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Dead Internet Theory

kudmitry.com

621–630 of 735 posts

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#621
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some keyboards and operating systems — iOS is one of them — convert two dashes into an emdash.

And macOS, at least my keyboard layout, has both en and em dashes easily typeable with Alt+- and Alt+Shift+- respectively.

I use emdashes and endashes all the time—but maybe that's because I'm an academic?

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#622
Maybe HN needs to have a real ID verification? One account per official government ID. I remember when social media companies like Facebook and others pushed really hard for it, and how I resisted, but now...well, maybe its a good thing to know that if I am talking to someone they are either a person, or the dedicated bot for that person, rather than to a host of propaganda selling swarms of bots trying to crack our brains for power and profit.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

divisiveness this kind of stuff will create I'm pretty sure we're already decades in to the world of "has created". Everyone I know has strong opinions on every little thing, based exclusively their emotional reactions and feed consumption. Basically no one has the requisite expertise commensurate with their conviction, but being informed is not required to be opinionated or exasperated. And who can blame them (us).…

I honestly think it might be downstream of individualized mass-market democracy; each person is tasked with fully understanding the world as it is so they can make the correct decisions at all level of voting, but ain't nobody got time for that. So we emotionally convince ourselves that we have solved the problem so we can act appropriately and continue doing things that are important to us. The founders recognized t…

It's easier to focus on fewer representatives, and because the federal government has so much power (and then state governments), life-changing policies mainly come top-down. Power should instead flow bottom-up, with the top being the linchpin, but alas.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

divisiveness this kind of stuff will create I'm pretty sure we're already decades in to the world of "has created". Everyone I know has strong opinions on every little thing, based exclusively their emotional reactions and feed consumption. Basically no one has the requisite expertise commensurate with their conviction, but being informed is not required to be opinionated or exasperated. And who can blame them (us).…

I honestly think it might be downstream of individualized mass-market democracy; each person is tasked with fully understanding the world as it is so they can make the correct decisions at all level of voting, but ain't nobody got time for that. So we emotionally convince ourselves that we have solved the problem so we can act appropriately and continue doing things that are important to us. The founders recognized t…

Completely agree, but at the same time I can't bring myself to believe that reinforcing systems like the electoral college or reinstating a state-legislature-chosen Senate would yield better outcomes.

Most people I know who have strong political opinions (as well as those who don't) can't name their own city council members or state assemblyman, and that's a real problem for functioning representative democracy. Not only for their direct influence on local policy, but also because these levels of government also serve as the farm team or proving grounds for higher levels of office.

By the time candidates are running with the money and media of a national campaign, in some sense it's too late to evaluate them on matters of their specific policies and temperaments, and you kind of just have to assume they're going to follow the general contours of their party. By and large, it seems the entrenched political parties (and, perhaps, parties in general) are impediments to good governance.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Alas, something something capitalism.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#626

Maybe HN needs to have a real ID verification? One account per official government ID. I remember when social media companies like Facebook and others pushed really hard for it, and how I resisted, but now...well, maybe its a good thing to know that if I am talking to someone they are either a person, or the dedicated bot for that person, rather than to a host of propaganda selling swarms of bots trying to crack our…

It's fairly easy to "farm" real ID NFC data since majority of documents are not intended to be actual digital signing key. And on top of that AI is getting pretty good at generating face / video details to the point where simple biometric data verification is also quite useless.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#627

Maybe HN needs to have a real ID verification? One account per official government ID. I remember when social media companies like Facebook and others pushed really hard for it, and how I resisted, but now...well, maybe its a good thing to know that if I am talking to someone they are either a person, or the dedicated bot for that person, rather than to a host of propaganda selling swarms of bots trying to crack our…

I strongly believe that users will start to demand proof of humanity (and related things like content credentials on photos/videos), and eventually filter out anything that isn't verified. Through great expense and loss of privacy, we will eventually claw our way back to an internet that looks more or less the same as it was in 2020.

Unfortunately, less privileged users will have to endure the sea of AI content that still preys on the unauthenticated. It will be like using the web without an ad blocker, but 1000X worse.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

divisiveness this kind of stuff will create I'm pretty sure we're already decades in to the world of "has created". Everyone I know has strong opinions on every little thing, based exclusively their emotional reactions and feed consumption. Basically no one has the requisite expertise commensurate with their conviction, but being informed is not required to be opinionated or exasperated. And who can blame them (us).…

> It is almost impossible to escape the constant barrage of takes and news headlines these days without being a total luddite It really isn't that hard, if I'm looking at my experience. Maybe a little stuff on here counts. I get my news from the FT, it's relatively benign by all accounts. I'm not sure that opting out of classical social media is particularly luddite-y, I suspect it's closer to becoming vogue than not…

I think the comment you're replying to isn't necessarily a question of opting out of such news, it's the fact that it's so hard to escape it. I swipe on my home screen and there I am, in my Google news feed with the constant barrage of nonsense.

I mostly get gaming and entertainment news for shows I watch, but even between those I get CNN and Fox News, both which I view as "opinion masquerading as news" outlets.

My mom shares so many articles from her FB feed that are both mainstream (CNN, etc) nonsense and "influencer" nonsense.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#629

Maybe HN needs to have a real ID verification? One account per official government ID. I remember when social media companies like Facebook and others pushed really hard for it, and how I resisted, but now...well, maybe its a good thing to know that if I am talking to someone they are either a person, or the dedicated bot for that person, rather than to a host of propaganda selling swarms of bots trying to crack our…

I was thinking the time for the old PGP Web of Trust idea might have finally come [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#630
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that sounds like one of the worst heuristics I've ever heard, worse than "em-dash=ai" (em-dash equals ai to the illiterate class, who don't know what they are talking about on any subject and who also don't use em-dashes, but literate people do use em-dashes and also know what they are talking about. this is called the Dunning-Em-Dash Effect, where "dunning" refers to the payback of intellectual deficit whereas the i…

Of note is theother terrible heuristic I've seen thrown around, where "emojis = AI", and now the "if you use not X, but Y = AI".

When I see emojis in code, especially log statements, it is 100% giveaway AI was involved. Worse, it is an indicator the developer was lazy and didn't even try to clean up the most basic slop.
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