“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 do believe there’s a very real risk of several related scenarios but it can be a good thing. Hear me out.
One of my favorite answers to the Fermi Paradox - why we don’t encounter other life in the universe - is that civilization is a tool not a goal. This hypothesis implies that as soon as civilization empowers individuals enough to be self sustainable they retreat to their own space ships as cooperation and conflict are simply undesirable. If you can quantum print anything you want and you have an AI interface to educate, entertain you and be your safe gate to a shared network then why would you spend all that effort to group together?
If this hypothesis has any merit then we’d first see this happen on the digital space. Instead of interfacing to lemmy where there are straight up lies you need to verify yourself and conflicts you need to endure you can have a AI interface that abstracts all that away from you.
Is this dead internet? Kinda, at least of current understanding. Is this bad? Only if we risk capture by allowing manipulation of these interfaces. This is why libre software is critical for our future - we must trust out software if we delegate such responsibility to it.