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The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

adriankrebs.ch

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Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#81

Post by amiantos »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58
amiantos wrote: post #51

Why is it being called dead internet theory when, as far as I can tell, what's really happening is that big centralized systems are being overrun with bots? The internet existed and was pretty great before these large centralized systems came into being. Anyone can still run a blog/website, and/or their own discourse server. There's no need to mourn for these centralized systems that largely existed only to exploit u…

> Why is it being called dead internet theory “A social networking system simulates a user using a language model trained using training data generated from user interactions performed by that user. The language model may be used for simulating the user when the user is absent from the social networking system, for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user is deceased” [1]. (More seriously: https://en.…

So why isn't it called "dead social media theory"? The internet is not only social media services, though I understand a lot of people seem to think that without centralized social media services there is no reason to use the internet.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#82

Post by rpcope1 »

jacquesm wrote: post #36
bsaul wrote: post #5

I only see two outcomes for this problem : an internet of verified identities (start by uploading your ID card). Or a paid internet, where it doesn't matter who you are, but since you're going to pay for that email or that reddit account, the probability that it's AI spam is greatly reduced. And i'm looking forward to none of them.

Friend of a friend verification could side-step that, if there is a good way to penalize bad actors willing to violate the principle.

I guess we're coming full circle back to red offbrand Hacker News

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#83

Post by girvo »

toddmorey wrote: post #17

I see many, many startups that promise to be an automated marketing agent that will do this exact thing: scour sites for conversations and post links to your product. Obviously that burns down the human Internet, but it’s also a business that will have a short lifespan and bring about its own demise. I guess they don’t care about anything enduring as long as they can grab some quick cash on the way out.

> I guess they don’t care about anything enduring as long as they can grab some quick cash on the way out.

As far as I can tell, that is basically all AI-related businesses. Including those non-AI ones jumping on the bandwagon to throw all their employees in the bin and expect 10x productivity somehow: if they are right and these tools do become that good, well the economy as we know it is over as white collar knowledge work disappears.

But hey, we made money in those few years right!

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#85

Post by MeetingsBrowser »

dehsge wrote: post #79
bsaul wrote: post #5

I only see two outcomes for this problem : an internet of verified identities (start by uploading your ID card). Or a paid internet, where it doesn't matter who you are, but since you're going to pay for that email or that reddit account, the probability that it's AI spam is greatly reduced. And i'm looking forward to none of them.

Members only comment blogs. Where you need an invite to comment also solves the problem. You need to know a real human to get access.

That might raise the initial barrier, but it assumes every user behaves appropriately.

All it takes is one invited user to open the door to bots.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#86

Post by robotswantdata »

amiantos wrote: post #51

Why is it being called dead internet theory when, as far as I can tell, what's really happening is that big centralized systems are being overrun with bots? The internet existed and was pretty great before these large centralized systems came into being. Anyone can still run a blog/website, and/or their own discourse server. There's no need to mourn for these centralized systems that largely existed only to exploit u…

How would the small internet fight the bots?

Aggressive moderation? Disable UGC?

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#87

Post by pixl97 »

righthand wrote: post #48
d--b wrote: post #28

Well, it's not such terrible news, is it? I get nostalgia for the 90s/00s, but that time was never coming back anyways. The best we can hope now is for people to be less online. And if it comes from people drowning in AI crap, I think it's kind of funny.

I don’t think people are going to get offline and the best we can probably do is create free and open p2p platforms that don’t require registration necessarily to use. And allow people to control their own databases. A lot of communication is locked behind corporations that run the services that are building these tracking and identification databases. I actually think it’s more about getting people off browsers and…

>create free and open p2p platforms that don’t require registration necessarily to use

And how do you create this without it being overran by bots, spam, and people posting gargantuan amounts of porn?

>allow people to control their own databases

There are two types of people that want to control databases. 1: The freedom seeking type who want information sovereignty. 2: The type of people that want to hoover up as much data as possible for money and power.

Guess who has more ability to control the world out of those two.

Lastly, most people want to use curated websites free of spam and content they don't want. Almost nobody wants to do that curation themselves. Hence curated platforms will attract the most people via network effects.

ah shoot, that wasn't lastly...

> getting people off browsers

and putting them on what exactly? phone apps, that's not better at all. Multimedia attracts people like flies to poop. It's seemingly a natural human response to move to an application that is more visually interesting regardless of it's security safety.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#89

Post by rpcope1 »

hinkley wrote: post #69
Pigalowda wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can use verification mountain dew cans. No big deal.

I can't recall the last time I did the Dew. Should I turn myself in to a reeducation camp?

I recall a WSJ article during the 2024 election that was about the fact that Tim Walz and JD Vance were both big consumers of Diet Mountain Dew, and how basically America ran across the board on various types of Mountain Dew. Can you really call yourself "American" if you're not doing the dew?
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