The internet is going quiet — and developers who can't afford AI are the ones still feeding it

The internet is going silent Dev.to's trending article this week has an uncomfortable observation: the internet is getting quieter. Stack Overflow traffic is down. Forums are emptying. People who used to write detailed answers are... not writing them anymore. The reason everyone agrees on: AI. Why write a detailed answer when ChatGPT will just give it to you? Why document your solution when Copilot will suggest the next line? The incentive to contribute public knowledge is collapsing. But here's what that article missed The developers still writing answers on Stack Overflow? Still posting on forums? Still documenting their solutions in public? They're disproportionately from Nigeria, Kenya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan. Not because they're more generous. Because they can't afford the AI tools that would let them skip the forums. A developer in Lagos can't pay $20/month for ChatGPT on a salary where $20 is a meaningful fraction of daily income. So they do it the old way — they s