LLM summary of all comments: https://hn-discussions.top/dead-internet-theory/
Dead Internet Theory
711–720 of 735 posts
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember participating on *free* phpBB forums, or IRC channels. I was amazed that I could chat with people smarter than me, on a wide range of topics, all for the cost of having an internet subscription. It's only recently, when I was considering to revive the old-school forum interaction, that I have realized that while I got the platforms for free, there were people behind them who paid for the hosting and the st…
Something that's been on my mind for a while now is shared moderation - instead of having a few moderators who deal with everything, distribute the moderation load across all users. Every user might only have to review a couple posts a day or whatever, so it should be a negligible burden, and send each post that requires moderation to multiple users so that if there's disagreement it can be pushed to more senior/trus…
So the Slashdot model?
Everyone gets a random set of messages to review and if they agree with the original judgement, stuff happens.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#713LLM summary of all comments: https://hn-discussions.top/dead-internet-theory/
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Re: Dead Internet Theory
#714Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in multiple Discord servers with people I know IRL. In fact, I'd say it's probably the easiest way to bootstrap a community around a friend-group.
Is this a generational thing? All my groups of this type are on WhatsApp (unfortunately).
Definitely. My friend group consists of gen-z and millenials and we met irl but have a shared interest of gaming that gets us together on weekends.
What Discord does so well is that you start using it for gaming but then it also becomes the space for all kinds of things. We discuss news there, music/popculture, organize events etc
Whatsapp is more for the "formal" stuff and when it's time critical since not everybody has Discord notifications enabled.
I'd say Discord is definitely more popular among gen-z (or even younger) and gamers but it's kinda become reddit 2.0 where every niche has its discord.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#715My 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…
Humans have strong self preservation instincts so at some point they'll start to ignore the free internet content or treat it as no more than fiction. There might come the time when people will demand personal meetings for everything, kind of a return to nature because they won't trust anything that can be machine generated. In way that's positive as current trends of weakening deeper human connections will be reversed thanks to AI :)
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#716Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's never going to happen, but I felt we solved all of this with forums and IRC back in the day. I wish we gravitated towards that kind of internet again. Group sizes were smaller and as such easier to moderate. There could be plenty of similar interest forums which meant even if you pissed of some mods, there were always other forums. Invite only groups that recruited from larger forums (or even trusted members onl…
> I wish we gravitated towards that kind of internet again. So do it. Forums haven't gone away, you just stopped going to them. Search for your special interest followed by "Powered by phpbb" (or Invision Community, or your preferred software) and you'll find plenty of surprisingly active communities out there.
Yeah, you are right! I have started going down that road the last year or so, but mostly in the IRC sphere. I started hanging out libera.chat, but found a smaller community on irc.inthemansion.com which I really enjoy.
I'm probably just jaded as most of the forums I visited back in the day became ghost towns during the 2010s. I should make more of an effort here
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#717Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bots are a major problem on Discord. I frequently receive messages to buy MMO gold.
That's a flaw in the GP's plan, not a flaw in the observation that Discord is a good example of what they're asking for.
I guess I am kind of describing Discord in some sense, I personally discounted Discord as I've only ever used it as a free voice chat for small groups. But to be fair, I would rather leverage basic HTTP websites for consuming social media content than everything being that boring discord client.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. In these gossip circles they brush off anything that doesn't make them upset, eager to get to the outrageously stuff. They really do seek to be upset. It's a pattern of behavior which old people in particular commonly fall into, even in absence of commercialized media dynamics.
> In these gossip circles they brush off anything that doesn't make them upset Things that they have no fear about, and so do not register as warranting brain time. > eager to get to the outrageously stuff. The things which are creating a feeling of fear. It’s not necessary for the source of a fear to exist in the present moment, nor for it to even be a thing that is real. For as long as humans have communicated, we…
The opposite question - why so insistent that people wouldn’t seek it out, when behavior pretty strongly shows it?
Why are you so insistent that people don’t do what they clearly seem to do?
Why is that hypothesis so unbelievable?
Is it the apparent lack of (actual) agency for many people? Or the concerning worry that we all could be steering ourselves to our own dooms, while convincing ourself we aren’t?
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#719Earlier 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's malware in the mind. it was happening before deep fakes was possible. news outlets and journalists have always had incentive to present extreme takes to get people angry, cause that sells. now we have tools that pretty much just accelerate and automate that process. it's interesting. it would be helpful to figure out how to prevent people (especially upcoming generations) from getting swept away by all this.
There's a massive industry built around this on YT, exemplified by the OP's post about his parents. To a first-order approximation, every story with a theme of "X does sexist/racist/ageist/abusive thing to Y and then gets their comeuppance" on YouTube is AI-generated clickbait. The majority of the "X does nice thing for Y and gets a reward or surprise" dating from the last year or two are also AI-generated clickbait, but far more of the former. Outrage gets a lot more clicks than compassion.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#720My 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…
Just twenty minutes ago i got a panic call that someone was getting dozens of messages that their virusscanner is not working and they have hundreds of viruses. By removing Google Chrome from sending messages to the Windows notification bar everything went back to normal on the computer. Customer asked if reporting these kinds of illegal ads would be the best course. Nope, not by a long shot. As long as Google gets i…
People just need to have like a barebones understanding of: computer hardware level, OS level, browser level and how permissions work between the three.
If you have that you will never get scared by a popup in Chrome.