The Future of the Internet May Depend on Proving You Are Human, Without Revealing Who You Are
Here is an uncomfortable question for anyone who still thinks of the internet as a human place: if a majority of the traffic hitting the world's websites is not human, who exactly is the web being built for?
According to Imperva's 2026 Bad Bot Report, automated traffic accounted for more than 53% of all web traffic in 2025, up from 51% the year before, while human activity fell to 47% and continues to decline. Malicious bots alone made up 37% of all internet traffic in 2024, and Imperva is explicit that this reflects a structural change in how the internet operates, not a short-term attack cycle. Businesses are no longer serving customers alone. They are serving machines.
The minority internet
Layer the fraud numbers on top and the picture darkens. The FBI's IC3 logged roughly $893 million in losses from complaints that referenced AI in 2025,...
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