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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

#171

Post by keithnz »

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…

No, the old internet wasn't that great. There were so many problems. Finding things was hard, buying things was hard, integrating things was hard, compatibility was hard, everything was super fractured. It felt great at the time because you discovered all these random things and it was all novel at the time. Centralized (Or decentralized collaborative services like IRC or Usenet) really unlocked the power of the internet.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#172

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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…

And who is going to know your blog exists? If they search on Google they are going to get an answer from AI and stop

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#173

Post by dwedge »

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…

In some ways it might be positive. My girlfriend had a small addiction to Instagram reels. The flood of AI generated videos on there just killed the magic for her and she stopped using it

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#174

Post by idop »

ambicapter wrote: post #93
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…

Anyone can run a blog/website and be subject to AI bot crawlers using terabytes of your bandwidth for no reason, yeah.

More than that, it's practically impossible to find good specialized, human-written websites. Search engines don't find them, all results are AI garbage. With no real ability to be discovered, there's no incentive to maintain such websites too, and so the cycle of slop continues.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#175

Post by dwedge »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #172
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…

And who is going to know your blog exists? If they search on Google they are going to get an answer from AI and stop

Kagi small web, for one

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#176

Post by pixl97 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #148
Oras wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish going outside again were possible, but what if most of the people you actually want to hang out with aren't in the same area? And for those who are near, the cost of having a coffee or a drink is too much now on top of expenses that are already stretching,

go for a walk with your friends and a bottle of water

It's becoming rarer and rarer for people to have friends that are physically close to them unless they've stayed in the town they were born in.

Modern technology kind of broke friendship in the sense that not very long ago maintaining friendships over any distance was expensive. That is it costs long distance fees, gas, or letter writing. Because of those expenses it was very common to make friends locally pretty quickly.

But the internet broke that, especially modern social media. Wherever you moved your friends were a free website away, and long distance calling was gone. At first this seemed fine because sites connected you to your friends, but as the lock in happened it became a contest of getting you pissed off and showing you ads.

Going to take a long time to socially fix this problem. Especially as some large number of people are going to talk to AI instead.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#177

Post by dwedge »

ambicapter wrote: post #93
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…

Anyone can run a blog/website and be subject to AI bot crawlers using terabytes of your bandwidth for no reason, yeah.

If this encourages those people to stop sending hundreds of megabytes of crap per page load of their text content, it might be a good thing

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#179

Post by dwedge »

idop wrote: post #174
ambicapter wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can run a blog/website and be subject to AI bot crawlers using terabytes of your bandwidth for no reason, yeah.

More than that, it's practically impossible to find good specialized, human-written websites. Search engines don't find them, all results are AI garbage. With no real ability to be discovered, there's no incentive to maintain such websites too, and so the cycle of slop continues.

Kagi small Web, though their rss only seems to show 5 updates a day across thousands of sites. Also search for indieweb

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#180

Post by ninjagoo »

mrkramer wrote: post #160

Tbh I don't care if I speak to a human or a bot as long as they are "useful"; by useful I mean if they provide me useful information but then again humans can provide unique information that bots can not. But I think identity is not relevant anymore, what's relevant is reputation. People think internet bots are bad per se but we need to build useful bots, just like there are chat bots that are useful on various platf…

This is a great point. In the past and present, sites like slashdot and HN depend on the users to achieve that moderation to surface useful comments and keep 'spam' down.

Now, there are tools to achieve that kind of moderation automagically, and even better, consistently. This is an opportunity to build out a community that is useful for everyone. The first platform that guarantees anonymity supported by human-independent moderation will likely attract significant and persistent user support.

There is still the issue of cost - how does the community pay for such a platform? Perhaps like the Google of yore - very limited ads? Avoiding enshittification can be done through the Wikipedia model - non-profit to manage the whole thing?

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