It Seems a Lot Like Dead Internet Has Actually Come True
“The infamous dead internet theory was originally a conspiracy that posited that the vast majority of the internet was run by bots and thinking machines. Most accounts you saw online were really bots masquerading as people — all part of some nefarious scheme to control humankind by keeping us isolated and divided. That last part is far-fetched, but the core of the idea — that bots outnumber humans online — is inexorably starting to feel weirdly grounded.”
Pretty sad. I remember the first public Internet when bulletin boards migrated onto the new web. It was mostly all human driven with lots of blogs, no adverts, no tracking pixels, and no mobile phones.
Everything moves on and evolves, that is true, but today you certainly can't trust opinions or videos that are seen on the Internet. I can't see the Internet going away, but it is going to be very interesting to see what the future of content holds.
What I'm seeing, is a hollowing out of many of the big platforms such as Facebook, Twitter (who faked numbers to advertisers), etc. Certainly there are still accounts there, but I see next to none of my real human friends or family posting there. Many have migrated off to instant messaging platforms, and the broader other social media users I see, have moved to decentralised platforms like the Fediverse and Bluesky, and the more extreme are active on platforms like Nostr, Secure Scuttlebutt, and some centralised platforms like MeWe and Reddit. LinkedIn is littered with AI generated motivational business memes.
It has all come down to gaming the system that rewards “content”. Like so many things in life, money corrupts. Exciting times, but I'm pretty sure that quality content will still find its niche audiences, and especially for those who want to share and educate others.
See https://gadgeteer.co.za/it-seems-a-lot-like-dead-internet-has-actually-come-true/
#ai #bots #technology
“The infamous dead internet theory was originally a conspiracy that posited that the vast majority of the internet was run by bots and thinking machines. Most accounts you saw online were really bots masquerading as people — all part of some nefarious scheme to control humankind by keeping us isolated and divided. That last part is far-fetched, but the core of the idea — that bots outnumber humans online — is inexorably starting to feel weirdly grounded.”
Pretty sad. I remember the first public Internet when bulletin boards migrated onto the new web. It was mostly all human driven with lots of blogs, no adverts, no tracking pixels, and no mobile phones.
Everything moves on and evolves, that is true, but today you certainly can't trust opinions or videos that are seen on the Internet. I can't see the Internet going away, but it is going to be very interesting to see what the future of content holds.
What I'm seeing, is a hollowing out of many of the big platforms such as Facebook, Twitter (who faked numbers to advertisers), etc. Certainly there are still accounts there, but I see next to none of my real human friends or family posting there. Many have migrated off to instant messaging platforms, and the broader other social media users I see, have moved to decentralised platforms like the Fediverse and Bluesky, and the more extreme are active on platforms like Nostr, Secure Scuttlebutt, and some centralised platforms like MeWe and Reddit. LinkedIn is littered with AI generated motivational business memes.
It has all come down to gaming the system that rewards “content”. Like so many things in life, money corrupts. Exciting times, but I'm pretty sure that quality content will still find its niche audiences, and especially for those who want to share and educate others.
See https://gadgeteer.co.za/it-seems-a-lot-like-dead-internet-has-actually-come-true/
#ai #bots #technology
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