Interestingly after just digging into this a bit more it seems that when considering this principle in multiple studies measured since the 2000s, the most successful predictor for this power law is if the internet property is a form of community. Specifically in those cases there was a strong 1-9-90% rule in effect.
1% of the users were responsible for all generated content in terms of creation.
9% were responsible for editing if they had the privilege to edit. Perhaps “replying” would fit in this segment.
90% lurkers.
This is a stronger version of the Pareto principle. It’s interesting metaphysically and perhaps physically when considering musical theory, intervals, and how boundary conditions seem to work pretty consistently despite seemingly unrelated things.
I digress though, back to my earlier point. It seems if these laws hold up then there is a strong potential that much of the users who are active are in fact “avatars of creation.”
It’s certainly been mentioned that the internet has felt like this over the recent years by more fringe echo chambers. However given the backdrop of progress, it certainly gives more credit to the idea of a more nuanced form of the dead internet theory reminiscent of “society of the spectacle.” What is the said progress I allude to? Well, “NLP” of course. The most amount of progress in machine learning and AI is specifically within language models. Given that the availability of building such automation tools to conduct memetic warfare doesn’t even require sophisticated language models, (manpower, shills, some creative spam) one may have to wonder for how long oneself may have been talking to themselves on the internet? In a way it forms an “imaginary great firewall” for every user. Interacting with avatars built on your predictors, with seemingly no truth vector for the utility function and it’s behavior modification goal (alignment functions). Weird. I think we are past the smoke alarm stage. The evidence of ability and active training is self-evident since 2016 on 4chan and elsewhere.
