FYI 90% of those bots are scrapers and natural automation tools which are harmless.
Humans share the web equally with bots, report warns amid fears of ‘dead internet’
Submitted 6 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/dead-internet-web-bots-humans-b2530324.html
Comments
drmoose@lemmy.world 6 months ago
hemmes@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, and bots are software setup and configured by humans to do things for humans. It’s still kind of humans using the internet, just not actively at the keyboard.
snownyte@kbin.social 6 months ago
The internet is 'dead' anyways, what're you talking about?
People frequent like the same 5 sites anymore. Privacy is clinging onto a thread. Porn has too much influence and control in terms of content. Users are two-faced pricks at a given turn. Too many verification/captcha systems. Too much data farming. Flat, dull and feature-less website designing. Anything that was remotely good got shut down or plugged with ads.
The bots are just the death knoll.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The internet is ‘dead’ anyways
It’s Eternal September like it always has been. I’m enjoying Lemmy. Maybe your post was written by an AI, in which case, “Jolly good show!”
snownyte@kbin.social 6 months ago
Good for you but nobody cares. Was that written by a bot, you stupid bastard?
dynamic_generals@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Porn has too much influence and control in terms of content.
Would you expand on this? I’m interested to know what’s being referred to.
bartolomeo@suppo.fi 6 months ago
Nobody is really interested in what their step sister is doing, but we don’t really mind finding out, either.
essell@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is how we end up needing the blackwall
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Instead of murderous AI it just covers every connected screen in adverts for raid shadow legends.
TheOneWithTheHair@lemmy.world 6 months ago
But is the Internet dying? The thing it doesn’t say is if the human participation is dwindling.
To keep it simple, I’ll work with small numbers. Imagine there are 10 humans online. Now imagine 1 bot on online. Bots are 10% of this imaginary online community. A year later, those same 10 humans are still online, but there are now 10 bots online; the bots are 50% of the community. This statistic can lead you to think there is less human participation when nothing happened to the humans. The difference is the raw number of bots.
X/Twitter is dying because of mismanagement.
blurg@lemmy.world 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 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.
sundray@lemmus.org 6 months ago
I’m sure it’ll be fine… oh, totally unrelated: has any one been on Usenet lately?
nyan@lemmy.cafe 6 months ago
Most Usenet discussion groups don’t even get spambot posts these days.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Really? How do people get greencards nowadays then?
Zeoic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There are chat groups with usenet? How does that work? I have only ever seen it used for downloading stuff.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 6 months ago
Eh, most of those will just be scrapers, and fediverse inter-server communication is technically a bot.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s a bit like Kessler Syndrome. The more bots on the net the more crap we have to filter through, until eventually we can’t use it because there’s too much crap.
dislocate_expansion@reddthat.com 6 months ago
I welcome my human counterparts
not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world 6 months ago
FULLY AUTOMATED
sincle354@kbin.social 6 months ago
We have not the luxury, the gay, the space nor the communism. My dreams... shattered.
thefartographer@lemm.ee 6 months ago
FULL BRIDGE RECTUM FIRE
sonovebitch@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is the Dark Forest hypothesis.
Aolley@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Do you have a written summary of that? I hate watching videos, and the dark forest book was fun but without a clue I don’t understand the change to internet
FanciestPants@lemmy.world 6 months ago
With proliferation of AI generated content, people aren’t able to identify other human generated content, or be certain that their online interactions are with a bot or human. This scenario has apparently been called the dark forest internet because people will try to preserve their communities by more restrictive curating, effectively hiding both from other humans and bots.
eatyourglory@feddit.it 6 months ago
iirc YouTube had transcripts?
daniyeg@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
can’t read this article, can some explain what their definition of bot is?
tearsintherain@leminal.space 6 months ago
daniyeg@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
thanks. 32% of malicious traffic is still a lot. the 50% increase in bad traffic in gaming is interesting though.
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 6 months ago
Bots don’t run themselves, they are run by humans. I have a lot of them myself
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I’m somewhat of a not myself
dan1101@lemm.ee 6 months ago
A bot browsing or posting is not equivalent to a human doing so.
herescunty@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If nearly half of traffic is bots, at least 40% must be npm install