2024 Internet Traffic Breakdown

2024 Internet traffic in zettabytes 0.04 Actual user-generated payload 0.11 Accidental layer 2 forwarding loops 0.17 Intelligence agencies collecting Tor exit node traffic 0.23 Automatic updates to software we never wanted in the first place 0.26 438 Javascript frameworks per average web page 0.56 IoT devices forever calling out to discontinued servers 0.61 Data we would've kept locally but the vendor imposed a cloud subscription model 0.78 LLM bot training and autogenerated nonsense 0.92 Botnet C&C and attack traffic 0.96 RTB auctions 1.09 Advertising, spam, phishing, and other scams 1.18 Telemetry and other personal information the user had no idea was being collected 0.0 ZB 0.5 ZB 1.0 ZB

A bar chart titled “2024 Internet traffic in zettabytes” compares different sources of internet traffic. The joke is that genuine user-generated content is tiny, while most traffic comes from ads, telemetry, scams, botnets, pointless software updates, cloud subscriptions, and other unwanted machine activity. It is shared as a cynical reaction to how little internet traffic represents actual human communication. EN: A bar chart titled “2024 Internet traffic in zettabytes” compares different sources of internet traffic. The joke is that genuine user-generated content is tiny, while most traffic comes from ads, telemetry, scams, botnets, pointless software updates, cloud subscriptions, and other unwanted machine activity. It is shared as a cynical reaction to how little internet traffic represents actual human communication.

• @gentoomemes / 15523 2025-01-09