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PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

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Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#31

Post by robswc »

COAGULOPATH wrote: post #27

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 dismayin…

100%.

So far (thankfully) I've noticed this stuff get voted down on social media but it is blowing my mind people think pasting in a ChatGPT response is productive.

I've seen people on reddit say stuff like "I don't know but here's what ChatGPT said." Or worse, presenting ChatGPT copy-paste as their own. Its funny because you can tell, the text reads like an HR person wrote it.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#32

Post by thatguy0900 »

segasaturn wrote: post #28
thatguy0900 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Optimistically, if all you want to do is prove you are, in fact, a person, and not prove that you are a specific person, there's no real reason to need to lose privacy. A service could vouch that you are a real person, verified on their end, and provide no context to the site owner as to what person you are.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#33

Post by elashri »

It is sad that this is happening to PhysicsForums. It was one of first websites I was using frequently 15 years ago when I started my physics passion (later career). I was active reader and contributed on few occasions but I still remember some members who I thought that one day I will be smart and knowledgeable like them. With years and the move to social media following Arab spring things started to change (as part of the overall transition from forum being the dominant place for discussions). But I stopped visiting it around 2018 unless I came through google search (later kagi). I still find the archive useful to answer some questions and I would disagree with author of article that because no one is sharing links on twitter that means no one care.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#34

Post by guynamedloren »

EA-3167 wrote: post #5

I don't quite understand the issue of "back-dating" or hijacking accounts. How is this being done exactly? I came away from this article wondering if I was missing something.

Wondering the same. I couldn't make it through the article. Fascinating discovery, but poorly written and difficult to navigate the author's thoughts. The interstitial quotes were particularly disorienting.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#35

Post by asddubs »

COAGULOPATH wrote: post #27

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 dismayin…

I was googling a question about opengraph last week. so many useless AI drivel results now.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#37

Post by Terr_ »

m463 wrote: post #13
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…

It is sad. I have been putting a copyright notice on my resume at the bottom to prevent some nonsense. I have always wondered if people could attach some sort of cryptographic marker to their posts, that could link to an archive somewhere. Mostly I was thinking of backups of posts to yelp that couldn't be taken down, but I wonder if it would work that posts someone never made.

> I have been putting a copyright notice on my resume at the bottom to prevent some nonsense.

I expect the bad-actors will feed it into an LLM and say: "Rephrase this slightly", and they will get away with it because the big-money hucksters will have already convinced courts to declare it transformative or fair-use.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#38

Post by Gracana »

COAGULOPATH wrote: post #27

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 dismayin…

Yup, I'm the same, and I love my LLMs. They're fun and interesting to talk to and use, but it's obvious to everyone that they're not very reliable. If I think an article is LLM-generated, then the signal I'm getting is that the author is just as clueless as I am, and there's no way I can trust that any of the information is correct.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#39

Post by bawolff »

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.

We already have e-passports and zero knowledge proofs to show you have one without revealing who you are.

If all else fails, there is always the web of trust (i think web of trust has a lot of issues, but establishing soneone is human seems like a much lower bar than establishing identity)

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#40

Post by Lammy »

Scoundreller wrote: post #25

> 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 t…

> Google slowly stopped ranking traditional forum posts and blogs as well around that time

IMO the true inflection point was 2014 when Google first hid (from the UI) and then fully removed (no longer accessible by magic URL) the “Blogs” and especially the “Discussions” filters. Some contemporary discussions on “Discussions”:

- https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/23/googles-search-filters-now...

- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/03/bring-back-forum-se... (details the briefly-working magic URLs)

- https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/23/search-discussions-blogs-p...

- https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-filters-gone-1799...

- https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4687960.htm

- https://www.thecoli.com/threads/i-cant-google-search-by-disc...

- https://www.neogaf.com/threads/anyone-else-annoyed-google-re...

- https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/57249/has-the-op...

- https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/how-to-do-google-discuss...

- https://browsermedia.agency/blog/alternatives-discussion-sea...

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