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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

#301

Post by Anamon »

plagiarist wrote: post #196
geek_at wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I read about an idea for an incentive/check system like that before. Something like: make the cost 10c instead of 1c, but implement a system where recipients can mark mails as confirmed "wanted" mail, upon which the sender would be reimbursed 9c. Increasing the cost for unsolicited mails while keeping the cost low for well-behaved newsletters.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#302

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

littlestymaar wrote: post #250
pixl97 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely because your second sentence is impossible in one way or another. Even if it's some kind of government encoded key, governments cannot be trusted to create imaginary people and hand them out to companies like palantir for large scale population manipulation.

I can imagine a government creating a moderate number of fake profiles for use by police and intelligence services, and honestly I'm fine with it, but creating a ghost population for propaganda purpose is entirely different and if you live in a country where you cannot trust your government not to do something that bad, you're already screwd. In any case, it is still better than the status quo where even foreign auth…

Do you propose to only let people from a whitelist of countries use internet? Because many countries would have no qualms giving their troll farms bunch of fake electronic ids.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#303

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

Invictus0 wrote: post #53
crab_galaxy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine in what way? What people? I have not seen or heard of a single person who is excited about AI generated blog posts, or TikToks, or commercials, or images. In fact it’s the opposite, the internet coined the term AI slop, and my non-internet addicted friends hate the fact that chatGPT is killing the environment. The only people I’ve ever seen champion AI are the few who are excited by the bleeding edge, and the ma…

There are probably more than 10^17 AI model executions occurring per day. I know in ye olde HN there are many Purists that are Too Good For AI, but the majority of the human race is consuming AI at a blinding rate, and if they really didn't like it, they would stop.

There are probably as many spam emails per day. You think "majority of the human race" likes them?

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#304

Post by Anamon »

butlike wrote: post #282

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.

The problem is that

A. People want to connect with other people, not talk to computers, and

B. AI slop peddlers know this and have an incentive to lie about their content.

If GenAI content was always reliably declared and people's choices were respected, we wouldn't have a problem.

It's like saying, what does it matter if the news article was fake, as long as you enjoyed reading it? It matters because when I read the news, I want to read about things that actually happened, not stories that manage to fool me into believing they're true.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#305

Post by Anamon »

knaik94 wrote: post #153
august- wrote: post #22

do you think small, invite-only communities will end up being the last holdout for genuine human conversation online? or will bots eventually infiltrate those too?

I think most small communities will stand bot-free because there's little incentive to have bot engage with it. But I wonder if there's a size of conversation after which people will still choose AI assisted summaries. Discord had/(has?) a feature where it used LLMs summarize and then notify you about a discussion happening.

The Discord thing sounds like a reasonable and acceptable use case to me. Fuzzy search is basically the only thing LLMs are really useful for, and a feature like that actually serves the user. Help them find stuff that's interesting to them, instead of trying to replace it with a pale imitation of real thought and conversation. My most optimistic view of the future is that features like that will be what sticks around after the hype and bubble.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#306

Post by Anamon »

ingohelpinger wrote: post #255

just go out, what you are seeking is real life which happens outside, not in front of a display.

I, for one, miss the promise of the old Internet, that you could connect with people from all around the world. I always saw it as an exciting extension to real-world interactions, not a replacement. And I love the fact that over the past 30 years, I was able to make friends (or pen pals, if you will) in the US, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Japan, Indonesia, Russia, New Zealand... the concept of finding people sharing your niche interests, wherever they were on the globe, even as you were stuck on your cozy suburb, was amazing to me, and I'm sad that we all but lost that.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#307

Post by Anamon »

halyconWays wrote: post #40

The only place that reminds me of the old Internet is VRChat, funny enough. You're guaranteed to be interacting with a nerdy, culturally similar human who's present in the moment.

That just reminded me of Chat Roulette for some reason. It seems that one is still around, as well. I'd guess not many bots on there, either (though potentially plenty of other unpleasant things).

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#308

Post by rcxdude »

shimman wrote: post #285
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.

I think this is the trend, and it's probably a good one for most involved, except probably advertisers.

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#309

Post by layla5alive »

ramses0 wrote: post #166
selfsimilar wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hashcash was a proof-of-work system that would have put a computational tax on email. I don't know what kept it from getting more traction other than simple chicken-and-egg network effects, but it's a good idea, and worth resurrecting. http://www.hashcash.org

Email2000 is the only answer: https://cr.yp.to/im2000.html TLDR: Mail storage is the sender's responsibility. The message isn't copied to the receiver. All the receiver needs is a brief notification that a message is available.

Sounds like a horrible system where you retain many of the problems of email (you still need to deliver notifications) and new surveillance and persistence and mutability problems layered on top..

Re: The dead Internet is not a theory anymore

#310

Post by layla5alive »

twentyfiveoh1 wrote: post #63
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.

payment would need a delay too. Pay $10 and then wait a week or so for the payment to clear without it being reversed. Hopefully that stops the card stealers from dumping as much as possible before getting booted. Could we just add complex and varied captcha to the comment & posting forms?

That's not a bad idea, sending mail could simply be an authorization for a $1 or $10 charge. And if the receiver said the message was unwanted, then the charge would go through.

There's just the pesky problem of incentives on the other side of the coin - who gets the $? The spammee? But there would be enshitification issues like:

1. Those who are incentivized to take as big a cut as possible.

2. Those who would put it in their EULA that you must accept their spam and not chargeback or else you lose access to something you value like their services (EULA Ransom... not much different to today "accept our EULA or lose access to what you've already paid for!")

I'm sure there are many other perverse incentives which would creep in..

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