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You can't trust the internet anymore

nicole.express

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Re: You can't trust the internet anymore

#61

Post by anigbrowl »

nicole_express wrote: post #10
throwaway2027 wrote: post #7

"You really think someone would do that? Just go on the Internet and tell lies?" https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/just-go-on-the-internet-and-t...

A big part of my annoyance is that in the past, something like Phantasy Star Fukkokuban would not really be worth lying about; people need a reason to lie.

I'm gonna guess that it's just popular enough that being in the top 5 results on search engines yields a small net gain in ad revenue. It's possible the decision to generate the fake article was itself made by a machine.

Great piece btw

Re: You can't trust the internet anymore

#62

Post by arjie »

It is true that as the cost to construct fake content has gone to zero, we need some kind of scalable trust mechanism to access all this information. I don't yet know what this is but a Web of Trust structure always seems appealing. A lot of people are going to be excluded, but such is life, I suppose.

If I were to be honest, going to where the fish aren't is also going to help. Almost certainly there are very few LLM generated websites on the Gemini protocol.

I'm setting up a secondary archiver myself that will record simply the parts of the web that consent to it via robots.txt. Let's see how far I get.

Re: You can't trust the internet anymore

#63

Post by armchairhacker »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #20
mnau wrote: post #9

Signal to noise ratio is getting *lower (EDIT: was higher) than ever. I don't see a way out of this other than "human certified" digitally signed authorship (e.g. by using eIDAS in EU). There could be a proxy to at least retain pseudo-anonymity, but trackable to a human. Tragedy of commons strikes again.

"Tragedy of commons" is a false concept that obscures greed and selfishness and often lawlessness. Even its originator (Hardin) accepts that it does not describe actual history. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46623359

There’s a lot of debate under your linked comment.

My understanding is that people tend to cooperate in smaller numbers or when reputation is persistent (the larger the group, the more reliable reputation has to be), otherwise the (uncommon) low-trust actors ruin everything.

Most humans are altruistic and trusting by default, but a large enough group will have a few sociopaths and misunderstood interactions; which creates distrust across the entire group, because people hate being taken advantage of.

Re: You can't trust the internet anymore

#65

Post by klysm »

WD-42 wrote: post #16

This is why my friends and I are setting up a mesh network in our town. The open internet has been going downhill for a while, but LLMs are absolutely accelerating it's demise. I was in denial for the last few years but at this point I've accepted that the internet I grew up on as a kid in the late 90s to mid 2000s is dead. I am grateful for having experienced it but the time has come to move on. The future for peopl…

What does a mesh network have to do with this?

Re: You can't trust the internet anymore

#66

Post by noosphr »

cortesoft wrote: post #28
WD-42 wrote: post #16

This is why my friends and I are setting up a mesh network in our town. The open internet has been going downhill for a while, but LLMs are absolutely accelerating it's demise. I was in denial for the last few years but at this point I've accepted that the internet I grew up on as a kid in the late 90s to mid 2000s is dead. I am grateful for having experienced it but the time has come to move on. The future for peopl…

This seems like solving the problem at the wrong layer? The issue isn’t the actual network connection between people, it is the content. You could easily create your own forum or something and only include people you trust. You don’t need an entirely separate internet.

>The issue isn’t the actual network connection between people, it is the content.

Everyone serving a website is being ddos by AI agents right now.

A local mesh network is one way to make sure that no one with a terabit network can index you.

Re: You can't trust the internet anymore

#67

Post by shevy-java »

AI is kind of like Skynet in the first Terminator movie. It now destroys our digital life. New autogenerated websites appear, handled by AI. Real websites become increasingly less likely to show up on people's daily info-feed. It is very strange compared to the 1990s; I feel we lost something here.

> The commons of the internet are probably already lost

That depends. If people don't push back against AI then yes. Skynet would have won without the rebel forces. And the rebels are there - just lurking. It needs a critical threshold of anger before they will push back against the AI-Skynet 3.0 slop.

Re: You can't trust the internet anymore

#68

Post by shevy-java »

WD-42 wrote: post #16

This is why my friends and I are setting up a mesh network in our town. The open internet has been going downhill for a while, but LLMs are absolutely accelerating it's demise. I was in denial for the last few years but at this point I've accepted that the internet I grew up on as a kid in the late 90s to mid 2000s is dead. I am grateful for having experienced it but the time has come to move on. The future for peopl…

It is good to see there are some internet rebels left.

Perhaps AI-Skynet will not win - but they have a lot of money. I think we need to defund those big corporations that push AI onto everyone and worsen our lives.

Re: You can't trust the internet anymore

#70

Post by roxolotl »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #20
mnau wrote: post #9

Signal to noise ratio is getting *lower (EDIT: was higher) than ever. I don't see a way out of this other than "human certified" digitally signed authorship (e.g. by using eIDAS in EU). There could be a proxy to at least retain pseudo-anonymity, but trackable to a human. Tragedy of commons strikes again.

"Tragedy of commons" is a false concept that obscures greed and selfishness and often lawlessness. Even its originator (Hardin) accepts that it does not describe actual history. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46623359

The use of the word Tragedy in the name I think makes it easier for people to excuse themselves when they monopolize the commons. “Oh it’s a tragedy humans are just selfish we can’t avoid it.” The tragedy is that people are comfortable excusing others selfish, greedy behavior by saying it’s innate.
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