“He heard the truth and then he was sad
When it was not known it was bad!
But now he understood that’s its even more worse!
Sometimes knowing the truth is definitely a curse!”
Breaking news!
The internet is dead!
It has apparently been so since 2021!
now before you start your condolence messages;
read on!
The other day I read a story about a guy from Dubai who landed for his marriage and a big crowd only to find his instagram bride non existant or disappeared!
Now of course it could be an imposter and cheat which is the likely diagnosis but then it could very well been a bot!
That brings us to this interesting theory that internet is dead!
The Dead Internet Theory is the belief that the vast majority of internet traffic, posts and users have been replaced by bots and AI-generated content, and that people no longer shape the direction of the internet! This is not very far from the truth!
The theory was floating around in the late 2010s, but it was solidified and amplified in 2021 after a lengthy post describing the theory was posted on a thread titled “Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake,”!
This is really puzzling because suppose you search for any imaginative stuff which your mind can conjure, you would get a bag of results!
Imagine you search for Batman dog! You will get so many results! Some of the images would be so bizarre but some so realistic that you will be amazed! Some of these hyper-realistic images have garnered so much likes and comments!
Try it and come back! Think of any bizarre stuff which pops into your already weird mind and see if Google can get you what you thought!
This is of course not real and is actually generated by the AI! The real artists are dead!
The “dead internet theory” thus has an explanation that the AI and bot-generated content has surpassed the human-generated internet!
Already, there is strong evidence social media is being manipulated by these inflated bots to sway public opinion with disinformation – and it’s been happening for years!
In 2018, a study analysed 14 million tweets over a ten-month period in 2016 and 2017. It found bots on social media were significantly involved in disseminating articles from unreliable sources. Accounts with high numbers of followers were legitimising misinformation and disinformation, leading real users to believe, engage and reshare bot-posted content!
So much so that every ‘fact’ checker in the net has his or her work cut out! Of course most of the so called ‘fact’ checkers have a checkered past or motive which is why they may only present one or ‘their’ point of view of the truth! Since truth is many times a point of view and purely a human phenomenon!
This approach to social media manipulation has been found to occur after important events in many countries. In 2019, a study found bot-generated posts on X (formerly Twitter) heavily contribute to the public discussion, serving to amplify or distort potential narratives associated with extreme events!
Uncovered by activists and journalists, the coordinated efforts used bots and AI to create and spread fake information, reaching millions of social media users!
This scale of influence is significant. Some reports have even found that nearly half of all internet traffic in 2022 was made by bots. With recent advancements in generative AI – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT models and Google’s Gemini – the quality of fake content will only be improving!
At a top level, the concept is that artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots automatically churn out social media posts designed to farm clicks, comments and likes on platforms like Facebook and TikTok. They do this because more engagement leads to more advertising dollars!
In other words, everything is happening between machines, no humans needed. Go deeper down the rabbit hole, and some dead internet proponents argue that government organizations use these bots to manipulate human opinions!
Of course everyone knows that you do not need anyone else to manipulate human opinions! We can do that job pretty well ourselves!
Talking about humans and manipulations and the ‘truth’ reminds me of this amazing movie called the Kishkindha Kaandam and the splendid acting by Narayanapillai Vijayaraghavan!
What a performance! Which unlike the Dead internet was alive and rich! The chief message being; “you do not need to know the truth always! Some truths are best not known!”
Check it out when you can!
Now even if you think the internet is dead, remember that the bots do not stop! You can! So do that!
Shubh Ratri!
ramadocblog 