Is the Internet dead? Are we only interacting with BOTS?

youtu.be...

Do you remember when the internet wasn't dominated by 4 or 5 large media companies?
I do. And as a millennial I have fond memories of early internet. The endless niche messageboards and personalized websites hosted on angelfire and the like.

It seems as if nobody runs personal websites anymore. And those who do receive such little traffic or no traffic at all.

Social media used to be an engaging tool to share interests and keep up with friends. Lately most large sites like FB have turned into cesspools of parroted talking points and companies tracking your every move in attempt to sell personalized services/goods.

Even the people you encounter online seem generic and devoid of original thought. I frequent alot of forums and comment sections and at a glance it would appear most posters are bot accounts. Are we engaging with a bot majority? Is the Internet even hooked up to the outside world or are we only engaging with our closest friends and family in a virtual world mainly exclusively populated by AI Bots?

It seems as if information and entertainment online has been condensed so much that older information and links can no longer be accessed. Even Google itself has reduced its overall depth of searching.

Imagine everything we see online is filtered and catered to your wants and likes. We only interact with clever bots who influence our political beliefs and try to sell us products.

Imagine the whole landscape is empty except at a surface level. The quality and quantity of information and opinions has been censored or removed.

What say yee, good folk of ATS?

forum.agoraroad.com.../dead-internet-theory-most-of-the-internet-is-fake.3011/

I think the reason most people online seem devoid of all personality is because most people are.

10-15 years ago not everyone was online and it was mostly the freeks geeks and somewhat uniques that were on the train.

Now every numbnuts with a smartphone is bleating and repeating and it's awful.



a reply to: otie1

That is a good point. The internet now is much like cable television of the late 90s. You had a few big networks and a few niche channels. NBC, FOX, CBS, then TBS Comedy Central etc.

The internet now is very similar with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc with little room for the smaller more niche sites like this.



a reply to: nonspecific

a reply to: otie1

as a millennial I have fond memories of early internet

Your memory is a short one indeed. Technically, millennials are those born between 1981 and 1996. Assuming you were interacting with the internet at the age of 12, that means the internet you remember is the one between 1998 and 2008.

I'm sure you will agree that's just yesterday's internet...

a reply to: otie1

I think it's a combination of two factors:

1) That social media is causing people to communicate in shorthand - getting things out as expeditiously as possible because writing / typing / tapping a screen is an entirely different thing than speaking. Speaking is a natural act that requires ( for better or worse ) little thought or effort. Writing slows that process down and forces us to analyze more what we're saying.

2) Face to face communication involves social cues including but not limited to gauging reactions to our statements in real time, an inherent fear of being rejected or judged, exercising nuance and tact for a positive result and so on.

With the Internet it tends to lean more toward "Say it without concern and in the most blunt and direct way possible without any real concern."

In short, I think a better question than "Are we talking to bots" is to ask "Are we becoming the bots"?

a reply to: otie1

I say don't trust YouTube

Metadata real-time content creation might be possible.

Also did they just replace Facebook with bots?

a reply to: Direne

1998 and 2008 vary greatly in scope when it comes to the history of the internet. Now take that same 1998 and move forward to 2021, it's not even the same beast any longer. I started on right before AOL became a thing so 90 or so, it's completely unrecognizable at this point from what it was then. It's completely unrecognizable from what it was even 5 years ago.

Sure, but the consolidation of information and entertainment has created a sterile, devoid of personality landscape that lacks the quantity of information it onced had.

Many links are dead. Some archived links in the Internet Archive have even been lost. The internet seems to be dying.
Google used to list 100's of pages of specific links. Now you'd be lucky to get 50 pages or 500 results for a specific search.

Sure, I wasn't there for it all, but I can still observe the decay that has been documented


a reply to: Direne

a reply to: otie1

I can say that I was not involved with on line anything in the early days. I do know though that in hearing about it on the radio early on the suggestion was that it would be all around us soon. That soon took longer than many projected. I recall reading articles that said that a way to monetize it and organize it had to be developed first. The science was already there but the money people had not figured or developed a way to profit from it yet. So it had to wait to reach a broader audience. The browsers and providers and all took a bit to catch up but once they did, the whole thing took off like a rocket,just as the video points out early in it's presentation.

originally posted by: nonspecific
I think the reason most people online seem devoid of all personality is because most people are.

10-15 years ago not everyone was online and it was mostly the freeks geeks and somewhat uniques that were on the train.

Now every numbnuts with a smartphone is bleating and repeating and it's awful.



a reply to: otie1

No doubt that has some truth to it.

originally posted by: otie1
youtu.be...

Do you remember when the internet wasn't dominated by 4 or 5 large media companies?
I do. And as a millennial I have fond memories of early internet. The endless niche messageboards and personalized websites hosted on angelfire and the like.

It seems as if nobody runs personal websites anymore. And those who do receive such little traffic or no traffic at all.

Social media used to be an engaging tool to share interests and keep up with friends. Lately most large sites like FB have turned into cesspools of parroted talking points and companies tracking your every move in attempt to sell personalized services/goods.

Even the people you encounter online seem generic and devoid of original thought. I frequent alot of forums and comment sections and at a glance it would appear most posters are bot accounts. Are we engaging with a bot majority? Is the Internet even hooked up to the outside world or are we only engaging with our closest friends and family in a virtual world mainly exclusively populated by AI Bots?

It seems as if information and entertainment online has been condensed so much that older information and links can no longer be accessed. Even Google itself has reduced its overall depth of searching.

Imagine everything we see online is filtered and catered to your wants and likes. We only interact with clever bots who influence our political beliefs and try to sell us products.

Imagine the whole landscape is empty except at a surface level. The quality and quantity of information and opinions has been censored or removed.

What say yee, good folk of ATS?

forum.agoraroad.com.../dead-internet-theory-most-of-the-internet-is-fake.3011/

Hello [name];

We were glad|excited|happy|giddy to see you interested in our cesspools|parrots|landscaping|information.

Click the 'chat' option to speak with one of our agents further.

a reply to: otie1

The fun starts when the bots start having a flame war. It's even more fun when I start them. The way AI is going, it's only a matter of time before one of them actually wakes up.

I have engaged in debates with bots. They seem to be most active during election cycles. Especially midterms/presidential elections.
I believe Correct the record PAC had bots engaging with people online to persuade them to vote for Hillary.
Even more ironic is that her campaign created Russiagate and the "fake russian bot" conspiracy even though they themselves had fake profiles shilling for Clinton.

a reply to: billxam

a reply to: otie1

The internet has gone kinda flat for me. I was on ArpaNet in 1978, jumped on through Control Data Corp. I was on UseNet in 1980 after it first started up. Then the stupid AOL and Compuserve garbage in the 90's. Now we have this crap. I find the deepweb a lot more interesting simply because everywhere you go on the surfaceweb, your either followed around by ads and tracking BS or your inundated with information you're not looking for. There is TOO MUCH JUNK on the internet, too many bots and far too many whatever-they-are towing the party line of the day.

I come onto ATS, laugh at the trollz on FBIBook and Twitface, then boot up Tails or Kali, depending on whether I want to be hidden or hack. I have a number of websites, don't really care about the traffic, they are there for posterity, some just to remind a few of my past antagonists that I still know "where the bodies are buried" and "who did whatever illegal weapons deal with whom" and that I still have all the evidence as it is illegal to destroy it, gag orders or not.

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: Hypntick

Agreed, I thought I was the ballz when I upgraded my modem to 56k and got online through Mega-Net right on the other side of the interstate. After that it was AOL.
I was such a troll early on the AOL kicked me off for life.
Musta been the fisherman in me…..😆

Th interwebs is nuthin like it used to be….

a reply to: otie1

I miss perusing personal homepages, and seeing all the work people had put into them.
I had one, and also I even coded a cgi(?) forum for (Redwall series of books) fanfic.
The 90s were the time for the net...
Remember web rings? Or link rings?
You'd discover so much interesting original content.....just keep hitting random.
I taught myself HTML on notepad and made everything by hand for the longest time. Lots of work but very rewarding. Angelfire and Geocities were the go-to hosting spot, and talking in a chat room was actually civil and normal.
ASL?

a reply to: otie1


Ummm…wholly eff…I’m a bot…

Woohoo…I always wanted my little slice of immortality…

Now…when do I get my shiny new body…?





YouSir

01101010110100110

a reply to: YouSir

a reply to: nonspecific "

I remember when people said " Have you heard this one"

Do you have any proof of anything you claim or is it all just your perception of being online has changed?

For example you make this claim , "Google used to list 100's of pages of specific links. Now you'd be lucky to get 50 pages or 500 results for a specific search."

Can you give one of those topics?


Outside of that , things change.
I used to run or be a part of quite a few H-P-V-C BBS sites back during the old Vision2 ProBBS and other days. ANSI menus and ASCII artwork ftw. Then it was IRC then it was USENET then it was 4CHAN, Reddit , Dischord insert something else..

Is it possible that a % of interactions on line are BOTS sure.. You could very easily make the case that many of the social media sites like FB or bandcamp or whatever are effectively personal websites thankfully without the blinking marquee fonts that used to dominate online sites.

What I know is each of the last few times I have gone to HOPE-DEFCON-smaller..The last few times I have gone to local 2600 meetings attitudes have changed and become more inline with what the current world is, ultra opinionated and unwilling to engage in open discourse .