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Dead Internet Theory

kudmitry.com

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Re: Dead Internet Theory

#481

Post by iwontberude »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #443
raincole wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those subreddits label content wrong all the time. Some of top commentors are trolling (I've seen one cooking video where the most voted comment is "AI, the sauce stops when it hits the plate"... as thick sauce should do.) You're training yourself with a very unreliable source of truth.

> You're training yourself with a very unreliable source of truth. I don’t just look at the bot decision or accept every consensus blindly. I read the arguments. If I watch a video and think it’s real and the comments point to the source, which has a description saying they use AI, how is that unreliable? Alternatively, I watch a video and think it’s AI but a commenter points to a source like YT where the video was p…

Which themselves are arguments from bots.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#482

Post by SirHumphrey »

gwd wrote: post #445
LexiMax wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in multiple Discord servers with people I know IRL. In fact, I'd say it's probably the easiest way to bootstrap a community around a friend-group.

Is this a generational thing? All my groups of this type are on WhatsApp (unfortunately).

Maybe, but at least in my circles it’s a structure thing- until the group actually can be organised in a single chat sanely something else will be used- but as soon as multiple chats are required the thing is moved on discord.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#483

Post by self_awareness »

thinkingemote wrote: post #357
self_awareness wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How about this question: Can generating an anti-racist video be justified as a good thing? I think many here would say "yes!" to this question, so can saying "no" be justified by an anti-racist? Generally I prefer questions that do not lead to thoughts being terminated. Seek to keep a discussion not stop it. On the subject of this thread, these questions are quite old and are related to propaganda: is it okay to use…

Game theory tells us that we should lie if someone else is lying, for some time. Then we should try trusting again. But we should generally tell the truth at the beginning; we sometimes lose to those who lie all the time, but we can gain more than the eternal liar if we encounter someone who behaves just like us. Assuming our strategy is in the majority, this works.

But this is game theory, a dead and amoral mechanism that is mostly used by the animal kingdom. I'm sure humanity is better than that?

Propaganda is war, and each time we use war measures, we're getting closer to it.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#484

Post by maieuticagent »

Ground News's approach is worth modeling because it treats authenticity not as a binary detection problem but as a transparency and comparative analysis problem. It assumes bad actors exist and makes them visible rather than trying to achieve perfect filtering. The shift from "trust this AI detection algorithm" to "here are multiple independent signals for you to evaluate" is philosophically aligned with how we should handle the Dead Internet problem. It's less about building perfect walls and more about giving people the tools to navigate an already-compromised space intelligently.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#485

Post by InsideOutSanta »

lazide wrote: post #429
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people really do want to be outraged No, they do not. Nobody[1] wants to be angry. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, "today is going to be a good day because I'm going to be angry." But given the correct input, everyone feels that they must be angry, that it is morally required to be angry. And this anger then requires them to seek out further information about the thing that made them angry.…

If you think for a bit on what you just wrote, I’m pretty sure you’re agreeing with what they wrote. You’re literally saying why people want to be angry.

There's a difference between wanting to be angry and feeling that anger is the correct response to an outside stimulus.

I don't wake up thinking "today I want to be angry", but if I go outside and see somebody kicking a cat, I feel that anger is the correct response.

The problem is that social media is a cat-kicking machine that drags people into a vicious circle of anger-inducing stimuli. If people think that every day people are kicking cats on the Internet, they feel that they need to do something to stop the cat-kicking; given their agency, that "something" is usually angry responses and attacks, which feeds the machine.

Again, they do not do that because they want to be angry; most people would rather be happy than angry. They do it because they feel that cats are being kicked, and anger is the required moral response.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#486

Post by neilv »

self_awareness wrote: post #316
neilv wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't heard that saying. Many people seek being outraged. Many people seek to have awareness of truth. Many people seek getting help for problems. These are not mutually exclusive. Just because someone fakes an incident of racism doesn't mean racism isn't still commonplace. In various forms, with various levels of harm, and with various levels of evidence available. (Example of low evidence: a paper trail isn't le…

[flagged]

I don't think so. I was trying to respond to a comment in a way that was diplomatic and constructive. I can see that came out unclear.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#487

Post by tomaskafka »

lrvick wrote: post #465
seiferteric wrote: post #116

My parents were tricked the other day by a fake youtube video of "racist cop" doing something bad and getting outraged by it. I watch part of the video and even though it felt off I couldn't immediately tell for sure if it was fake or not. Nevertheless I googled the names and details and found nothing but repostings of the video. Then I looked at the youtube channel info and there it said it uses AI for "some" of the…

If there are ad incentives, assume all content is fake by default. On the actual open decentralized internet, which still exists, mastodon, IRC, matrix... bots are rare.

That’s not because it’s decentralized or open, it’s because it doesn’t matter. If it was larger or more important, it would get run over by bots in weeks.

Any platform that wants to resist bots need to - tie personas to real or expensive identities - force people to add AI flag to AI content - let readers filter content not marked as AI - and be absolutely ruthless in permabanning anyone who posts AI content unmarked, one strike and you are dead forever

The issue then becomes that marking someone as “posts unmarked AI content” becomes a weapon. No idea about how to handle it.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#488

Post by lazide »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #485
lazide wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think for a bit on what you just wrote, I’m pretty sure you’re agreeing with what they wrote. You’re literally saying why people want to be angry.

There's a difference between wanting to be angry and feeling that anger is the correct response to an outside stimulus. I don't wake up thinking "today I want to be angry", but if I go outside and see somebody kicking a cat, I feel that anger is the correct response. The problem is that social media is a cat-kicking machine that drags people into a vicious circle of anger-inducing stimuli. If people think that every…

And if you seek out (and push ‘give me more’ buttons on) cat kicking videos?

At some point, I think it’s important to recognize the difference between revealed preferences and stated preferences. Social media seems adept at exposing revealed preferences.

If people seek out the thing that makes them angry, how can we not say that they want to be angry? Regardless of what words they use.

And for example, I never heard anyone who was a big Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or Alex Jones fan who said they wanted to be angry or paranoid (to be fair, this was pre-Trump and awhile ago), yet every single one of them I saw got angry and paranoid after watching them, if you paid any attention at all.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#490

Post by ekianjo »

lesam wrote: post #452
ryanjshaw wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m spending way too much time on the RealOrAI subreddits these days. I think it scares me because I get so many wrong, so I keep watching more, hoping to improve my detection skills. I may have to accept that this is just the new reality - never quite knowing the truth.

Before photography, we knew something was truthful because someone trustworthy vouched for it. Now that photos and videos can be faked, we'll have to go back to the older system.

It was always easy to fake photos too. Just organize the scene, or selectively frame what you want. There is no such thing as any piece of media you can trust.
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