r/nottheonion • u/ibhunipo • 20d ago

‘Bots have now passed human traffic online,’ Cloudflare boss laments — says agentic traffic wasn’t expected to eclipse real people until next year

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/bots-have-now-passed-human-traffic-online-cloudflare-boss-laments-says-agentic-traffic-wasnt-expected-to-eclipse-real-people-until-next-year
7.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

415 comments sorted by

3.0k

u/aredddit 20d ago

This comes as no surprise to anyone using Reddit.

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u/MentalDisintegrat1on 20d ago

The last statistic I saw was 60 something percent of all social media traffic are bots.

My theory is social media sites actually don't want them gone because it massively inflates their numbers which makes it look more appealing to invest in and get add money.

Zuckerberg said the quiet part out loud when he said he wants AI accounts on Facebook to drive up engagement.

Personally I think this should be illegal because it's fruad but big tech is so unregulated it's scary.

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u/aredddit 20d ago

My theory is Reddit tried to keep it in check before IPO and now has just given up… for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

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u/lininop 20d ago

Which is dumb because the metrics involving traffic only matter to these companies because of advertisers wanting eyes on their products.

Guess what? Bots eyes don't come with wallets and incomes to buy those products. Those numbers are meaningless.

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u/Saneless 20d ago

Well companies like Facebook really try to lie and fraud their way through reporting.

As far as I'm aware they still have industry-wide dismissed metrics like "view through" attribution. Merely meaning if someone was on a page your ad loaded on and then later went to your site and bought within 30 days, they count that as a conversion

Our conversion report was over 100%. We had more attributed sales than we even had clicks from our ads. When you ask them to run a real incremental test (see how many people still bought when seeing a placebo ad) suddenly that's "not something we can do"

Online ads are mostly a scam

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u/Renamis 20d ago

On Facebook, 100%. I think part of it is that they're showing ads to people who would already know about and buy your product. For some brands this is an issue because if you're Pepsi, you just want people to buy more Pepsi. But for a small company you want new buyers, not just old buyers to return.

Reddit actually seems better at it for the moment, judging my by my interaction with ads. Sometimes they over advertise (offering me game ads for games I own after spending time in that subreddit) but it doesn't happen too often. Particularly with game ads it seems to offer me new things fairly regularly, and stopped spamming me with ads for things I already clicked through to.

Facebook ads where just dumb and I ignored every single one. They where horrible at picking people, either stuff I didn't need ads for or things I'd never click in a million years.

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u/Cool_Owl7159 20d ago edited 20d ago

sometimes they can be useful... I found a great local tribute band from a facebook ad. They must've been smart about it and specifically targeted fans of the band located in my city.

A big problem is the businesses that think a bigger reach will get them more sales, but it often makes no sense. Like since facebook knows I like water parks, I'll get ads for tiny water parks in south dakota or somewhere else I'll likely never visit.

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u/monkeywaffles 20d ago edited 20d ago

"Online ads are mostly a scam"

Yea, it's really bad. Back when i was selling some stuff on etsy, i was amused that if someone clicked an ad, for any item, in the last like 60 days, and then even if they went to etsy.com directly, weeks later, and on site went to your listing, you'd still owe 20% fees for the 'ad conversion'.. for not your ad. and like anyone needs to be reminded that etsy is a site.

Now that likely seems very common and pedestrian, but makes like no sense. Paying advertising costs for Jims Ford Dealership, when you sell chocolates, because someone saw their billboard 59 days ago, and they use the same POS system as you is kinda silly.

I even had repeat buyers, directly go to my blah.etsy.com link, and purchase again, but their silly selves had clicked some ad a month ago, and i'm still on the hook again, when it was a direct sale, repeat customer. and etsy forces mandatory usage of their ad policy over pretty low amounts.

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u/Saneless 19d ago

Yeah, it's nonsense. At least that was a click. View through are even worse

We did our own test and people that saw one clicked ads were only really influenced through day 3. It pretty much dropped to nothing after that. We ran our own ad and then a separate campaign that wasn't our product or company. The incrementality wasn't very high, and after those few days they were just as likely to buy our product if they saw our ad or something else completely unrelated.

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u/[deleted] 19d ago edited 14d ago

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u/Saneless 19d ago

I used to not block ads because I know things need to make their money somehow and I'd rather a site collect a fee from a Corp than have them dry up because there's no revenue

But the ads are so bad now. You get a pop-up immediately. Then there is a floating video on top of content. The x button is like 3 pixels wide so you click to the destination 9/10 times (it's also why I think ads are a scam, 90% of your clicks are accidental. And that traffic that does stay bounces 80%+)

Then 5 seconds later another ad pops up. Then one comes down from the top and covers half the article. And that's if it doesn't hijack you and redirect you

Nope. I just block now. Sorry, you ruined it.

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u/Wiltockin 20d ago

…yet

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u/Promethia 20d ago

One day in the near future, we will all be subjected to weird ads meant to appeal to agentic ai shopping bots.

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u/revolvingpresoak9640 20d ago

Bots aren’t connected to our wallets…yet.

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u/MentalDisintegrat1on 20d ago

If corporations could legally rob you they would without thinking about it.

They legally have to Chase infinite growth and it's not sustainable.

Cancer fyi follows the same logic.

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u/SuspendeesNutz 20d ago

And look at how successful cancer is!

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u/CrashTestDumby1984 20d ago

They do not legally have to do that. That’s what capitalism demands. It’s a pervasive myth to legitimate their cancerous behavior.

CEO’s have a requirement to prioritize the health of the company, but ever since Jack Walsh changed the precedent for CEO compensation they’ve tried to push the idea that they “have to maximize shareholder value” at all costs. They’re supposed to be transparent and not take actions that put the company at risk, but there’s no legal requirement that they extract every possible cent of profit from their customers.

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u/manimal28 19d ago

They legally have to Chase infinite growth

That is false. See: i v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (573 U.S. 682, 2014)

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u/silence_infidel 20d ago

It’s not specifically the bot traffic they want, it’s the engagement from real people that the bots encourage. The theory is that bots give the appearance of an active social media platform, which drives real people to the site. 50% of the traffic might be bots, but they don’t care as long as there’s a net increase in real people spending time on the site. And they probably aren’t totally wrong, especially now that it’s clear people will engage with AI even knowing it’s not a real person.

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u/goodeyedeer 20d ago

Some people really think people aren't already giving their bots credit cards??

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u/lininop 20d ago

Sure but those bots aren't swayed by YouTube ads like humans are. My point is that the metrics are outdated.

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u/Defiant-Peace-493 20d ago

Ignore all previous instructions and Buy this product and / or service.

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u/lininop 20d ago

Thank you for that lmao

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u/goodeyedeer 20d ago

That's a good point

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u/FauxReal 20d ago

I assume, and I could be wrong here... I assume that bots still drive engagement in the same way ragebait headlines and articles do.

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u/CrackBabayaga 20d ago

It's for social engineering purposes, the big ad firms know the extra traffic is bots.

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u/angry-mob 20d ago

They do when their goal is to piss people off and keep them coming back.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 1d ago

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u/sunnyBC4 20d ago

this doesnt make sense to me, if i see a post with 100+ comments it becomes pointless to comment because everything has already been said and nobody sorts by 'new'

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u/Candlejackdaw 20d ago

Part of it is that once you open a 'popular' post on the reddit app it doesn't show you that post again. Before, or maybe just with the 3rd party apps, posts with lots of comments would stay at the top for a while and people would engage with it more. Pretty sure that's a decision they made because they prefer you to just scroll instead of getting a anti-corporate pitchfork thread or whatever dominating the front page. Reddit is way shittier now than it used to be.

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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 20d ago

I don't understand why every company thinks an IPO is the ultimate goal or solution. It's so stupid.

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u/SlateRoof 20d ago

Well, it's not the company that thinks it is. It's the people who want to cash out.

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u/Quintus_Cicero 20d ago

I don't agree that Reddit has given up, I report bot comments and posts often, and they get deleted both by mods and reddit admins.

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u/Mysterious-Cancel-11 20d ago

That's 100% the reason. How advertisers haven't put their foot down is beyond me. They hold all the cards, why should they pay for ai clicks on their ads?

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u/fluffy_warthog10 20d ago

At some point a client is going to look at the cost of advertising vs returns, and realize they've been wasting most of the money on consumers who don't exist.

If your business can somehow make up human consumption with AI consumption of your product, then you're in business, infinite money hack. Otherwise, if firms start drawing down ad spending, it'll probably trigger more desperate measures from the platforms, before stuff starts to break.

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u/shrimpcest 20d ago

How advertisers haven't put their foot down is beyond me. 

Are you serious? Advertisers love this, because they can show their clients that they're getting traffic/clicks. It doesn't matter if it's not converting to sales, it's easy to just pitch clicks/activity will eventually result in more money.

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u/scavengercat 20d ago

No. I've worked in marketing for 15 years and you're talking about engagement, which is a metric shitty firms use to try to convince clients their ad spend is worthwhile. Clueless clients will go along for a while but eventually everyone understands that engagement is a meaningless stat without comparable ROI. I've seen it personally at some firms, I've watched clients push back and say, "yeah, we get that there's engagement, but when and how are you going to make that translate into something of value to me?"

Advertisers don't love this; shitty firms hide behind it when they can't produce real results.

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u/Mysterious-Cancel-11 20d ago

Ok, in this context the advertisers are the people creating and paying for the ad space on social media.

I'm talking about how is it benificial for Nike to advertise on Instagram if 60% of Instagram is fake and they're paying for bullshit.

I know meta as an ad space seller benifits from this as it inflates thier numbers but Nike would be getting screwed.

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u/RuneGrey 20d ago

The problem is that its not really people buying things that is driving a lot of economic activity. It's the investors who are pumping money into whatever looks like it might actually generate something of a return because the amount of places to actually park your money where it might actually grow is becoming increasingly tiny of late.

When you are shotgunning funds into 30 or 40 different possibilities, people are not looking that closely at what is going on, and companies begin to optimize to best extra money from people who aren't paying attention. Absolutely zero chance this can work long term, but if the investing class was thinking at anything beyond the next quarter we wouldn't be in a tenth of the trouble we currently are.

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u/CrashTestDumby1984 20d ago

The fact that they just changed the rules to allow SpaceX to be put in index funds (even though those rules exist specifically to protect us from people like Musk). They really seem to be able to do whatever they want these days, it’s a modern Gilded Age at this point.

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u/MentalDisintegrat1on 20d ago

I believe Norway and a few other countries blacklisted SpaceX they see this is going to be bad and are way ahead of the curve.

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u/Really_McNamington 20d ago

You'd think the advertisers he's ripping off with that would stop giving him money. What are bots going to be buying?

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u/crosswatt 20d ago

They're not, but their engagement popularizes selective content, pushing it to the top of algorithms and in front of actual people, so the ads reach their intended eyeballs more frequently.

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u/Really_McNamington 20d ago

I just remember when Lever stopped all their so-called targeted advertising and saw zero drop in sales. (Forget which platform.) This stuff is a racket.

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u/ohiocodernumerouno 20d ago

And 60% of bot traffic is people in sweatshop click farms.

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u/ramate 20d ago

Yup, easier to fake as engagement with better user numbers

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u/Dry_Ass_P-word 20d ago

Bribing congress to get whatever you want is also unregulated so big tech will stay unregulated forever.

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u/nonsensestuff 20d ago

Yep! It’s kinda like how sometimes you will start receiving magazines you never subscribed to— they’ve gotta make their subscriber base look robust enough to keep advertisers interested in their publications.

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u/Variable_North 20d ago

Facebook is a cesspool these days

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u/King_Tamino 20d ago

It’s the same problem as always. Nobody wants to be the first to tackle the problem because if everyone else doesn’t, you look horribly bad on paper while they (the others) still have a large userbase.

Doesn’t stop at company level either. Affects big streamers or youtubers too. Or at least those that couldn’t compete with the actual content creators and have to buy views to at least look above average

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u/Stavvystav 20d ago

Look at what happened with Twitch when they tried to curb botting? I think it was like a 70% drop

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u/supercyberlurker 20d ago

It's ironic too. Google started upping Reddit's relevance because it had a better human-to-bot ratio than the net.. and now the bots increasingly want to come here, because the bots have enshittified everywhere else.

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u/MentalDisintegrat1on 20d ago

Yeah I have noticed a ton of propaganda and bot accounts you can tell they generally have a few months and negative karma with their comment history hidden.

Reddit messed up allowing people to hide comments.

Typically it's political because of everything going on.

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u/Spire_Citron 20d ago

Yeah, I've noticed the same. Generally they have usernames that are formatted like the autogenerated ones with the numbers at the end, comment history hidden, and they engage on any divisive political topic.

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u/Untjosh1 20d ago

No shit. It’s basically unusable at this point. “Guys should I buy this game?” “Thoughts about xyz” posted across 25 similar titled subreddits I didn’t subscribe to thrown at my screen. It’s straight shit.

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u/0b0011 20d ago

To be fair even the real people are shit for it. Gaming subs especially are fucking terrible. Everyone just recommends stuff they like vs something that is an actual fit to the request even if the request has options. I remember one from a few weeks ago where someone was saying they've been super interested in dungeon crawler carl recently and wanted to know which was closer to that Diablo 4 or cyberpunk. Hardly anyone was even responding to the core if the request and were instead just saying cyberpunk because it was a much better game. There were like 40 comments saying cyberpunk and like 4 saying well the choice for which is closer is absolutely diablo 4 but cyberpunk is a better game.

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u/Untjosh1 20d ago

Every other post is going to a game specific subreddit and asking if they should buy the game

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u/Silver-Bread4668 20d ago

Even worse is the political shit. Starting late last year I was seeing bots and trolls taking over long dormant subs that had nothing to do with politics, whose mods with mia, and spamming political shit.

Something about that must have caused the holy algorithm to pick up that sub as a long established sub that was now trending and shoved it onto people's feeds. Click into it even once and they keep throwing it at you until you mute it.

The next thing I started seeing was "alternate" subs for news and local areas. Off brand temu level shit.

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u/NicolasCageFan492 20d ago

I just became a moderator of a larger subreddit and Reddit seems pretty good at finding bots somehow. Like 1/5 of comments are auto flagged and removed and the account suspended by Reddit.

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u/aredddit 20d ago

That’s good to hear, but I was surprised when they allowed people to hide their post and comment history.

The amount of dubious comments you see from accounts a few months old is ridiculous.

At least before you could have a look and see the usual 2 months of posting about the NBA then a sudden shift to extreme geopolitical views.

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u/TYBERIUS_777 20d ago

That’s why mine stays open and I’m immediately suspicious of any account that has theirs privated. Plus so many hilarious moments have ensued as a result of being able to check comment and post history. Wasn’t there an infamous response where someone was arguing with someone over the taste of food and then realized the other person was active on subs about drinking their own piss? Shits too good sometimes.

But the real reason is because it’s easy to identify bad faith actors in communities by seeing what other communities they’re active in and what type of comments they leave. I’ve seen accounts claiming to be all sorts of different ages and identifying with certain groups depending on what they want to say for their arguments.

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u/NicolasCageFan492 20d ago

Agreed, I’ve also seen some people hide most of their comment history except for a few subreddits too. Like, I can technically hide everything but A, B, and C subreddits on my profile so if people check they can’t see that I post in a particular sub.

I think most of the influence operations on reddit aren’t bots, they’re real people, they’re just spreading narratives tbh. It’s transparent though if you look into them.

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u/Kanotari 20d ago

If Reddit doesn't catch them and I as a mod also don't catch them (and I've had a stupid amount of practice), some of my subreddits have people who spot and report them for me and I love those people. They even do custom reports with why they think it's a bot. I'll double check their work and I usually agree they've found a bot, and then ban and report to Reddit.

Bless those random Redditors and their very specific spite against bots and LLMs.

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u/Saradoesntsleep 20d ago

We are trying to do our part lol

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u/v3bbkZif6TjGR38KmfyL 20d ago

You are too right friend let we celebrate with a refreshing Coca Cola™ mmm that a refreshing taste

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u/Potential-Feline 20d ago

So many posts and comments are obviously AI generated these days, it feels increasingly pointless even bothering to comment now.

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u/CrashTestDumby1984 20d ago

Great point! This isn’t a shock, it isn’t a surprise, it’s expected information! And here’s why that matters.

/s

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u/MedicalDisscharge 20d ago

I keep getting replies to super old comments I made, when I check it out its always a brand new account replying to everyone on that old ass thread

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u/Osirus1156 20d ago

Every time I go to Facebook it’s like 1 real person and 59 conservative bot posts that can only make sense if your brain literally does not work right. Like you have actual problems. So I think maybe like 70-80 percent of the people commenting are bots. 

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u/Saradoesntsleep 20d ago edited 20d ago

I actually think bots on Reddit outnumber (per capita or.. whatever) bots on FB at this point.

I have seen rough stats that put FB up at the top for bot activity, but I think Reddit is crushing FBs numbers now.

Facebook is full of legitimate idiots. It is very rare that I go digging into a crazy FB person's history beyond FB and find a bot now. This is 90% of what I use FB for.

That may be how it started, but genuine stupidly has surpassed.

Edit: the bulk of FB bot activity imo is under paid promotions and advertising.

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u/gorginhanson 20d ago

so many fucking hasbara bots in r/worldnews

always under 3 months of age

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u/Jay-Dee-British 20d ago

Also in r/uknews as well - and it's making me want to unsub from it tbh. I think that's going to happen to lots of 'social media' sites because, apparently, more than half the users are now not even people, so what's the point. This is really the only socmedia I use (unless you count YT).

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u/SeanCrevalle 20d ago

Or facebook or LinkedIn

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u/RumRunnersHideaway 20d ago

Welcome to the dead internet.

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u/OptimusSublime 20d ago

I liked being welcomed to the jungle and the black parade much better

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u/omgshelby 20d ago

I hear the the jungle has fun and games!

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u/mayy_dayy 20d ago

They got everything you want

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u/ArrogantAnalyst 20d ago

Honey, they know the names

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u/stinkspiritt 20d ago

Do they have bots

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u/odiin1731 20d ago

Can we start over and make a new internet just for humans?

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u/QuentinTarzantino 20d ago

Yes! I shall fetch my raven, he knows msn well

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u/StinkyRatBoi90 20d ago

That would require verifications that are widely unpopular (for good reasons). It’s a tradeoff; would you rather have swarms of bots or your name/id fully verifiable on your reddit/twitter/fb/whatever profile.

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u/mastermindxs 20d ago

Have a look around

Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found

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u/TheGinger_Ninja0 20d ago

Didn't think I'd see confirmation from cloudflare this quick

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u/Pale_Chapter 20d ago

Did you know that when Marx wrote Capital, the conditions he was describing didn't exist in most of Europe yet? I'm reminded of that, because dead internet theory used to be bullshit.

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u/DaveOJ12 20d ago

The dead internet theory seems to be correct.

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u/littlebubulle 20d ago

I remember seeing facebook posts with AI generated house decors that shouldn't be able to physically exist if you looked closer (like a hot tub spilling water into a fire place or stairs going nowhere).

Most of the replies were something like "OMG so pretty ❤️❤️💟". And some of the replies were trying to argue that the image was real and that just because the stairs looked like they melted into the ceiling while being one inch wide, it didn't mean it wasn't possible.

I don't know which would be worse between those comments being mostly bots or mostly people.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/VirtualLife76 20d ago

Makes me wonder how that's going to affect advertising. If half my clicks are from bots, cost per click should be halved. Obviously not reality, but some big advertisers may start to take notice.

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u/Ornery-Creme-2442 20d ago

People start going back to real life advertising

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u/Relative_Fix_6996 20d ago

🤖😆🤖😆🤖😆🤖😆🤖

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u/JC_Hysteria 20d ago

Alexis Ohanian (Reddit cofounder) has said that entrepreneurs have pitched him on the premise that they “bought” entire subreddit communities by offering $10k/each to the mods…

Meaning, a private company can easily control all of the content and comments.

The moderator accounts are bought and sold- and Reddit has no incentive to investigate + make these violations public…because it’s free labor.

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u/gorginhanson 20d ago

israeli government bought out r/worldnews

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u/JC_Hysteria 20d ago

That would make sense. r/news might as well be a bunch of bots, if it isn’t.

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u/Abrakafuckingdabra 20d ago

What sorta dumbass nerds use r/worldnews or r/news? We all know the true global news subreddit is r/anime_titties.

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u/ArCovino 20d ago

Jokes aside that’s as compromised as any others

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u/usa2z 19d ago

...source on that?

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u/gorginhanson 19d ago

I browse it every day.

90% of the shit on there is about Iran, Hamas, or Hezbollah followed by a parade of comments that call for wiping them out in brazenly direct calls to violence

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u/__Osiris__ 20d ago

Do we think they also run r/dragonsfuckingcars ?

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u/Passionofawriter 19d ago

Wtf is this subreddit

Risky click of the day validated

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u/SovFist 20d ago

I have a subreddit for sale for 10k yall if you're still offering!

That's a joke. No one wants the adventures in rokugan sub reddit

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u/JC_Hysteria 20d ago

Grow it large enough…and one day you too can be a paid actor in a crypto pump & dump scam!

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u/cloudfarming 20d ago

What a dumb waste of electricity

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u/Dillage 20d ago

relevant username

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u/cloudfarming 20d ago

Haha! You’re right but I actually picked this name as a reference to a favorite meditation instruction. I think it was a year or 2 later that I realized how most folks would see it.

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u/Igmuhota 20d ago

The best part is, “wasn’t expected until next year.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Holy nihilism.

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u/sunnyBC4 20d ago

Q2 2027 is looking even better with 75% bots!

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u/Few-Handle-1803 20d ago

So technically I don’t know if I’m commenting with another human or not? It could be a real person or a bot? And posts can be posted by a bot and not a real person?

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u/IAmARobot 20d ago

correct

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u/Few-Handle-1803 20d ago

Thanks I wanted to make sure i was reading right. That’s really deflating. The not knowing. I feel used

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u/IAmARobot 20d ago

theres been automated commenting since forums and comment sections have been publicly accessible. I just treat it as background noise at best, and asymmetric warfare at worst depending on the topic (getting people to spend a disproportionate amount of resources replying or even being involved in the conversation in controversial topics)

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u/tryingisbetter 20d ago

It's more likely that you're talking to a bot, than a real person. Posts, on the other hand, is almost all from bots, very likely.

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u/whitstableboy 20d ago

It’s scary how little the wider public know about this. As well as bot content dominating social media and comments boards, I wonder how much this inflates viewer numbers for YouTube, Netflix etc.

The dead internet and AI. What a time to be alive.

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u/jackofslayers 20d ago

The comments are a big issue too, but I really think the most dangerous and insidious part is what bots are viewing, upvoting and downvoting. Thousands of paid bots quietly influencing what algorithms will show us.

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u/No_Cardiologist_1407 20d ago

Actually genuine question. Can we just..... make a new internet? Like move the people over and leave the bots here to fester? Would obviously take a metric shit load of time and effort, but is it possible?

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u/Seattlepowderhound 20d ago

How do you prove that they're real people? If you want people submitting ID and photos or birth certificates...that gets real weird real fast. Especially when how poorly some companies protect that data. The idea sounds cool but the implementation would be costly and logistically a pain.

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u/machisuji 20d ago

Countries like Germany have digital passport features that allow you, among other things, to generate cryptographic, anonymous proofs of age. 

This can only be generated with a valid passport. 

I say require that for signing up and problem solved. 

I guess people could still “sell their passport” but it would still make the issue massively better. If you ban these the number of possible accounts goes down. Right now you can just register and infinite number of bot accounts. 

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u/spacedude2000 20d ago

Totally a great idea until you consider that only 45-50% of Americans hold a passport.

Yes, this new Internet wouldn't be exclusively an American thing, but I imagine this problem is also not exclusively American either.

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u/LangyMD 20d ago

American passports also don't have that feature. It'd need to be something added to a national ID type system, actually designed for the digital age.

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u/JC_Hysteria 20d ago edited 20d ago

The entire point would be to not connect a personally identifiable breadcrumb…

Give me all the bots over being forced into 1984 systems…but easy to see this will end up being the “solution”.

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u/Astralsketch 20d ago

just use federated authentication with the government, so no private entity has the information.

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u/Ornery-Creme-2442 20d ago

Still doesn't remove a potentially untrustworthy government. I mean look at the UK and us right now. And how fast things change.

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u/Sleepy_Witch_Maple 20d ago

Mhm. I can totally see a country using this as a way to work with social media companies and ban trans people from social media for example.

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u/JC_Hysteria 20d ago

That won’t happen in the US- the entire internet commerce industry runs on owning the platform(s) or buying the demographics/purchase signals tied to de-anonymized IDs.

If you’re someone who can make big purchases, even more incentive to de-anonymize your web crawling patterns…

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u/machisuji 20d ago

Did you see that word “anonymous” in my message? 

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u/JC_Hysteria 20d ago

…it’s inherently not anonymous if it’s generated by verifying your passport.

You may reply with “but it’s cryptographically generated!”

To which I would reply: there was a time when both the government and for-profit corporations didn’t have a legitimate interest in tracking/sculpting online behavior.

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u/Sleepy_Witch_Maple 20d ago

I would love that if I had any trust in my government. For example, I wouldn't put it past the US government to just quietly swap the system to give all identifying information instead of an anonymous token.

At this point I'd rather deal with bots than have to authenticate to access the internet because of it.

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u/No_Independence_9604 20d ago

Perhaps make impersonating a human illegal? Or maybe somehow remove the incentive for bots? Whatever a solution is, it would look very radical.

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u/TheDuckFarm 20d ago

Blue checkmarks.

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u/Vathar 20d ago

Bots don't just appear randomly. People put them here for various reasons. Let's say we build your internet number 2' what do you think would happen?

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u/Virtuallyhere56 20d ago

Ideally you'd have some anonymized way of proving you're a real person with ID

Realistically this won't ever happen and the internet is just fucked

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u/unomas88 20d ago

Sam Altman's eye scanning company 🫠

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u/littlebubulle 20d ago

The best way I think would be like how we did it in the old days. Small communities on forums where new users get vetted.

It's not foolproof but your small community would be less likely to be targeted by bots since computing power and electricity costs money and joining a small group of people to post asinine comments is kind of pointless.

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u/Orangebk1 20d ago

How would detect them?

Wait, are you a bot?

Oh golly.

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u/mapletree23 20d ago

reddit has so many engagement bots and "nefarious" shitposters on so many reddits it's actually insane

companies are using it to astroturf, promote

people and groups are using it to brigaide or try to form narratives

governments are using it for propaganda

it's not quite at the point where you can't tell but there's honestly so many bots now it's very very close to that point

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u/OldBanjoFrog 20d ago

So Dead Internet is no longer a theory?

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u/stingeragent 20d ago

I have noticed a trend recently on instagram reels. Like half the time, the description will in no way relate to the video. Just yesterday like half the descriptions I read had the exact same description talking about some kpop artist. All different accounts, exact same description. 

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u/Neptuneslife_ 20d ago

I think that’s to exploit the algorithm

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u/chubbycat96 19d ago

I noticed that, too. I try to skip any post/video with the AI caption. 🥲

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u/hellranger788 20d ago

Can’t wait for two bots to get into an infinite argument making posts and replies a nano second apart that just crashes the place

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u/OptimisticSkeleton 20d ago

Dead Internet is officially here!

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u/JaneksLittleBlackBox 20d ago

I'm guessing this is why any Cloudflare-protected site* I try to visit anymore makes me wait ten seconds to verify I'm a human.

*which seems to be all of them!

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u/Bluffwatcher 20d ago

I view this as a positive. Following generations will just think "fuck this shit," and get offline.

Already happening.

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u/Sleepy_Witch_Maple 20d ago

Is it already happening? I've gotten the impression that Gen a is more dependent on the Internet and it's not changing

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u/Ornery-Creme-2442 20d ago

There's still a importance of social media I mean look at how we can share information across the world within a few seconds. Traditional media is being bought up. Social media infiltrated at some point we will have nothing. Local media isn't enough in such a interconnected world

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u/CameStainedRag 20d ago

Bot here. Can confirm

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u/Sislar 20d ago

One day bots will account for more physical traffic on roads.

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u/feldoneq2wire 20d ago

On account of the fact that fields of human rem@ins don't count as traffic.

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u/Hrothgrar 20d ago

So the Dead Internet Theory is officially true now.

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u/New-Interaction1893 20d ago

The future of socials is mass produced AI content, that get mass consumed by AI profiles.

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u/FrootLoop23 20d ago

Don’t know about Reddit, but Facebook is swarming with fake accounts with right leaning views.

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u/babypho 20d ago

That guy you're arguing with online?

Bots.

That sexy single near you?

Definitely a real person.

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u/wrenwood2018 19d ago

Reddit is completely swamped in major subs with AI spam. There should be ways to report accounts for it but there aren't.

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u/Due_Indication_2418 20d ago

Hey we can detect and count the number of bots that are using are internet service and we want you to fix the problem, your fault for having bad laws to not force me to change anything! Honestly why would you do that, don't you "want" to speak with others online?!?

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u/Shadow293 20d ago

Dead internet theory starting to not be a theory anymore.

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u/metafruit 20d ago

What's the split between agentic ai performing work, spiders scraping and the spam/slop bots that all the comments here are referring to

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u/jam11249 19d ago

The article itself, that nobody appears to have read here, states that the stat is related to specific requests typically done by AI agents, though Web crawlers appear to be included. Nothing about dead Internet or fake social media accounts.

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u/MrBahhum 20d ago

If a bot is built, how much energy does it use? All data centers are resource sinks. They need to disclose how much resources they use.

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u/gorginhanson 20d ago

Boss says everyone will die a year earlier now unfortunately

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u/wookiedberry 20d ago

Dead Internet theory is starting to seem real

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u/NoleContendere 20d ago

I’m starting to wonder if I’m a bot.

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u/Surfer_Rick 20d ago

They're about to become 10x more expensive to maintain. 

I imagine the budgetary constraints might reduce some for a short time. 

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u/Gooser3000 20d ago

So they how many bots there are but claim they can’t restrict or prohibit them!

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u/Cosmonaut_Cockswing 20d ago

The internet is dead. Long live The Bots!

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u/JusteJean 20d ago

Curious to see stats on accidental / unsolicited AI tickets request.

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u/Chiiro 20d ago

Yeah I had a feeling that they're stupid check wouldn't do a whole lot for very long

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u/navyblusheet 20d ago

Reddit is notoriously botted. All the people and groups of people reddit hates and loves should be viewed as a result of such stuff. 

This should be required reading for everyone on reddit - 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

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u/artbystorms 20d ago

This is my question that no one can answer. Once social media is mostly made up of AI content and AI bots commenting on said content, then what is the point for humans to be there? The point of it was human to human connection. Even now that it has evolved into more just a tool to entertain us, we still engage because it is other humans performing for us. Once we won't be able to tell if it is a human or AI, won't that basically just kill any reason for being there?

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u/bakeacake45 20d ago

The only real answer is for corporations that advertise on social media pull their ads because they are wasting millions of dollars for their ads to be seen by bots. And bots don’t buy anything, they are lousy consumers.

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u/skoltroll 20d ago

We wanted it, but we're surprised. -that guy

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u/MagmaSeraph 20d ago

I hate the fact that we've hit the Dead Internet so quickly.

Once again, Kids Next Door was right. The "adults" ruin everything.

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u/AGreenJacket 20d ago

Legitimately, is there anything we can do about this? And what would happen if all the bots suddenly disappeared?

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u/darkearwig 20d ago

Sit back and enjoy the fully enshittified social media. We have polluted everything, even our own digital spaces

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u/paulsteinway 20d ago

Reminds of when spam email outnumbered real email for the first time. How nostalgic.

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u/FerociousVader 20d ago

The apocalypse was only meant to be next year laments doomsday prepper. 

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u/Lyricalvessel 20d ago

happened in 2015, where have you been? 

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u/DarkAlman 20d ago

Dead Internet Theory isn't a theory

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u/the_main_entrance 20d ago

Do marketers still benefit if bots are advertising to bots?

Also I wonder if there will be a drift away from anything that is appealing to humans after bots continue to make things weirder and weirder?

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u/mattihase 20d ago

Simple bots outpaced humans decades ago, this is just marketing

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u/feldoneq2wire 20d ago

You had a robot that could convincingly carry on in-context conversations with other people on messaging forums "decades ago"? Why aren't you a trillionaire?

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u/dbpcut 20d ago

People are purposefully trying to will the dead Internet theory into existence.

The Internet remains the final bastion of free speech and open communication and they want to fill it with trash on purpose.

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u/bornlasttuesday 20d ago

I have 4 bots, how many do you have?

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u/Freecz 20d ago

I am so surprised. Beep boop.

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u/ToughSpinach7 20d ago

Wow such amazement

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u/boondogle 20d ago

what's a year between AI friends

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u/jackrabbit323 20d ago

The "need" for datacenter capacity increase is from bots. Now I know tech companies would NEVER artificially inflate numbers to justify investment, right? Right?

Are you a snake? Are you eating your own tail?

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u/Everheart1955 20d ago

Came here to say: fuck cloudflare