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PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

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Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#51

Post by roywiggins »

jgilias wrote: post #45
segasaturn wrote: post #17

Money quote: > There’s also a social contract: when we create an account in an online community, we do it with the expectation that people we are going to interact with are primarily people. Oh, there will be shills, and bots, and advertisers, but the agreement between the users and the community provider is that they are going to try to defend us from that, and that in exchange we will provide our engagement and con…

Oh, there are solutions. One is a kind of a socialized trust system. I know that Lyn Alden that I follow on Nostr is actually her not only because she says so, but also because a bunch of other people follow her too. There are bot accounts that impersonate her, but it’s easy to block those, a it’s pretty obvious from the follower count. And once you know a public key that Lyn posts under, I’m sure it’s her. She could…

How can ZK approaches prevent people from renting out their human identity to AI slop producers?

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#52

Post by roywiggins »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #32
segasaturn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't stop Verified Humans(TM) from copying and pasting AI slop into text boxes and pressing "Post." If there's really good pseudonymity, and Verified Humans can have as many pseudonyms as they like and they aren't connected to each other, one human could build an entire social network of fake pseudonyms talking to each other in LLM text but impeccable Verified Human labels.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#53

Post by MrPowerGamerBR »

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…

> 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.

This reminds me of the time around ChatGPT 3's release where Hacker News's comments was filled with users saying "Here's what ChatGPT has to say about this"

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#54

Post by Terr_ »

hooverd wrote: post #19
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…

Don't sign your posts!

Are you saying nothing should be key-signed because you want some kind of deniability later?

Or do you mean people should avoid using an pseudonym in favor of posts that are anonymous, so that there's never any created identity to exploit/defend?

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#55

Post by cess11 »

segasaturn wrote: post #17

Money quote: > There’s also a social contract: when we create an account in an online community, we do it with the expectation that people we are going to interact with are primarily people. Oh, there will be shills, and bots, and advertisers, but the agreement between the users and the community provider is that they are going to try to defend us from that, and that in exchange we will provide our engagement and con…

If you think about historical parallels like advertising and the industrialisation of entertainment, where the communication is sufficiently human-like to function but deeply insincere and manipulative, I think you'll find that you absolutely can see such a future and how it might turn out.

A lot or most of people will adapt, accept these conditions because compared to the constant threat of misery and precarity of work, or whatever other way to sustenance and housing, it will be very tolerable. Similar to how so called talk shows flourished, where fake personas pretend to get to know other fake personas they are already very well acquainted with and so on, while selling slop, anxieties or something. Like Oprah, the billionaire.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#56

Post by thatguy0900 »

roywiggins wrote: post #52
thatguy0900 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't stop Verified Humans(TM) from copying and pasting AI slop into text boxes and pressing "Post." If there's really good pseudonymity, and Verified Humans can have as many pseudonyms as they like and they aren't connected to each other, one human could build an entire social network of fake pseudonyms talking to each other in LLM text but impeccable Verified Human labels.

The identity provider doesn't need to tell the forum that you are 50 different people. They could have a system where if the forum bans you the forum would know it's the same person they banned on reapplication. As far as people making a real person account then using that to do Ai stuff yeah there will have to be a way to persistently ban someone through anonymous verification, but thats possible. Both the identity verifier and forum will be incentivized to play nice with each other. If a identity provider is allowing one person to make 50 spam accounts the forum can stop accepting verification from that provider.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#57

Post by NotYourLawyer »

paulpauper wrote: post #46

Dead internet theory is one of those ideas that keeps resurfacing or being revied with articles like this, even though the evidence is only limited to confirmation bias. It ignores that there are huge parts of the internet that are not dead. I think it's more like the quality of discourse has fallen for reasons that are not clear.

> there are huge parts of the internet that are not dead

Such as?

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#58

Post by Trasmatta »

robswc wrote: post #31
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.

I've noticed the opposite actually, clearly ChatGPT written posts on Reddit that get a ton of upvotes. I'm especially noticing it on niche subreddits.

The ones that make me furious are on some of the mental health subreddits. People are asking for genuine support from other people, but are getting AI slop instead. If someone needs support from an AI (which I've found can actually help), they can go use it themselves.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#59

Post by Aerroon »

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 can understand it for AI generated text, but I think there are a lot of people that like AI generated images. Image sites like get a ton of people that like AI generated images. Civitai gets a lot of engagement for AI generated images, but so do many other image sites.

Re: PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

#60

Post by 1659447091 »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #22
segasaturn wrote: post #17

Money quote: > There’s also a social contract: when we create an account in an online community, we do it with the expectation that people we are going to interact with are primarily people. Oh, there will be shills, and bots, and advertisers, but the agreement between the users and the community provider is that they are going to try to defend us from that, and that in exchange we will provide our engagement and con…

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.

> with actual identity checking of some sort

I am hoping OpenID4VCI[0] will fill this role. It looks to be flexible enough to preserve public privacy on forums while still verifying you are the holder of a credential issued to a person. The credential could be issued from an issuer that can verify you are an adult (banks) for example. Then a site or forum etc, that works with a verifier that can verify whatever combination of data of one or more credentials presented. I haven't dug into the full details of implementation and am skimming over a lot but that appears to be the gist of it.

[0] https://openid.net/specs/openid-4-verifiable-credential-issu...

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