Dead Internet Theory: Called A Conspiracy Theory But I Don’t Think So

Below is a Live Science dot com article which actually acknowledges that 50% of forum traffic is bots. Does not account for AI generated articles which are reworked and reposted via AI. Side note is the resulting 60% error rate in citations and outright wrong sourcing in current AI machines.

The 9/24 article:

The dead internet theory first surfaced on the Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe forum in 2021, when a user started a thread called "Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake." Citing posts from major online discussion forums like 4Chan, the theory claimed that non-human bots are responsible for almost all online activity and content creation.

At a top level, the concept is that artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots automatically churn out social media posts designed to farm clicks, comments and likes on platforms like Facebook and TikTok. They do this because more engagement leads to more advertising dollars.

But the accounts responding to those automatic posts are in turn bots and AI agents, the conspiracy claims. In other words, everything is happening between machines, no humans needed. Go deeper down the rabbit hole, and some dead internet proponents argue that government organizations use these bots to manipulate human opinions.

Proponents argue the internet died around 2016 or 2017 — we just didn't know it back then.

This conspiracy theory has a little kernel of truth at its core: bots account for around half of all internet traffic, research suggests. That said, there are definitely humans on the internet.