In short: WIRED's "let the internet die" column lists the familiar woes of the online environment: aggressive advertising, surveillance, artificially heated debates, a flood of low-quality material and people's dependence on large platforms. The author proposes to stop feeding attention to platforms that make money from such behavior, and return to small independent communities. This is a journalistic opinion and not a message about an upcoming network shutdown.
Why the slogan is too broad: The Internet includes communications, independent sites, libraries, maps, educational resources and work services. Problems with one commercial platform model do not render the entire infrastructure useless. The column itself contains examples of lively corners of the network, including small creative spaces. This means that the author's real proposal has more to do with the choice of places where people spend their time, and with the reduction of the power of large intermediaries. The headline blurs this distinction and makes it seem like the only solution is to destroy the Internet entirely. That said, complaints about intrusive recommendations and loss of privacy deserve attention. You need to check specific mechanisms: data collection settings, recommendation rules, the ability to switch to another service and the safety of links. The call to “kill the Internet” is not proof that the entire network is hopeless; it's an emotional way to start a conversation about her device.