I do think they will essentially die. They will morph into completely different websites, but I think they will be around for a long time, and I think their userbase won’t shrink even a bit.
Big websites are slowly adopting the facebook model: All the content is hidden and requires you login to view it. Creating an account requires some sort of personally identifying information like a phone number, photo of ID, mailing address, etc.
The old model simply turned out to be unprofitable. It was always done under the motto of “bring the people and the money will come” and so they made it as easy as possible to build up a large user base, but it turns out that motto is false on the internet, and investors have finally realized it. There is no point in having a massive user base if they don’t actually generate a profit for you. Anonymous internet users do not do this. They are indistinguishable from bots. If they don’t use adblock, they don’t click on ads. They don’t donate money. Yet they use up the majority of the server resources.
It used to be that you at least needed anonymous users to generate content for you, but (in part thanks to facebok) non-anonymous usage of the internet has become normalized. If anything the best content will come from someone who has their real name, and profile picture attached to the content they submit. The anonymous nobody is much less likely to post anything valuable.
I think the internet as we know it is dead, and tbh I don’t even blame big corporations for this. I blame mass tech illiteracy, and people’s willingness to sacrifice their privacy for some dopamine hits.
I don’t think most people actually think that these sites will literally die (well, actually Twitter/X literally dying at some point wouldn’t surprise me all that much), it’s more just hyperbole for jumping the shark.
I could also see dying referring to people rationing their time elsewhere. People might still hang on to Twitter to read about bus delays or school closures for example but they won’t engage with content there.
myspace.com is still a website you can visit, but no one does. facebook is going down that path once their userbase ages out of living. the artist formerly known as twitter is going to go bankrupt and a very salty elon musk will sell it for a fraction of what we bought it for and who tf knows what happens to it after that.
It will be interesting to see, whether Meta manages to stay afloat even without Facebook.
Buying Instagram was one of their best business moves and kept them connected with the younglings for a while. They couldn’t replicate that with TikTok or the likes.
Over time, Facebook will become irrelevant, but Meta might actually manage to buy apps left and right hoping to hit the new unicorn.