The Internet is Fake (Dead Internet Theory)

The internet is ever changing, but over the past couple of years things have started to change. The proportion of bots in increasing. A theory dubbed “The Dead Internet Theory” that states that most of the internet is in fact AI bots. These bots have been unleashed to control the populous and rake in profits. But is it true? And if so, how much of it is true? In this episode we’ll find out.

ColdFusion Podcast:

ColdFusion Socials:

Producer: Dagogo Altraide
Writer: Kate Rostance / @ThenWhatHappens

[ColdFusion]

Just some clarification: I'm seeing a lot of comments talking about how I said in 2021 "there was no widespread generative AI". By that I didn't mean generative AI didn't exist before 2021 (I've been doing videos on them since 2018) What I meant was that it wasn't "widespread" 
Just wanted to clear that up. Cheers

[jrjubach]

What a cool dystopian short film it would make if a guy who spends all his time cooped up in his apartment on the internet finally notices he's the only person alive.

[ColdFusion]

Disclaimer: No AI was used in the making of this video. Thanks for watching!

[bigboss]

I'd like to think that the Internet becoming so untrustworthy will one day push people out of the digital realm and enjoy outside/real-life more, but I highly doubt it...

[GOODYGOODGOOD]

"We could be entering a post-truth world." I want to ask: how the hell are we not already in a post-truth world?

[ceefar]

The worst part about this is that it has barely been 10 years of the modern era of internet (post MySpace/askJeeves) and already the internet is becoming unusable due to bot accounts and bot spam, imagine what this looks like in 50 years lmao

[JJ-siqh]

I've noticed google getting progressively less helpful and all articles are either an ad for something, or so poorly written it might actually be written by a dumb human or dumb bot. Either way, it has become useless to search for things anymore

[PaulineMontagna]

The bots are certainly with us. A few years ago, as a self-published author, I was trying to establish an online presence and opened a Google Plus account (remember them?). Every time I checked my account I would be so excited to find that I had so many new followers, but when I finally checked them I found that the vast majority of them had strange names and profile pictures of busty, young blondes. I had to spend a great deal of time purging them all.

[Subterfugeo]

Back in the 90s, there were over 100 player at the same time, real-time arcade games on PC, and there was not a single bot.

[Federgeistchen-cgnr]

The internet has been “dead” for me more and more over the last few years, in that using it becomes less and less helpful/fulfilling. There are a couple of highlights still (iNaturalist, Wikipedia, some YouTube Channels and Reddit communities). But over all, spending time on the internet has become more and more of a pain, source of frustration, and waste of time.

Even though I was hugely excited about the future of the internet a few years ago, I’m withdrawing from it more and more now, and try to limit the impact it has on my life as much as possible.

[michaelfortier]

The golden age of the internet is long passed unfortunately. Not just because of bots, but because of social media sites as well. 2005-2015 were the best years.

[ZIDANz]

Dagogo Altraide, you have opened my eyes to a whole new vision of the world and beliefs. I remember how the internet was so good, and I gained a lot of experience that shaped who I am right now. I recall the website where I spent almost all my day, the forums and topics I followed, as well as the online games I played from 2005 to 2011. Everything changed after this. Facebook took over, and little by little, we all drowned in the social media nonsense.

[joshuaam]

This theory was explored 20 years ago in Accelerando by Charles Stross. In the book a group of Ghosts spawned off by their owners trace to the intergalactic router on a super computer the size of a tin can via lightsail. The arrive at the internet router to find it’s original creators long since gone or dead, and the networks taken over by basically bot like Aliens and AI’s that will capture you and hold you in virtual worlds for profit generation. It was referred to as economics 2.0 and basically if fed off the populace that are apart of it. It’s pretty wild, and a great read.

[clearmoneytea]

What’s scary is how difficult it was/is for most people to distinguish between bots and people BEFORE advancements in AI. With the advancements we’ve seen now in gen AI it seems pretty hopeless for there to be improvement in distinguishing between bot and person.

[gneu]

I feel so sad knowing the platform that once used to be full of people is now more than half filled with bots.

[StephenHoldaway]

Worth pointing out that every website costs money to keep online, so I think it's more likely we've reached a saturation point from millions of people trying to make money online (recipe blogs to scammers) than anything else. Generated content and automation/bots are just tools, not the underlying incentive

[FreshSmog]

The downsides of AI has become more apparent lately as some people had time to get comfortable with it and start taking them to the extreme. Increasing number of scams, captchas on every website that doesn't want to avoid the inevitable spam. Major platforms hosting user generated content tripping over themselves trying to lock down, take ownership of the content and train AIs on it.

Worst of all, I no longer want to write guides and upload open source code that I wrote myself, because I simply do not want to help train AIs for Reddit or Microsoft. I'm almost certain there will be a sharp decline in generosity of sharing content, including other fields like artists, while AIs start overfitting by training on other AI generated content.

[robertbeisert]

This is the second death of Internet I've heard of. The other one is the fact that most hyperlinks are dead, as are most of the servers that backed them.

[Toleich]

I think if there's more awareness of the overwhelming number of bots online it will push people back into their communities and building real relationships.
Which will be a positive for humanity moving forward.

[Mehwei]

A few days ago I went to a concert and they played a new, unreleased song. I thought to myself that it sounded like another song by a totally different sounding, more obscure, artist. That night I was on YouTube and it recommended a song by the other artist.