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I'm torn. I found the theme of this video as thought-provoking as I found its closing remarks eye-wateringly trite. The premise of the "Dead Internet" may or ma

I'm torn. I found the theme of this video as thought-provoking as I found its closing remarks eye-wateringly trite. The premise of the "Dead Internet" may or may not be true, but if we are to assume that it is, I think that ending on the "positive note" that something is being done about it by tech giants developing "safeguards" based on AI-detecting-AI is naïve and superficial. Also, saying that "education on media literacy and critical thinking skills may go a long way too" is as hackneyed as stating that improved firefighting resources may go a long way to deal with the Canada wildfires. If we accept the premise of the Dead Internet as true, this is a systemic issue which needs to be dealt with on a systems-level (i.e. economic, social and political), and not by the very architects of this flawed system adding their own little patches —which will just result in an AI arms-race— nor by improving the "media literacy" of the World population so they know how to deal with this broken system —a new arms-race. Avoiding the consequences of the Dead Internet should not rely on saving the current social-media-attention-economy-internet from AI-bot infestation and expecting people to be "educated" against it. It should rely on either fully rethinking, overhauling and/or shutting down this social-media-attention-economy-internet, or alternatively on helping society to abandon-ship and let this bot-infested internet go the way of Myspace and Digg in terms of social relevance. The one thing that AI content cannot do is get in the way of society's ability to touch grass.

Loquebantur 3y ago
It is really about people not knowing epistemology? In order to be anything other than a big distraction, information on the internet needs to be true. Which means, it needs to be from real humans, about real life, the real world, providing real useful knowledge. Epistemology intends to explain how that works. In particular, you need the information to take a trustworthy channel from its source to recipients. Anonymity is one principal contradiction there.
JanneVee 3y ago
Well if The Dead Internet isn't true there is potential with the latest progress generative AI it might become true. There is an argument to be made that it has the potential to kill social media as we know it, depending on what the majority of people see a point in engaging with non-human generated content. Seeing how chess players treat cheaters, there is hope!
_hypx 3y ago
I suspect that the Dead Internet Theory guarantees the death of non-curated social media. Basically, any online community that doesn't do human verification of its users will simply be overrun by bots. In other words, social media platforms pretty much have to be well-moderated by members of that community. That implies smaller, more close-knit communities, probably more akin to the webforums era of the Internet, and not like the giant platforms of today.

Loquebantur 3y ago

It is really about people not knowing epistemology? In order to be anything other than a big distraction, information on the internet needs to be true. Which means, it needs to be from real humans, about real life, the real world, providing real useful knowledge. Epistemology intends to explain how that works. In particular, you need the information to take a trustworthy channel from its source to recipients. Anonymity is one principal contradiction there.

JanneVee 3y ago

Well if The Dead Internet isn't true there is potential with the latest progress generative AI it might become true. There is an argument to be made that it has the potential to kill social media as we know it, depending on what the majority of people see a point in engaging with non-human generated content. Seeing how chess players treat cheaters, there is hope!

_hypx 3y ago

I suspect that the Dead Internet Theory guarantees the death of non-curated social media. Basically, any online community that doesn't do human verification of its users will simply be overrun by bots. In other words, social media platforms pretty much have to be well-moderated by members of that community. That implies smaller, more close-knit communities, probably more akin to the webforums era of the Internet, and not like the giant platforms of today.