less over time because much of the web will increasingly be built for automated systems to use.

That argument has implications well beyond social media. If AI agents are becoming the primary users of some online services, companies may need to redesign products for machine-to-machine interaction rather than human browsing. Search, commerce, customer support and publishing could all be affected.

Ohanian’s framing does not mean the entire internet is becoming fake overnight. But it does reflect a growing anxiety in tech circles that the volume of synthetic text, synthetic engagement and synthetic behavior is making it harder to tell what is authentically human online.

Why AI agents matter to the future of the web

AI agents are important because they can perform tasks, generate content and interact with digital systems at speeds humans cannot match. As their use expands, websites and platforms may increasingly optimize for automated behavior instead of human browsing patterns.

That could change how pages are structured, how content is discovered and how companies measure engagement. It could also encourage more closed systems, where only verified or authenticated users can participate in order to preserve trust.

Ohanian’s remarks suggest he sees this not as a distant possibility but as an active transformation already underway.

How is AI helping Reddit and hurting it at the same time?

AI has made Reddit’s data more valuable while also threatening the traffic that helps the platform grow. That contradiction is at the center of Ohanian’s comments and of Reddit’s current business challenges.

On one hand, AI companies want access to Reddit’s enormous archive of discussions because it reflects the messy, detailed and opinionated way people really talk. On the other hand, AI-powered search tools can reduce the need for users to click through to Reddit in the first place.

That problem has become visible in the company’s market performance. Reddit shares fell 29 percent last week after the company warned that Google’s AI search products were hurting referral traffic. The warning highlighted a broader worry across the publishing and platform industries: AI can consume the value of human-generated content without necessarily sending users back to the source.

For platforms that depend on engagement, referral traffic and ad inventory, that creates a difficult balancing act. Their data is increasingly essential to AI companies, but their own audiences may be shrinking or changing behavior because of the same technology.

Why is Reddit tightening access for users?

Reddit is tightening access because it wants to protect itself from third-party scraping and preserve user engagement. The company recently said users would need to sign in, a move that appears designed to make it harder for outsiders to extract data at scale and easier to keep activity inside Reddit’s own systems.

Ohanian did not directly endorse or criticize the decision. But he said there must be a way to prove that a user is human online without making the internet feel invasive or overly monitored.

He argued that online platforms need “provable humanity” without making users feel watched or uncomfortable.

That formulation points to one of the central dilemmas of the AI era. Platforms want to know who is real because bots distort conversation, engagement and revenue. Users, meanwhile, are increasingly sensitive to tracking, identity checks and platform overreach.

The result is a push and pull between openness and authentication. The more the internet is flooded with fake activity, the more platforms may try to verify users. But the more they verify users, the less open the web can feel.

Who is Alexis Ohanian backing now?

He is backing companies and sectors he believes still benefit from real-world community, practical utility and long-term technological change. Through Seven Seven Six, Ohanian has become a prominent venture capitalist with more than $1.3 billion under management, and he has increasingly focused on sports and consumer products that connect to offline behavior.

That focus makes sense given his skepticism about much of the current internet. Sports fandom, in his view, still offers something tangible: live events, shared rituals and communities grounded in physical reality. In a time when digital spaces can feel increasingly synthetic, that kind of authenticity has clear appeal.

He is also an early investor in Anthropic, signaling continued faith in frontier AI even as he questions its effects on the broader web. His posture is not anti-AI; it is caution paired with optimism.

Why sports still matter to his investment thesis

Sports create communities that are not entirely dependent on algorithms or content farms. Fans gather around games, teams and live moments that cannot be fully automated or manufactured.

That makes sports a compelling area for investors looking for resilient attention. As the internet becomes more polluted with synthetic material, activities rooted in the physical world may become more valuable as places where people know they are interacting with one another in real time.

What does Ohanian see as the upside of AI?

He believes AI could deliver meaningful benefits, especially in medicine. Despite his warnings about manipulation, bots and synthetic content, Ohanian said he sees a real possibility that the technology could drive major improvements in health care and other areas where better tools could save time, money and lives.

His optimism is important because it shows the debate is no longer neatly split between techno-enthusiasts and skeptics. Even people who worry about the social costs of AI still see enormous upside in specific domains.

Ohanian said the technology could still “cause a lot of harm,” but added that people must stay sober about how it is built while remaining open to the ways it could make things “demonstrably better.”

That balance captures a growing consensus in Silicon Valley and beyond. The challenge is not whether AI can do good things, but whether the institutions surrounding it can steer the technology toward those outcomes without widening existing harms.

What this means for the future of social media

Ohanian’s comments suggest that social media is moving through a reset, not an extinction. People still want to share, argue, joke and build communities online. What is changing is the format, the trust layer and the economics underneath those interactions.

The biggest winners may be products that combine intimacy with verification, or utility with community. The biggest losers may be platforms that depend on mass public posting but cannot prove that the people posting are real.

For founders, that means the next wave of consumer internet companies may look smaller, more private and more specialized than the giants of the last era. For users, it could mean fewer open feeds and more curated spaces that feel closer to real life.

For platforms like Reddit, the challenge is sharper. They must preserve the value of human conversation while preventing that same content from being absorbed by AI systems that reduce traffic back to the source. The question is no longer just how to grow a community, but how to defend its authenticity.

Key moments in Ohanian’s latest comments

Here is a quick summary of the main takeaways from Ohanian’s remarks at WIRED World Fair:

• He believes starting a new social media app is no longer culturally exciting.
• He expects the next major form of user-generated content to resemble a better group chat.
• He says AI agents are making the internet less human-centered and more machine-oriented.
• He thinks Reddit’s conversation archive has become highly valuable to AI companies.
• He warns that the same AI shift is also reducing traffic and trust for platforms that host human discussion.
• He remains optimistic that AI could produce major medical breakthroughs.

Timeline: Ohanian, Reddit and the AI shift

The story of Ohanian’s remarks makes the most sense when viewed as part of a longer arc in internet history.

Why this moment matters beyond Reddit

Ohanian’s remarks are about more than one company. They reflect a deeper reckoning across the internet industry about identity, authenticity and value creation in the age of AI. If bots, agents and synthetic content continue to spread, the web may need new systems to prove that users are real and that conversations are worth trusting.

That is a major challenge for platforms, search engines, advertisers and regulators alike. It affects how content is discovered, how communities are moderated and how people decide what to believe online.

In that sense, Ohanian’s warning is also a prediction. The web is not disappearing, but it is changing shape. The next version may be less public, more private, more authenticated and far more aware of the difference between human participation and machine production.

For someone who helped build one of the internet’s defining social platforms, that shift is both a business story and a cultural warning. The future of online community may still be social, but it may no longer look much like social media as we have known it.