The Dead Internet Theory

[LSSBB]

How about Brain Dead Internet?

 

[Roboramma]

How about Brain Dead Internet?

There's definitely a lot of that.

 

[Spektator]

Who killed the Internet?

I say a conspiracy theorist, in the library, with a fringe reset.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

“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.

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.

 

[Checkmite]

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?

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]

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]

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.

 

[Orphia Nay]

{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.

Yep, it seems to have evolved and taken on a somewhat different, less fanciful meaning.

 

[Donal]

Isn't that how SEO works? Bots creating content to appeal to bots?

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

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.

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.

An estimated 55 billion email spam were sent each day in June 2006, an increase of 25 billion per day from June 2005.

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

The Internet is dead but is in zombie mode.

 

[Thermal]

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.

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.

 

[novaphile]

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.

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.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

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.

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.

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'?

 

[Roger Ramjets]

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.

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'?

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

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.

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

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.

One reason we may be seeing less is that blocking efforts are working even as the transmitted volume increases.

 

[dudalb]

At times I think most of the Internet is brain dead, but that is a different thing...