Dead Internet Theory – Did A.i. Take Control Of The Web?

02-22-22

Episode Transcription

Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.

Hey Man, what's going on? Brother? Oh, not much like when you do that. Oh, there you go. Oh, it feels like you're as somebody how their days going, and they go you, like you could have said good. Yeah, yeah, it's like, Oh, I don't wasn't looking for an answer. Yeah, and they go you know what, you're like, no, no, I want to vent Ti Vanilla. It's always the star. I love. anyways, have you ever heard of the dead Internet theory? The dead Internet theory. Yeah, okay, let me play this out. Play it out. I saw that movie. What movie? D Internet theory? Yeah, Robin Williams makes all the kids staying on the desks rip up the books. It was the sequel. They went up the laptops. Yeah, just say, it's more they break their little your Mac Book Ares and half. Yeah, and yeah, it was a more modernized take on the YEP, Yep. Yeah, and they're all like Tumbler Boys, you know, loocause they were all like, I mean they were they were poets, they were slamp, you know kids. Yeah, and yeah, accurate. Actually, now they would be like the weird tumbler kids. And you know, anyway, they've got that little hey trademark on that idea. If someone's listening to this and like Oh, I should remake the dead poet society, they can't steal that, will see you. Yeah, I will sue you. Support US our patreons so we can win our lawsuits. That's a new perk patriot. Dead Internet. Theory, dead Internet, that we're all dead. Is this your look like? Is it listen? Is it like a lost situation where it not to give away the end of loss, but they're dead. Sorry if I spoiled that. You didn't miss much. So I don't finish it. That we're all dead and that the Internet is our hell, because that's what it feels like. That, honestly, that's my theory, is that we all died and the will is Internet. Dude, all dead and the metaverse is like the final Dante's inferno. It's The let's look the Meta versus the final layer. This reminds me. Let's get to the topic. I don't want to spend fifteen minutes talking about. Reminds you of what, though? I don't want to spend but anyways, what does it remind you? Yeah, well, I didn't want to go off on a bunch of tangents and allow myself the time and then not allow you the time. Yeah, so I need to get some tangent time if you're gonna get some tanted time. I deserve some tanted time and you just wasted yours on that roll. You dingus with Corellacom Flix TV in cale of life way. What are you banned from every website? You can go out and battle box. Are we real things? I learned last night. It's wasted here. Is a good, stupid and time joke. So what is the dead Internet theory? Are you really not going to give you a te you wasted it. I gave it to you and you w have to or get back in and work. Get back in later Tangente time. Have you taken some engine time today? You wasted your your danger time on that. You dingus man rats. So the dead the dead Internet theory? This is the theory that the Internet died a long time ago, and died is probably not the best word came for it. That's a little confusing that they say that. That I get the idea. Basically, the idea is that the Internet is no longer controlled by humans. Okay, which a lot of well, so here's the idea. So here's the idea. So I lay out from look at look at our Internet episode. Remember that. Take a take a brain journey back to when we did that. Can you play the theme song and then put the entire Internet episode in the Middle? Here things I learned last night. That's what we did. You could go back and watch it or or wait thirtyers and we'll talk to you again in fifty eight. We're throwing a whole episode. Couldn't decide what to cut. So anyway, think about the Internet. Yeah, yeah, welcome back. Hope you enjoyed that episode. There you go. Here's the episode. You try to listen to originally, if you fast forwarded. I hope you listen before. I hope you listen to atnt episode, because here's if you're gonna need some much needed context for about to talk about things I learned last night. Okay, so the theory is that AI is running all of it, Kinda so. So, okay, look back to our Internet episode. We talked about the history of the Internet. Right, yes, and there was an era in the Internet. You might call it the golden age of of the webcom boom, thecom boom, the golden age of the web. You know when choosing gumballscom reigns supreme. Everything you saw on the Internet and that era somebody handcoded themselves. It did not exist without a person doing it. So everything that's on the Internet now was coded by hand. Well, everything in that era, everything in thecom boom era, was code by hand. Someone built it all put it there. Okay, we're in an interesting era where, over time it's it's it's coppy and pasted. Everybody caught something from someone else. No one wrote anything. The code is just the code now, sort of. So so here's the steps that kind of touch. So it was if you wanted a website, you sat down with a blank page and you wrote all your rotored out. Yeah, you wrote it on a piece of paper and then you stuck it in your disk drive and you got the Internet. Used to be that. You have to write and Gep a feather in the ink and right ht in. If you had bad handwriting your website, better hope your l doesn't look like an eye, because then your website's broken. Ht Mine. That's how computers used to work. Did you know that what there was cards you inserted. That's a hundred percent in real or real thing they punched holes in them and that's it. Read the holes you punched. Yeah, anyways, floppy discs work. Why you need to see the had a hole in it. Blue Ray. It sounds like you're setting up a joke with did you just want to say blue, Blue Ray, blue ray. Okay, hole in it. All right, there's no real reason those discs to have holes. It's Oh my gosh. So the Internet somebody made. What were you're saying is is that like a city? You show up, the buildings have been made by some money. I'm trying to make it a flick of for I don't know what's so funny to you. Yeah, yeah, that is. Yeah, and now see, that's where that analogy falls apart. But now are the buildings themselves falling over and creating new ones. You don't have to see with that. Almost almost. So people hand cold their entire website right then after that there became an Arrow where plugins were born. Okay, and so someone will build it's plug in. Yeah, or the code for a plug into exist, and then they will. You could put that plug into your way. So you get plugins and plug ins were somebody went and they built this plug in, which is essentially a piece of content for your site, but you can manipulate to get to do stuff. Sometimes it was like a tool that did something. So then now you don't have to write all the code. You just plug everything in and then run with it. And that has become. That has done most of what the Internet is. That's what squarespaces. Yes, yes, scarre space is one hundred percent plugins. Yes, and and it's it's gotten the point now where, yeah, so much of the Internet people aren't sitting down to write it. They were using other tools and plugins to be able to get to that point. Well, as time has gone on, the kind of I don't know, big five or seven, depending on your lists, of the Internet. So your facebook, your Google, your Netflix, your companies like that. They all started writing algorithms. So they mo again. What are your Big Five? FACEBOOK, Amazon, Netflix, Google, apple is like different p Blix TB in Kale of life way. Those are my big five. Those are what all my tabs are. You know, twitter, Youtube, instagram, mostly social, but there's a couple whole like googles, to search engine, Amazon, the store. I don't know a lot of the media. You're not going to after this episode. It's dead to me. Yeah, it should be. They all wrote Algorithms. We've heard Algorithms a hundred times. There's a hundred and one. If you don't know, a hundred one algorithms an animated series for the modern child. You grew up with classes like dead Poet Society of one hundred one Dalmatians, but your kids watching dead Internet theory and one hundred one algorithms. With Correllacom Grella. I want to make a jacket out of these CSS layers. So if you don't know algorithms, just dictate what you see on the Internet. It's a set of SOTUATIONS. It's a computer looking at what you engage with or spend time looking at, and then it identifies things related to or that you are more likely to be Ange the time to. Yeah, and obviously the reason why they have these is so that way you spend more time on the platform, because most of them are making money off of advertising. So they need you to spend as much time as possible on the platforms. That way they can make as much money as possible, because money is life. Tangent time. You cut off my Tato time, so we're going to take some Tato time. I want some times of time back recognize the gentleman is recognized. Do you think it's interesting that there are so many industries now that social media is positioning themselves in a way that they are too big to fail? They're already too big to fail right now, but we've talked about often that, like our livelihoods depend on so much of the Internet existing. Yeah, like still working, but I think that that might have been part of the strategy of facebook and twitter. Is that? And even tick Tock, is that? You t about them a lot of I mean youtube goes down. There are how many creators who lose millions of dollars and revenue just from Youtube? Yep, Yep. I mean that is a huge thing because it's like, I mean, it's so much of the global economy now is tied to the Internet in some way. You get rid of it and it, I mean it. I was the only I'm even thinking more like social media stuff too, is that, you know, they make money on your eyeballs being on social media. But then also there's so many people who use social media, even if it's not like there. My primary job is creating content. I can still create content without those social media platforms, but without them I will not make anywhere near the income. I mean, that's the same thing. Like so many brands that advertise on those platforms would not make anywhere near as much money if it weren't for. That's true social advertising, because social advertising is unbelievably cheap compared to advertising historically, and so you're able to spend way more, which means you're able to get way more return. So yeah, it works. Would not work without social media. Okay. So can I get my tangent now? Sure, now, we won't do a tangent after tangent. I'll do a tangent later. I'll introduce itly. Do Double Tangents so well, when the old red triple tangents. So then algorithms. What they did is they started dictating what you see on the Internet. Sure, and that was kind of the two thousand and ten where you everything you see is an algorithm that's deciding what you're going to see. Right. Initially those algorithms were yes, some person in a computer, that happens, some high school, sat down and built this algorithm. It wasn't a high school, it was probably Google, but a computer ladd in Google was sitting down and he wrote this algorithm that dictates what you see. Right. What's interesting is we're in an are and now where that's not the case. You don't have an engineer that is writing these algorithms. They're probably involved in the process and they probably are writing parts of these algorithms, but for the most part they have an ai that is writing these algorithms. Right, and so they have watched thousands and thousands and thousands of interactions of people. I I have, or the person person's just like I have watched so much browsing his three Ai is taking your you leave a trail, yes, when you are, when you Internet, when you Internet, when you have to the Internet, you leave a trail. Yes, and the AI is taking all of these trails and identifying like in a basically, if, like there's a US map and you've taken a road trip, right, so then it's taking all of us who have taken road trips and they're stacking the maps on top of each other and identifying all the points where these things overlap, our paths overlap, and then they are showing you more of those overlapping points. Yeah, was really good analogy than I just came up with I was very good. Yeah, thank you. So I was like I was getting up credit for it, but the computers doing that. Whereas a person could do that for like fifteen the AI is doing that to thousands, tens of thousands, yeah, hundreds of thousands of people, just yes, and even more, even more than that, like they are able to observe more. But then they are able to adjust the algorithm, so they're able to see in all these different interactions with people, when the algorithm gave these sorts of scenarios, it had a certain result. And it's as well. This would be more beneficial if we gave these sets of outcomes in the algorithm. So it's adjusting the algorithm as well to give that outcome. Yeah, as well. And so it's gotten to the point where it really kind of is like it's a beast that's out of control. Yeah, it's like it's still relatively within control. The way I would describe it is like like an animal trainer who has got like a giant animal on a leash and they're like, we've got it, but it's like but, I mean we do, we have it, you know, it's like it's not trained, it's not in under control as far as I can't direct this thing anymore, but I've got it still. It's not yeah, like they can still, well, they can still kind of control it, but I mean the leash is pretty long, like they're letting it kind of do do it's thing. Every once in a while they're like they're like, okay, so what you want is a responsible owner of exotic animals, right, and currently silicon valley is just Joe exoticing. Yeah, that's pretty Internet algorithms. That's pretty accurate. That's pretty accurate. It's like, I mean they are the under control, sure our people's arms getting eaten off? Absolutely. HMM. Yeah, yeah, that's actually really accurate. So so what's going on here is we're quickly entering into a period where what's being seen by your eyes on the Internet is controlled completely by an ai some robot. Okay, that's just one piece of the dead Internet theory. So we're quickly entering into this, and that is probably the most confirmed side of this theory. Is like yeah, that's true. Each of these next steps going into this theory are where's it's a little less. You like this dance video, you'll like this one, or you liked this craft video. You'll like there's not like it like some instrument. One want dispatch room with people with screen cool watching everyone's browsing. But yeah, there's not. So that's already no party. Dead Internet just means there's no person in charge of that m there's no person doing it actively. Dead Internet, to succinctly define, would say the deadnet theory would say that we are dead. Internet is no longer a the Internet is no longer a human thing. It's the bots have taken over, essentially. Okay, as the idea, and so the first half of that is that that the algorithms are in room skate. When you show up the test logs and all the people cutting logs are in Tan shirts, green paints and they're bald, right, because that's the default character, you get many that that's a Bot. Yeah, yeah, and we're just trying to cut logs. We're trying to play a game and have fun, right, these guys are just trying to bought farm logs. There's farm and logs. Okay, that's a really good analogy, though. Thank you. Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, that's right. That's when new episodes drop on Patreon. Patreons a way to get early access to episodes and o their content and exclusive merchandise. And we're not going to stop there, because we got a private discord with our hosts and producers in it for less than seventeen cents a day. That's right, that's five dollars a month. You two can be a patreon supporter and not here advertisements in this freaking podcast anymore text till in the six six eighty sixty six. Otherwise I'll come to your house, I will find you, I will destroy everything that's good in your life until we're the only thing left. Anyway, here's another advertisement. So that's a first layer and in that is pretty much like yeah, like, that's what's going on, happening. Yeah, the next layers where a limit told us all about it. Yeah, the next layers where I starts to get like there's a conflict of opinion. Okay, this layer would tell you that. Well, let's roll it back a little bit. We're still we're walking this layer. We need to lay a foundation. Okay, have you heard of bots? Okay, we're doing an inception. That's fine, that's fine. BOTs. Yeah, yeah, a program that can run a certain function yes, yes, so the Internet, most of them have gotten pretty good that they can appear to be human as far as like they've got multiple patterns to run. Yeah, that's say running one pattern. Yeah, so there's there's there's two kinds of bots on the Internet. There are malicious bots and then there's benevolent bots. There these are your God bots, these these are the lords of the Internet. It's these. So there's a couple of them. You got like your boss spots, your boss bots. So you got some that are indexing the Internet. These are things like Google, and so Google's got all these bots that are, they say, crawling the web. They call spiders because they're crawling the web and they're indexing everything, and so that's how they know where everything is on the Internet is they're just going to every page on the Internet that they can find and seeing what that page is about and then putting it in a little index folder. Well, yeah, our website still gotta put that in the index. I guess I got the index it. Well, that's one kind of bought. There's there's other bots that are performing relatively similar functions. There are good bouts that. Then there's the malicious ones with that are trying to find backdoors in size, trying to find personal information, yeah, trying to like put code into site, to download viruses through sites, things like that. And then there's you kind of mentioned it. There's kind of these these impersonator bots that are attempting to be humans, and these are used in a couple a few different ways. One really common way that they're used is one it's honestly really tough from a like web analytics point of view, to tell whether a BOT is a BOT or a human. There are specific ips that we just know from experience that we're like, oh, that's a Bot, but there are and there are certain tendencies we can pick out where we'll be like, oh, this is a tendency that's tending towards. But but there's are there are plenty tendencies for as like, Oh, it visited this page or what. Yeah, behaviors. So like it, it tries to enter a form and it doesn't know what a street is like, things like that. But like and certain routes that follows like a rousing. Yeah, browsing behaviors like people in bots brows pages very differently. Bots are obviously typically quite a bit faster and so behaviors you can a lot of times be able to kind of pick up, but it's not always so cut and dry. So a very calm when I go to websites, I just look at pages like two seconds ago, too quick one to click. I try to make it boy yeah, and then I go to the capture formed and I'm like what's what? Yes, I don't want them. I want them. I in my what do you banned from every website? I do. I have no selfcontrol in the Internet. So I'm trying to get banned for being a Bot, and you can't get banned from the Internet, you know, you have to get pay in from every website. And I'm doing an outbreak order tomorrow's basking robinscom. I'm all in the bees, you know, take it forever. Oh my gosh, I can't even tell. Yes, it was bass pro. So anyways, that's a quick overview of bots. Fuddle, the fuddle, the Bota. Here we are now. There there was a popular form of Bot that came out, which I'm sure you've heard of, being a social media mogul like yourself. Yeah, there's you can go out in battle bots. We're talked about it a lot. So we're gonna say in the same time. Okay, you can on social media. You can buy views and buy followers. R I did, and that's super easy. Those all right, did for a podcast. Those kind of bots are pretty hard to tell if it's a BOT or not, right, because all they're doing is viewing some content, yes, or following a profile and so A. I mean it's pretty easy to tell, though. Well, when you click through the profiles, you can start to pick it up. Did you ever look at a certain politicians followers on twitter? I'm not sure what certain politicians you're saying. Well, you can't say that. You can't go look at the now, right, but when you did, this account was getting fiftyzero new followers a day. I would say that's probably not his own doing. I bet. I bet someone else was sending him there. Sure, yeah, but still. But yeah, yeah, and so that's the thing. There was actually there was actually this big company, I think they were called. Like, I mean, but I'm saying, there's so many youth pastors who do this. Oh, yeah, so many common yeah, well, because, I mean, you only need that. And this is where it gets like super unethical, though, is that you know your social media following is almost like a social media credits court, and so a lot of people are boosting these numbers up to an insane amount and then getting deals based on but what matters is your engagement rate, and the bots can't engage with your content the way that people do, can they? That's not paying enough. there. I've never paid for for I feel like I gotta clarify. I've never paid and there bodyny followers or anything like that. You never bought bots. Know about bots. There was a big company that just got in a lot of trouble in like two thousand and sixteen that was selling youtube views. They made like one point three million dollars at that. Maybe that's under what I think. Anyways, they made a lot of money. Yeah, selling views on YouTube. Sure, this is obviously a problem, because youtube views translates to money, chances to add revenue, and those advertisers spent money for real people to see it. It doesn't matter if a BOTSA there ad. It matters of a person's other add oh, I thought you were going the other way of that. A Youtube Creator could gain the system where they are paying for views and making more from the ad revenue. Well, yeah, that it is I want had on two sided. It's a two sided things. So, yeah, the the the Creator, made a lot more money because they had so much more views, but the advertiser didn't get the return on that investment because the people who viewed their ads were not genuine people. Yeah, weren't, yeah, you know, purchasing whatever their sells. So then these advertisers are all upset because they're like, oh, all these people weren't all that this money we spent was gaining this worthless right. And so platforms like Youtube want to try to limit the amount of BOTs on their platform as much as possible. Sure, facebook is also done this. FACEBOOK gotten big trouble, I think it was last year, for inflating the stupid yeah, I think I told you about that. Yeah, we should do a mini episode about that sometime. Yeah, that would be good one. Yeah. And so obviously like this, these these are these are problems because you have bots doing stuff like this. Well, they're getting significantly more sophisticated. Bots are these bots that are doing something like this. And so there's an account out there that has like one point, which I mean, I guess I wish I would have thought of using bots I was charging people for Youtube views and I was just watching so many, sitting there watching them. Dude, I had twenty two ABS open. It's clicking play on all of them because o paying me to watch this. Is that I got sucked into the ADS man. So, like the money I was making, I went and spent on the DAD's. Yeah, yeah, you won't believe how many Vpns I had. Oh my Gosh, man, I bought so much of that squatch soap stuff. So the thing is they've become significantly more sophisticate, and so they are now capable of engaging with content as well. And so they'll go, go and they like in the comment and they are getting a boughts do comment. They are getting significantly better at commenting, where they're more and more going unnoticed. In they're seeing more authentic right. Yeah, because they were using too many e Moji's to begin with. There was a time where it's like, if a BOT commented on something you'd like, that's not a person that you could tell. It's getting harder to tell, so much so that a group of researchers catfish by a Bot once. I tell you that. M No, it was just so hard to tell if it was a person or not. Is the shut. Up to the bakery. Firs was some meat and you wouldn't believe it, a full robot walks in the door. was like, hold on, did I skip bought fish? I hate this so much I just keep bought fished, not fish, like fisa Ph I a tech joke. I got it. I got it and he was like well, technically I am this and I was like wow, this is what are you doing? So there's this instagram account. Okay, this was, I'm pretty sure, put together by a like a research facility. Okay, I don't know what it is. They've got three point one million followers on instagram. Completely bought ran the accounts called Little Monella followers bots. Maybe because it's not as impressive, they just faked it. Well, in theory they aren't. Oh okay, so they're saying that the content being posting, content being posted, is posted by a bout. So this is a BOT account and they this research from was like, can we make this account viral by being a botton? So they've just kind of engineered about. Yeah, can we engineer program that would then build a follower, create an influencer. Basically and it worked. Wow, and and it's hard here. Let me see if I can actually just throw this on the screen. I'm going to stop our output. Are Your background looks better this time. Yeah, so this looks like, Oh, for real and authentic. And all the pictures. That's a real person. These are all night. These are deep fixtures. Yeah, these are deep fakes. What and so it created and like it is the content that it's putting in, like, they do not seem like okay, but I can tell the pictures are fake. But even the comments here, though, that's how come are you the girl from polar suppress? She kind of looks like we'll go back sex. I was reading for these comments here. This is spooky as heck, isn't it? Hu time can we spend on this, because I would love the deep dive into this stuff, but the comments all hold a whole. Look, Miss You. I hope you get a haul of what you buy. I'll show you what I got it today in return to click that account, which we can blow this tha. Is that a real person? It might be. That's a real person engaging with this butt like it's a normal like it's a normal account. But yes, they set this up to see can we get a Bot to become an influencer? Then they even had it up here. I'm like old robot living in La but all this is fake content and people are engaging with it like it's a real person, and I think there's a lot of people who, I would assume a lot of people, don't know. Which is scary and it's Ray. Say what the picture right to the right of what you're at? What's up with the eyes? That's a an instagram filter. That's Terry. Fine. Yeah, that is scary looking, though. So it's not perfect. But if you're not, if no one told you this was a bot and you're just scrolling through your feet and you see this pop up. So is this, you might my head out, a person? That's also made up. Yeah, all of this is fake, and so that are the images from. Whose body is this on? I don't know if this is a body. I think this is like remember when we looked at deep fakes in that synthetic media episode, like I did. Also, we got any who episode right now. Things I learned last night. So this episode is like four hours long. Welcome back. Welcome back from the synthetic media episode. So this is bonkers, man. Yeah, so this is all made up, because this is sure we are. I mean there, I'm sure what they did is they took the box. So, yeah, that's where I'm saying, though. There's got to be a real person to supply the that's a different boyfriend. She went through a breakup. Yeah, she did. Who that? That's it. What the face in that one? What Die Heck, I'm saying the go we're did the break up? How this one? This one didn't it go? Well, that one is symthetic media. Who are the Digital Demon people? What it's? It's crazy, man. And if you the girl from lady mouths were one of the comments said. So here's the thing, and so the dead Internet theory takes accounts like this. These are are known things. There's there's at least a couple of these like research accounts out there. Right, Oh, are we real? Who knows? So, did the what the theory says? So, what's that girl's name? Little Michaela, Little Michaela and Jake Paul are made up. Well, what they're saying is they're saying that we had we're now outnumbered by these. Oh, I don't like so and so. What they're saying is that the majority of the content online is one of two scenarios. Bots like this that are just very convincing fakes of humans, or they are that bought. How the check mark? I know in that crazy and that's instagram's doing. For that's wrong. I don't believe that's creat I just show a photo ID get my check mark. I mean a robot can get an idea, right. I was. I was just thinking, though, like I said, to upload a picture. I could have photoshop my ID. How are they gonna confirm that? That's probably what the BOT did. The pop probably just shop than I. The Bot was just like here you go as yeah, for D, I'm sure form the BOT was like yeah, send me to prison. Good, good luck, walk me away. Give it a try. Yeah, so the the jail on the metaphverse. Sorry, that's a tangent. Hey, perfect good opportunity for me to take my tangent that I've been wanting to take your tangent. So there's a one of my former students. I'm not going to say his name. He listened to his podcast, though. He'll remember this. Ryan sparks. No, that's not here, that different one. That's funny. Yet he texted me the other day he was like he's saying he got in Oculus and he was loving it. Okay, and I was like, dude, that's tight, Super Fun. You gotta met this girl, macay law. He was like he's like brother Neta verse is Dope, and I was I just I was like no, it's not. In his response text with as was fine, it's not. As response is the best thing I ever heard. He said in real life I have mice in my apartment. In the metaverse I have a robot, mean and so, and then he said, I know, I get comet girlfriend. He said I can also sit court side in an NBA game, and I said you could do those in real life if you get a job, you could. I want a robot and be court side if you just maybe you should get a job as a rat killer. Get rid of the mice in your apartment. Yep, work your way up. Yeah, work your way up the corporate ladder, the corporate rat ladder, the rat race, and then say so, so so. The theory is that there's cow or there's a lot of accounts like this, so and this is the other side dead innor a theory in Capt like includes the fact that the algorithm is pumping stuff in front of us. And then it's also say that the stuff it's popping in front of us is mostly made by not real people. Yes, and that's what's kind of losing me a little bit. There's decent data for this. So twitter, twitter did a study in two thousand and nineteen on two things, one bots on the platform to user engagement on the platform. So they found two really interesting statistics. One, they found that ten percent of the audience, or ten percent of the users on twitter, I think it was a hundred fifty million at the time, ten percent were the voice of twitter. So ten percent accounted all for the vast majority. was like ninety eight percent of the tweets on you and me. Yeah, we are twitter, but the other ninety percent they just they follow, they just listen. They're not the talkers. They call talkers and listeners. And so ten percent of all the contests wore, I call them. Ten percent of all the content on twitter came from WHO talkers, the same group. While they also found that four percent of all profiles on twitter were bots, and so not all of those bots were probably talkers. But you have reason to believe that if ten percent of voice comes from are ten percent of all the content comes from that same group, there's a reasonable amount to believe that a decent bit of that four percent that our bots are within that group and there's a decent bit of the content in twitter that's coming from commoter generated content. Yeah, okay. Well, because, I mean, I just saw I get emails all the time for an ai can write your blog posts for you. HMM. Well, we get emails all the time for ads that are written by Ai, like bots, trying to sell us, get us to do ads for them. Really. Yeah, all the time. You've seen those. Well, that's like I'm saying, like those are like clearly scams. No, no, but they're not. They're not selling us on like a script that's been written by an AI, are they? No, yeah, the script was written by the AI to send us, an know, to get us to give farur information so they could, you know, steal stuff from us. Is that we're trying to do? Yeah, Oh, the scam. They're fishing anyways. So then I've been bought fished. I don't know. So the so the theory is that? The theory is that a lot of the content. Not all, obviously, because you and I are still posting stuff and we see each other sweets or but it's the theory is that a lot of content online is being created by computers. Yes, it's also being pushed by computers. Yes, and then eventually your complete internet experience will just be computers. Yeah. What's interesting about it too, is it's even bigger than that too, because, like people who buy and views and engagement, there are brands who will do that to fluff their engagement, to go viral on things. Yes, and so advertise still do that to go viral. And so now you've got these groups that will say, okay, we're sending a BOT to make this go viral. About road an algorithm that made that to where they could get it to the point where it goes viral. And theoretically that thing that went viral was made by a Bot. And so you're in a system where it's like the Algorithm was done by a Bot, the algorithm was gained by a Bot and the content was created by a Bot. And so what they're saying is the Internet has been shrinking. It really, and this is this is verifiably true. It's like it's like the great like it's like a nation where everybody in the nation lived all over the place and then the city's popped up and everybody moved back in the cities. There was all sorts of places in the web and now it's just kind of facebook and twitter and instagram. There's all these other places, but really that's where everything online is happening, right, and so everything's coming even all the other places exist. Point back to those places, yeah, at some point, if you can end up back there. So so the idea is that we are now a serious minority in terms of who is having the voice online. We are consuming stuff that's created by Bots, and what's scary about that is things like with the Russian voter scandal. Right, anybody can create these bots and they can send millions of them into a platform, yes, and set them up to you and say whatever, right, and as they the things they're creating could be very dangerous ideas. Yes, yes, and even beyond that, like what's what's scariest about it is a lot of these are ai driven, so their machine learning. So they are set up to honestly a lot like our endorphin system in our brain is set up where the more they see that success rate, they're just going to keep going yeast it, but their way faster than us, and so they're able to pump out so much more than content when they start seeing success in that way that it almost gets the point to where the creators of these bots really do lose control that leash and it just runs wild. So dead Internet. Theory is that we've passed that point. Youtube Calls Youtube coined the phrase the great inversion, which sounds terrifying, and so that's the point where it flips and we are now. We flit from being the Internet controlled by humans so the Internet controlled by Bots and depending on control by the Internet. Yeah, depending on who you talk to, that numbers different. Some people will said there yet. Well, it's close. Think we're there. It's really close. Like the numbers, the numbers are tough to like say, are accurate, like it's really tough to find an accurate number. But it's anywhere from twenty percent of traffic on the Internet is bots too. I've seen numbers all the way up to sixty percent, and so if we're at sixty percent, the great in version happened and the bottom and control. It's really, really tough to say where we are. But if you look at a lot of those chief websites that are at the top, they'll have numbers of their asset estimates that are probably relatively close to the amount of boss that they have on their platform. And it does seem like we are really, really close to that line of fifty fifty. Whether we're past it or not as hard to find. But twitter or Youtube crack down in two thousand and fourteen, right, and it was a huge deal because that meant a lot of creators found out, Oh, I have twentyzero subscribers than I thought, and for some creators that was a huge impact to their channel and in their revenue then, and so that was a huge yeah, almost scandal, but it's like it needed to happen because that meant that a lot of the content or a lot of what the advertisers were spending their money on was worthless. Right. And so you sayfully doing it, but facebook wasn't even using bots to get those views. They were literally just changing the numbers. HMM, that was a little more like moist asking. Yeah, like someone, someone was doing that. Have you heard of tilling podcast March? That's right, we have a merge store full of tilling bread and teas, hoodies, mugs and so much more. We also make new designs for every single episode, but those are only available for a limited time, so get them while they're hot. Text till into six, six, eighthndred and sixty six to get your till and March today. But it's a scary scenario because we have a situation where anybody who has a little bit of technical know how can really influence public opinion pretty easily. Yeah, and we saw that with Russia. There's there are these farms in China know, that are getting shut down like full warehouses. It's kind of ominous to look at it, where they were literally have walls like rooms as tall as this one, where walls floor to ceiling. They've got phones and the phones are hooked to a server and the servers running that phone, and so you can see it browsing the Internet and engaging with content and putting stuff on like liking posts and commenting on posts and stuff like that, and it's it's terrifying to watch like just all these screens moving around super quick on this wall and they're all like all these chargers plugged in and moved all of the place. China is cracking down really hard on those right now, but I mean the Chinese government probably has them too well, because a lot of these what they're doing is they're doing like almost like smear campaigns against the Chinese governments. Also say they're cracking down on yeah, so they're almost certainly the Chinese government has their own settled up for sure, and I mean it's it's pretty likely. And why do you think they didn't put the windows on those Att Buildings? That's what I'm saying. I think it's pretty likely that just about every like first world country has some port portion of the government that's doing some level of this. And it's scary because it's like you almost can't find something on the Internet that's reliable anymore. It's right, it's set up to steer you towards some sort of opinion. Yeah, and there's someone or something like a bought behind it, which is scary. And so that's the idea here in the dead Internet. Theory is that we've lost control of the Internet and it's completely run over by we've hit the great inversion. So if PSS episode are bought worked, it got you here. Welcome, we're bots. Were deep fakes all of this. We were do a weird like I don't know. Yeah, sometimes it glitches. Yeah, but yeah, so it's I mean it's kind of it. It's a little scary because it is a situation where it's like, I mean, how to how do you fix that? I mean you're kind of opened up. We've kind of opened up Indora's box with the algorithms and the AI and it's Internet. Can we get control of it? I don't know. I don't know if there's any solution other than just killing it. Well, but that's the thing is that once it does cross over that threshold where it is mostly bots creating content engage you with content, there's no reason for ad spenders to put money there anymore. Yeah, yeah, exactly, and so I think we'll just see new circles pop up where ad money does get in front of real people. Well, the interesting thing is because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. The big groups, those big websites, well, I'll tell you where. Nowhere near that threshold. Yeah, but that's because they have their own boss running. Yeah, the thing is, is that legitimate? It's hard to say because because they're red and he was tied to that address. A solution, so they'll lie. Make friends in real life. Yeah, only trust people you see with your real eyes. All Right, let me touch your eyes, let me type you your eyes. I'll know you're real if I feel your eyes. Okay, doubting Thomas. Only make friends in real life and unplug your phone to night. Turn it off. They can hear you. Lock your front door with a real lock, not with the computer lockint a computer lock. Do the thing where you for your sliding back door. Do that? Think we have the broom stick in the way? Yeah, that. Obviously the robots are going to get in. have an emergency front of a thousand dollars. Pay Off your smallest debts first, going with the baby stick. Practice. That that's Snow Ball, Ye, aren't your Big One? Reward progress. Build a bunker. Build a bunker, hit well, dig a hole, final wall. Call the news by the giant. To do all that stuff first, and then build a bunker. Build the bunker. You in that bunker survive the apocalypse. Yeah, but if you connect Internet to your bunker, start all over. Yeah, if you're listen this in your bunker, right now what are you doing? You broke the system unless you downloaded this gruble bro good bunker. Broke your bunker. So yeah, so, I mean, you know, that's a scary place. Now is my bought bunker. It's fo yeah, just afraid of bots. That's the body box in this room right now. I see Bots, I see dead Internet. Yeah, so, I mean it's terrifying. Well, to the scary scenario and anything and everything you see on the Internet, I mean legitimate. They could not be real. That influenzer was scary. Yeah, that's very scary. And they're on the other they're only getting better, like they're only getting better at this, and so the more time that goes on, I mean, the more you're going to see stuff like this. Man, I've wanted to start a conspiracy where I was a fake person for a long time. Either that or I died, but in the Avril leaving thing happened later. But like I should have done this. I thought about in my first set of faked died in my first special back like tosen fourteen. Yeah, you can't find it anywhere. I can don't, but I thought about after, like you know, be like thank you so much on Jeremy Well, everyone's clapping, not in the microphone, just like mouthing the words, like I died four years ago. Cool, just doing that in every special so that it like fifteen years. It just showed clips of me be like like me, like trying to cry for help, like I'm dead. I thought that would be funny. That's that is really funny. Yeah, I didn't do it, though, so you start. Yeah, I will. I guess I could go back at alter the footage with Ai. If you see it, it's altered footage, but it's bad. It's a bad altered footage, like you know where you put a little square mouth. I died two thousand and four what. Anyway, are we done? Yeah, yeah, we can. That was my robot missing up. Did he off? Okay, great things on the last night is a production of space tim media, produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alice Garnett, video by Connor beat social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg. Our hoster, Jeremyers and Tim Stone. Please follow us on social media at tilling podcast. That's Tillo in podcast. Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you. For listening to things on the last night,


In the mid-’90s, the internet took the world by storm. For the first time in history, everyone had access to an unprecedented amount of information. In those early years, the entire web was curated by skilled webmasters who understood the inner workings of the internet. Over time, new technologies allowed everyone to share their thoughts and ideas with the world.

Recently, bots were let loose online to fulfill a variety of tasks. Most of these robots perform necessary and helpful tasks. Unfortunately, however, some were deployed for malicious purposes. Major sites across the web have documented the rapid increase in bot traffic on their platform over the past few years. The increased A.i. traffic has led some people to theorize that the internet is dead and the bots have taken over. The theory that we’ve lost control of the world wide web is known as Dead Internet Theory, and this is its story.

Web1, Web2, Web3

Let’s start with a brief history of the internet as illustrated by the three phases of the web to date. Beginning in the early ’90s, the internet became available to private consumers. This early iteration of the web, often called web1, was primarily a massive encyclopedia. The internet authors covered the information system, but users could only access the information. The average internet user could not add their content or share any form of data on the internet.

On came Web2. The second phase of the internet blew up with social media sites like Geocities and Zynga. For the first time, users could post their content to the internet. Instead of a closed source system with highly curated information, it became an open-source utopia with freely exchanged and updated information.

Now we are staring down the birth of the third internet generation, Web3. It is difficult to predict what this new generation of the internet will bring. Many technologies hope to be the dominant force in the Web3 era. Things like NFTs, the metaverse, and cryptocurrency are all fighting for the forerunner of this new phase. It will likely be a synthesis of the three creating a whole new digital landscape in the coming decades.

The Bots Are Coming

Bots have been a part of the internet since the early days. For the most part, these bots are just watching things online. Think of them as census takers for the internet. These bots crawl the web; they get the name spiders and index everything they find. These bots are how search engines are even possible. There are other bots out there that seek to find back doors in websites and upload malware or spyware. But, what is interesting, is the rising number of bots that are meant to mimic humans.

Much of the online economy is based on advertising. Websites, YouTubers, and podcasters generally make the majority of their money from advertising. To turn a profit, these creators need hundreds of thousands of views on all the content that they release into the world. Unfortunately, scammers created these bots to trick advertisers into believing millions of potential customers are viewing their ads, and they’ve made many people very rich. Sites like YouTube are cracking down on these practices and have removed these bots from their platforms.

Dead Internet Theory

The human imitating bots have penetrated just about every form of social media. These bots have become far more intelligent and convincing. Many of them even comment and create content themselves (@lilmiquela). We even have records of governments and other organizations using this technology to sway public opinion. This is where the dead internet theory comes into play.

The theory states that we have been overrun, and the bots have taken control of the internet. As a result, most of the content online is no longer generated by humans. Instead, we’re all consuming content created by Ai posing as flesh and blood people.

There is a decent bit of data to support the theory. Twitter announced last year that they estimate that 4% of all active users on the site are bots. The number sounds insignificant until you learn that 95% of all tweets came from just 10% of active accounts last year. Could that 4% be included within that 10%?

YouTube calls the event The Great Inversion. Their engineers think we are still quite a ways away from the inversion, they see signs that humanity is in danger of being outnumbered online.

Conclusion

Sci-fi has taught us to fear robots for as long as technology has existed. But have we been thinking of them all wrong? Could it be that the robot apocalypse will happen on Twitter and YouTube instead of the iRobot scenarios we’re all acquainted with? The Ai that actively poses as real human users seem to be posing to convince people of one thing or another. It could be who to vote for, what to believe, or behave. But could we be engaged deep in a psychological war with bots without even knowing it? Be careful what you read online. The bots are taking over.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode right now!

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Sources

The Dead Internet Theory – Futurism


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