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How will the Dead Internet Theory affect society, and what does it mean for the future of social media? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 days ago by CoderSupreme@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey, I've been pondering the Dead Internet Theory (DIT) lately and how it might impact society. For those unfamiliar, the DIT suggests that the internet has been mostly abandoned and that the content we see today is generated by AI and curated by large corporations. While this theory might sound far-fetched, I've noticed a significant portion of the content in my feeds appears to be AI-generated, making it difficult to distinguish between human-generated and AI-generated content.

As someone who was initially excited about the prospect of having an AI assistant, I'm now concerned about the potential for AI to be used to brainwash people and extract money from them. I can't help but wonder if most people will even notice or care, as they continue to use social media and other online platforms, oblivious to the fact that they're being gaslighted into believing what the companies that own the AI want them to believe.

With this in mind, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the DIT and how it might affect society. Do you think it's a real possibility, or is it just a conspiracy theory? How do you think it will impact the way we use the internet, and what can we do to protect ourselves from the potential negative effects of AI-generated content?

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts on this topic!

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[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 30 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I recently saw a reddit thread that was a repost, and every comment was a bot reposting the comments from the last time it was posted. And in the middle of that, there was like a single human commenting on it, not realizing he was intruding on a karma farming circle jerk filled with bots.

I'll try embedding the image, if it's too compressed to read I can upload it somewhere else:

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

It's small, but surprisingly I can read it. In a way, that human is talking to ghosts long since passed.

Whats the point upvotes at all on reddit these days? It's probably a bot.

[–] dariusj18@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago (4 children)

You'd think this would make it very easy for reddit admins to find and ban bots.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago

That would make the site look a lot less popular and tank the share price

Hell, I'm of the opinion that they run some of the bots themselves

[–] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago

Reddit is the frontpage of the DIT. The majority of Reddit is bots.

[–] Chainweasel@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

They have shareholders now, if half the site traffic disappeared (and I feel like that's being optimistic about the actual number of real people on the site) it would be devastating to the stock price.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 5 points 4 days ago

They probably don't mind repost bots. Reposted content is still content, and can be used to attract new users. And the repost bots specifically target popular content, meaning their reposts often do really well.