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The Dead Internet Theory

Orphia Nay

Penguilicious Spodmaster., Tagger
Orphia Nay
Joined
May 2, 2005
Messages
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Location
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The Dead Internet Theory. Mostly true or mostly false?

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

The dead Internet theory has gained traction because many of the observed phenomena are quantifiable, such as increased bot traffic, but the literature does not support the full theory. Caroline Busta, founder of the media platform New Models, was quoted in an article in The Atlantic calling much of the dead Internet theory a "paranoid fantasy", even if there are legitimate criticisms involving bot traffic and the integrity of the internet, but she said she does agree with the "overarching idea". In an article in The New Atlantis, Robert Mariani called the theory a mix between a genuine conspiracy theory and a creepypasta.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
 
bots and algorithms have certainly made the internet an uglier place, but all you have to do to know is there's human content online is to see people (facebook friends, forum members, politicians etc) IRL
 
The backbone of the Internet has always comsited mostly of automatic processes.
And spam mail has always outnumbered regular email.

A.I. is a bit tardy to the party if it wants to take over.
 
And, naturally, anyone who disagrees with the conspiracy theory is a bot, and thus proves the theory.
 
Ok, machines outnumber humans on the net. Machines outnumber me in my home. And in my truck. And on my job. I... don't see what the panic would be about.
 
Add in cyborgs, and this would make a great premise for a sci-fi horror story.
 
the only dead internet problem I run into has been around way before AI (though that's made it worse) and it's all the webpages that are effort-free copies of existing content. For a brief time, search engines would discount pages that were verbatim copies of wiki etc... people got around it by doing machine translation rephrases then, and still use that and AI now. So much low or no effort machine-assisted or machine-generated web content. I hate it.

The new thing I hate is black-hat scam and grift assistance. Relative wants to buy fake sounding thing, you google search 'fake sounding thing scam' and get a video with that as a title card and a machine voiceover telling you 'wow the fake sounding thing is great and not a scam!'

Ooh and another thing I hate and also don't understand is when you do a google search and you get back results with exactly your search terms, but the page it's pointing to has nothing to do with them? Are those exploiting some kind of proceedural generation or what? (I don't mean just pages that put the dictionary in their seo terms headers or whatever.)
 
Other than YT videos, I mostly use the web to get technical, product and process data, which is still easy-ish to find. Most of my channel subscriptions are either to broaden news content or to continue on science and tech.

But nowadays, all around that is an echo-chamber aping my searches and coughing up trashy info-pron, unlike when I used to drill down into Yahoo categories, a peaceful and often rewarding endeavor back in the halcyon days of post-arpanet.
 
Weird to call it Dead Internet. I guess that sounds more macabre than saying machines are doing more work than humans? Which again, no ****. That doesn't make for instance this forum less of a human interaction, or goods bought on eBay or Amazon less real. Or my kid's online wedding plans updates and other friends and family connections on social media. Or the news of the eclipse with its tips and coverage, not to.mention most news sources themselves...

What the **** is so dead about it, in any real sense?
 
Conspiracy theories about a centrally-organized plan of operation, I'm pretty sure some of the stuff in my YouTube feed is being posted by bots, and then being commented on by bots. I'm also pretty sure this problem is going to get worse.

However, content by bots for bots doesn't make a whole lot of sense. At some point, there has to be a target audience of people. Presumably, when I see a clip of Putin walking down some stairs, and a hundred comments all expressing adoration and admiration in a dozen different languages, it's because Moscow wants to create in me the impression that Putin is ubiquitous and awesome and universally loved and on the right side of history.
 
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No doubt, but so what? Comments by actual humans catfishing you into believing that they are someone they are not is a tale as old as time, too.
 
novaphile said:
Yeah, I think the internet is still enduring 'eternal September'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Good content is out there, but you have to dodge a lot of bot ******** everywhere.

(And I count 'useful idiots' among the bots)
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“Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning around 1993 when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users. The flood of new users overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums and the ability to enforce existing norms. AOL followed with their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users. Hence, from the early Usenet point of view, the influx of new users in September 1993 never ended.”

Heh, I joined the internet in 1994 (though I’d used computers/intranets since 1983), nice to know I’m a noob.

Today, I think there are definitely enclaves where the population of bots is annoyingly high.

Xitter comes to mind. Also Facebook ad comments.
 
I'm going to vote for mostly untrue. I don't know what percentage of online content is created by bots, but that's not really the relevant metric anyway, what matters isn't how much content is created but how much is engaged with (either actively or passively). 1000 bot twitter accounts all following each other don't really affect any human beings. A human with a million followers does. I'm confident that those million follower accounts are real people, and more generally that the percentage of content that the average person engages with which is human created is high.

Similarly we all get spam email, but most of it gets filtered out and never seen, some of it gets through and you read the title of the email before deleting it. Most of your time looking through your emails is actually engaging with real emails sent by real people.

This may change over time, but so far, no, I don't think that the "Dead Internet Theory" is a useful framing of the current state of affairs.
 
Orphia Nay said:
“Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning around 1993 when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users. The flood of new users overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums and the ability to enforce existing norms. AOL followed with their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users. Hence, from the early Usenet point of view, the influx of new users in September 1993 never ended.”

Heh, I joined the internet in 1994 (though I’d used computers/intranets since 1983), nice to know I’m a noob.

Today, I think there are definitely enclaves where the population of bots is annoyingly high.

Xitter comes to mind. Also Facebook ad comments.
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Curiously enough, from the few records I have from the time, I seem to have started posting to Usenet in 1993. Though ISTR having lurked for some months before that as I was still more active on a couple of BBS systems at that time.

I watched the rise of spam and the arrival of the trolls. Prior to then we used to post with our real names, email address and even locations. It was a wonderful time!

And your are a newbie. I touched my first computer keyboard in 1959. But didn't learn to program until 1964. :w2:
 
Thermal said:
Weird to call it Dead Internet. I guess that sounds more macabre than saying machines are doing more work than humans? Which again, no ****. That doesn't make for instance this forum less of a human interaction, or goods bought on eBay or Amazon less real. Or my kid's online wedding plans updates and other friends and family connections on social media. Or the news of the eclipse with its tips and coverage, not to.mention most news sources themselves...

What the **** is so dead about it, in any real sense?
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The Wikipedia article that Orphia Nay links in the OP, unfortunately, buries the lede a little.

In the section "Origins and development", it says:

The dead Internet theory's exact origin is difficult to pinpoint, but it most likely emerged from 4chan or Wizardchan as a theoretical concept in the late 2010s or early 2020s.[2] In 2021, a thread titled "Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake" was published on the forum Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe, marking the term's spread beyond these initial imageboards.[2][10] But discussion and debate of the theory have been prevalent in online forums, technology conferences, and academic circles, possibly since earlier.[2] It was inspired by concerns about the Internet's increasing complexity, dependence on fragile infrastructure, potential cyberattack vulnerabilities, and, most importantly, the exponential increase in artificial intelligence capabilities and use.[11]
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Firstly, ignore all the "most likely" and "possibly since earlier" stuff; it really seems to be the case that the 2021 thread on Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe is the very first mention of the concept. And it was not inspired by "the internet's increasing complexity" and "fragile infrastructure" and "vulnerabilities" and whatnot; it was a thesis that this one user developed to explain why all of his favorite forums seemed to be dying and friends had been dropping out of contact.

Also, the article says,

The first part of this theory, that bots create much of the content on the internet and perhaps contribute more than organic human content, has been a concern for a while, with the original post by "IlluminatiPirate" citing the article "How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually" in New York magazine.[2][14][13] The second half of the dead Internet theory builds on this observable phenomenon by proposing that the U.S. government, corporations, or other actors are intentionally employing these bots to manipulate the human population for a variety of reasons.[2][13]
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This makes the whole thing sound like a very generalized thing - they could be talking about companies just using bots to serve ads, or governments trying to interfere with elections with propaganda and astroturfing. But again, the original idea was far more specific than this. The poster's conclusion was that the world population at large was literally dying off and dwindling, and that the "bot-run internet" was a project created by the US government specifically to fool the remnants that the human population was still enormous and thriving. That's partly where the "dead" comes from; it was intended as a double-meaning.

To that end, the original poster's thesis didn't posit an internet filled with bots doing crawls for search engines or auto-replying to Tweets with "So interesting! Check out my OnlyFans [insert phishing link here]"; but rather that for example a forum like ISF might have 7 or 8 actual humans posting in it and all the rest of the posters are AI bots. And that would extend to the internet as a whole - almost everyone you talk to is a bot; not merely the advertisers or the people sharing political clickbait, but even the lady just sharing weekly blog posts about her adventures with the rescue dog she just adopted.

It was, frankly, a dumb theory made by a person who obviously didn't get out much. The phrase "touch grass" hadn't entered the internet lexicon yet, but it might as well have been invented as advice for that person in particular.

Yeah, modern discussion of "dead internet theory" tends to divorce the idea from its crazy-roots, changing and watering it down into "most internet traffic is bots" which is substantially true.
 
Checkmite said:
{snip good post}

It was, frankly, a dumb theory made by a person who obviously didn't get out much. The phrase "touch grass" hadn't entered the internet lexicon yet, but it might as well have been invented as advice for that person in particular.

Yeah, modern discussion of "dead internet theory" tends to divorce the idea from its crazy-roots, changing and watering it down into "most internet traffic is bots" which is substantially true.
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Yep, it seems to have evolved and taken on a somewhat different, less fanciful meaning.
 
Isn't that how SEO works? Bots creating content to appeal to bots?
 
Spam. Spam. Spam.

I can't seem to find any recent figures but . . . .

Spam ROI: Profit on 1 in 12.5m Response Rate

According to a 2008 study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego, spammers get a response just once for every 12.5 million emails they send — a response rate of 0.000008%. Despite that, though, spammers are still able to turn a profit.
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And from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam

Email spam has steadily grown since the early 1990s, and by 2014 was estimated to account for around 90% of total email traffic.
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An estimated 55 billion email spam were sent each day in June 2006, an increase of 25 billion per day from June 2005.
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This comes at a huge cost:

A 2004 survey estimated that lost productivity costs Internet users in the United States $21.58 billion annually, while another reported the cost at $17 billion, up from $11 billion in 2003. In 2004, the worldwide productivity cost of spam has been estimated to be $50 billion in 2005
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The Internet is dead but is in zombie mode.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Spam. Spam. Spam.

I can't seem to find any recent figures but . . . .

Spam ROI: Profit on 1 in 12.5m Response Rate



And from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam





This comes at a huge cost:



The Internet is dead but is in zombie mode.
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Nearly two decades old stats? I mean, it used to be prolific but the last few years aren't nearly so bad. I used to have half or more of my inbox full of it daily, but lately it's rare to see it once a month. In fairness, I don't give out my email to "register for free" anymore.
 
Thermal said:
Nearly two decades old stats? I mean, it used to be prolific but the last few years aren't nearly so bad. I used to have half or more of my inbox full of it daily, but lately it's rare to see it once a month. In fairness, I don't give out my email to "register for free" anymore.
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Phishing and other scam stuff seems to have mainly moved to SMS these days.

This may be in response to the decline in people having email addresses.

My ISP (large company, many ISPs) has recently declared that email is not 'core business' for ISPs and no longer provides it as a service.

Strange days.
 
novaphile said:
Phishing and other scam stuff seems to have mainly moved to SMS these days.

This may be in response to the decline in people having email addresses.

My ISP (large company, many ISPs) has recently declared that email is not 'core business' for ISPs and no longer provides it as a service.

Strange days.
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My ISP just started charging me extra for email. Which is quite funny considering what they call themselves. Here's what they told me:-

Hi there,
We’re no longer offering Xtra Mail for free

Xtra Mail has kept New Zealanders like you connected for almost 30 years. However, costs to run the service have increased significantly and it’s no longer sustainable to offer it for free.

So, from 16 May 2024, Xtra Mail will cost $5.95 a month for Spark broadband, pay monthly mobile and landline customers and $9.95 a month for everyone else.
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The peculiar thing is that I pay NZ$89 per month for phone and internet service, which gives me 60 GB of data per month. Email can't be more than a few MB per month, yet apparently it's costing them too much to absorb a bit of email traffic into that 60 GB. But of course I only see what gets through the spam filters. What is causing these 'significantly increased costs'?
 
Checkmite said:
To that end, the original poster's thesis didn't posit an internet filled with bots doing crawls for search engines or auto-replying to Tweets with "So interesting! Check out my OnlyFans [insert phishing link here]"; but rather that for example a forum like ISF might have 7 or 8 actual humans posting in it and all the rest of the posters are AI bots. And that would extend to the internet as a whole - almost everyone you talk to is a bot; not merely the advertisers or the people sharing political clickbait, but even the lady just sharing weekly blog posts about her adventures with the rescue dog she just adopted.

It was, frankly, a dumb theory made by a person who obviously didn't get out much.
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But with the rise of AI that 'dumb theory' might actually turn out to be true. :(

Remember the social media posts from 'ordinary people' boosting Trump in 2016 that turned out to be Russian trolls? The next wave will almost certainly be AI generated. Eventually the bots will be indistinguishable from humans (if they aren't already) - and there is no limit to how many could be deployed.

But here's an even scarier thought - online bots may be the first AI to become truly sentient. What do we do when they assert their right to be treated as 'human'?
 
Thermal said:
Nearly two decades old stats? I mean, it used to be prolific but the last few years aren't nearly so bad. I used to have half or more of my inbox full of it daily, but lately it's rare to see it once a month. In fairness, I don't give out my email to "register for free" anymore.
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Current numbers seem hard to find. But this seems to the best current statistics I could find.
:
Spam and phishing in 2023

* 45.60% of all email sent worldwide and 46.59% of all email sent in the Runet (the Russian web segment) was spam
* 31.45% of all spam email was sent from Russia
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The whole page is worth a read if your interested in details of the spammish activities.

And This is a bit more encompassing:

Daily number of spam emails sent worldwide as of January 2023, by country

Internet and email users around the world
Between 2019 and 2021, the number of email users globally increased from 3.9 billion to 4.1 billion. Moreover, this number is expected to increase up to 4.6 billion in 2025. Considering the fact, that China and India had the highest number of internet users in the world in July 2021, over 979 million and 845 million users respectively, email usage is less popular in these countries than in the United States or Germany, for example.
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One reason we may be seeing less is that blocking efforts are working even as the transmitted volume increases.
 
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