this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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I think we have 10-15 years or so left before the internet becomes totally unusable due to ads, paywalls and general bad design all over the place.
The internet is fine, you're just using the wrong parts of it.
Yet I am somewhat optimistic that we can build our own communities that may work beyond this crap.
Not to mention AI bots using large language models spreading advertisements and misinformation.
A time will come where you cannot differentiate between real and generated content, the internet will be flooded with noise, and one can either stay in the illusion we call internet, or go offline and only believe their own physical senses.
AI has the potential to be the most powerful propaganda machine the world has ever known. The ability to seamlessly jump into conversations and actively steer them towards the owner's target position en masse is terrifying. Add to that the ability for the AI to swarm dissenters with dozens or even hundreds of sock puppet accounts, creating manufactured consensus is undoubtedly already being done by people on a smaller scale, and definitely being tested by state and corporate actors to use for a variety of targets and subjects.
It's unclear to me how that is different from today where people already pay for content posting by humans. I suppose it might make anonymous user reviews or use testimonials worth even less than they are today, but presumably for shooting the shit it matters not whether you're doing it with a person or AI.
I wonder if we're going to want some sort of ID tied to an account so we can at least talk to communities. And if we'll split more back into smaller communities where we kind of get to know the people or AIs in them vs Twitter etc.
I think it will be a difference in scale. It will be cheaper to pay for AI bots en masse, flooding forums and social media more efficiently.
But I agree with that federation would help combat this phenomenon.
Maybe the dead internet conspiracy theory will become true!
Really? I was thinking we are kind of already there lol.
I suspect our browser extensions will help mitigate this tbf.
I'm honestly afraid of extensions becoming less and less useful as Google and co become hostile to them.
Use Firefox instead.