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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

#191

Post by hinkley »

rpcope1 wrote: post #89
hinkley wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I drank enough for three people in college. My lifetime average is probably still in the margin of error.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#192

Post by bytehowl »

abcde666777 wrote: post #168

For a while video was a holdout of sorts - e.g. if someone posted video content of themselves or their voice you could trust a real person was behind it. But now convincing fake video generation is easily accessible, so one more holdout stands to fall. It does seem like some kind of ID system is going to be the only way. Sucky but inevitable. I often have the following thought: technological advancement, for all its…

The technology isn't inherently evil. The actual problem is the way our societies are set up, ironically incentivizing sociopathic behaviour even among members of a single nation, nevermind when geopolitics get involved.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#194

Post by JohnMakin »

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.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#195

Post by E-Reverance »

dwedge wrote: post #173
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

Happy to hear of this anecdata, as it gives me hope something similar will happen to my family

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#196

Post by plagiarist »

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.

We need something else, we need an "extreme" (~$1) fine that anyone can claim from any sender who bothered them, no questions asked. Spammers will stop instantly overnight. This would work for phone spam as well.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#197

Post by BobBagwill »

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

Hi Friend, are you looking for a bottled water? Here are the top 1000 brands of delicious bottled water! Water is very good for you! You are an ugly bag of mostly water! You do not have to enter your payment details, I remember them! Be assured that 1000 cases of 1000 brands of delicious bottled water are on their way to you now [Shipping charges may apply] at Peach Trees 2026, Sector 13, Mega-City One! Have an adequate day!!!

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#199

Post by pixl97 »

amiantos wrote: post #112
pixl97 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been on the internet at large lately? With google you may get one authoritative site on something and 50 bot copies of the site on different domains. Sometimes the stolen site is the number one return. Also, if you ran sites years/decades ago, you realized way back then the any local user posting was getting overran by spammers/bots. Now is so much worse that it's not worth doing in most cases. So, most post…

I spend all day every day on the Internet and I don't share your perspective. I might dislike centralized social media and yearn for a bygone era, but just in the past two days I had a very positive interaction with multiple real humans in the Commodore 64 subreddit that helped solve a problem I was having that isn't documented anywhere else on the internet yet. So then I went on my personal blog and blogged about it…

"You can do everything right and still lose".

At the end of the day there is no real penalty for being a bad actor on the internet. They get unlimited retries on spamming and otherwise causing problems. In many ways this helps Google entrench itself as the search/ad company. No one else has the money or compute resources to continuously update the internet. Furthermore they have told us it's their job to shove unskippable ads in our faces. They'll gladly let the public internet die in the future if they can push out their own version of "SafeInternet by Google/now with more ads!".

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#200

Post by pseudalopex »

pixl97 wrote: post #138
girvo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Who wrote what you quoted?
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