“The “Dead Internet Theory” is a concept suggesting that the internet has largely been abandoned by humans and replaced by non-human activity. It posits that most online content, interactions, and engagement metrics are driven by bots, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, creating the illusion of a vibrant, human-driven web.”
I think that a lot of it is a result of forms of interaction that are easy to falsify and which real people are not expected to exercise judgment on. Fake likes, views, and upvotes involve little that can be scrutinized at the user level and are mainly a negotiation between spammers and a social media company. Those companies favor organizing their sites around these sorts of shallow metrics, and selling a passive experience that confers or requires next to no social agency, because they want to be able to treat the people using their services as commodities they own.
These problems would be greatly diminished with social networks that are actually social.