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Anyone gone down the rabbit hole with this? I’ve heard it talked about a bit here and there on podcasts.
Here’s a synopsis for anyone curious:
The "Dead Internet Theory" is an online conspiracy theory that suggests the internet, particularly social media and public platforms, is no longer primarily driven by human activity
. Instead, it posits that content and interactions are dominated by AI-powered bots and algorithms, creating a feedback loop of artificial engagement.
Fortune estimates 50% of internet traffic is bots and up to 20% of those bots are programmed to be malicious.
Some estimates have estimated twitter traffic to be nearly 80% bots. Which is believeable if you scroll on there at all.
I think this is important to remember in today’s rage baiting misinformation society. We’ve all been fooled by a headline or ‘story’ before. Sometimes it’s good to have a reminder that the internet isn’t real life.
It's true, my company's website logs show over 80% of visitors are bots.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, something about most of the content regarding mainstream topics online just feels a little “off” if that makes sense. My only real form of social media besides Vital is IG, and when I occasionally click into the comments on a relatively popular post none of it seems real, it’s all extremely repetitive and follows very similar patterns of speech.
I mainly just use it to follow people that I know and keep up with friends that I’ve met through racing or various other activities over the years so the majority of the content I see is authentic, but when you occasionally venture into the mainstream stuff something always seems off.
Plenty of bots on Instagram and YouTube.
What is it? 75-85% of stock trades are just computers trading too?
So not surprising if it is elsewhere too.
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Looks like you’ve upset some folks by discussing something that’s become a known issue.
How dare you!
🤣
Bot farms are real? No way. 🤣
You can buy " Followers " for instagram...
Ever see those " Phone banks " pictures out there !
EDIT ^ as in above post
Ai is probally Miles ahead of phone banks .
Those down votes have really ruined my day 😂
It's grim out there in social media land, bots, AI, algorithmic manipulation, targeting, tracking, it's all on the table.
I'm not a big internet doomer, at some point you gotta breathe air, drink some water, and feel the sunshine, that will always be a nice time compared to interacting with a computer.
I'm not very impressed with what our biggest and best tech minds have been spending their time and money on, however.
There's cheaper ways to do it...
You guys make it sound like all those followers might be fake?!
OH, NO!!!
I think if it's not true already then it definitely will be in the next 5 - 10 years.
I’m not a bot. Then again, that’s what a bot would say.
Gotta go hang out with my very real family 😛
Canadian BOT!
I knew it!I knew it!
🤣
Don't get me started on YT. It's loaded with fake performers, phony child phenoms and tons of republishing the same shit over and over on with minor variations and titles..
Right! I knew something was fishy about the guy. A canadian motocross enthusiast, Motörhead loving, philosopher, seminary school drop out, turned accountant! Only AI could come up with a backstory like that.
The only thing concerning is his neutrality on all issues and his politeness.. makes me think he’s an AI bot invented by Canadians.
Maybe he just deploys the bots when shit gets too stupid to read...? 🤣
Ya gotta wonder, What Would Lemmy Do?
Youtube is trash and has a parental lock on all of our devices. The absolute dumbest fucking content is on there. It's so pathetic.
Pit Row
YouTube has both the best and some of the worst video content on the internet, the trouble is separating the wheat from the chaff and their algorithm isn't interested in doing it for you, personal curation is essential.
I spend a lot of time there but 95% is on channels i know. If all you do is random surf youtube, you are losing IQ points rapidly. It's 90% garbage. Maybe more.
Yeah I won't refute that there is good content. Lately I am really struggling with my screen time report being higher than the amount of time I get to spend with my kids and it makes me want to puke. Being self employed with two piss ant businesses I do use my phone a lot during the day but I am putting the damn thing out of sight at home. We do a decent job of keeping the tv off. Don't get me wrong, I don't just sit around on my phone when I'm with them but it bums me out that I see them for an hour or a little more in the morning before they're off to school/daycare and at night I get home about 5:30 and by 7/7:30 it's time to start winding them down for bed. Life is speeding by and I don't like it.
I don’t know what the percentages are between good and bad content…but…
I go there for specific content and on the rare occasion that I click on a rando? Well, those randos always make me wonder about the people that “roam YouTube”.
🤣
Some of ya'll are doing YouTube wrong....it's got some of the best content on the internet, period. If you are seeing shit content, then that is likely a reflection on you and how you've trained the algorithm to feed you content.
I'm currently watching a series on the Red Bull Rookies Cup and it's awesome.
So much good moto content on YouTube there isn't enough free time to take it all in.
Haha, it is a bit of an unusual biography. One correction: I didn't drop out of seminary - it was a Bible College (a Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada school which is the Canadian equivalent of the Assemblies of God in the U.S.), and I got a degree (a Bachelor of Theology). That's were I figured out that philosophy was something I was not only interested in, but pretty good at. I'm pretty sure that doesn't make it any less unusual - especially given that I've got that degree but am now an atheist. That's a whole other discussion.
Accounting was just sort of something I stumbled into completely fortuitously, and it's really quite the series of circumstances that led me there. Graduate school went wonderfully well - I was cruising though with perfect grades, a thesis that was on track, a great committee, and excellent scholarships (including a fellowship from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) and teaching assistantships (so no student debt). I thought I had the world by the tail. Then everything changed. When I was finishing my PhD and should have been busy attending conferences and publishing papers to give myself a fighting chance in a very difficult academic job market, my dad dropped dead from a brain aneurysm and just over a month later my mother had a debilitating stroke. As luck would have it, when my mom had her stroke, I was home on the farm with her but I was literally on my way out the door to a national conference in London, Ontario - suitcases and plane ticket in hand - where I had been invited to be on a panel discussion that included a fairly prolific U. of Toronto scholar. Needless to say I had to cancel that trip (of course I did - no regrets or blame, just unfortunate timing since that was a big opportunity). I'm an only child, and not knowing what else do do with my mom, my ex wife and I took her in and looked after her - along with our 2 toddlers - for a few years until we could place her in a good care home (my mom, not my ex wife!). Let's just say that I wasn't a productive scholar during that time period. So for a few years life was pretty nuts - looking after my mom, our young kids, my dad's estate (including having a farm auction sale, which is massively labor intensive). I was teaching but not really writing anything new, which even in the best of times, makes getting a tenure track academic position nearly impossible. Then if all of this wasn't enough, the financial meltdown happened, which made the academic job market even tougher. Then my marriage imploded and I went through some severe mental health issues which isn't exactly conducive to scholarly productivity either. But I kept taking on short term teaching contracts, though that's both unreliable and not very lucrative (one year I taught a 4/5 course load and made about 60% of what my full-time colleagues were making teaching a 2/2 load).Then one year I had nothing lined up for the winter so I took a job preparing tax returns for farmers - I had absolutely no relevant knowledge or experience but they offered on the job training. They liked me and kept me on after my initial term and gave me more training, and I built up my experience and I eventually successfully applied for a job at a big 4 firm that needed someone with experience in the agriculture sector. So I've been in a big 4 accounting firm for over 10 years, despite never having taking any college courses in accounting (there are other people here without accounting degrees, but I don't know anyone with no relevant academic background of any kind).
I'm happy with my career, but the newest challenge is that I'm now 54 with Parkinson's disease (which medication controls quite effectively - I still ride). But I have a good life and a life story that people seem to find interesting. No regrets or complaints. Regrets are pointless anyways - even if you have them, you can't change the past.
If you thought my backstory was far fetched before, now you must really think I can't be real! But I am. Though that's, of course, also what I'd say if I wasn't.
Or is this the kind of shit you can't make up, @TeamGreen 😄
I got nuthin’…
Except, I’m stoked with what you’ve done with…
What life hath wrought.
Sometimes you walk around the corner and life kicks you in the balls.
Sometimes you walk around the corner and life gives you an opportunity.
You’ve had both of those situations and you’re here making a good life of it.
Good on you.
Well I don’t ever watch it unless it’s Enduro GP highlights. My five year old started out watching Outdoor Boys and some how that guided him to stupid fucking songs that some fat weirdo is writing about why I should let my kid play video games all day because they’re his favorite. He doesn’t get to play video games and cant spell anything yet so I know he’s not searching for the retard content. It’s the algorithm targeting him through the smart tv. This tech is fucking stupid and unnecessary.
This is definitely my experience. There are Youtubers that aren't experts themselves in certain topics of interest to me, but they have excellent guests who are experts, and they are very good at interviewing them. There are other people who are experts and are excellent at communicating with those of us who aren't (e.g Sabine Hossenfelder is a very good science communicator). Mustic, moto channels (including Vital!) - pretty much any topic you're interested in, you can find something on Youtube. I just ignore all the shitheads in the comments - Youtube comment sections are a cesspool, but you don't have to look at the comments. What's not to like about Youtube? Nobody's making you watch anything you don't want to see.
It is kinda funny when you see a real person, like a Facebook friend or something, and they are hooked in on some rage bait article. Or worse, they are responding to an obvious rage bait comment on something. And it gets them all worked up. Ugh.
Excellent observations. We are all workaholics, or training to be workaholics, and missing the critical to function human element that drives all of us. And hard work rarely actually pays off these days. When the computer and phone became tools to supplement our lives they were great. Now they consume us in a lot of ways that are not great.
Nowadays both parents need to work to afford a home and some kids, we pay strangers to watch our kids. Everyone is fried by the time they get home for the few waking hours we have together and are shells of ourselves. Our whole society and how it's structured does not work for what we are.
Shit is broken and a lot of people are starting to recognize this. This is a good thing in my ignorant opinion.
Step 1 is admitting we have a problem.
I kind of feel the internet has killed individual creativity. People all just want to be like each other now. No uniqueness anymore. Just a bunch of clones of each other. Its sad.
Every youngster I meet... I try to drill into them that the internet and socials will rot their brain and make them lame.
I say the same thing about college too. 🤣
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