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Dead Internet Theory

kudmitry.com

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651–660 of 735 posts

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#651

Post by dpkirchner »

alex1138 wrote: post #539
flomo wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know Meta, the "social media company" came out and said their users spend less than 10% of the time interacting with people they actually know? "Social Media" had become a euphemism for 'scrolling entertainment, ragebait and cats' and has nothing to do 'being social'. There is NO difference between modern reddit and facebook in that sense. (Less than 5% of users are on old.reddit, the majority is subject to the a…

It would be nice if the social media company actually showed their posts in the feed

I'm hopeful that one day engineers at Meta will crack the chronological sort code. It's a tough algorithm but I bet Llama can help 'em out.

Better back button handling and fixing the location bugs in event creation may well be entirely beyond Llama, sadly.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#652

Post by Permit »

kouru225 wrote: post #648

I’m in favor of the dead internet because the alternative was even worse. About 10 years ago we had a scenario where bots probably were only 2-5% of the conversation and they absolutely dominated all discussion. Having a tiny coordinated minority in a vast sea of uncoordinated people is 100x more manipulative than having a dead internet. If you ever pointed out that we were being botted, everyone would ignore you or…

> About 10 years ago we had a scenario where bots probably were only 2-5% of the conversation and they absolutely dominated all discussion.

This was definitively not the case on HackerNews.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#653

Post by Salgat »

I'm not saying the entire internet needs to be this way, but I would love to see the expansion of non-anonymous/verified accounts used on web platforms. Take ycombinator for example; some of the best comments come from users with known identities and reputations tied to their accounts, rather than anonymous folks who can spew whatever nonsense without repercussion (and in some cases aren't even real people).

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#654

Post by theptip »

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…

> Will create

As others have noted, it’s a long-term trend - agree that as you note it’ll get worse. The Russian psy-ops campaigns from the Internet Research Agency during Trump #1 campaign being a notable entry, where for example they set up both fake far-left and far-right protest events on FB and used these as engagement bait on the right/left. (I’m sure the US is doing the same/worse to their adversaries too.)

Whatever fraction bots play overall, it has to be way higher for political content given the power dynamics.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#656

Post by dpkirchner »

pants2 wrote: post #106

Are there any social media sites where AI is effectively banned? I know it's not an easy problem but I haven't seen a site even try yet. There's a ton of things you can do to make it harder for bots, ie analyze image metadata, users' keyboard and mouse actions, etc.

It's impossible, so I figure we may as well accept it when browsing rando's content (or just don't read any of it) and reject it when interacting with friends and family. What else can you really do?

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#657

Post by ulf-77723 »

Trying to figure out if human or bot seems to be a fun game for a lot of people. I was being accused on Reddit for being a bot (of course I’m not) and English is not my mother tongue - yet people see what they want to see.

Maybe the future will be dystopian and talking to a bot to achieve a given task will be a skill? When we reach the point that people actually hate bots, maybe that will be a turning point?

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#658

Post by bombcar »

scelerat wrote: post #624
bombcar wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's an inherent problem with democracy in itself, and something that will have to be worked out at some time, somewhere.

The accidents that let it occur may no longer be present - there are arguments that "democracy" as we understand it was impossible before rapid communication, and perhaps it won't survive the modern world.

We're living in a world where a swing voter in Ohio may have more effect/impact on Iran than a person living there - or even more effect on Europe than a citizen of Germany.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#659

Post by abustamam »

Ntrails wrote: post #649
abustamam wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Right, and my point is how easy opting out actually is. I have no news feed on my phone. I doubt on android it is any harder to evade. Social media itself is gone. The closest I get to click-bait is when my mother spouts something gleaned from the Daily Mail. That vector is harder to shift I concede!

Fair points on both fronts! Though I think you may be conflating simple with easy. Removing social media from one's life is certainly simple (just uninstall the app!), but it's not that easy for some people because it's their only method of communication with some folks. I mostly don't use SM but I log onto Instagram because some of my friends only chat there, same with Facebook.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#660

Post by tonymet »

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…

Most of my Wikipedia edits are converting tacky hyphens to em-dashes. I also autocomplete into em-dashes.

hyphens are so hideous that I can't stand them.

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