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The 'Dead Internet Theory'

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Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#51

Post by jcynix »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #26
g15jv2dp wrote: post #21

Published the same day as https://theconversation.com/ai-chatbots-are-intruding-into-o... > A parent asked a question in a private Facebook group in April 2024: Does anyone with a child who is both gifted and disabled have any experience with New York City public schools? The parent received a seemingly helpful answer that laid out some characteristics of a specific school, beginning with the context that “I have a c…

I recently created a new account on Facebook with the single goal of seeing what was going on in my local community. Firstly their search /discover was pretty terrible. I am sure that local groups exist, but searching for keywords mostly turned up communities with commercial angles. Secondly even tho I only joined groups related to a very specific European location, every 3rd post in my feed is now bizzarely a scanti…

Your experience sounds similar to mine with YouTube, especially if I try to watch videos without logging into an account.

Thus I have more than one account to use these as topical pre-filters. And when you loose your cookies, YouTube wants a phone number to "verify" that it's "me". Luckily, as a European living near enough to French borders, I can purchase temporary SIM cards in France and "verify" things during holiday trips and don't need to use my main phone account.

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#52

Post by brabel »

sneak wrote: post #15
drjakerenzella wrote: post #14

I’m one of the authors of this article, great to see it shared to HN. It’s been interesting to see how the article has resonated with people, and that many of us are feeling the same way about the internet we know and love. I think one of the responses to the growing phenomenon, especially as LLMs make fake content even easier and more convincing, is that we will see increased uptake on platforms like Discord where y…

Bots are software tools used by humans to publish, just like web browsers. Nothing on the internet happens without human intent.

As the article points out, the problem is when Governments start using them as basically weapons.... and companies use them all the time for marketing...

Yes, there's a group of people behind those, but it's hard to ignore the difference between a single person controlling a couple of bots to post harmless updates or whatever, and Governments trying to sway the agenda of other countries their way.

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#53

Post by roody15 »

openrisk wrote: post #18

The writing is clearly on the wall for the "internet" as there is no visible restoring force. If its not dead already, its getting pretty close. It is a sort of tragedy of the digital commons, where the commons in this instance is the availability of extremely usable digital channel for people to communicate online in a decentralized way. The early pioneers were really excited about the empowering potential of all th…

“ but alas they did not work out the full dynamics of human nature (seeking short term profit, influence and control) ”

Has anyone worked out this … in terms of governance or anyone organized grouping of humans?

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#54

Post by macsparrow »

Nursie wrote: post #36
HlessClaudesman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently created a new account on Facebook with the single goal of seeing what was going on in my local community. Firstly their search /discover was pretty terrible. I am sure that local groups exist, but searching for keywords mostly turned up communities with commercial angles. Secondly even tho I only joined groups related to a very specific European location, every 3rd post in my feed is now bizzarely a scanti…

My feed is now swamped with trash. My friends, now we're all a bit older, don't post as frequently as they once did. I'm also a member of a couple of hyper-local groups which don't necessarily get posts every day, and I have no interest in anything else. I'm fine with this, if nobody's posted for a while then I'll see that and move on. Facebook is not fine with this. Apparently I must be interested in archaeology, or…

Social feeds have been in a death spiral for a while, most platforms curate for likes/ engagement/ followers, which in turn deters genuine content both from a sharing and visibility POV.

Spurious recommendation algos currently have enough engagement, bots et al, that they'll keep rattling away... for now.

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#55

Post by vidanay »

shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote: post #2

> The dead internet theory essentially claims that activity and content on the internet, including social media accounts, are predominantly being created and automated by artificial intelligence agents. The theory predates the current era of AI generated content: > The dead Internet theory's exact origin is difficult to pinpoint, but it most likely emerged from 4chan or Wizardchan as a theoretical concept in the late…

The Why Files made a video on the subject a couple years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlR9fCXfWyM

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#56

Post by dools »

brabel wrote: post #49
drjakerenzella wrote: post #14

I’m one of the authors of this article, great to see it shared to HN. It’s been interesting to see how the article has resonated with people, and that many of us are feeling the same way about the internet we know and love. I think one of the responses to the growing phenomenon, especially as LLMs make fake content even easier and more convincing, is that we will see increased uptake on platforms like Discord where y…

> Or maybe those like Musk will get his way and platforms like X will require paid verification! I would like for verification to be mandatory on platforms meant for "real people" to interact, but not "paid" on a proprietary platform, but using new standards for internationally valid identities. I am betting on w3C's Verifiable Credentials for that: https://w3c.github.io/vc-overview/ It's still a bit unclear who woul…

The problem with these sorts of ID requirements is that, even though we have lots of very good examples of government issued IDs, everyone immediately jumps to dissidents in authoritarian regimes and government overreach and Bill Gates conspiracy theories.

I think the fundamental disagreement is that, for some, the solution to poor governance is less governance, and for others the solution is better governance.

I am in the latter camp because I think it's apparent than in the absence of better governance, poor governance is replaced by even poorer governance.

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#57

Post by openrisk »

roody15 wrote: post #53
openrisk wrote: post #18

The writing is clearly on the wall for the "internet" as there is no visible restoring force. If its not dead already, its getting pretty close. It is a sort of tragedy of the digital commons, where the commons in this instance is the availability of extremely usable digital channel for people to communicate online in a decentralized way. The early pioneers were really excited about the empowering potential of all th…

“ but alas they did not work out the full dynamics of human nature (seeking short term profit, influence and control) ” Has anyone worked out this … in terms of governance or anyone organized grouping of humans?

Arguably yes, though it varies by domain. The closest equivalent to the internet would seem to be printed information technology (books, journals, newpapers etc.). While certainly not without problems of all sorts, there are so many lessons there on how to mitigate the worst abuses. Ironically the "internet" is destroying that universe as well, without actually offering any workable replacement.

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#58

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Was social media ever a good idea. Some people would never question it; some may even stake their livelihood on it. (Dumb idea.) But the internet, as a computer network, has always been more than social media, or even Usenet. These are not necessarily the "highest and best use" of the internet as a public resource.

Was sending direct mail, i.e., junk mail, the highest and best use of the postal service. It might have been the most profitable but does that mean it was the best.

The internet is a computer network with an enormous amount of junk travelling across it. In theory, that could change.

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#59

Post by HonestOp001 »

jocoda wrote: post #6
shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote: post #2

> The dead internet theory essentially claims that activity and content on the internet, including social media accounts, are predominantly being created and automated by artificial intelligence agents. The theory predates the current era of AI generated content: > The dead Internet theory's exact origin is difficult to pinpoint, but it most likely emerged from 4chan or Wizardchan as a theoretical concept in the late…

predatory SEO! Not content to fuck up the real world, we've done the same in the digital. Social sites, like systems, consist of inputs and feedback loops. How the feedback inputs are filtered is what we call moderation. Sometimes good, sometimes not. Google tamed the web and tuned itself for its own benefit. SEO engineers noticed and motivated by culture's dear friend greed, they were some of the first to automate -…

It was not just Google. All of the search engines have an initial period of being good then when they get to a state of market domination or market penetration, the SEO and large companies with money show up. The SEO people game the system, while the people in companies with money, simply pay to be at the top of the chart or surreptitiously give money to be at the top of the chart. The surgeons are fine when they start getting market traction that the issue starts to pop up.

Re: The 'Dead Internet Theory'

#60

Post by tivert »

houseplant wrote: post #7

I watched a great video essay about this. Bots to create fake articles, bots to defect fake articles, bots to use common word salad to evade detection, bots detecting the word salad, bots to make comments on articles, bots to upvote those comments, bots to aggregate these articles and generate articles out of the comments, bots to rip off and change a bit of the wording of an article so they could repost the article,…

> when I think about "the dead internet theory", this is what I imagine. all of this happening over top of our heads as we chat on a forum, out of the way.

It won't necessarily be "over top of our heads as we chat on a forum, out of the way." You missed people replying to bots, thinking they're replying to a person: https://www.404media.co/facebooks-ai-spam-isnt-the-dead-inte....

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