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Dead Internet Theory

kudmitry.com

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Re: Dead Internet Theory

#571

Post by charles_f »

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…

In reciprocity, my parents call "AI" anything they don't like or want to believe.

We truly live in wonderful times!

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#572

Post by shadowgovt »

DrScientist wrote: post #472
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the right thing to take away from this. This isn't about one group of people wanting to be angry. It's about creating engagement (for corporations) and creating division in general (for entities intent on harming liberal societies). In fact, your comment is part of the problem. You are one of the people who want to be outraged. In your case, outraged at people who think racism is a problem. So you attack…

> Until you realize that this is the root of the problem, that the whole system is built to make people angry at each other, you are only contributing to the anger and division. It's not built to make people angry per se - it's built to optimise for revenue generation - which so happens to be content that makes people angry. People have discovered that creating and posting such content makes them money, and the reven…

In social networks, revenue is enhanced by stickiness.

Anger increases stickiness. Once one discovers there are other people on the site, and they are guilty of being wrong on the internet, one is incentivized to correct them. It feels useful because it feels like you're generating content that will help other people.

I suspect the failure of the system that nobody necessarily predicted is that people seem to not only tolerate, but actually like being a little angry online all the time.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#573

Post by sigio »

iso1631 wrote: post #552
lrvick wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Usenet died partly due to the ads, and the inability for adblocking software at the time to keep up. People left and never came back. But those bots were certainly around in the 90s

Worst is... the bots, spam and ads are still there, even if there is no-one to read them. Usenet might still be alive (for piracy/binaries at least), and maybe a handfull of still-alive text-groups, but in the text-groups I used to read, it's nothing but a constant flow of spam since 15+ years.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#574

Post by hughw »

When I first used my own telescope to view Saturn I had a thought, "they can't fake that!" Photos in a magazine or on television could have been faked. And the moon landing truthers became unhinged about it. I had not appreciated that I subtly and unconsciously held a reservation about the truth of it all.

This is the modern epistemic crisis. And wait till Elon implants a brain computer interface in you. You won't even fully trust your eye looking through a telescope.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#575

Post by patrickmay »

skwee357 wrote: post #333
makingstuffs wrote: post #120

Think the notion that ‘no one’ uses em dashes is a bit misguided. I’ve personally used them in text for as long as I can remember. Also on the phrase “you’re absolute right”, it’s definitely a phrase my friends and I use a lot, albeit in a sorta of sarcastic manner when one of us says something which is obvious but, nonetheless, we use it. We also tend to use “Well, you’re not wrong” again in a sarcastic manner for s…

The thing with em-dashes is not the em-dash itself. I use em-dashes, because when I started to blog, I was curious about improving my English writing skills (English is not my native language, and although I have learned English in school, most of my English is coming from playing RPGs and watching movies in English). According to what I know, the correct way to use em-dash is to not surround it by spaces, so words l…

I am a native English speaker and I agree with you completely that em-dashes look better when surrounded by spaces rather than connected directly to the words.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#576

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

tomaskafka wrote: post #487
lrvick wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>and be absolutely ruthless in permabanning anyone who posts AI content unmarked,

It would certainly be fun to trick people I dislike into posting AI content unknowingly. Maybe it has to be so low-key that they aren't even banned on the first try, but that just seems ripe for abuse.

I want a solution to this problem too, but I don't think this is reasonable or practical. I do wonder what it would mean if, philosophically, there were a way to differentiate between "free speech" and commercial speech such that one could be respected and the other regulated. But if there is such a distinction I've never been able to figure it out well enough to make the argument.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#577

Post by charcoalhobo »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #133
chao- wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have strong negative feelings about the era of LLM writing, but I resent that it has taken the em-dash from me. I have long used them as a strong disjunctive pause, stronger than a semicolon. I have gone back to semicolons after many instances of my comments or writing being dismissed as AI. I will still sometimes use a pair of them for an abrupt appositive that stands out more than commas, as this seems to t…

I still use 'em. Fuck what everybody else thinks.

There's always the 3-em dash⸻a dastardly long strike.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#578

Post by phito »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #132
kelseydh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would have been very helpful three years ago, before I permanently stopped using em-dashes to not have my writing confused with LLM's.

I suspect whatever you try to do to not appear to be an LLM… LLM's also will do in time. Might as well be yourself.

Indeed. I found that recently, Claude has been using hyphens instead of emdashes.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#579

Post by pousada »

dugidugout wrote: post #568
_heimdall wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is almost impossible to escape the constant barrage of takes and news headlines these days without being a total luddite Its odd to me to still use "luddite" disparagingly while implying that avoiding certain tech would actually have some high impact benefits. At that point I can't help but think the only real issue with being a luddite is not following the crowd and fitting in.

Which also has a term with stigma: hipster

Hipster used to mean that but meaning changed to being someone who “doesn’t fit in” but only for performative reasons, not really “for real” but just to project an image of how cool they are

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#580

Post by bentcorner »

iwontberude wrote: post #481
ryanjshaw wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This itself could be a bot argument casting doubt on reddit. It's an endless cycle.

If bots reference real sources it's still a valid argument.

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