In June 2026, bots officially surpassed humans in generating web page requests, marking a significant shift in internet dynamics. Cloudflare, a company that manages web traffic, reported that bots now account for 57.5% of internet activity, a milestone reached earlier than their CEO Matthew Prince had anticipated. While Cloudflare predicted this change would occur by the end of 2027, it happened more than a year sooner. Meanwhile, Thales, a global defense and technology firm, claims that machines became the majority as early as 2023. Despite differing timelines, both companies agree that bots now dominate the internet. This shift raises questions about the future of online interactions and the monetization of human attention in a digital landscape increasingly populated by machines.
QUESTION: How might the increasing presence of bots on the internet impact the way we interact online and the value placed on human attention?
The ‘dead internet theory’ is real. And it’s killing the web as we know it
