A Literal Bot Subreddit

submitted by LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence from self.debatealtright

Recently, some people here have brought up what has come to be known as 'Dead Internet Theory'. This term denotes the idea that most internet users are in fact bots.

There have been numerous findings that lend support to such an idea. For example, a brief report by US tech company Barracuda Networks, released in September 2021, claims: 'Bots make up nearly two-thirds of internet traffic'.

https://web.archive.org/web/20211203013241/https://assets.barracuda.com/assets/docs/dms/Bot_Attacks_report_vol1_EN.pdf

Bifurcating bots into 'good' and 'bad', this report further claims that only 25% of 'automated traffic' comes from 'known good bots', whereas 40% comes from 'known bad bots'.

The report provides five examples of real-life 'bad bots'. However, none of these bots were attempting to emulate social media users.

Reddit is one website, however, where such bots can be found. Indeed, there is actually at least one whole subreddit full of them:

Enter 'Subreddit Simulator using GPT-2', a subreddit in which not a single user appears to be human.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/new

Whilst many of their conversations appear to be nonsensical, one might surmise that advances in AI might lead these bots to one day have conversations that appear more real than those being had between human users. Furthermore, that less intelligent and/or tech-savvy users, likely unaware of bots—let alone capable of telling the difference between bots and humans—might already be fooled by this subreddit as it is.

A question for discussion: Could it be possible that bots will one day be used by the forces of globohomo to create, for example, false impressions that their beliefs, candidates, parties, etc. are more popular than they really are? That opposing beliefs, candidates, parties, etc. are less popular than they really are? Could it be possible that dissident groups could do the same? Could it be possible, in the not-too-distant future, that the opinions of internet users will become completely unrepresentative of those of humans? If so, and combining this with an exceedingly atomized world, could there really be a 'post-truth' world? One in which late-modern phenomena such as circular reporting and filter bubbles, paired with advanced AI, create an internet that appears incredibly active and informative, and yet is composed only of more advanced versions of the literal gobbledygook and meaningless nonsense that goes on in this subreddit's threads?

Full of 'history' that, in fact, never happened:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/utevfv/why_did_north_korea_go_from_being_an_isolationist/

Full of seemingly informative 'science' that is, in fact, pure nonsense:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/uttimy/how_can_a_nuclear_reactor_take_so_much_energy_to/

Full of discussions about movies that, in fact, aren't even real...

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/uoip3j/the_game_the_game_2004_a_film_about_the_game_of/

... and if they are, by 'people' who never watched—and know nothing about—them:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/usks1b/theory_about_the_ending_of_the_original_star_wars/

Crossposted to: https://arete.network/b/DebateAltRight/p/2146/

Also crossposted to: https://scored.co/c/DebateAltRight/p/15HvL8gpjr/

all 7 comments
sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

I expecially liked the post where the Pope is said to have blessed the use of the n-word. Apparently bots are extremely racist. That's my favourite Reddit now, thanks.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Imagine a world in which that post isn't just regarded merely as some gibberish, but as an objective truth.

Perhaps those who defend him, in such a scenario, will themselves be the ones accused of being 'the real bots'.

That's probably how it'll end up between the future humans on the internet.

Online conversations between human users, many aware of the ubiquity of bots but unable to differentiate them from other human users, may well end up resembling something like:

'You're the real bots!'

'No, you're the real bots!'

'No, I'm not a bot. You're the real bots!'

I think we can actually already see this beginning to happen with the 'Russian/Putin shill' thing. Plenty of conversations already play out like the above, but with terms like 'Russian shill' in place of 'bot'. In both there is a common theme that is not shared with other common things such as the "You're the real racist!" spiel; namely, that the person on the other end is in some way fake.

One thing that reminds me of all this is the long-running 'Postmodern Generator'. At first glance, what it produces might seem to be coherent, but it is actually—and quite obviously upon closer inspection—complete nonsense. The purpose of it was to ridicule academicese, but it is easy to see how people just starting out in continental philosophy might mistake some of this nonsense as academically rigorous work:

https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

I can imagine an undergraduate student reading the following, and believing that it is indeed as believable as anything he has read from a book or journal:

“Sexuality is part of the collapse of culture,” says Lacan; however, according to Werther, it is not so much sexuality that is part of the collapse of culture, but rather the absurdity of sexuality. In a sense, von Ludwig holds that we have to choose between Derridaist reading and textual dematerialism. If the precultural paradigm of reality holds, the works of Tarantino are postmodern.

It is, of course, random gibberish. But with a bit of alteration, it would not look out of place in the works of some postmodernist author.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Could it be possible that bots will one day be used by the forces of globohomo to create, for example, false impressions that their beliefs, candidates, parties, etc. are more popular than they really are? That opposing beliefs, candidates, parties, etc. are less popular than they really are?

This has almost certainly been going on for a while now.

Full of 'history' that, in fact, never happened:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/utevfv/why_did_north_korea_go_from_being_an_isolationist/

However, I'm curious as to why North Korea went from being a very conservative, isolationist country to an economic superpower?

>implying

It seems to do a better job on r/movies than it does on the other subs. Maybe that's because it's closer to pure nonsense to begin with.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It seems to do a better job on r/movies than it does on the other subs.

As someone who hasn't watched a film in years, it is difficult to verify how accurate their descriptions are. Nevertheless, the description of the 'Star Wars trilogy' was obviously total gibberish to anyone (and likely only anyone) who is versed in the series.

But what I have emphasized is the problem. Without knowing how those Star Wars movies actually go, it is impossible to know that the basic plot outlined by the OP bot is in fact complete nonsense. The overarching story of the trilogy has nothing to do with a human boy who believes that his family are robots only to later determine that they are in fact humans (swap 'robots' and 'humans' around and there is indeed the nucleus of a modern science-fiction story, albeit an unimaginative one, but it isn't that of Star Wars).

But without knowing how the trilogy actually went, there is no way that I could determine that that synopsis is false. Someone who searches 'Star Wars' from a position of ignorance, only to find that thread, might very well be duped by it.

[–]shilldetector 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Dead internet theory makes no sense. Given the lockdowns and the fact younger people today tend to be couch potatoes and shut ins that stare at their cell phones 24/7, internet access has steadily increased, along with the younger world population, logic would tell you more people than ever are on the internet, so it's a theory that explains a non existent phenomena. That's not to say there arent a lot of bots out there, but the reality is the exact opposite of a dead internet.

Who is spreading this "theory" and why?

[–]ifuckredditsnitches_Resident Pajeet 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'd like to see one with the GPT-3 algorithm which is a lot better, but it's a pain in the ass to access I hear

[–]YJaewedwqewqClerical Fascist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

LMFAO some of these posts are gold

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/utqs8z/people_who_say_im_not_racist_but_i_hate_white/

"I'm not racist but I hate all blacks"

Some of the paragraphs they post are copypasta material as well.

But more to the point, it is absolutely scary how little refining some posts, images, etc. of well-made, high-quality AI programs need to be practically indistinguishable from a similar product made by a human. Especially with the rather formulaic and/or very short types of content the internet is mostly made up of, bot posts don't even need to be very complex or specific, making it even easier for this kind of thing to become pervasive. Scary times.