The Dead Internet Theory
In: Technology
Slightly more than ELI5.
There are people that use bots to boost their presence.
Have you ever seen a tweet with the same 3 comments repeated over and over on it? Or a YouTuber with 1000 subs with a 100,000 views on a video for no reason? These people are using bots to artificially inflate the metrics a website’s algorithm uses to deliver content. Essentially, they’re using robots to try to game the system.
This is done by more than just users of a website. It can be done by the website themselves. When a website makes its money by selling space for ads, there is an incentive to make it look like many people use the website and therefore see the ads. Bots can be used for this.
The dead internet theory comes from a question that arises from this. Are the comments around you real? Or are they bots used by the website to make them appear more popular? Are there ANY other real people on the internet? Or are they all bots?
When people create fake engagement for money, where does it end? With an internet comprised entirely of bots and actual people aren’t needed.
Tl;Dr – if you can make a website look good on paper, actual human users aren’t needed.
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