• blurg@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Let’s extend this thought experiment a little. Consider just forum posts; the numbers will be somewhat similar for articles and other writings, as well as photos and videos.

    A bot creates how many more posts than a human? Being (ridiculously) conservative, we’ll say 10x more.

    On day one: 10 humans are posting (for simplicity’s sake) 10 times a day, totaling 100 posts. Bot is posting 100 a day. For a total of 200 human and bot posts; 50% of which are the bot.

    In your (extended) example, at the end of a year: 10 humans are still posting 100 times a day. The 10 bots are posting a total of 1000 times a day. Bots are at 90%, humans 10%.

    This statistic can lead you to think human participation in the Internet is difficult to find.

    Returning to reality, consider how inhuman AI bots are, with each probably able to outpost humans by millions or billions of times under millions of aliases each. If you find search engines, articles, forums, reviews, and such are bonkers now, just wait a few years. Predicting general chaotic nonsense for the Internet is a rational conclusion, with very few islands of humanity. Unless bots are stopped.

    Right now though, bots are increasing.

    • TheOneWithTheHair@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Bots are increasing. But the Internet is not dead/dying, just changing. Many of the “The 10 bots are posting a total of 1000 times a day.” are repost bots merely parroting human generated content.

      I wonder, though, if this will cause the scrapers to be impacted by the reposters or other AI generated content.

        • TheOneWithTheHair@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          So change means “dying”? So every time a tadpole evolves into a frog, a tadpole dies? Should we have protest signs that read, “FROGS KILL TADPOLES! DOWN WITH FROGS”?

          • blusterydayve26@midwest.social
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            6 months ago

            But what if I wanted to communicate with humans instead of propaganda-bots? Then yes, that Internet is dead, and there’s no real fucking reason to be on most of those sites.

          • SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip
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            6 months ago

            No, that is not what I was talking about. In the current environment it is completely possible for some people to only have interactions with bots online, without even knowing. This may get worse and worse in the future. THAT is what “dead” internet implies, lifeless online interactions essentially.

            • TheOneWithTheHair@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              I suspect there will still be online interactions with humans, just more interactions with bots. Unfortunately, it’s we humans behind the mess. Even if we pass laws to stop it (or even forced labels of “I’m a bot” on bot accounts), some people won’t play by the rules. So the change is going to happen. We can try to persuade the public, but we know how well that works:

              A parody of the piracy ad from the 1980s 'home taping is killing music and it's illegal' cassette tape with crossbones. The words read 'online bots are killing social media and it sucks'.

              So what do you propose be done about it?