The 'Dead-Internet Theory' (opens in new tab)

Some of them post random timestamps like "i like your video 23:34", "love u 5:49" (but the video is just 2 minutes long), other bots just spam every conversation with the same video links. There's a few that are a bit more advanced that attempt to use video's metadata as a response. On twitter there's a lot of fake activity too.

The majority of us are drones doing the same basic labour over and over while the very smartest figure out new techniques and technologies for us to adopt, which trickle down to us eventually. But large swathes of people just don't have the critical and analytic faculties to actually function in a complex advanced society.

It's all a matter of degree, we all have these flaws to some degree or other, we're all imperfect beings. Even the geniuses have great days when they make a new discovery and others when they fall prey to a scam.

(now they not only know you're a dog, but what kind of dog food you eat and how often you go walkies)

I know exactly what happened: the programmer used the wrong delimiter. It makes me wonder how many times the programmer did not make such a mistake.

Maybe that's how most people need to understand things (eg "God"), but it's also a straw man (cf claiming the Twin Towers were actively brought down by explosives, rather than simply stopping at the largest beneficiary being the military industrial complex).

Most of the qualitative trends he describes are happening. But the straightforward explanation is that many different entities are trying their hands at such things. And as is common for "AI", there are likely to be many Mechanical Turks.

And so addressing the substance, which I feel is also being covered in very mainstream channels: yes, we are in post-reality. The virtual world increasingly defines the real world. Does anybody not feel that the mess of Covid disinformation is being driven by willful actors, whether for self-interested "engagement" ior actively malevolent propaganda? That disinformation is driving a lot of people to make self-harming choices in the real world. The Covid-21 pandemic is of digital origin.

In the post-reality landscape, your own reasoning ability is paramount. Conspiracy theories that ascribe complex phenomenon to single actors are yet another memetic pitfall to be avoided. See the truth in where they're coming from, but don't drink the Kool Aid.

A bit related to that, it also makes me think about the story with games published on itch.io that had "fake multiplayer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCqnD40Q5T8.

https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-...

I wouldn't say the internet is devoid of real people, but it is definitely less useful for real interaction than it used to be.

Even if all of the content you're interacting with is managed and generated, it does still ultimately affect the real world around you in some way. Call it "fake" if you will, but it has a downstream effect. You can ask your friends and neighbours whether they have the same opinions about the world, whether they've read the same articles and reached similar (or opposite) conslusions, and see the results of political and regional decision-making around you.

The strategy is to keep a clear vision of what you think improvement is, and to require proof-of-work from others during interactions that bring you (ideally all, in a multi-person setting) closer to your vision.

If an entity that you're interacting with (whether it's a person, an organization, a bot, or entirely indeterminate) doesn't provide verifiable progress (ideally without loopholes) towards your vision, that's when you need to decide whether to attempt to correct their actions (perhaps aided by the likeminded group around you), or simply to gradually disengage if they don't appear to adapt and realign over time.

You should also be aware that you and your own vision may be realigned by the proof-of-work requested by others; and in those cases you also have a value judgement to make: do I change my opinions based on the requests and evidence I've received, or do I continue to adhere to my chosen path?

The assertion of "Dead Internet" is not (necessarily) that 99% of everything on the net is made by one sinister literal AI run by the US government (though things might well converge to this point eventually). The point is that currently, less and less of the content is organic or real anymore.

"Bot" in modern Internet parlance is shorthand. It CAN mean a GPT-style program posting stuff on its own. It can also mean a human guiding said program, editing and cherry-picking before posting. It can also mean a bunch of humans in a room somewhere who have been paid to blend into various communities and spread propaganda and disinfo, for the sake of nudging opinion or just to muddy the waters. Sometimes in the employ of nation states, sometimes by a company just trying to sell a new pair of shoes. It can also mean the countless rogue individuals who make such posts just because they like to be disruptive.

It can also mean the so-called "algorithms" at work on every major platform now, a near infinite set of interlocking rules twisting and churning beneath the surface. What video will be recommended? What tweet will rise, and which will be buried? What information will be easy to come across, and what will be nearly impossible? This is a level of control and propaganda the tyrants of the previous era could only have dreamed of, and it is the reality of the modern Internet. Not simply to crudely censor or broadcast an idea, but to nudge the population this way or that in ways that are often almost undetectable.

The Internet used to be largely unfiltered, aside from basic trash collection. Now it is highly MANAGED, in ways that are never clear or honest, by agents that wear many masks. THIS is what is meant by "bots." The Atlantic article itself is a perfect example. What is the point of the article? To inform or empower the reader? Of course not. It's to MANAGE. To address the "Dead Internet" theory, a theory that's dangerous because it's true, and blunt it, to shift your opinion by "debunking"/"clarifying"/scoffing.

The Atlantic article was (probably) not written by an AI. It was (probably) written by a real human, working for other real humans. But why was the decision made, by those real people, to write and publish such an article? Because the "Dead Internet" theory is true: the Internet has become an enormous propaganda machine, exploited in turn by any number of powerful groups. The Atlantic is tied into those groups, and they want to keep the gravy train rolling. Maybe Kaitlyn Tiffany was specifically directed to write such an article. Maybe (more likely) she was hired because she was the sort of person who would write a dismissive article like this unbidden as soon as she encountered the "Dead Internet" theory (a "good cultural match for us"). Either way she's no longer an individual simply expressing HER views, but a tool for the small group of people that increasingly dominate the net to express THEIRS.

She's a bot.

And the Dead Internet is full of them.