Our Hometown Blog

In our latest podcast, the Our-Hometown team shares their insights on an episode by ColdFusion on the Dead Internet Theory, a concept suggesting most internet activity is the work of bots. They believe this issue, driven by profit and occasional geopolitical interference, is a significant challenge we need to address.

The video discusses a study showing only 57.7% of internet users are human, with harmful bots making up 27.7%. It’s alarming to see the proportion of humans on the internet at its lowest in eight years, while bad bots are increasing at a rate of 5% per year. The team believes the growing abilities of generative AI will impact these numbers in the future.

They also touch on the different types of bots, the use of plugins to identify bots, and the issue of bots spamming comments on YouTube videos. They discuss the implementation of CAPTCHA and the need to mitigate security risks, and the use of two-factor authentication (2FA) for user security.

The video concludes by discussing the creation of an AI version of an influencer named April Isabella and the potential for AI influences on social media platforms like Instagram. They warn about an inversion point where YouTube bots would make up a larger percentage of viewership than real people, distorting analytics and making it harder to identify real traffic from fake traffic.

The team encourages us to develop critical thinking skills and technological literacy to combat the wave of low-quality AI-generated content. They believe that developing safeguards like content credentials is as important as the development of the technology itself.

Chapters

00:00 – Intro
02:33 – Dead Internet Theory
06:23 – Bots and Bots
21:05 – AI Influencers
23:52 – Fake on Facebook
25:28 – Turing Turns
29:25 – AI and Trust
32:17 – Final Thoughts

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