The post-truth chronicles - Dead Internet Theory
Notes From the Desk: No. 29 - 2024.03.11
Notes From the Desk are periodic posts that summarize recent topics of interest or other brief notable commentary that might otherwise be a tweet or note.
What is dead Internet Theory?
Dead Internet Theory is the concept that online activity between humans has been mostly replaced by bots, algorithmic manipulation and AI-generated content. Humans are no longer interacting with each other, but just machines.
It is often referred to as a conspiracy theory likely due to the assertion that most online activity has been replaced. Unfortunately, that is dismissive of the substantial and growing impact of real algorithmic consumption of the internet.
AI automation is creating real problems for users and businesses. For users, it makes it more difficult to find high-quality content and the sea of noise reduces visibility for businesses creating high-quality content.
Post-truth, reality drowns in the noise
I have previously written in detail about the growing concerns of technology that obscures reality and the cost that will incur for civilization. So what are some of the patterns that are now being adopted that are drowning our world in noise? At what rate is information increasing that we have to sort through?
A few quick notes on the scale of AI generated information:
More than 15 billion AI images have been created, surpassing all images created in the first 150 years of photography.
Adobe Firefly created 1 billion alone in 3 months after launch.
Approximately 34 million images per day estimated after DALLE-2 launch.
$13 billion in ads and rising wasted on AI content farms.
AI influencers that don’t exist can be paid up to $33,274 per post.
AI generated content has been shown capable of stealing 50% of traffic from major websites.
Some additional quick observations of related trends:
“Since May, websites hosting AI-created false articles have increased by more than 1,000 percent, ballooning from 49 sites to more than 600”
“News Corp using AI to produce 3,000 Australian local news stories a week”
“Google is reportedly paying publishers thousands of dollars to use its AI to write stories … Of note, publishers in the program are apparently not required to disclose their use of AI”
— Engadget
“Over three days in February, cybersecurity firm CHEQ tracked the proportion of bot traffic from X to its clients' websites. It found three-quarters of traffic from X was fake …”
“They are now infiltrating dating apps to try and create a fake relationship, and eventually trick victims into sending money. Scammers are using bots at scale to create a massive number of accounts.”
“since February 2023, the TS2 Space has published at least 336,260 blog articles written by AI …“
“Authors keep finding what appear to be AI-generated imitations and summaries of their books on Amazon. There's little they can do to rein in the rip-offs.”
— Wired
“Study Finds Almost 11% of Fortune 500 Blog Articles Are Likely AI-Generated”
“How I Published 1,000 AI SEO Articles in 30 Mins “
It is all an immense sea of noise that is growing far more rapidly than any solution thus far to deal with it. It is a very sudden shift in patterns of content creation and there isn’t much data as of yet to tell us how significant the impacts are going to be.
This exchange somewhat highlights the problem in a humorous manner:
And the reply …
Yes, we have come full circle. Bots posting and bots responding. This is the dead internet.
The AI content wars begin
Google is beginning an effort to limit the AI-generated spam. New algorithms will be applied in May in an attempt to limit AI spam in search results.
But so far, AI seems to be leveling the playing field in the most undesirable direction. Scammers, spammers, cybercriminals and the like are finding it far easier for their craft than those who defend against it. And in somewhat sobering and depressing news, supposedly many prefer AI-generated content over human-created content.
Maybe Jaron Lanier got it right …
We are going to turn ourselves into NPCs.
Now would be the time for archivists and librarians to begin separating out post-2022 written and visual work from what was produced before. As I saw once on Twitter, "this is the K-T boundary of information."
Anything afterwards is increasingly unlikely to be made by humans.
— Ethan Mollick, Professor, The Wharton School
Unlike much of the internet now, there is a human mind behind all the content created here at Mind Prison. I typically spend hours to days on articles including creating the illustrations for each. I hope if you find them valuable and you still appreciate the creations from the organic hardware within someone’s head that you will consider subscribing. Thank you!
No compass through the dark exists without hope of reaching the other side and the belief that it matters …
> Unlike much of the internet now, there is a human mind behind all the content created here at Mind Prison.
You can't prove that. Unfortunately.
This is a nice digestible summary of the ideas of The Dead Internet theory, enjoyed it as a quick read. I’ve also written about this topic, approaching it from the standpoint of examining how possible this theory is, I’d love to get your opinion on the post!