[amiantos]

So why isn't it called "dead social media theory"? The internet is not only social media services, though I understand a lot of people seem to think that without centralized social media services there is no reason to use the internet.

[pixl97]

Have you been on the internet at large lately? With google you may get one authoritative site on something and 50 bot copies of the site on different domains. Sometimes the stolen site is the number one return. Also, if you ran sites years/decades ago, you realized way back then the any local user posting was getting overran by spammers/bots. Now is so much worse that it's not worth doing in most cases.

So, most posts on social media aren't real.

Most user posts on non-social media are spam/not real.

Most websites in searches are copies/ad spam.

So yea, dead internet reality.

[amiantos]

I spend all day every day on the Internet and I don't share your perspective. I might dislike centralized social media and yearn for a bygone era, but just in the past two days I had a very positive interaction with multiple real humans in the Commodore 64 subreddit that helped solve a problem I was having that isn't documented anywhere else on the internet yet. So then I went on my personal blog and blogged about it, which will get it out there on Google and help others. In this way, I am helping to keep the internet alive, I guess. "Be the change you want to see in the world," and all that.

[dylan604]

> So then I went on my personal blog and blogged about it, which will get it out there on Google and help others.

That's some of the boldest optimism I think I've seen in awhile. Maybe your blog is more popular than I assume, but still

[amiantos]

Traffic stats for my primary blog are public (I only started using simple analytics in December so there's only two full months of data): https://dashboard.simpleanalytics.com/amiantos.net

[dylan604]

If you think a site with only 209 visitors in the past 30 days is going to move the needle, then I've got news for you. Especially if bots are the main source of that visitors count. That's very very close to the number of people visiting your site being you, you, and maybe your mom type of numbers. After that, it'll be skiddies and bots. Anybody that's run their own site has been there, but let's not make it out to be some grandiose site that will determine Google page ranking.

[amiantos]

Why are you putting words/desires in my mouth that I did not voice? No one said anything about moving the needle. I said that my blog will go into Google results and help people, you said that sounded optimistic, so then I provided you proof that my blog already shows in google results and receives traffic. I've received messages from real people who have been helped by my writing on my blog, so it's not just bots.

I do not know what "move the needle" means or why you think I am trying to do that. Your excessive negativity and pessimism is unwarranted and I dislike it. Honestly between you and that other guy replying to my comments with seemingly thinly veiled vitriol for my perspective, it's just further proof of my point that being able to communicate with large groups of anonymous people is typically a net negative. Most anonymous people seem to be quite nasty. I'd rather write on my blog where no one like you will see it, and if you do see it, you likely won't go out of your way to send me an email with your negative comments because it's likely you do this for public attention.

[lesostep]

I think you are looking from a very different angle. A site with only 200 visitors/month can't move a needle, but it's a valid part of ecosystem.

Tbh, for niche hobbies even one new visitor a month is a win, if they actually read the article and not skim over it. An eager enthusiastic listener is a price not easily won on the internet. Having even one per month would mean you personally taught something to a classroom of peers in a meager 2 years. Blogposts easily can move live ten times as longer.

For people that spend most of their time on small internet, sites like that are essential, because they work on another level. You know you engage with someone who has a passion for the same things you do, and had a time to polish their words. You know you can reach out for help and be kindly greeted.

This is parts of the internet that are so boring for anyone else, they are totally safe from spam and ads. That doesn't scale, can never scale, if anything like that becomes popular, the massive slopfest would follow and the slop would be sold instead of the original.

And yet those boring places – boring for everyone not interested enough – are there, and people have a way to reach to each other and talk to each other about shared interests. The internet isn't dead for nerds.

[nwhnwh]

You are a kind soul, but your mind is afraid to see reality. It doesn't matter if you share that perspective or not, and "Be the change you want to see in the world" doesn't really say anything here. See this for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kWeAhMponc, and this https://arnon.dk/the-trust-collapse-infinite-ai-content-is-a...

And check these books "Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart" and "No Sense of Place", maybe it would help you to see the overall effects of the internet (and other communication mediums) and forget this simplistic view that a lot of programmers have. The nature of the communication medium doesn't just affect the message, it shapes everything in society. Ignoring that because you had a good experience here and there won't change anything.

[pixl97]

"You can do everything right and still lose".

At the end of the day there is no real penalty for being a bad actor on the internet. They get unlimited retries on spamming and otherwise causing problems. In many ways this helps Google entrench itself as the search/ad company. No one else has the money or compute resources to continuously update the internet. Furthermore they have told us it's their job to shove unskippable ads in our faces. They'll gladly let the public internet die in the future if they can push out their own version of "SafeInternet by Google/now with more ads!".

[amiantos]

Every single one of your comments in this thread is some slippery slope stuff where you think corporations and federal government are going to work together to kill off the (public?) internet. It's okay that you feel that way, even if it's just a big ol' fallacy, but you don't need to repeat it in six different places. You made your point, you think the internet is doomed no matter what happens, great, let's move on.

[pixl97]

>even if it's just a big ol' fallacy

Really?

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/08/social-media-child-safety-in...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...

Please wake up, won't be long before someone fires off a lawsuit at HN and we'll have to give identification here.

[specialist]

Not a slippery slope. That's exactly what happened.

You've (unironically?) restated the crux of the Dead Internet Theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

Authentic human activity has been completely overwhelmed by bots and slop. Discerning signal from noise becomes too burdensome to bother with.

Of course the physical medium continues to exist.

Of course there are still humans, such as yourself, producing free content, to be harvested and regurgitated by parasites.

But authentic human activity is increasingly going out of band, no longer discoverable. Whatsapp, discord, private groups. Exactly as the theory predicted.

[nagonago]

I appreciate your positive attitude and I hope more people will adopt it.

I am also part of some very niche communities on the internet, and although they are small they are certainly thriving.

[myvoiceismypass]

To be really blunt - why do you think your blog takes will 'get out there on google' and also 'help others'?

[amiantos]

They already do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47343123

[TitaRusell]

It is inevitable that in a few years we can't even tell a real user from a bot without forensic analysis.

When AI can post a million times a day the internet is FUBAR.

[ruszki]

The problem is that average people cannot tell even now. Heck, I'm quite sure that /r/all is completely bot driven, yet I still check it occasionally. I'm not even sure about HN, but I didn't find yet so obvious manipulation than on Reddit.

[TitaRusell]

It's funny when people start accusing eachother of being chatGPT.

[mysterydip]

That sounds exactly like the kind of thing chatGPT would say to hide the fact it’s chatGPT… :)

[bfeist]

100% agree that this is what it should be called. To argue that big websites being big makes them equivalent to the whole Internet is absurd. Besides, I love the idea of the only recourse to be to go back to independently run information websites.

[dylan604]

For the younger generation, social sites are the internet. They open an app on their device, they don't go to sites by searching the web. I've seen people perform a web search in an app store thinking it was the same thing.

[burnto]

Yeah I agree. It’s an acute problem on social media platforms where there’s a market force incentivizing it. If you’re mostly engaging in specific niche interactions with known communities or people, it’s not nearly so prevalent. The internet still works fine as a whole.

[jareklupinski]

commercial internet services would prefer that you forget the internet without them can in fact exist