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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

#281

Post by jMyles »

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.

Third option: a web-of-trust that allows you to see the vectors required to connect you to a given commenter, and which of your known friends and friends-of-friends has already attested their humanity.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#282

Post by butlike »

What does it matter who wrote it as long as you like the content? If the content is posted on a network that allows robotic agents to post, and you don't like it, just sign on to a different network.

I imagine it will be way closer to Ghost in the Shell/Cyberpunk in the end than we realize.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#283

Post by looselygoosy »

Rapzid wrote: post #233

You know.. I keep thinking this might be a good thing in some ways. AI spam could save us from the worst of the current social media status quo, the toxicity of the attention "economy", but flooding it so thoroughly nobody wants to engage with it anymore. Maybe the world can collectively "wake up" and "go outside" by turning towards local and more intimate communities for social interactions.. It's a shame though tha…

I don't know that the influx of AI spam would necessarily result in people disengaging and choosing to seek out real content, though. Social media feeds have been serving up less and less content from our actual real life contacts for a while now (partly because people seem to be posting less). As long as it's engaging I think a significant chunk of people aren't going to care whether it's AI

(anecdotally, my mother loves AI generated videos, perhaps it's just novelty at the moment and it will wear off)

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#284

Post by butterlesstoast »

nwhnwh wrote: post #198
butterlesstoast wrote: post #164

Really makes me wonder. Is there anything we can do to revive the internet or is it time to let the golden age go? : (

What is wrong with real life?

Very fair question. Investing in life outside of the internet has always paid off ten-fold.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#285

Post by shimman »

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 see a simpler outcome, smaller communities where you can verify humans are human. I've already started doing this, and mostly with people that already live in my community.

The corporate internet was never good to begin with, it was just forced on the masses.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#286

Post by soco »

retrocog wrote: post #278
soco wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland just voted recently to officially implement Selective Disclosure JWT, which does exactly all that. Social network registration can ask "are you 18?" and run with that - and only that. Or the club entrance. Or whatever, because it's all controlled by yourself in your app.

That seems like a good idea. The question is how the JWT is generated. A standard one would be more akin to a traditional crypto keypair. That is a "signal" key insomuch as it tells us who controls an account. It can't tell us the owner is the controller and that is the current weakness of crypto right now. To know the owner, we need another type of keypair to go alongside the traditional kind. That would be a "tone…

But you don't need to prove to all others that you are yourself, do you? You are only asked whether you're 18, the bouncer doesn't care about your name. So you can still hold the phone (like last summer the ID) of someone else and fake their answer.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#287

Post by nagonago »

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…

I appreciate your positive attitude and I hope more people will adopt it.

I am also part of some very niche communities on the internet, and although they are small they are certainly thriving.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#288

Post by pixl97 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #224
pixl97 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of getting judgy about Google responses, read the original story. https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch

I read the story before. Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ya, that dang be danged, religious adherence to that rule is quite stupid, especially when you're talking to someone that has been here years

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#290

Post by lostmsu »

coldtea wrote: post #181
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 still run a blog/website, and/or their own discourse server. And those will also get chocked with fake bot "members" and bot comments. Plus, if "anyone can still run a blog/website", this includes bots. AI created and operated blogs/websites, luring in people who think they're reading actual human posts.

What's wrong with AI written websites? Not all of them need to lure people by pretending to be humans. Content is either useful or not.
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