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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

#131

Post by jasondigitized »

robotswantdata wrote: post #86
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?

Run your site like an old school BBS. You only run into these problems when you invite the world to your site and want big numbers. You don't have to do that.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#132

Post by ianbutler »

pixl97 wrote: post #116
amiantos wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal/fantasy world under "small internet theory", every online friend group would have their own Discourse server set up (similar to how friend groups use Discord now), and traffic/usage of that Discourse server is so small that it would be a waste of resources to try to swamp it with bot traffic, and on top of that, everyone on the Discourse server are friends who can vouch for new members who join, so no bot…

>Let's build small communities of And 10 minutes later Texas demands you identify all your users age when someone posts a porn image somewhere. Facebook will gleefully laugh all the way to the court saying we need such internet ID to entrench themselves. >, in that way the internet will never die. You mean in the exact way the internet used to be... then died? I'm guessing your GenX or a Xennial, it's how we think. R…

> Attempting to move to a system that is more difficult will be very difficult for them.

That doesn't make it wrong, it just might make the last 20 years a mistake.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#133

Post by amiantos »

jasondigitized wrote: post #130
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…

Bring back BBS. Getting into the good ones was a process back in the day.

It's funny you mention this, I got a Commodore 64 Ultimate the other day and one of the first things I did was load up the BBS client and browse some BBSes. Those are from before my time (my first PC was a Compaq Pentium 166) so I never got to experience them for real. But if the rest of the internet collapses under the weight of bot traffic, BBSes are quite nice.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#135

Post by gpderetta »

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…

signal/noise

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#136

Post by throwaway94275 »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #85
dehsge wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#137

Post by drdaeman »

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.

Neither of those solves it, just tries to conserve the status quo.

The issue, as I understand it, is literally a new Eternal November, just that instead of “noobs” there are “clankers” this time.

Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck about things like gender, organs (like skin or genitalia) or absence thereof, or anything alike when someone posts something online, unless posted content is strongly related to one of those topics. Ideas matter no matter who or what produces them. Species fit into the same aspects-I-don’t-care-about list just fine - on the Internet nobody knows^W cares you’re a dog. Or a bunch of matrices in a trench coat. As long as you behave socially appropriate.

The problem with bots is that they’re not just noobs - unlike us meatbags they don’t just do wrong and stupid things but can’t possibly learn to stop (because models are static). Solving that, I think, is the true solution, bringing Internet back to life. Anything else seems to be just addressing the correlations to the symptoms.

(Yea, I’m leaning towards technooptimist and transhumanist views - I was raised in culture that had a lot of those, and was sold a dream of a progress that transcends worlds, and haven’t found a reason to denounce that. Your mileage may vary.)

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#138

Post by pixl97 »

girvo wrote: post #75
Invictus0 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably more than 10^17 AI model executions occurring per day. I know in ye olde HN there are many Purists that are Too Good For AI, but the majority of the human race is consuming AI at a blinding rate, and if they really didn't like it, they would stop.

> and if they really didn't like it, they would stop. I can’t really articulate why, but this doesn’t feel true to me. There are plenty of things humans do especially at scale that we don’t like, or we do that we don’t like others doing, and don’t stop

>The "Moloch problem" or "Moloch trap" refers to a scenario where individual, rational self-interest leads to a collective outcome that is disastrous for everyone. It describes competitive, zero-sum dynamics—often called a "race to the bottom"—where participants sacrifice long-term sustainability for short-term gains, resulting in a loss for all involved.

Hence why we have to keep feeding the orphan crushing machine.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#139

Post by Krei-se »

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…

Your welcome to link your proven human page with mine.

Id even run a dedicated UT99 server lol

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#140

Post by demaga »

empath75 wrote: post #68

Reddit in particular is overwhelmed by bots. There are small niche communities where it’s mostly people talking to people, but the vast majority of popular posts are made by bots, voted on by bots and commented on by bots. It’s not even like commercial astroturfing, it’s just karma farming and public sentiment manipulation.

I think it makes sense, since most people don't post anything or at least don't post much. So someone (something) must fill in this void.
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