The Post‑Web Visibility Collapse: How Digital Infrastructures Erase Public Legibility

Title: The Post‑Web Visibility Collapse: How Digital Infrastructures Erase Public Legibility Description This essay develops Post‑Web Visibility Collapse Theory, a central component of the technological arc of the SignalRupture framework. It argues that the transition from the open‑web era—defined by hyperlinks, public pages, and stable archives—to the post‑web era of algorithmic feeds, platform enclosures, and fragmented attention architectures has produced a structural collapse of public visibility. Drawing on research in media studies, information science, and platform governance, the essay demonstrates how algorithmic opacity, content de‑prioritization, platform volatility, and the disappearance of stable digital spaces erode the conditions necessary for shared reality, public legibility, and structural truth. Visibility collapse is not a decline in content creation but a decline in the ability of content to remain publicly accessible, discoverable, and contextually meaningful. SignalRupture positions visibility collapse as a systemic threat to democratic discourse, collective understanding, and the capacity for structural analysis in the digital era.