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

231–240 of 735 posts

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#231

Post by Underphil »

vinyl7 wrote: post #206
lizknope wrote: post #5

Bots have ruined reddit but that is what the owners wanted. The API protest in 2023 took away tools from moderators. I noticed increased bot activity after that. The IPO in 2024 means that they need to increase revenue to justify the stock price. So they allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue. I think they purposely make the search engine bad to encourage people to make more posts which i…

> So they allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue When are people who buy ads going to realize that the majority of their online ad spend is going towards bots rather than human eye balls who will actually buy their product? I'm very surprised there hasn't been a massive lawsuite against Google, Facebook, Reddit, etc. for misleading and essentially scamming ad buyers

Is this really true though? Don't they have ways of tracking the returns on advertising investment? I would have thought that after a certain amount of time these ad buys would show themselves as worthless if they actually were.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#232

Post by optimalquiet »

kimixa wrote: post #191
MarkusQ wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. En-dash doesn't work "just as well" as an em-dash, anymore than a comma works as an apostrophe. They are different punctuation marks. Also, I was a curmudgeon with strong opinions about punctuation before ChatGPT—heck, even before the internet. And I can produce witnesses.

In British English you'd be wrong for using an em-dash in those places, with most grammar recommendations being for an en-dash, often with spaces. It's be just as wrong as using an apostrophe instead of a comma. Grammar is often wooly in a widely used language with no single centralised authority. Many of the "Hard Rules" some people thing are fundamental truths are often more local style guides, and often a lot more…

Interesting, I’m an American English speaker but that’s how it feels natural to me to use dashes. Em-dashes with no spaces feels wrong for reasons I can’t articulate. This first usage—in this meandering sentence—feels bossy, like I can’t have a moment to read each word individually. But this second one — which feels more natural — lets the words and the punctuation breathe. I don’t actually know where I picked up this habit. Probably from the web.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#233

Post by nitwit005 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #162
LexiMax wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. The "former type" had to do with online socializing with people you know IRL. I have never seen anything on Discord that matches this description.

You're essentially saying you haven't seen anyone's private chats.

I'm in a friend Discord server. It's naturally invisible unless someone sends you an invite.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#234

Post by neoden »

> LLMs are just probabilistic next-token generators

How sick and tired I am of this take. Okay, people are just bags of bones plus slightly electrified boxes with fat and liquid.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#235

Post by rmunn »

kimixa wrote: post #188
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…

As a brit I'd say we tend to use "en-dashes", slightly shorter versions - so more similar to a hyphen and so often typed like that - with spaces either side. I never saw em-dashes—the longer version with no space—outside of published books and now AI.

Besides the LaTeX use, on Linux if you have gone into your keyboard options and configured a rarely-used key to be your Compose key (I like to use the "menu" key for this purpose, or right Alt if on a keyboard with no "menu" key), you can type Compose sequences as follows (note how they closely resemble the LaTeX -- or --- sequences):

Compose, hyphen, hyphen, period: produces – (en dash) Compose, hyphen, hyphen, hyphen: produces — (em dash)

And many other useful sequences too, like Compose, lowercase o, lowercase o to produce the ° (degree) symbol. If you're running Linux, look into your keyboard settings and dig into the advanced settings until you find the Compose key, it's super handy.

P.S. If I was running Windows I would probably never type em dashes. But since the key combination to type them on Linux is so easy to remember, I use em dashes, degree symbols, and other things all the time.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#236

Post by mmooss »

deadowl wrote: post #167
mmooss wrote: post #154

The problem is not the Internet but the author and those like them, acting like social network participants in following the herd - embracing despair and hopelessness, and victimhood - they don't realize they're the problem, not the victims. Another problem is their ignorance and their post-truth attitude, not caring whether their words are actually accurate: > What if people DO USE em-dashes in real life? They do an…

On a typewriter, you'd be able to just adjust the carriage position to make a continuous dash or underline or what have you. Typically I see XXXX over words instead of strike-throughs for typewritten text meanwhile.

Most typefaces make consecutive underlines continuous by default. I've seen leading books on publishing, including iirc the Chicago Manual of Style, say to type two hypens and the typesetter will know to substitute an em-dash.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#237

Post by amrocha »

awakeasleep wrote: post #190
fuzzer371 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one uses em dashes

Except for highly literate people, and people who care about typography. Think about it— the robots didn’t invent the em-dash. They’re copying it from somewhere.

My impression of people that say they’re em dash users is that they’re laundering their dunning kruger through AI.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#238

Post by amrocha »

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…

You’re absolutely right—lots of very smart people use em dashes. Thank you for correcting me on that!

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#239

Post by 152334H »

pants2 wrote: post #106

Are there any social media sites where AI is effectively banned? I know it's not an easy problem but I haven't seen a site even try yet. There's a ton of things you can do to make it harder for bots, ie analyze image metadata, users' keyboard and mouse actions, etc.

in effect, broadly anti-AI communities like bsky succeed by the sheer power of universal hate. Social policing can get you very far without any technology I think

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#240

Post by Davidzheng »

nikeee wrote: post #176

I hope that when all online content is entirely AI generated, humanity will put their phone aside and re-discover reality because we realize that the social networks have become entirely worthless.

lol if they don't put the phone down now, then how can AI generated content specifically optimized to get people to stay be any better.
Post reply on HN