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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

#261

Post by vintermann »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #182
throwaway94275 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blog admin sees who invited the bots and recursively kicks that account and any invited by it.

I invite myself multiple times in addition to other real humans. Then I use my duplicate accounts to invite bots.

Inviting people who invited bots chould also hurt your "social credit" score in various ways.

Your tree could for instance be pruned - you can still invite people, but the people you invited can no longer invite people.

There are not a lot of sites which have tried this and failed. Those which have tried to be even a little bit clever about it, have succeeded pretty well (Advogato was a really early example).

What there have been, are sites which rejected such restrictions after a while, because they would rather have a big number to show to investors than real people. Many have even run the fake accounts themselves (e.g. Reddit).

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#262

Post by onetokeoverthe »

littlestymaar wrote: post #250
pixl97 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely because your second sentence is impossible in one way or another. Even if it's some kind of government encoded key, governments cannot be trusted to create imaginary people and hand them out to companies like palantir for large scale population manipulation.

I can imagine a government creating a moderate number of fake profiles for use by police and intelligence services, and honestly I'm fine with it, but creating a ghost population for propaganda purpose is entirely different and if you live in a country where you cannot trust your government not to do something that bad, you're already screwd. In any case, it is still better than the status quo where even foreign auth…

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Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#264

Post by ojosilva »

JohnMakin wrote: post #194
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.

Paid option doesn't really deter this behavior, it encourages it - a botter will see a price tag on a "real" account (see what happened to twitter's blue checkmark sub) and go oh goody, I can pay for people to think I'm real. If you make the price high enough sure, but I'm unsure you can find the right price to simultaneously 1) deter bot traffic and 2) be appealing to actual users.

I'm trying to imagine this new paid app in different angles and versions, ie a new Reddit... Pay to be in there, get paid for being in there, only humans can be in there, ads pay for humans being there, humans use some govt on-line ID system, karma systems improve so that only humans are rewarded, Voight-Kampf captchas, humans mail the app their dna to verify their identity, humans login on a street 24/7 login post (think phone booths).... I just don't see any good, unbreakable, viable and/or sustainable way. We just need to get used to coexist with bots everywhere while we adjust our expectations and social codes. Fast forward until AI is massively on the streets and indistinguishable from us physically (or very distinct and fascinating), and all supposing that we can keep them in control...

Dead internet is the prequel to dead world, let's seize the opportunity to learn how to coexist with synthetics and develop the code that will make life with a higher intelligence species possible on Earth. And remember, we humans vary widely, and just like there are people happy to share LinkedIn slop today, there will be humans gladly living surrounded exclusively by overpowering synthetics. So lower your expectations for universal solutions and focus on niche.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#265

Post by mfru »

kubb wrote: post #37
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.

I want cool cryptography where I can, e.g. verify where I'm writing from and what my age is without giving away any other information. Or if I want, I can verify that I'm myself, and eschew anonymity, and certain platforms should only accept contributions from people who don't hide their identity. Everyone knows who you are in the town square.

People in the town square only see my face, they do not automatically have my name, birth date and ID available unless I give it to them or they go to lengths obtaining those (il)legally.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#266

Post by orbital-decay »

kubb wrote: post #37
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.

I want cool cryptography where I can, e.g. verify where I'm writing from and what my age is without giving away any other information. Or if I want, I can verify that I'm myself, and eschew anonymity, and certain platforms should only accept contributions from people who don't hide their identity. Everyone knows who you are in the town square.

>Everyone knows who you are in the town square.

Many years ago I left a small town and moved to a big city for this exact reason.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#267

Post by bsaul »

geek_at wrote: post #19
yakattak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the $10 barrier to SomethingAwful back in the day (and I guess now since it’s still around) definitely made a huge difference. I hate the idea of subscribing to a site like HN or Reddit… but one time $10 to post? I’d accept that if it meant less bots.

reminds me of Bill Gates in the 90s when asked about email spam. He said it would make sense to make an email cost like 1 cent so the spammers can't spam as much but this didn't sit right with the mindset of the people at the time.

it's also something that was in my mind when i wrote about those two options. I still keep this idea in the back of my head since those days (i'm old enough to remember when gates had this atrocious, yet interesting idea).

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#268

Post by pllbnk »

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.

Maybe some proof-of-work scheme where uploading content would require the uploader to solve a cryptographic puzzle, hence reducing overall number of posts? The PoW difficulty should somehow be correlated to economics where it wouldn't be too expensive but also wouldn't make sense to do mass uploading via bot farms?

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#269

Post by Bender »

munk-a wrote: post #103
ryandrake wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would probably not pay $10 to post on HN, but many spammers who expect some kind of tangible return would pay that, so the fee just makes the problem worse.

The spammers wouldn't pay it once though - the idea is that it's a good way to scale moderation. Each time an admin needs to ban a user there is a 10$ subsidy supporting that action - and if the bots come back then they get to pay 10$ to be banned again. Assuming the money isn't wasted and is actually used to fund moderation 10$ is probably comfortably above the cost to detect and ban most malicious users.

The spammers wouldn't pay it once though

There are large swaths of spammers that indeed would not pay it. There are on the other hand plenty of NGO's that would pay it without a second thought to promote specific topics and dogpile on others. Those are the movements I would expect AI to take over if not already. AI does not sleep, humans do. AI won't miss the comments that groups believe need to be amplified or squelched.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#270

Post by sarbanharble »

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.

I actually look forward to the era of social media companies paying humans to use their platforms.
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