291–300 of 318 posts
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.
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…
The big centralized systems existed before the internet. GEnie. Delphi. Bitnet. CompuServe. The Well. American People Link. And dozens more.
The internet brought them all together, then extinguished them. Now we're going back to the old days.
The only difference now is that instead of paying AT&T to carry dialup connections and leased lines, we're paying our local/regional ISP for cable and fiber.
It's all the same game. Only the names have changed.
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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.
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Maybe some proof-of-work scheme where uploading content would require the uploader to solve a cryptographic puzzle, hence reducing overall number of posts? The PoW difficulty should somehow be correlated to economics where it wouldn't be too expensive but also wouldn't make sense to do mass uploading via bot farms?
Like a CAPTCHA?
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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.
Because you have an initial user who invited the bots. The whole invite tree of this user can cull all invites given by the user who added bots.
Also, if the bots are smart, they'll add real people too and take them down with them.
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.
the individual user is now priced out and cannot speak candidly and anonymously, while large, wealthy orgs simply price that into their market-capture and consensus-building techniques
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Because you have an initial user who invited the bots. The whole invite tree of this user can cull all invites given by the user who added bots.
Yes but I think bots can be very good, and many people have legitimate online-only relationships. It gets hairy quickly, with real users getting culled and bots slipping through. Also, if the bots are smart, they'll add real people too and take them down with them.
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If you think a site with only 209 visitors in the past 30 days is going to move the needle, then I've got news for you. Especially if bots are the main source of that visitors count. That's very very close to the number of people visiting your site being you, you, and maybe your mom type of numbers. After that, it'll be skiddies and bots. Anybody that's run their own site has been there, but let's not make it out to…
Why are you putting words/desires in my mouth that I did not voice? No one said anything about moving the needle. I said that my blog will go into Google results and help people, you said that sounded optimistic, so then I provided you proof that my blog already shows in google results and receives traffic. I've received messages from real people who have been helped by my writing on my blog, so it's not just bots. I…
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>Where you need an invite to comment also solves the problem. You need to know a real human to get access. Bittorrent trackers, as absolute retarded as they are, have performed this experiment for us and the lesson we're supposed to learn is that this does not work. Someone, somewhere, has an incentive to invite the wrong sort eventually, which because of the social network graph math stuff, eventually means "soon".…
Actually it does work for those invite-only trackers, especially in niche fields. Unlike most public trackers which are either dead or on a life-support, member-only and invite-only sites are still kicking. And you are personally responsible for your invitee
The few I'm part of all have a real community (like in the net of old), civil conversation, and verified, quality materials being shared. Almost everybody behaves and doesn't abuse the invite system, because nobody wants to lose their access to such a wonderful oasis among the slop web. It's a great motivator to stay decent and follow the rules. When things go bad, it's usually not because of malice, but because someone got their account stolen. Prune the invitee tree and things are mostly under control again.
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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.
Also, while real people probably would not be willing to pay to E-mail, spammers who are making money would pay and consider it a cost of doing business. So the fee is having the opposite of its intended effect.