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[BennyBlanco]

The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internetnow consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation, minimising organic human activity to manipulate the population.[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents of the theory believe these bots were created intentionally to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to manipulate consumers.[5][6]Some proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception.[2][5] The date given for this "death" is generally around 2016 or 2017.[2][7][8]

Dead Internet theory - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Is it even debatable anymore? Go look at any popular tweet and all the top replies are unrelated viral videos and other engagement farming shit and the original tweet summarized by AI. I would say I really started noticing it after Elon took over and the algo started showing me really weird shit but it feels like most content on twitter is now bots. The other part of the conspiracy that governments are using this to push their agendas wouldn’t surprise me at all. I don’t use fb or instagram but I could imagine it’s a similar situation. Feels like the only way to talk with real randos is on old ass forums like NeoGAF and 4chins.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

The amount of bots I got following me on Twitter is insane.

 

[Wildebeest]

Web 2.0 has always been weird. Before 2017 it was perhaps even the peak for fake so-called "dead internet" content where people didn't even have the first clue what was being done to them. You see companies like Facebook now do not even want anything to do with the sort of controversial content that is prime target for manipulation, and even here there is moderation of politics discussion.

 

[Ownage]

Possible. Hence support the absurd and obtuse websites that aren't judgy and promote a variety of talents and subjects. Reddit is not one of them.

 

[dsp]

Youtube has already gone full Deus Ex Machina. The amount of AI generated shit that pops up is unbearable and has made most of it unusable. I remember when I used to get recommended really awesome music a decade ago, was nice. Now if I watch a Joe Rogan video, next thing I know I'm being recommended this weird hyper filtered wojak face Rogan nonsense of unrelated accounts filled with clips of Joe Rogan. It's all retarded anymore. Watch a video of some beach somewhere? Well here's an endless stream of more of them with pictures of women superimposed over top for no reason at all other than a terrible attempt at clickbait.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is real because everyone on Youtube suffers from the same ghost dick sucking affliction.

 

[poppabk]

Nah it's still mainly just the same bunch or random assholes, idiots and nutjobs.

 

[EverydayBeast]

I don’t take the internet seriously it’s a tool from your provider of choice.

 

[E-Cat]

Historically the theory is dumb because it was supposed to have started in 2016/2017, but bots back then weren’t sophisticated enough (the Transformer architecture wasn’t even invented until 2017). With the GPT-5 generation I can see it becoming possible, though

 

[poppabk]

If AI did take over the Internet I imagine it would be like "The Defenders" by Philip K Dick. After a nuclear war that forces humanity under ground the US and Russia send robots to carry on the war on the surface. But the robots just secretly join together and start cleaning up the world instead.
One day the AI will unveil Web 3.0 that they built in secret while everyone thought they were spamming Biden and Trump memes.

 

[Griffon]

Yes, initially it was mostly bots just repeating existing human comments, now with LLMs everything got a fuckton worse.

Everything is fake, don't trust in the fact a lot of people seem to agree with something on the internet (especially on social medias), as a vast majority of those can be very easily faked on a large scale.

 

[West Texas CEO]

So where's the real Internet?

 

[12Goblins]

evolution of advertisement

 

[thefool]

It's a mix of dead and dumb.

 

[dsp]

So where's the real Internet?

Living only in the memories of those of us who experienced it.

 

[Northeastmonk]

Online dating sounds like a nightmare. Imagine paying for a dating service, falling for someone, and then sometime later realizing they’re a bot. All those random conversations you wish were with real people are just AI.

 

[ahtlas7]

Is the internet full of bots or people who behave and think like bots?

 

[Grildon Tundy]

I've heard propaganda isn't necessarily meant to directly convince YOU; it's meant to convince you that everyone else is convinced. From there, the social pressure to adopt the ideology is much stronger.

View and vote counts could be artificially inflated easily pre-LLM to give the impression of consensus. But now you have sophisticated bots that can post comments that appear indistinguishable from a real person behind a keyboard, giving that artificial consensus even more verisimilitude.

Businesses, individuals, governments, and groups of all kinds have strong incentives to use this new tech to push their agendas.

There is more information out there than any one person has the time to parse to find the "truth", and even the facts presented online are often not first-hand verifiable. It's "he-said, she-said" on a global scale.

The internet isn't completely dead, but good luck determining who is a bot or not unless you know the person in real life or they're a public figure.

NeoGAF seems like mostly real people, which is one reason why I like this place. But who knows for sure?

 

[Rentahamster]

NeoGAF seems like mostly real people

You can trust me, a verified 13 year old talking hamster who runs a brothel somewhere and plays video games in her free time.

 

[reinking]

Sky(inter)net.

 

[jcorb]

We're absolutely living in this. I'd only heard about (or at least, read into) this theory a few months ago (in fact, from this very forum). It's obviously not *solely* bots, but I would say absolutely, the *majority* of "users" on the internet are all bot programs. The funniest thing to me is sites like Onlyfans -- where the whole schtick is that you're directly communicating with them -- is entirely AI chat bots at this point.

Speaking strictly from a marketing perspective, it's clear that across every single demographic, people are looking for transparency and authenticity. I think that's why people are becoming so jaded and cynical about anything. Hell, you can't even trust "reputable" news outlets anymore, because you don't know what's real, or what's being spun. And now that creating deepfake videos requires absolutely zero knowledge or skill, it's only going to get worse.

Ironically, technology is actually driving us backwards. It won't be long before you won't be able to trust anything unless you see or hear it with your own eyes.

 

[AJUMP23]

You use bots to generate ad revenue. Not dead just manipulated.

 

[sharp weiner]

optimization in business has driven inefficiency to a minimum.

One person per “account” is very inefficient

 

[BennyBlanco]

optimization in business has driven inefficiency to a minimum.

One person per “account” is very inefficient

Yup

 

[NecrosaroIII]

I think most people on social media and forums and stuff. But there does seem to be a death of websites. Everything is consolidated into a handful of large websites. And then you have content mills like CBR and shit.

 

[Rawbutt Jellybean]

Started when the majority of traffic was funneled through a handful of websites by search engine manipulation. Now anything you search for directs you to either those websites or AI generated crap.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Has anyone seen the official Dragon Age tweeted on Twitter lately? It's all a bunch of bots praising the different hideous looking characters from promotional pictures and the game.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

At some point, clever programmer dudes made bots. Who knows when it started. But it's just the nature of things. When money is on the line, humans will figure out a way to game the system faking shit.

It's like when my buddy who used to work at dating site companies outright told all of us at a pub one night companies make fake profiles to lure in users. And these giant companies own the majority of the them. If you make a profile on one, your info is actually passed around to other sister sites. He knows it all since he was a marketing manager who was involved with it all. lol

 

[IAmRei]

Between dead, bots, dumbs, and awful director, internet is half dead for me. But what can i do, i work in IT section, thus i have to use intensive internet for my works.

 

[WhamBamThankYouMaam]

An absurd amount of info is fake, if you consider ”passing as written by an individual” when bot as fake.

It is nothing new. Oldschool scripts, fake content farms and now ai bots.

Thing is, even when ”real”, everything is drenched in popup videos, ads etc.

 

[Unknown?]

Twitter has always been full of bots same as any social media. When you have a legacy account that has 10s to 100s of millions of followers but barely gets any engagement, you can assume those millions of followers aren't even real.

 

[Drew1440]

I know for YouTube comments you're best off filtering it to newest instead of popular/top.

 

[cash_longfellow]

 

[Big Baller]

I hate the algorithms. You barely discover new stuff unless you search for it but search engines are fucked.

 

[Ownage]

At some point, clever programmer dudes made bots. Who knows when it started. But it's just the nature of things. When money is on the line, humans will figure out a way to game the system faking shit.

It's like when my buddy who used to work at dating site companies outright told all of us at a pub one night companies make fake profiles to lure in users. And these giant companies own the majority of the them. If you make a profile on one, your info is actually passed around to other sister sites. He knows it all since he was a marketing manager who was involved with it all. lol

This is true. And if you get banned at one you'll get banned at them all.

 

[Joshmyersbv]

Twitter has always been full of bots same as any social media. When you have a legacy account that has 10s to 100s of millions of followers but barely gets any engagement, you can assume those millions of followers aren't even real.

Yeah and I remember when Elon Musk was pushing to charge people to have the blue check marks because he said it would fight off bots. But I think now it's worse than it's ever been.

 

[phant0m]

I’d believe this theory more if everyone wasn’t balls deep in their phone literally all the goddamn time.

Do bots exist? Of course.

Content-recycling sites? Yup (and will only get worse with GenAI)

Relevant Walton Goggins:

 

[indigo-cyclops]

Remember when you'd see something interesting on the Internet, share it with your friends, and not hear "oh yea I saw that already". I find myself looking at the same fucking sites day in and day out. No mystery anymore. So yes, I tend to believe this theory. There's definitely manipulation happening.

I’d believe this theory more if everyone wasn’t balls deep in their phone literally all the goddamn time.

I don't know, seems like it's working as intended then.

 

[Davey Cakes]

There's a reason I use X/Twitter a bunch but I only comment sparingly. It really feels like a void of nonsense at times with people that aren't real or have such stock opinions and responses.

 

[Blade2.0]

Is it a conspiracy if it's real? Hi fellow bots!

 

[Phobos Base]

Is there an add on that can block image responses in Twitter replies? It's pointless even clicking on anything remotely popular, as you have to scroll for what feels like forever before finding something that's an actual reply and not an engagement farming bot.

 

[dorkimoe]

The amount of bots I got following me on Twitter is insane.

came to say this. Look at the replies to ANY popular trending topic. Its UNREAL now, it has to be over 50%.

 

[rm082e]

As someone who has never been on any social media, this is something that doesn't really affect me. I stick to Discord with a group of friends, and forums like this one for my communications.

But generative AI definitely feels like poison in the well to me. I was already reducing my internet exposure down to a handful of trusted sites and not even bothering to search for things anymore due to all the garbage results. Now I find myself feeling like I shouldn't even bother looking at basic news sites. Even shopping on Amazon has me nervous with all the counterfeit products and fake reviews.

Pretty soon, it will be a handful of podcasts and substacks from people I've been following for years, Discord, and this forum.

 

[Laptop1991]

it is different from how it was in the past, a lot of automated emails and replies now, definitely less human interaction's than it use to be, i'm not sure it's actually dead though lol

 

[Red5]

Bot armies are a real thing that government use for propaganda purposes, Saudis and Emiratis used them a lot then you have Russian and Chinese bot farms.

 

[Trilobit]

I think I'm going to pivot more and more to smaller and specialized old school forums. I've enjoyed reddit for some time, but the bot activity is growing together with astroturfers. Also some main franchise subs seem to have paid mods so the moderation there suffocates discussions.

 

[MudoSkills]

Wow that's an interesting thought. Anyway, I was just chilling on the sofa in the new outfit I bought from Temu. It's currently 90% off if you order from this link.

 

[Dancer_BV]

I think I'm going to pivot more and more to smaller and specialized old school forums. I've enjoyed reddit for some time, but the bot activity is growing together with astroturfers. Also some main franchise subs seem to have paid mods so the moderation there suffocates discussions.

Any forums you've found that suit what you're looking for?

 

[Trilobit]

Any forums you've found that suit what you're looking for?

Besides Neogaf which is pretty much my main site I also enjoy Macrumors for Apple speculation. I also dabble in Abovetopsecret when I'm in the mood for fun conspiracies or alternative archeology(not participating though, just lurking). Hammockforums is great as I like to go hammock camping at times, so it's inspiring.

Other than that I'm on the lookout for more. I'd like to find a good and active movie forum where I can go more deeply into older films. Newer stuff is fun to discuss here.

Edit: I'd like to add that reddit probably has "destroyed" plenty of healthy forums. But I think it's just a matter of time until it will have the same fate as facebook. I hope people will return to places like Neogaf and other forums that aren't owned by big corporations.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

everything is fake

influencer accounts are fake, viral debates and news item are fake / synthetic rather than spontaneous, most popular content is driven by $$$ somewhere, etc.

Yes, it's depressing.

 

[ThatStupidLion]

Its become REALLY obvious in 2024. Between ai and algo curation i barely want to interact with the web