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Dead Internet Theory

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661–670 of 735 posts

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#661

Post by AutumnsGarden »

GMoromisato wrote: post #153

Most of this is caused by incentives: YouTube and others pay for clicks/views, so obviously you can maximize this by producing lots of mediocre content. LinkedIn is a place to sell, either a service/product to companies or yourself to a future employer. Again, the incentive is to produce more content for less effort. Even HN has the incentive of promoting people's startups. Is it possible to create a social network (…

I do use AI internally for content moderation but I’m building a platform like this at https://grove.place

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#662

Post by brunoborges »

The explosion of fake people on Instagram (which has become just a front-door for Other Form of "social networks"), as well as fake videos in general, will likely push people away from the Internet as a means to interact with other people.

I think old school meetups, user groups, etc, will come back again, and then, more private communication channels between these groups (due to geographic distance).

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#663

Post by novok »

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…

Eventually it will make everyone say that videos are fake because nobody trusts videos anymore. We will ironically be back to something like the 40s where security cameras didn't exist and photography was rare and relatively expensive. A strange kind of privacy.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#664

Post by skwee357 »

Salgat wrote: post #653

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).

On the other hand, take LinkedIn for example, and you get the bottom of corporate AI-slop.

I agree that anonymization makes people more hostile to others, but I doubt the de-anonymization is the solution. Old school forums and IRC channels were, _mostly_, safe because they were (a) small, (b) local, and (c) usually had offline meetups.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#665

Post by jvanderbot »

bombcar wrote: post #611
spicyusername wrote: post #522

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…

I disagree.

Voting on principles is fine and good.

The issue is the disconnect between professed principles and action. And the fact that nowadays there are not many ways to pick and choose principles except two big preset options.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#666

Post by forgotpwd16 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #553
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…

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, aren't the LLMs actually trained to look like human language? So whatever particular "quirk" you have as a writer, there is probably an LLM emulating that either wholesale, or like 50% of the times. LLMs use em-dash because people (in their training data) used em-dash. They use "You're absolutely right" because that's a common human phrase. It's not "You write like an LLM", it's "The LLMs wr…

The LLM output isn't an unfiltered result of an unbiased model. Rather, some texts may be classified high-quality (where the em-dash, curly quotes, a more sophisticated/less-everyday vocabulary are more expected to appear), some low-quality, and some choices are driven by human feedback (aka fine-tuning), either to improve quality (OpenAI employs Kenyans, Kenyan/Nigerian English considered more colonial) or engagement through affirmative/reinforcing responses ("You're absolutely right. Universe is indeed a donut. Want me to write down an abstract? Want me to write down the equations?"). Some nice relevant articles are [1],[2].

[1]: https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-li... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/magazine/chatbot-writing-...

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#667

Post by sdoering »

spicyusername wrote: post #522
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…

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.

Then I am very proudly one. I don't do TikTok, FB, IG, LinkedIn or any of this crap. I do a bit of NH here and there. I follow a curated list of RSS feeds. And I twice a day look at a curated/grouped list of headlines from around the world, built from a multitude of sources.

Whenever I see a yellow press headline from the German bullshit print medium "BILD" when paying for gas or out shopping, I can't help but smile. That people pay money for that shit is - nowadays - beyond me.

To be fair. This was a long process. And I still regress sometimes. I started my working life at an editorial team for an email portal. Our job was to generate headlines that would stop people from logging in to read their mail and read our crap instead - because ads embedded within content were way better paid than around emails.

So I actually learned the trade. And learned that outrage (or sex) sells. This was some 18 or so years ago - the world changed since then. It became even more flammable. And more people seem to be playing with their matches. I changed - and changed jobs and industries a few times.

So over time I reduced my news intake. And during the pandemic learned to definitely reduce my social media usage - it is just not healthy for my state of mind. Because I am way to easily dopamine addicted and trigger-able. I am a classic xkcd.com/386 case.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#668

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

spicyusername wrote: post #522
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…

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'm pretty sure we're already decades in to the world of "has created".

Simulacra and Simulation came out in '81, for an example of how long this has been a recognized phenomenon

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#669

Post by skwee357 »

fhennig wrote: post #531

What about going back to a system of reputation and recommendations by reputable people? I'm thinking stuff like web rings. Or if you have a blog, maybe also have a curated set of pages you think are good, sort of your bookmarks, that other people can have a look at. People are still on the internet and making cool stuff, it's just harder to find them nowadays.

Few people posted here about the "intent" behind such content, i.e. today, most people are motivated by money because "this influencer told me I can make 10$k by writing blogs", so while you might find a blog you like, it's not immune to starting to accept "just put our link here for $$$ and we link back to you".

Something similar happened in the Podcast and YouTube spheres, where every creator seems to be "sponsored" by these shady companies that allocate 70% of their revenue for creator payouts, for the sake of affiliate marketing.

I really don't know what's solution though.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#670

Post by [deleted] »

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!

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