Found a youtuber starting to uncover the dead internet.

[brentw]

Hello fellow dead internet travelers and/or robots.

Recently stumbled on this channel and thought his recent videos were interesting.
This dude started deep diving on social media bots and he keeps kinda blowing his mind with what he finds.
And it seems like there's more coming down the pipe on this topic.

"Unlimited Bots" - He starts looking at what a mindboggling number of bots are guiding trends and discussion on twitter.

View: https://youtu.be/ewxKgFxdRHM


"The Blue Wave Propaganda Bot Network" - He stumbles on a fucking massive DNC bot network.
Also mentions the other huge bot networks they've observed fall into two other categories: Porn and Crypto.

View: https://youtu.be/2cIpLo_XWck


"AI Craze" - Mostly a talk about the current state of AI but later on starts touching on the combination of AI and bots.

View: https://youtu.be/d1i6iTVeOYg


"The Company Destroying Hollywood" - Mostly about how entertainment is being led around by dumb metrics but goes on to touch on how easily bot traffic can manipulate these metrics.

View: https://youtu.be/HbxnoZjVI-k


This sounds like a fucking ad, I'm sorry. I should be paid for this shit.
I just thought it was interesting.

 

[bnuungus]

I'll have to give these a watch later, they sound intriguing

 

[Orlando Smooth]

Just watched the "Unlimited Bots" video and I have to say I'm very impressed that this isn't just another shallow "omg the internet is fake!" creator. It's refreshing to see something approaching quantitative bot analysis outside the domain of academic research. While DIT definitely has something of an underground following online, it's still largely unknown to the general public. It'll end up being deep dives like this that spur the more mainstream journalists to write articles about the topic/problem read by normies. In general I think more people are waking up to "Twitter is not real life," but they still have no idea just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Social media as it exists today really needs to be destroyed if we are to ever overcome the social strife that currently divides us so deeply.

---

Correction: I originally said "approaching quantitative bot analysis" but after watching more of his content it's clear that it's not "approaching" - it truly is high quality quantitative research. This is a very good find @brentw , thank you very much for sharing.

 

[Vetusomaru]

"Bots bad" this YouTuber says and yet he uses bots for his discord server.

 

[RisingThumb]

It's really very simple! People have been doing this for ages, but only now is it actually any good to do en masse!

 

[№56]

These are good videos, thanks for sharing. The AI one in particular was very insightful.
I like his definition of ChatGPT and similar services as "tools that fabricate content." I've never liked the idea of calling these things "AI" because it implies that they're intelligent, but up until this point it's been hard for me to avoid using the term out of convenience. "Content fabrication/content fabricator" might be good alternative. Not only does it cut out the intelligence question, it highlights the connection between these programs/models/services and the current cultural obsession with reducing everything to homogeneous "content" that can all be consumed, transmitted, and reprocessed in the same way. It wouldn't have been possible to create something like ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion without first having this assumption that everything uploaded to the internet can be considered as "content," regardless of what it actually is or where it comes from, and the assumption that "more content=good" no matter what. About ten years ago artists/authors/journalists/musicians/comedians/etc. started to be reduced down to "content creators." Now, the process is complete and "content" can start creating itself. The real danger of "AI" in the foreseeable future isn't that it's going to create Skynet, it's that it's going to start fabricating more "content" than society can deal with.
"AI is just...more" is a great quote that sums up the whole situation perfectly.

 

[Vetusomaru]

I decided to check these videos a little and this is the part that made me cringe the most:

The Youtuber who made this video made a bot account as part of his experiment with AI-generated images of a young woman that were too obviously fake. And yet in just few hours he got lots of messages from thirsty retards who cant tell apart an obvious Ai-generated photos. This shit is as bad as the thirsty retards who assume you are female just because you have a female anime avatar with them being too friendly with you because they think you are female but they immediately turn into asshole mode when you inform them that you are male.

 

[llillilll]

I decided to check these videos a little and this is the part that made me cringe the most:

The Youtuber who made this video made a bot account as part of his experiment with AI-generated images of a young woman that were too obviously fake. And yet in just few hours he got lots of messages from thirsty retards who cant tell apart an obvious Ai-generated photos. This shit is as bad as the thirsty retards who assume you are female just because you have a female anime avatar with them being too friendly with you because they think you are female but they immediately turn into asshole mode when you inform them that you are male.

You fell for a catfish with a female anime avatar, didn't you.

 

[-SteampunkTraveler-]

Upper Echlon is a W bro, been watching him for a while, depressing yes, but still

 

[Some_porcupine]

The Youtuber who made this video made a bot account as part of his experiment with AI-generated images of a young woman that were too obviously fake

https://www.artbreeder.com/ > https://www.artbreeder.com/amonsirius?sort=new

 

[Green Grape Tim]

I've watched the first two videos and I have to say they are so much better than the standard, overdramatic, fearmongering videos on the DIT that exist online and get far more views. Normies are so quick to assume a broad explanation of a concept is all they need to know and will react on that basis, which is the exact reason why these bot networks are so successful on sites designed to generate outrage-based attention.

The most ominous part of DIT, to me, is the fact that it isn't just in the mere existence of fake users/bots that causes the internet to be far emptier than we expect, but rather the interactions between them and us, the fact that most of what we interact with online is orchestrated by a system that has properties and behaviours now (mostly) outside of our control. The internet as it exists now has become something arguably more deterministic than the cause-effect relations between things that exist in the physical world. If DIT as a concept becomes more well-known, it needs to be emphasised that it doesn't mean "most people you talk to don't exist!" but instead that there is a growing epistemological distance between us and real events.

 

[Alone]

Honestily, the internet isnt dead, just stagnated.

 

[Captain]

The web is dead, don't be fooled. The walled gardens are all that's left. The internet is just a public utility connecting the walled gardens. There is nothing of consequence left of the web. Sites are long gone, people don't maintain webpages. It's all social media and messaging. When the web was something you surfed, there was tons of content because it was the new exciting wave. Today nobody sees the web the same way. I don't know a single person that has a personal website today. The web is what AOL was at the end, an abandoned wasteland where a few people hung around to chat in long abandoned chat rooms. I happed to be online and signed on when AOL pulled the final plug of the AOL legacy platform ( 2014/15?), it reminds me of exactly what is happening to the web today.

If you think the web is alive, you must not have been around in the beginning with the rest of us. It's bad enough I can hear the deafening silence of the now abandoned telephone lines outside my window on the pole, but now I can hear the emptiness of the room that is the web. It's a shame. We are surrendering the last stand of creative expression and information sharing to the Facebooks of the world. What was ideas and connectivity on a scale never seen before is just a bunch of people photos of lunches and broken political ideals forced onto us by the army of machines working for the big money. Nobody gave 1 shit about politics until Web 2.0 told them to care. The internet...telephone calls & mass manipulation for profit or control. If that's not what death is....I don't know what is.

 

[VHSMARONITE]

Upper Echelon does great work. Good to see him getting some exposure on here.

 

[Some_porcupine]

The web is dead, don't be fooled. The walled gardens are all that's left. The internet is just a public utility connecting the walled gardens. There is .... Nobody gave 1 shit about politics until Web 2.0 told them to care. The internet...telephone calls & mass manipulation for profit or control. If that's not what death is....I don't know what is.

View: https://twitter.com/MintaReturns/status/1672081890759819264

(read comments)

 

[FODTony]

good shit my man, thanks for the recommendation

 

[housepoopr]

This shit is as bad as the thirsty retards who assume you are female just because you have a female anime avatar with them being too friendly with you because they think you are female but they immediately turn into asshole mode when you inform them that you are male.

I assume everyone is a G.I.R.L. (Guy in real life) and it's served me well.

 

[Some_porcupine]

I assume everyone is a G.I.R.L. (Guy in real life) and it's served me well.

I was shocked when the opposite happened
I thought Aral of Xiaohe was dude/guy (before I read her blog)
(But that is weird, was I ignorant of the pronouns? Or - no. I just didn't paid attention. And also presumed we are all dudes here. - being terminally online doesn't help that :/)
If you asked me how I imagine girl, I'd imagine some type of Mean girl, Tumblr girl (weird on purpose/just being cute-or going with the "bandwagon"), "girly girl", tomboy, Lain (similar to Tumblr girl, but even more detached from reality (doubts , but (who is more...)), economic woman (hustler, self-drive) {generally, stereotypes}.

Need to work on that. I wonder, if others have it like that, or just me being stupid and detached from life. / Generalising what shouldn't have been g-ed. And overthinking about things that are not real and would never happen (being too afraid of them, then to never try them XD (as, that is sad))...

*Throws hand* "I am do over" *giggle* *dramatic music* *starts to cry* *laughing it off* *cringe over all that* *trying music thoughts* *music: ritsuko* *?omodettou; music*...

 

[ZinRicky]

And also presumed we are all dudes here. - being terminally online doesn't help that

I usually stand by the "there are girls on the Internet, just not where I go" rule

 

[AnHero]

Damn, I thought this was going to be some sensationalist-tier shit like that 'Moon' guy, but this is actually great.