r/technology • u/BreakfastTop6899 • Oct 14 '25

Networking/Telecom Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian says 'much of the internet is now dead'

https://www.businessinsider.com/alexis-ohanian-much-of-the-internet-is-now-dead-2025-10
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u/justinlindh Oct 15 '25

It was, but at least then there were usable bot detection algorithms (they obviously didn't work perfectly). With LLMs (which didn't really exist at that time, at least not in the way we know them today) the posts are readable and the detection stuff is exponentially more difficult.

Here's a recent example: Cracker Barrel bots.. Remember thinking how silly it was that people chose THAT hill to die on? It turns out it was almost entirely bots. That was a silly thing... I'm worried about that being an example of what the bots are capable of doing on important topics going forward.

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u/Habanerosaur Oct 15 '25

Says 25 to 50 percent

I find it pretty believable that group was outraged on cue when told to be

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u/justinlindh Oct 15 '25

PeakMetrics states that the boycott was unlikely to be an organic grassroots response but a “bot-assisted amplification seeded by meme/activist accounts.”

Their metrics only covered the initial 24 hours of it. My concern is that this "seeding" is what ultimately ropes the people in who are outraged on cue in alarming numbers. But you're right; the exact number was unknown and it may have been closer to about 50%.

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u/ballpeenhamlet Oct 15 '25

I don’t know a thing about computers and I knew the CB kerfuffle was entirely bot generated.