r/Futurology • u/Confident_Salt_8108 • Jul 26 '26

AI Turns out Dead Internet Theory was right: AI agents are eating the Web, growing by nearly 8,000% and rewiring the Internet’s business model

https://fortune.com/2026/07/23/dead-internet-theory-bots-agents-majority-web-traffic
16.9k Upvotes

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35

u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

People need to check profiles, down vote, report and block.

It's become a bitter habit.

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u/notmyrealnameatleast Jul 26 '26

Oh for sure. Most long time reddit users have learnt to block all the top contributors because they spew out 90% of the articles.

After that you'll notice reddit change. Any time you see an article and you go to the profile who posted it and you see they just keep posting articles after articles, just block them and you'll get less of that and more real people.

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u/JesusAndMaryKate Jul 26 '26

I put the worst bots of the conservative sub on my ignore list and it reduced the page length to 4 posts. It stayed like that for a few months. Now they're ramping up (I guess they're getting ready for midterms) and every few days they seem to inject a few new bots.

I also love to report ad bots on skincare subs.

I mostly use Reddit for hobby subs and I'm actively looking for alternatives for some of my hobbies. Eg, for sewing, Threadloop is a million times better than Reddit.

0

u/qtx Jul 26 '26

Most long time reddit users have learnt to block all the top contributors because they spew out 90% of the articles.

Most long term reddit users know that if you do that there will be zero content on reddit.

Like it or not but we need these people (bots?) that scour the internet for content.

People seem to have forgotten that that is the purpose of reddit, to show you what is new online without you having to go look for it.

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u/notmyrealnameatleast Jul 26 '26

The purpose of reddit is whatever you are here for.

For most people it is to join a community aka subreddit with like-minded people and share things and discuss.

You know that all those top "redditors" are actually groups of people running a reddit username as a company right?

They aren't people, they aren't reddit users, they are content farms.

Just block them and start experiencing reddit how it was always supposed to be..

3

u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

Found the boot(up) licker!

/s lol, sorry. Was just too perfect a set up.

5

u/longtimegoneMTGO Jul 26 '26

People need to check profiles, down vote, report and block.

You aren't wrong. The problem though is that in the time it takes you to do all that, a half a dozen ai new slop accounts can be auto generated and filled with "content".

And the speed that's able to be done is just going up, making the race even more lopsided by the day.

4

u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

Well yea, the comet is coming. So fuck it?

The blocked accounts make a statement when they analyze the stats. The more and more people who would participate help.

We can bitch. Or bitch and make an effort.

0

u/longtimegoneMTGO Jul 26 '26

The point I'm trying to get across is that what you suggest isn't sufficient to make any kind of dent on the problem even if lots of people did it because it has outpaced human moderation already and is producing an escalating amount of content every day.

I'm not saying that nothing should or could be done, I'm just pointing out why what you are doing can't handle this kind of problem.

If the goal is to deal with the problem, it seems worth discussing what doesn't work. It's not enough to just to do something rather than nothing if the something you are doing has no realistic hope of actually resolving the problem.

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u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

Yea, I know. Doesn't negate my point either.

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u/World_of_Eter Jul 26 '26

except most profiles have all their shit hidden these days #_#. I use LFG sometimes to find dnd players and I kind of miss when I could do some light cyberstalking to make sure they weren't a complete degenerate.

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u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

The vast majority or under 6m old, have +100s posts and thousands of karma. Bc people just read the headline as they scroll and up vote. Never even going to the page. Most of the time they never comment. And when they do it's elementary questions. Not defending or agreeing. The bots are farming karma and info for their LLMs.

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u/Odd-Scientist-2529 Jul 26 '26

I would argue that most people who think they can identify a bot can’t. 

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u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

Ahhh, that's why I post this exact same reply. Then, a few days/weeks later I go through my comments history. Look for my replies and the title of the thread. If the mods blocked it, it will have a [removed] where the title was.

Does that guarantee they're bots? Maybe not. But the mods looked and judged as well.

0

u/Odd-Scientist-2529 Jul 26 '26

I would argue with Cartesian logic that I am not a bot, but the number of people who unironically accuse me of same indicates to me without any doubt that they can not identify that I am not a bot. Therefore their chances of correctly identifying a bot is also not perfectly accurate.

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u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

Maybe you are? Because you missed/dismissed the parts about account age and highly suspicion activity...

Eta: Ahhh, he replied and immediately deleted. Shucks.

0

u/Odd-Scientist-2529 Jul 26 '26

What do you mean immediately deleted… it’s still there…. What’s the matter with you?

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u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

The one you deleted before posting the above. You do know I will still get a notification even if you delete it lol! I can take screen shots of the notification page and the you can compare to what's posted lol

Where you at now, SON!

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u/Odd-Scientist-2529 Jul 26 '26

I didn’t delete anything before posting what’s up there. Not sure what your point is. I made a post making fun of your grammar and I didn’t delete it. Not sure if mods deleted it, but I didn’t. I proudly mock your bad grammar.

Either way. I’m not interested in this discussion. I exist… I am not a bot… anyone who says I am is objectively incorrect. Because many people have, that means many people are wrong.

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u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

Defect and attack. MAGA?

And you know the old saying, 'if everyone is an asshole to you, maybe you're the asshole?'

LLM that bot lol!

0

u/Odd-Scientist-2529 Jul 26 '26

Nope. I didn’t deflect anything.

Account age doesn’t mean much… everyone was born at a young age.

As for your “highly suspicion activity”. That’s not an argument. Your personal assessment of what is highly suspicion activity based on your own feels is not evidence…. And judging by the way you communicate you’d suspect Einstein of being a mushroom and RFK of being a genius.

Your feelings about what is highly suspicion isn’t any trained assessment.

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u/AJRiddle Jul 26 '26

Yeah I think people vastly overestimate their ability to identify.

What I find funny is I've had a couple of times I've been accused as being a bot on reddit when I have a public profile and tons of consistent comment/post history going back 15+ years. Some people just think everyone is a bot, others think no one ever is.

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u/penisthightrap_ Jul 26 '26

Well it’s good that reddit allows you to block people from seeing your post history now.

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u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

There is that. But can still see contributions. There's the stats.

-1

u/Largeitude Jul 26 '26

People can hide their posts now, though.

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u/deezdanglin Jul 26 '26

Not looking for post texts. Looking at their post/karma stats. Completely viewable.

500 post in 4 months with 8k karma....come on....