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PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

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Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#21

Post by hooverd »

UltraSane wrote: post #11
Terr_ wrote: post #3

Ooof. The idea--or reality--that humans' accounts would be hijacked by site-owners to make impersonating slop (presumably to bring in ad-revenue) is somehow both infuriating and energy-sapping-depressing. Issues of trust and attribution have always existed for the web, but for many reasons it feels so much worse now --how bad must it get before some kind of sea-change can occur? I'm not sure what the solution would b…

I exchange public keys with close friends in person. A large scale solution would be very Orwellian. You would need a national ID that is a smart card to connect to an ISP and possible biometric verification.

Do you exchange public keys with your non-computer-toucher close friends?

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#22

Post by thatguy0900 »

segasaturn wrote: post #17

Money quote: > There’s also a social contract: when we create an account in an online community, we do it with the expectation that people we are going to interact with are primarily people. Oh, there will be shills, and bots, and advertisers, but the agreement between the users and the community provider is that they are going to try to defend us from that, and that in exchange we will provide our engagement and con…

Invite only forums or forums with actual identity checking of some sort. Google and Facebook are in prime position to actually provide real online identity services to other websites, which makes Facebook itself developing bots even funnier. Maybe we'll eventually get bank/government issued online identity verification.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#23

Post by kevinventullo »

segasaturn wrote: post #17

Money quote: > There’s also a social contract: when we create an account in an online community, we do it with the expectation that people we are going to interact with are primarily people. Oh, there will be shills, and bots, and advertisers, but the agreement between the users and the community provider is that they are going to try to defend us from that, and that in exchange we will provide our engagement and con…

Ironically, on Facebook itself I am only friends with people I actually know in real life. So, most of the stuff I see in my feed is from them.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#24

Post by arccy »

hooverd wrote: post #21
UltraSane wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I exchange public keys with close friends in person. A large scale solution would be very Orwellian. You would need a national ID that is a smart card to connect to an ISP and possible biometric verification.

Do you exchange public keys with your non-computer-toucher close friends?

if you convince them to use signal that's close enough...

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#25

Post by Scoundreller »

> It had fairly steady growth until 2012, before petering out throughout the 2010s and 2020s in lieu of more centralized sites like StackExchange, and by 2025, only a small community was left

This timeline tracks with my own blogging. Google slowly stopped ranking traditional forum posts and blogs as well around that time, regardless of quality, unless it was a “major”.

> But, unlike so many other fora from back in the early days, it went from 2003 to 2025 without ever changing its URLs, erasing its old posts, or going down altogether.

I can also confirm if you have a bookmark to my blog from 2008, that link will still work!

The CMS is no longer, it's all static now... which too few orgs take the short amount of time to bother with when "refreshing" their web presence :(

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#26

Post by afpx »

UltraSane wrote: post #11
Terr_ wrote: post #3

Ooof. The idea--or reality--that humans' accounts would be hijacked by site-owners to make impersonating slop (presumably to bring in ad-revenue) is somehow both infuriating and energy-sapping-depressing. Issues of trust and attribution have always existed for the web, but for many reasons it feels so much worse now --how bad must it get before some kind of sea-change can occur? I'm not sure what the solution would b…

I exchange public keys with close friends in person. A large scale solution would be very Orwellian. You would need a national ID that is a smart card to connect to an ISP and possible biometric verification.

Could I buy a physical device like RSA SecurID from my bank branch or post office and log into a closed VPN-like network where all the servers are run by verified users? I know there are problems with that idea.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#27

Post by COAGULOPATH »

Something I'm increasingly noticing about LLM-generated content is that...nobody wants it.

(I mean "nobody" in the sense of "nobody likes Nickelback". ie, not literally nobody.)

If I want to talk to an AI, I can talk to an AI. If I'm reading a blog or a discussion forum, it's because I want to see writing by humans. I don't want to read a wall of copy+pasted LLM slop posted under a human's name.

I now spend dismaying amounts of time and energy avoiding LLM content on the web. When I read an article, I study the writing style, and if I detect ChatGPTese ("As we dive into the ever-evolving realm of...") I hit the back button. When I search for images, I use a wall of negative filters (-AI, -Midjourney, -StableDiffusion etc) to remove slop (which would otherwise be >50% of my results for some searches). Sometimes I filter searches to before 2022.

If Google added a global "remove generative content" filter that worked, I would click it and then never unclick it.

I don't think I'm alone. There has been research suggesting that users immediately dislike content they perceive as AI-created, regardless of its quality. This creates an incentive for publishers to "humanwash" AI-written content—to construct a fiction where a human is writing the LLM slop you're reading.

Falsifying timestamps and hijacking old accounts to do this is definitely something I haven't seen before.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#28

Post by segasaturn »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #22
segasaturn wrote: post #17

Money quote: > There’s also a social contract: when we create an account in an online community, we do it with the expectation that people we are going to interact with are primarily people. Oh, there will be shills, and bots, and advertisers, but the agreement between the users and the community provider is that they are going to try to defend us from that, and that in exchange we will provide our engagement and con…

Invite only forums or forums with actual identity checking of some sort. Google and Facebook are in prime position to actually provide real online identity services to other websites, which makes Facebook itself developing bots even funnier. Maybe we'll eventually get bank/government issued online identity verification.

Online identity verification is the obvious solution, the only problem is that we would lose the last bits of privacy we have on the internet. I guess if everyone was forced to post under our real name and identity, we might treat each other with better etiquette, but...

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#29

Post by simplicio »

jeremyjh wrote: post #18
aaron_m04 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could anyone possibly think it'd be OK to impersonate real humans?

They don't give a fuck if its "ok". They are just trying to scrape up some additional ad revenue, like 99% of the rest of the internet.

I don't really get the revenue angle though. The AI posts don't seem to be trying to drive traffic to ads or anything. I really don't understand the point of auto-generating a bunch of AI gibberish under the name of old users on ones own site?

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#30

Post by r58lf »

tomrod wrote: post #16
Rodeoclash wrote: post #4

The ShackNews forum: https://www.shacknews.com/chatty was similar - go back in time on on it and you can find posts about 9/11 unfolding.

Ars Technica started with comms forums + this new idea to report tech news. The forums are still there but not nearly the camaraderie of the early days.

Same with siliconinvestor.com

It was an early stock discussion forum. It grew rapidly when search engines started indexing everything and this forum had a URL for each message that was easily indexable.

It's still around, but nothing like the old days.

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