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> Or maybe artificial intelligence is flooding the internet with synthetic information and killing the old web.

Relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

> The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity.[1][2][3][4] Proponents of the theory believe these bots are created intentionally to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to ultimately manipulate consumers.[5]

This is not a new thing. SEO types have been running 'spinner' tools for a long time. A spinner is a tool/technique to make copied content look fresh and new, and non-verbatim. Then we have the advent of LLMs which I have no doubt is being leveraged right now to spam the web with synthetic content.




> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

I find it distasteful that this article frames it as a fringe (conspiracy) theory of the present, rather than simply a theory of the future.

Is the Internet dead now? I mean no, that's pretty fringe.

Will it become so in the future? It's a very reasonable and thought-provoking hypothesis.

IMO the article should be reframed to take this into account, or a new term should be coined.




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