Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dead Internet Theory

kudmitry.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 735 posts

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#121

Post by BLKNSLVR »

Morromist wrote: post #109
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #97

I'm not really replying to the article, just going tangentially from the "dead internet theory" topic, but I was thinking about when we might see the equivalent for roads: the dead road theory. In X amount of time a significant majority of road traffic will be bots in the drivers seat (figuratively), and a majority of said traffic won't even have a human on-board. It will be deliveries of goods and food. I look forwa…

I mean maybe someday we'll have the technlogy to work from home too. Clearly we aren't there yet according to the bosses who make us commute. One can dream... one can dream.

Anecdote-only

I actually prefer to work in the office, it's easier for me to have separate physical spaces to represent the separate roles in my life and thus conduct those roles. It's extra effort for me to apply role X where I would normally be applying role Y.

Having said that, some of the most productive developers I work with I barely see in the office. It works for them to not have to go through that whole ... ceremoniality ... required of coming into the office. They would quit on the spot if they were forced to come back into the office even only twice a week, and the company would be so much worse off without them. By not forcing them to come into the office, they come in on their own volition and therefore do not resent it and therefore do not (or are slower to) resent their company of employment.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#122

Post by BobBagwill »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #97

I'm not really replying to the article, just going tangentially from the "dead internet theory" topic, but I was thinking about when we might see the equivalent for roads: the dead road theory. In X amount of time a significant majority of road traffic will be bots in the drivers seat (figuratively), and a majority of said traffic won't even have a human on-board. It will be deliveries of goods and food. I look forwa…

The Last of the Winnebagos by Connie Willis

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#123

Post by __turbobrew__ »

chongli wrote: post #49

I prefer a Dark Forest theory [1] of the internet. Rather than being completely dead and saturated with bots, the internet has little pockets of human activity like bits of flotsam in a stream of slop. And that's how it is going to be from here on out. Occasionally the bots will find those communities and they'll either find a way to ban them or the community will be abandoned for another safe harbour. To that end, I…

Discord fills some of the pockets of human interaction. We really need more invite only platforms.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#124

Post by karim79 »

makingstuffs wrote: post #120

Think the notion that ‘no one’ uses em dashes is a bit misguided. I’ve personally used them in text for as long as I can remember. Also on the phrase “you’re absolute right”, it’s definitely a phrase my friends and I use a lot, albeit in a sorta of sarcastic manner when one of us says something which is obvious but, nonetheless, we use it. We also tend to use “Well, you’re not wrong” again in a sarcastic manner for s…

I would add that a lot of us who were born or grew up in the UK are quite comfortable saying stuff like "you're right, but...", or even "I agree with you, but...". The British politeness thing, presumably.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#125

Post by [deleted] »

seiferteric wrote: post #116

My parents were tricked the other day by a fake youtube video of "racist cop" doing something bad and getting outraged by it. I watch part of the video and even though it felt off I couldn't immediately tell for sure if it was fake or not. Nevertheless I googled the names and details and found nothing but repostings of the video. Then I looked at the youtube channel info and there it said it uses AI for "some" of the…

[deleted]

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#127

Post by therobots927 »

femto wrote: post #99
therobots927 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why we need a parallel internet.

The "old" Internet is still there in parallel with the "new" Internet. It's just been swamped by the large volume of "new" stuff. In the 90s the Internet was small and before crawler based search engines you had to find things manually and maintain your own list of URLs to get back to things. Ignore the search engines, ignore all the large companies and you're left with the "Old Internet". It's inconvenient and it's…

Well then in that case, maybe we need a “vetted internet”. Like the opposite of the dark web, this would only index vetted websites, scanned for AI slop, and with optional parental controls, equipped with customized filters that leverage LLMs to classify content into unwanted categories. It would require a monthly subscription fee to maintain but would be a nonprofit model.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#128

Post by neilv »

Sunday evening musings regarding bot comments and HN...

I'm sure it's happening, but I don't know how much.

Surely some people are running bots on HN to establish sockpuppets for use later, and to manipulate sentiment now, just like on any other influential social media.

And some people are probably running bots on HN just for amusement, with no application in mind.

And some others, who were advised to have an HN presence, or who want to appear smarter, but are not great at words, are probably copy&pasting LLM output to HN comments, just like they'd cheat on their homework.

I've gotten a few replies that made me wonder whether it was an LLM.

Anyway, coincidentally, I currently have 31,205 HN karma, so I guess 31,337 Hacker News Points would be the perfect number at which to stop talking, before there's too many bots. I'll have to think of how to end on a high note.

(P.S., The more you upvote me, the sooner you get to stop hearing from me.)

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#129

Post by LexiMax »

viccis wrote: post #73

>which is not a social network, but I’m tired of arguing with people online about it I know this was a throwaway parenthetical, but I agree 100%. I don't know when the meaning of "social media" went from "internet based medium for socializing with people you know IRL" to a catchall for any online forum like reddit, but one result of this semantic shift is that it takes attention away from the fact that the former typ…

> the former type is all but obliterated now.

Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it.

While it stinks that it is controlled by one big company, it's quite nice that its communities are invite-only by default and largely moderated by actual flesh-and-blood users. There's no single public shared social space, which means there's no one shared social feed to get hooked on.

Pretty much all of my former IRC/Forum buddies have migrated to Discord, and when the site goes south (not if, it's going to go public eventually, we all know how this story plays out), we expect that we'll be using an alternative that is shaped very much like it, such as Matrix.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#130

Post by mc3301 »

makingstuffs wrote: post #120

Think the notion that ‘no one’ uses em dashes is a bit misguided. I’ve personally used them in text for as long as I can remember. Also on the phrase “you’re absolute right”, it’s definitely a phrase my friends and I use a lot, albeit in a sorta of sarcastic manner when one of us says something which is obvious but, nonetheless, we use it. We also tend to use “Well, you’re not wrong” again in a sarcastic manner for s…

Also, I've seen people edit, one-by-one, each m-dash. And then they copy-paste the entire LLM output, thinking it looks less AI-like or something.
Post reply on HN