Google · U.S. · Claude · The Atlantic Technology
The Dead-Internet Theory Is Back
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Five years ago, people who hang out in the stranger corners of the web started arguing that the internet was mostly fake.
Key facts
- The reporter spoke with Melissa Crowder, a 47-year-old from Alberta, Canada, who shared her own experience with AI texting in a July post on Reddit — It had been this way since about 2016, they said, when Google introduced its artificial neural network for machine translation
- Even way back then, in 2021, social platforms were awash in fake views, fake likes, fake traffic, and fake engagement
- In June, the Pew Research Center reported that nearly a quarter of American adults now use chatbots every day
Summary
This wasn’t true, but the core idea was tethered to a real phenomenon. Even way back then, in 2021, social platforms were awash in fake views, fake likes, fake traffic, and fake engagement. “Dead Internet” theory is seeing a revival, this time in mainstream conversation. In June, the Pew Research Center reported that nearly a quarter of American adults now use chatbots every day. The ChatGPT-iMessage integration works on your desktop, not your phone. “Low-effort communication has always existed,” Michael Pfister, a software developer living in Colorado, told me. He tried having it write a text to his friends, as an experiment, but they immediately noticed that the message was AI.