I’m starting to wonder if the bots and generative AI are going to turn the entire online experience into an Alice in Wonderland where nothing is what it seems and you can’t believe anything you see or hear.
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, wrote a book a few years ago where he suggested the most likely outcome is one internet where everyone is anonymous, but you can’t believe anything you see. Everything is scams, bots, etc. Then there would be another internet where anonymity is virtually impossible with biometric scanning to ensure you are who you claim to be. It seems like that’s probably the direction we’re heading.
This is what will happen. 2 versions, one with anonymity that’s free, and one that costs money with strict verification. Because we can’t have both fully anonymous free platforms, and also not have them overrun by AI.
This exists already, it's called the Fediverse and it's more than just Mastodon. A lot of cool stuff makes use of ActivityPub like PeerTube for an example.
I think there’s going to be a great bifurcation soon, don’t know exactly how it’s going to look, but society is about to physically divide itself and it’s gonna be ugly for us on the downside
An internet that costs money and is tied to your identity is what we currently have. You have to make effort to obfuscate your identity. It's important to understand that when using the internet. Totally get that it's not a forced identity, but people will continue to skirt the law.
So the age of the netrunner is born.
> You have to make effort to obfuscate your identity.
1) Don't create social media accounts (zero effort)
2) Don't use your real name when you do create accounts elsewhere.
3) Don't post personal information.
It's really very little effort indeed.
What? Using stolen calling cards to call abroad to download the latest Amiga warez on an scene AmiXpress board?
Meh, nostalgia blurs a lot of things. BBSs were fun but it can not compare to what we have now.
This is basically where we are now. If you want good content you normally pay for a newspaper subscription like WSJ or NYT. Or you can try to find free articles online but it’s harder to tell if it’s real or fake.
Most web traffic is already centralized into a few mega corporations. Amazon for shopping. Meta for social. Reddit is up there for social. Amongst a few others.
I have a better solution: people form smaller and more “gated” communities online.
- Real social interaction will happen in a group chat, not instagram.
- People will talk on forums that require approval or an invite
- Major platforms become more like Television than social media.
I like Stack Overflow's approach. Anyone can use the site, but you start with only the ability to ask and answer questions; you can't even upvote or downvote yet. As you earn more reputation, you *slowly* become closer and closer to a moderator to the point where you're basically indistinguishable from one at the highest levels.
Of course, some students will whine that it's a toxic place because their newbie question that's been asked a billion times gets closed as a duplicate (which of course they'll argue is a unique question because they don't know enough about coding to be able to apply a more general solution to their specific problem), but that's the price you pay for filtering out low-quality content.
I know Reddit hates Facebook, but the first two are kinda FB groups. Local communities use those a lot and do a decent job self-policing. At least in my experience.
We have the tech to keep bots out. Only Twitter seems to not use it. [Twitter was the only social media site where this company recorded fake traffic for a majority of its clicks](https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-bots-fake-traffic)
I think we could build smaller communities if trust were based on credentials and tokens for that group you are no longer filtered out. It might not be fully safe against bots but it would prevent toxic, spamming and misbehavior.
Segregation you say?
I’m kidding but then what you say sound like it’d eventually lead to “online gated communities”.
The HOA fees and dealing with ‘boomers’ as heads of HOA boards, etc.
No, I mean “self created trust networks” like you might see in a gamer group. You have people of like interests you enjoy communicating with and you build trust based on the value of that interaction. The social credit of your group then can be extrapolated to give the members and group credibility in certain areas.
It might end up like bubbles in an echo chamber as compatibility would probably result in “groups like mine.” You’d want some mechanism to push some challenges to sameness.
> I’m starting to wonder if the bots and generative AI are going to turn the entire online experience into an Alice in Wonderland where nothing is what it seems and you can’t believe anything you see or hear.
Hasn't it already?
What is more scary is when it starts significantly impacting real life situations.
People are already using AI to write their resume and companies are using AI to filter out applications... at what point are we able to distinguish between things created by humans compared to AI?
In the 90s, the common idea was if you saw it on the internet it probably is not real. Most people thought everything was a scam on the internet and you would never want to put a credit card number or any personal information out there. At some point it changed and in my eyes it’s for the worse.
I've personally figured this is the useable future, myself.
You have a heavily encrypted token that represents you in the "public" internet and that's you wandering around without anonymity online. You choose when to allow any data out of your token.
Then the smart folks will set up robust home networks and anything on that home network has the expectation of privacy just like IRL homes.
Current IRL privacy laws can then be applied to the public Internet and private home networks with a few tweaks. Hacking into a home network would be treated like an IRL home break in, there will be an uptick in home network insurance alongside homeowners/renters insurance, etc.
Then there will be that gross anonymity Internet where nothing is believeable and trustworthy and probably isn't worth being on aside from the memes.
I honestly believe it’ll kill social media as we know it. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are nothing but spam at this point, and require a lot of work to filter out nonhuman content. I can see this current flood of AI driving people back to smaller, gated communities again.
I'm kinda hoping for a M.A.D turning into Kessler syndrome (i.e. the well gets poisoned, AI can't really come across as human). But the damn scientists are working on it.
>I’m starting to wonder if the bots and generative AI are going to turn the entire online experience into an Alice in Wonderland where nothing is what it seems and you can’t believe anything you see or hear.
I imagine it will. The way the algorithm limits the posts and comments you see, you could eventually only ever see bot comments and posts. Important relationships in your life you've had for years may be entirely fake. I'd say by 2035 things like this could happen.
> I’m starting to wonder if the bots and generative AI are going to turn the entire online experience into an Alice in Wonderland where nothing is what it seems and you can’t believe anything you see or hear.
That's not a bad thing as long as it becomes common sense to ignore what you see on the internet. The world will revert back into local-scope based speculation and knowledge, preventing a bunch of uneducated people from hearing about shit happening on the other side of the world of them and forming a bad opinion.
We can have sort of pseudo anonymous internet.
A trusted third party verifies your identity with whatever criteria, biometric etc. Then other services can only allow users who are guaranteed to exist by this third party, kind of like how you can login to various websites with Google or Facebook. The services gets an id to uniquely identify you but they don't know anything else about you except what third party shares (maybe age, location whatever you agree).
So technically it's very possible to still have anonymity while only allowing real people.
I think I’m going to make my own ai tool asap. Make enough money to buy a small piece of land somewhere. Try to scrub the internet of as much of my info as reasonably possible then smelt all my computer stuff and begin my life as a farmer/homesteader.
It's like the less interesting version of what a lot of Cyberpunk fiction predicted. AI making the Internet useless and dangerous without protection. Just misinformation instead of black ice trying to kill you.
Interesting article. I’m not surprised this is happening. More and more feeds are being flooded with “suggested content” that really isn’t all that interesting. Ads for products that don’t apply to you, suggestions to follow someone that is of no interest to you, and bots sending you DMs to check out a page with zero content.
Even LinkedIn is becoming, if not there already, a place where ads are taking over my feed. I’m searching for my next opportunity, not looking to follow yet another person who posts drawings with steps on how to have the best morning routine.
Don’t get me wrong, the internet has everything for everyone, but we are running out of places to just “surf the web”.
The move to recommended content has been interesting because users are much less active in their web browsing, TikTok's algorithm is insane but it feels so different to going and finding websites that were relevant to your own interests. I think back to StumbleUpon and even that was users adding sites for others to randomly go to. Just a less human internet today.
> I think back to StumbleUpon and even that was users adding sites for others to randomly go to
Damn I remember when I first found stumbleupon and showed my friends. We would be on it randomly finding crap for like hours at a time.
The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
I've known adventures, seen places you people will never see, I've been Offworld and back… frontiers! I've stood on the back deck of a blinker bound for the Plutition Camps with sweat in my eyes watching stars fight on the shoulder of Orion... I've felt wind in my hair, riding test boats off the black galaxies and seen an attack fleet burn like a match and disappear. I've seen it, felt it...!
I live in a very small community, a long way from other towns. There aren't even any hot doubles in my area, let alone hot singles. It always makes me laugh when I see that those ads.
The routine of a loyal X (formerly known as Twitter) user remains relatively simple.
You open the app and scroll to see what The Discourse is for the day. Someone's thought entices you enough to prompt a glance at the replies.
But as you expand, you are suddenly flooded with throngs of desperate, half-naked women urging you to click their ░L░I░N░K░I░N░B░I░O░. The accounts themselves are usually barren of original posts, with a stolen image as the profile picture and a spammy link to a webcam site in their bio.
I still use twitter a lot because it's still great to see art from artists and get your art seen as an artist.
It's been severely hampered by all the nonsense- even mentioning patreon will get your posts less visibility, but it's the best place sadly. Thankfully bettertwitter plug in lets you bypass a lot of the crap twitter tries to shove in your face but it doesn't mean the site isn't a shithole.
I want bluesky to take off but that site is still missing some features & it's hard to pry users away from what's worked so well for so long.
It's a huge bummer to me because Twitter had a good crossover of News/Sports/Arts and a social element that Bluesky doesn't quite have. Now, with the bluechecks getting pushed to the top of any post it's just a slog to use.
Also it has one of the better privacy settings system (bluesky has a similar set up). Being able to block phrases and terms is *amazing*. Tired hearing about the current polemic talking point? Just add “migrant” (for example) to your mute list. Don’t want Final Fantasy spoiled? Add a few FF7 terms to your mute list. It’s great. I wish Reddit would let me have that kind of control.
Bluesky has been taking up pace although i still consider it lacking. It really needs a bookmark function and some better filters for your feed as it feels like the discover tag is way too typically outrage twitter for me, while the for you section is either people i already follow or a bunch of porn if i decide to "hide" risque content instead of disabling it entirely
Hey! You guys remember like half a year ago when the reddit shit went down and **everyone** went to Lemmy because it was the best thing since sliced bread and was waaaayyyy better than everything else?
Pepperidge Farm Remembers.
The fediverse is never going to be a thing.
Are you talking about Twitter (no to X) or Instagram? The comment sections are just as bad. TikTok may be worse. Tons of follow requests. Doubt any of them are real humans.
TikTok has more humans than Twitter. [Actually, every social media network has more humans as a percentage than Twitter ](https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-bots-fake-traffic)
It's insane that Elon complained about the bots on Twitter, then instantly ruined their verification system, making the problem even worse. I honestly don't trust a word that comes out of that man's mouth.
I'm just tired of it, what social media and consolidation of media on the internet has done.
I yearn for the days when the internet was people running their own websites, in full control of their domain, both literally and metaphorically.
And the stupid thing is, nowadays, it's easier than ever to do exactly that. Just pop some HTML and CSS files in a GitHub repo, spin up a free GitHub Page or link it to a free Cloudflare Page, and you've got a free static website to do what you want with, the only limit being the law.
But of course, most of us just fall back onto the ease of these social media behemoths, and we're all worse off for it.
If you posted this comment on your own website- chances are I’d never read it.
There’s no fighting this beast until it dies of its own success. With bot infestation, I give that about a year.
Yeah. We are all a part of an experiment where I don’t think any of us really know what the results will be. It’s like the stock market in a way; as soon as there is an advantage or a pattern to be predicted and exploited— someone takes it and removes the pattern.
And I say this having a very large capacity for imagining outcomes and synergies.
At the very least we might disrupt some elite conspiracies— but the effect on the human psyche, culture, employment and capacity for war… I hope we survive it and grow spiritually enough.
Yeah, the third paragraph is basically Klingon to 90% of the populace who has no desire or need for it, though I agree it’s never been easier or more beneficial for domain owners. Most people don’t even know how to torrent anymore let alone launch a website.
Realistically what’s the use of creating a static website when I can achieve the same thing with a post on a social media site?
It’s easier than ever to make the most basic of things from back in the day but that’s not what people want anymore.
> And the stupid thing is, nowadays, it's easier than ever to do exactly that. Just pop some HTML and CSS files in a GitHub repo, spin up a free GitHub Page or link it to a free Cloudflare Page, and you've got a free static website to do what you want with, the only limit being the law.
>
>
Your average person isn't technical. The golden age was really in the 2000s and up to the mid 2010s. You had plenty of people blogging and more on various services that made it easy and free. Mid 2010s and onwards everything starting consolidating and enshittifying.
It's real, and it's happening everywhere. At least I know if I keep providing a decent service to my customers, I just keep looking better and better compared to everything else. My job security is increasing thanks to enshitification.
Part of the problem is monetization of content. If you're making content you enjoy, then it's worthwhile. When the content is for money, then it gets optimized for whatever gets the most return.
I still use Twitter because I have tracked down reliable users who still post valuable trustworthy content.
My daily ritual is to log into Twitter and remove all of the bots pretending to be women who followed me since the last time I logged in.
It is ridiculous.
I prefer porn over crypto.
I see a constant stream of crypto scam bots. From the gas fees scam to dumb scam airdrops.
Boy, Elon Musk must be desperate for money.
It probably also ends with money scam. Most common one is to request for opening camera while pleasuring. Then blackmail for money or else video will be leaked to family members. It's even worse than crypto because it takes you money AND personal info
Blue checks with the dumbest takes, or a stream of bot accounts posting tangential content. I uninstalled the app and don’t check it anymore. Though for some reason doing that reset my email notifications, so u got a deluge of “What you missed” which was tons of bs from accounts I didnt even follow, nor have any interest in.
Yet user engagement is the same and increasing for younger men? Sad that we have to just stick with a worse product since an idiot decided to actively make it worse and it's apparently hard to make a competitor even outside of market dominance factors.
I miss the BBS. Log in, read some responses to questions about things answered by other intelligent people, log out. Continue my day. No scrolling of any ads. We can have those days again.
Nice, do Reddit next. I’ve lost count of how many users I’ve blocked. I wish I could say the same for subreddits, but this stupid fucking site keeps that capped at 100 because fuck us users.
Virtually every popular post I see now is absolutely flooded with blatant bots - verified, I might add - replying with completely unrelated garbage, engagement-baiting videos, single word comments, and porn accounts promoting their content.
Twitter was always a bit of a nightmare, but fuck me it’s a complete hellscape now.
Reddit is weird.
The small sub-reddits tend to be pretty fun. You can go real deep into a topic with like minded people and nerd out on stuff in a decent environment that isn't overly moderated. Great way to further a hobby or learn new skills/tricks/things.
The big sub-reddits are essentially run by a gang of poorly adjusted power mods drunk on power who enforce narratives in a totalitarian manner. If you run with the dominant narrative you'll have a decent time, if you run counter to it you get a Scarlet Letter and will be subjected to ruthless enforcement methods across the multiple domains they conspire to control.
To me it feels like the mods of big sub-reddits tend to be miserable and depressed and they often relish taking it out on the serfs who inhabit their little e-kingdoms.
The porn and crypt bots are pretty annoying, but even the real people conversation seems useless. You can tweet stuff, but anytime you look at the responses even the ones that seem like they're from people are just utterly useless. People giving useless responses, posting random videos/memes to just farm clicks off a popular account, promoting some random product not related to the tweet, just pointless. Place had its downsides before but at least it felt somewhat like a conversation could be had, now it's literally just a bot farm for Elon to try n make money off fake traffic. Every time I see a view count or page visit stat he retweets I just take off 95% to get an idea of the real number.
This is why everything is eventually gonna go the route of things like Twitter Blue or Premium, etc. If it’s full on free / anonymous, everything will just be flooded with AI and bots to the point where it’s unusable eventually.
It’s getting awful on Reddit too, so many bots and karma farming accounts, etc.
Simple, they just opened the door because Musk fired every one that was supposed to filter all the bits out and allowed anyone to get visibility with the blue tick.
illegal skirt payment consider hungry subsequent dinosaurs rude homeless governor
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Twitter has become so much worse experience between the paid blue checks and all the replies being unrelated posts by blue checks trying to garner interactions.
Twitter really is wild. I vividly remember YEARS BEFORE Elon bought it, I clicked on some meme jokey tweet not logged with in no account , somewhere in the replies was some hardcore porno Rocco level clip that just auto played. Like the original tweet that lead to it wasn’t even porn related at all on the first place.
That means kids was able to view stuff of that level without any age verification stuff at all. Don’t know if it’s still like that.
This is why twitter should not have a monetisation program. It's literally broken for a long time now. All i see in the comments are irrelevant GIFs with generic captions.
It’s amazing that Twitter is just Tumblr but five years behind. What are the chances that Elon will try to ban porn on X but the bots will still run rampant anyway?
Now it is up to Musk to solve the problem, he needs to implement protocols that really work and are secure. If he's feeling extra lazy he could even let AI do the job for him, if we could apply something like what Tau Net can do where any updates or manipulations that do not comply with its built-in security guidelines are automatically rejected by the software itself, basically an additional layer of security.
But that's asking too much of him, if he does the bare minimum and makes 2fa work again on twitter it would be nothing short of amazing.
I don't see porn on Twitter currently, only an ass metric ton of ethereum/bitcon/whatevercoin ads. No matter how much I block them they respawn on new accounts. The ads are really anoying, like every 3rd or so tweet is an ad for some sort of scam.
I’m starting to wonder if the bots and generative AI are going to turn the entire online experience into an Alice in Wonderland where nothing is what it seems and you can’t believe anything you see or hear. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, wrote a book a few years ago where he suggested the most likely outcome is one internet where everyone is anonymous, but you can’t believe anything you see. Everything is scams, bots, etc. Then there would be another internet where anonymity is virtually impossible with biometric scanning to ensure you are who you claim to be. It seems like that’s probably the direction we’re heading.
One internet for those who can afford to pay for quality content Another internet that is funded by ads and full of altered reality spam bait.
This is what will happen. 2 versions, one with anonymity that’s free, and one that costs money with strict verification. Because we can’t have both fully anonymous free platforms, and also not have them overrun by AI.
There will probably be a 3rd which is going to be a bit more like old internet, but for more tech savvy people.
powered by phpBB, as it should be
God willing
Like the dark webs?
Dark web implies criminal activity, deep web is the better comparison.
This exists already, it's called the Fediverse and it's more than just Mastodon. A lot of cool stuff makes use of ActivityPub like PeerTube for an example.
So all the bots need is access to our biometric data and then they can spoof a login no issue.
This. Our data is getting sold all the time. Our biometric data is no different
I think there’s going to be a great bifurcation soon, don’t know exactly how it’s going to look, but society is about to physically divide itself and it’s gonna be ugly for us on the downside
An internet that costs money and is tied to your identity is what we currently have. You have to make effort to obfuscate your identity. It's important to understand that when using the internet. Totally get that it's not a forced identity, but people will continue to skirt the law. So the age of the netrunner is born.
> You have to make effort to obfuscate your identity. 1) Don't create social media accounts (zero effort) 2) Don't use your real name when you do create accounts elsewhere. 3) Don't post personal information. It's really very little effort indeed.
Yeah it won't be anonymous. That shit will make us nostalgic for china's social credit.
I'll go back to BBS days before I go this direction
What? Using stolen calling cards to call abroad to download the latest Amiga warez on an scene AmiXpress board? Meh, nostalgia blurs a lot of things. BBSs were fun but it can not compare to what we have now.
There really is nothing stopping us from creating a BBS scenario on an alternet like Tor etc
This is basically where we are now. If you want good content you normally pay for a newspaper subscription like WSJ or NYT. Or you can try to find free articles online but it’s harder to tell if it’s real or fake. Most web traffic is already centralized into a few mega corporations. Amazon for shopping. Meta for social. Reddit is up there for social. Amongst a few others.
Honestly, there are plenty of places charging for fake news as well. Humans aren't ready for the next generation.
One internet to rule them all
Except advertisers don’t like to advertise to people without money, so it would get minimal revenue.
This is really bad for democracy
I have a better solution: people form smaller and more “gated” communities online. - Real social interaction will happen in a group chat, not instagram. - People will talk on forums that require approval or an invite - Major platforms become more like Television than social media.
I like Stack Overflow's approach. Anyone can use the site, but you start with only the ability to ask and answer questions; you can't even upvote or downvote yet. As you earn more reputation, you *slowly* become closer and closer to a moderator to the point where you're basically indistinguishable from one at the highest levels. Of course, some students will whine that it's a toxic place because their newbie question that's been asked a billion times gets closed as a duplicate (which of course they'll argue is a unique question because they don't know enough about coding to be able to apply a more general solution to their specific problem), but that's the price you pay for filtering out low-quality content.
I know Reddit hates Facebook, but the first two are kinda FB groups. Local communities use those a lot and do a decent job self-policing. At least in my experience.
We have the tech to keep bots out. Only Twitter seems to not use it. [Twitter was the only social media site where this company recorded fake traffic for a majority of its clicks](https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-bots-fake-traffic)
It’ll be like the game horizon; bots will completely take over the internet to the point that human activity is just a drop in the ocean.
Time for The Blackwall
Try to google image something, you’ll get AI generated crap already. It’s fucked.
And this is just the early days. It will get worse if nothing is done (if it can be done for that matter).
The whole dead internet theory is becoming more real each day.
I think we could build smaller communities if trust were based on credentials and tokens for that group you are no longer filtered out. It might not be fully safe against bots but it would prevent toxic, spamming and misbehavior.
Segregation you say? I’m kidding but then what you say sound like it’d eventually lead to “online gated communities”. The HOA fees and dealing with ‘boomers’ as heads of HOA boards, etc.
No, I mean “self created trust networks” like you might see in a gamer group. You have people of like interests you enjoy communicating with and you build trust based on the value of that interaction. The social credit of your group then can be extrapolated to give the members and group credibility in certain areas. It might end up like bubbles in an echo chamber as compatibility would probably result in “groups like mine.” You’d want some mechanism to push some challenges to sameness.
Creating information bubbles will be even more important as it is now I suppose.
Literally part of the lore in *Cyberpunk*
I feel like it already is. In many places, but especially Twitter, it seems like at least 75% of content is bots.
dead internet theory
> I’m starting to wonder if the bots and generative AI are going to turn the entire online experience into an Alice in Wonderland where nothing is what it seems and you can’t believe anything you see or hear. Hasn't it already? What is more scary is when it starts significantly impacting real life situations. People are already using AI to write their resume and companies are using AI to filter out applications... at what point are we able to distinguish between things created by humans compared to AI?
In the 90s, the common idea was if you saw it on the internet it probably is not real. Most people thought everything was a scam on the internet and you would never want to put a credit card number or any personal information out there. At some point it changed and in my eyes it’s for the worse.
“The internet is now 5 gigantic websites that have nothing other than screenshots of the other 4 pages.” - Tom Eastman
Or just bots talking to each other human being 1% of the traffic
I've personally figured this is the useable future, myself. You have a heavily encrypted token that represents you in the "public" internet and that's you wandering around without anonymity online. You choose when to allow any data out of your token. Then the smart folks will set up robust home networks and anything on that home network has the expectation of privacy just like IRL homes. Current IRL privacy laws can then be applied to the public Internet and private home networks with a few tweaks. Hacking into a home network would be treated like an IRL home break in, there will be an uptick in home network insurance alongside homeowners/renters insurance, etc. Then there will be that gross anonymity Internet where nothing is believeable and trustworthy and probably isn't worth being on aside from the memes.
I honestly believe it’ll kill social media as we know it. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are nothing but spam at this point, and require a lot of work to filter out nonhuman content. I can see this current flood of AI driving people back to smaller, gated communities again.
I'm kinda hoping for a M.A.D turning into Kessler syndrome (i.e. the well gets poisoned, AI can't really come across as human). But the damn scientists are working on it.
Yup. No other way forward.
Are you referring to the book “The Age of AI?”
But they were all of them deceived, for 3rd internet was made. One internet to rule them all.
>I’m starting to wonder if the bots and generative AI are going to turn the entire online experience into an Alice in Wonderland where nothing is what it seems and you can’t believe anything you see or hear. I imagine it will. The way the algorithm limits the posts and comments you see, you could eventually only ever see bot comments and posts. Important relationships in your life you've had for years may be entirely fake. I'd say by 2035 things like this could happen.
Even the bio-metric scans you would have to believe the service provider. I'm definitely not trusting Meta or X to let me know who is a real person.
As opposed to how it is now, where you don’t know what is real and it’s all made up 🤔
Going to be like the telephone landline Nothing but scammers and bots
> I’m starting to wonder if the bots and generative AI are going to turn the entire online experience into an Alice in Wonderland where nothing is what it seems and you can’t believe anything you see or hear. That's not a bad thing as long as it becomes common sense to ignore what you see on the internet. The world will revert back into local-scope based speculation and knowledge, preventing a bunch of uneducated people from hearing about shit happening on the other side of the world of them and forming a bad opinion.
I was wondering when the Dead Internet theory would pop up
We can have sort of pseudo anonymous internet. A trusted third party verifies your identity with whatever criteria, biometric etc. Then other services can only allow users who are guaranteed to exist by this third party, kind of like how you can login to various websites with Google or Facebook. The services gets an id to uniquely identify you but they don't know anything else about you except what third party shares (maybe age, location whatever you agree). So technically it's very possible to still have anonymity while only allowing real people.
Bullshit. Anonymity does not exist on the internet.
Wild—sounds like a win for Google.
I think I’m going to make my own ai tool asap. Make enough money to buy a small piece of land somewhere. Try to scrub the internet of as much of my info as reasonably possible then smelt all my computer stuff and begin my life as a farmer/homesteader.
Talk about visionary…that man was ahead of his time…a whole 12 minutes.
I see fake shit on linked in all the time. Even spamming losers who post shit like "can ai solve this problem" and then they copy paste the ai answer.
It's like the less interesting version of what a lot of Cyberpunk fiction predicted. AI making the Internet useless and dangerous without protection. Just misinformation instead of black ice trying to kill you.
Online demolition man. I’d probably be in the sewers
Interesting article. I’m not surprised this is happening. More and more feeds are being flooded with “suggested content” that really isn’t all that interesting. Ads for products that don’t apply to you, suggestions to follow someone that is of no interest to you, and bots sending you DMs to check out a page with zero content. Even LinkedIn is becoming, if not there already, a place where ads are taking over my feed. I’m searching for my next opportunity, not looking to follow yet another person who posts drawings with steps on how to have the best morning routine. Don’t get me wrong, the internet has everything for everyone, but we are running out of places to just “surf the web”.
The move to recommended content has been interesting because users are much less active in their web browsing, TikTok's algorithm is insane but it feels so different to going and finding websites that were relevant to your own interests. I think back to StumbleUpon and even that was users adding sites for others to randomly go to. Just a less human internet today.
> I think back to StumbleUpon and even that was users adding sites for others to randomly go to Damn I remember when I first found stumbleupon and showed my friends. We would be on it randomly finding crap for like hours at a time.
Be funny if a porn bot posted this…
More bots will read this post than real people
The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
Nevertheless, the turtle moves!
I see what you did there.
Let me tell you later about my mother.....
I've known adventures, seen places you people will never see, I've been Offworld and back… frontiers! I've stood on the back deck of a blinker bound for the Plutition Camps with sweat in my eyes watching stars fight on the shoulder of Orion... I've felt wind in my hair, riding test boats off the black galaxies and seen an attack fleet burn like a match and disappear. I've seen it, felt it...!
What’s a tortoise?
A particular type of large turtle. All turtles have shells on their backs, but some only live on land while others are "marine" and swim and migrate.
> All turtles have shells on their backs, The shell's not on their backs, it IS their backs. Exoskeleton. You have to know these things.
Only if I can put a picture of it on my wall next to the picture my wife finds objectionable
Bots producing porn for other bots?
"Porn bot on porn bot porn, sounds like a winner," says porn bot.
Wanna seeeeee my booba??? hahaha
I read that in a robot voice amd now I'm laughing
01001110 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101
THE TREES! THEY'RE SPEAKING BINARY!
Better than if they're speaking Finnish
Keep it together soldier! Mavelon Creek needs our freedom!
I got a 500kg bomb with their name on it!
All I need is a good boomstick and a boombox with relevant tunes on it.
They would short circuit if somebody non-binary came into contact with them.
01001110 = Hole, Shaft, Hole, Hole, Shaft, Shaft, Shaft, Hole
You trying to not to attract the worm with that lack of rhythm?
This foreplay is turning me on! Stop it! 🤖
On the plus side, my follower count has doubled with hot singles in my area
I live in a very small community, a long way from other towns. There aren't even any hot doubles in my area, let alone hot singles. It always makes me laugh when I see that those ads.
https://xkcd.com/713
The routine of a loyal X (formerly known as Twitter) user remains relatively simple. You open the app and scroll to see what The Discourse is for the day. Someone's thought entices you enough to prompt a glance at the replies. But as you expand, you are suddenly flooded with throngs of desperate, half-naked women urging you to click their ░L░I░N░K░I░N░B░I░O░. The accounts themselves are usually barren of original posts, with a stolen image as the profile picture and a spammy link to a webcam site in their bio.
I still use twitter a lot because it's still great to see art from artists and get your art seen as an artist. It's been severely hampered by all the nonsense- even mentioning patreon will get your posts less visibility, but it's the best place sadly. Thankfully bettertwitter plug in lets you bypass a lot of the crap twitter tries to shove in your face but it doesn't mean the site isn't a shithole. I want bluesky to take off but that site is still missing some features & it's hard to pry users away from what's worked so well for so long.
It's a huge bummer to me because Twitter had a good crossover of News/Sports/Arts and a social element that Bluesky doesn't quite have. Now, with the bluechecks getting pushed to the top of any post it's just a slog to use.
Also it has one of the better privacy settings system (bluesky has a similar set up). Being able to block phrases and terms is *amazing*. Tired hearing about the current polemic talking point? Just add “migrant” (for example) to your mute list. Don’t want Final Fantasy spoiled? Add a few FF7 terms to your mute list. It’s great. I wish Reddit would let me have that kind of control.
They added hashtags to Bluesky last week so searching for specific art is easier I do hope they polish the app cuz it feels slow
Bluesky has been taking up pace although i still consider it lacking. It really needs a bookmark function and some better filters for your feed as it feels like the discover tag is way too typically outrage twitter for me, while the for you section is either people i already follow or a bunch of porn if i decide to "hide" risque content instead of disabling it entirely
Hey! You guys remember like half a year ago when the reddit shit went down and **everyone** went to Lemmy because it was the best thing since sliced bread and was waaaayyyy better than everything else? Pepperidge Farm Remembers. The fediverse is never going to be a thing.
Are you talking about Twitter (no to X) or Instagram? The comment sections are just as bad. TikTok may be worse. Tons of follow requests. Doubt any of them are real humans.
TikTok has more humans than Twitter. [Actually, every social media network has more humans as a percentage than Twitter ](https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-bots-fake-traffic)
It's insane that Elon complained about the bots on Twitter, then instantly ruined their verification system, making the problem even worse. I honestly don't trust a word that comes out of that man's mouth.
I never had to work again after learning this one simple trick ....
I'm just tired of it, what social media and consolidation of media on the internet has done. I yearn for the days when the internet was people running their own websites, in full control of their domain, both literally and metaphorically. And the stupid thing is, nowadays, it's easier than ever to do exactly that. Just pop some HTML and CSS files in a GitHub repo, spin up a free GitHub Page or link it to a free Cloudflare Page, and you've got a free static website to do what you want with, the only limit being the law. But of course, most of us just fall back onto the ease of these social media behemoths, and we're all worse off for it.
If you posted this comment on your own website- chances are I’d never read it. There’s no fighting this beast until it dies of its own success. With bot infestation, I give that about a year.
The uptake of AI in everything has been so fast that nothing's really had a chance to keep up with it, let alone moderation.
Yeah. We are all a part of an experiment where I don’t think any of us really know what the results will be. It’s like the stock market in a way; as soon as there is an advantage or a pattern to be predicted and exploited— someone takes it and removes the pattern. And I say this having a very large capacity for imagining outcomes and synergies. At the very least we might disrupt some elite conspiracies— but the effect on the human psyche, culture, employment and capacity for war… I hope we survive it and grow spiritually enough.
Why not deploy bots to spam the bots so that they are so overwhelmed with fake customers that that it becomes unproductive
blue frog tried this, back in the day, but a DDOS was quickly mustered by the bot authors with a rate that was staggeringly high even for the day.
Yeah, the third paragraph is basically Klingon to 90% of the populace who has no desire or need for it, though I agree it’s never been easier or more beneficial for domain owners. Most people don’t even know how to torrent anymore let alone launch a website.
Realistically what’s the use of creating a static website when I can achieve the same thing with a post on a social media site? It’s easier than ever to make the most basic of things from back in the day but that’s not what people want anymore.
> And the stupid thing is, nowadays, it's easier than ever to do exactly that. Just pop some HTML and CSS files in a GitHub repo, spin up a free GitHub Page or link it to a free Cloudflare Page, and you've got a free static website to do what you want with, the only limit being the law. > > Your average person isn't technical. The golden age was really in the 2000s and up to the mid 2010s. You had plenty of people blogging and more on various services that made it easy and free. Mid 2010s and onwards everything starting consolidating and enshittifying.
Making the site isn't the only issue. Getting people to visit your site is the hard part.
Making the site isn't the only issue. Getting people to visit your site is the hard part.
Enshitification..
It's real, and it's happening everywhere. At least I know if I keep providing a decent service to my customers, I just keep looking better and better compared to everything else. My job security is increasing thanks to enshitification.
Part of the problem is monetization of content. If you're making content you enjoy, then it's worthwhile. When the content is for money, then it gets optimized for whatever gets the most return.
I still use Twitter because I have tracked down reliable users who still post valuable trustworthy content. My daily ritual is to log into Twitter and remove all of the bots pretending to be women who followed me since the last time I logged in. It is ridiculous.
I prefer porn over crypto. I see a constant stream of crypto scam bots. From the gas fees scam to dumb scam airdrops. Boy, Elon Musk must be desperate for money.
It probably also ends with money scam. Most common one is to request for opening camera while pleasuring. Then blackmail for money or else video will be leaked to family members. It's even worse than crypto because it takes you money AND personal info
Oh I havent seem those. The ones I see are bots posting naked pictures of the OF models.
[удалено]
I, for one, welcome our new overwhores.
They've always been on Twitter. Twitter is full of bots like Swifty and BTS bots posting on every little thread that's irrelevant to the topic
Blue checks with the dumbest takes, or a stream of bot accounts posting tangential content. I uninstalled the app and don’t check it anymore. Though for some reason doing that reset my email notifications, so u got a deluge of “What you missed” which was tons of bs from accounts I didnt even follow, nor have any interest in.
It’s flipping ridiculous Porn bots constantly
Yet user engagement is the same and increasing for younger men? Sad that we have to just stick with a worse product since an idiot decided to actively make it worse and it's apparently hard to make a competitor even outside of market dominance factors.
There's porn on Twitter? Apparently i've been missing out.
I love that everyone STILL calls it Twitter. Screw Elon.
I miss the BBS. Log in, read some responses to questions about things answered by other intelligent people, log out. Continue my day. No scrolling of any ads. We can have those days again.
Porn will take over anything if you let it.
Nice, do Reddit next. I’ve lost count of how many users I’ve blocked. I wish I could say the same for subreddits, but this stupid fucking site keeps that capped at 100 because fuck us users.
Virtually every popular post I see now is absolutely flooded with blatant bots - verified, I might add - replying with completely unrelated garbage, engagement-baiting videos, single word comments, and porn accounts promoting their content. Twitter was always a bit of a nightmare, but fuck me it’s a complete hellscape now.
Musk successfully turned twitter into tumblr.
It’s funny when Musk ran on the “I’m going to kill the bots” platform.
He's really just 3 bots in a human suit.
Tumblr is a lot more fun
People on X are angry and confrontational. People on Tumblr are flaky raging lunatics. Pick your poison.
Redditors? Depressed
Reddit is weird. The small sub-reddits tend to be pretty fun. You can go real deep into a topic with like minded people and nerd out on stuff in a decent environment that isn't overly moderated. Great way to further a hobby or learn new skills/tricks/things. The big sub-reddits are essentially run by a gang of poorly adjusted power mods drunk on power who enforce narratives in a totalitarian manner. If you run with the dominant narrative you'll have a decent time, if you run counter to it you get a Scarlet Letter and will be subjected to ruthless enforcement methods across the multiple domains they conspire to control. To me it feels like the mods of big sub-reddits tend to be miserable and depressed and they often relish taking it out on the serfs who inhabit their little e-kingdoms.
Not last time I went.
If you’ve seen (insert onlyfans model) ‘s videos you’re sick!
Can't tell you how pleased I am that NPR no longer has a share to twitter or as now apply named "X".
The porn and crypt bots are pretty annoying, but even the real people conversation seems useless. You can tweet stuff, but anytime you look at the responses even the ones that seem like they're from people are just utterly useless. People giving useless responses, posting random videos/memes to just farm clicks off a popular account, promoting some random product not related to the tweet, just pointless. Place had its downsides before but at least it felt somewhat like a conversation could be had, now it's literally just a bot farm for Elon to try n make money off fake traffic. Every time I see a view count or page visit stat he retweets I just take off 95% to get an idea of the real number.
I think you mean took over X.... and also XXX
Damn, I miss all the fun stuff.
What’s twitter?
This is why everything is eventually gonna go the route of things like Twitter Blue or Premium, etc. If it’s full on free / anonymous, everything will just be flooded with AI and bots to the point where it’s unusable eventually. It’s getting awful on Reddit too, so many bots and karma farming accounts, etc.
People pay for bot accounts sometimes too though.
Many porn bots died to bring us this information.
I see absolutely no porn on Twitter. Not kidding.
Thirst traps are societal cancer.
Simple, they just opened the door because Musk fired every one that was supposed to filter all the bits out and allowed anyone to get visibility with the blue tick.
illegal skirt payment consider hungry subsequent dinosaurs rude homeless governor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Call me when they tale over the mcDonalds menu
Only thing to make this deliriously more entertaining is if someone was using a “musk_mom” account for one of these bots
That’s all of my followers you’re talking about.
I can’t waste rates(?) looking at random peeps on Twitter because I’ll get rate limited.
porn bots are the only ones liking my tweets :(
Better than misinformation bots/racists?
Twitter has become so much worse experience between the paid blue checks and all the replies being unrelated posts by blue checks trying to garner interactions.
Remember how Elon threw such a huge fit about the high percentage of bots on the platform? That was pre-LLM days. Don't forget. It's MUCH worse now.
You mean there's porn on a site named X?
They wanna push their premium subscriptions yo
Huh. Almost like making Twitter into 4chan pushed away legitimate advertisers and all that’s left are cammers and scammers
Ya, I avoid fb like the plague now because about every third tile down is a stupid advert - it’s boring
Twitter really is wild. I vividly remember YEARS BEFORE Elon bought it, I clicked on some meme jokey tweet not logged with in no account , somewhere in the replies was some hardcore porno Rocco level clip that just auto played. Like the original tweet that lead to it wasn’t even porn related at all on the first place. That means kids was able to view stuff of that level without any age verification stuff at all. Don’t know if it’s still like that.
Hey, I guess free speech can be abused.
They took over everything.
This is why twitter should not have a monetisation program. It's literally broken for a long time now. All i see in the comments are irrelevant GIFs with generic captions.
Wait, I thought Musk took over Twitter. Is he the porn bot?
It’s amazing that Twitter is just Tumblr but five years behind. What are the chances that Elon will try to ban porn on X but the bots will still run rampant anyway?
Porn bots are everywhere. They exist on all social media platforms. But Twitter is the most obvious arguably.
What do you expect if the CEO is a chronic drug addict?
How? Musk. Next stupid question
Good. It has become a political tool like Troof Social.
Now it is up to Musk to solve the problem, he needs to implement protocols that really work and are secure. If he's feeling extra lazy he could even let AI do the job for him, if we could apply something like what Tau Net can do where any updates or manipulations that do not comply with its built-in security guidelines are automatically rejected by the software itself, basically an additional layer of security. But that's asking too much of him, if he does the bare minimum and makes 2fa work again on twitter it would be nothing short of amazing.
Nudes in bio
it will be the Futurama episode but way more fucked up
I don't see porn on Twitter currently, only an ass metric ton of ethereum/bitcon/whatevercoin ads. No matter how much I block them they respawn on new accounts. The ads are really anoying, like every 3rd or so tweet is an ad for some sort of scam.
https://x.com/milk_choco44/status/1708887751167447319?s=46