Bots really are ruining the internet, and are one of the driving factors in a lot of the identity verification and age gating. Both pressures are going to combine to destroy what we once had with the internet.
It's nothing new though. Forum spam has been around since the early internet. The only difference is that spammers use LLMs now, instead of $0.08 worth of "freelance writing".
I get less concerned about LLMs taking or jobs by the day, and more convinced they’ve already taken away our internet.
There was a time of BBS and text based systems where only genuine humans could participate, and a lusty lady on mIRC was at worst some dude pretending. Now I’m half a page into HN posts and realizing I have yet again been duped into losing some life to some jagoffs lying bot and work is just as bad.
The constant drip-drip of what’s-the-point makes the whole thing seem performative and hostile.
I think that could get shot down real quick though.
Accounts/identities that are known to have been shared could be flagged as stolen and now anyone who tries to use it gets burned.
Then the question is, what happens to the poor guy whose identity was stolen? As it is I already can't view half the sites on the internet due to endless captcha loops.
Active discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47368135
Bots really are ruining the internet, and are one of the driving factors in a lot of the identity verification and age gating. Both pressures are going to combine to destroy what we once had with the internet.
It's nothing new though. Forum spam has been around since the early internet. The only difference is that spammers use LLMs now, instead of $0.08 worth of "freelance writing".
I get less concerned about LLMs taking or jobs by the day, and more convinced they’ve already taken away our internet.
There was a time of BBS and text based systems where only genuine humans could participate, and a lusty lady on mIRC was at worst some dude pretending. Now I’m half a page into HN posts and realizing I have yet again been duped into losing some life to some jagoffs lying bot and work is just as bad.
The constant drip-drip of what’s-the-point makes the whole thing seem performative and hostile.
I think the answer is to retreat to networks where there is no profit motive
The internet was a utopia back when corporations weren’t even aware that they could register a domain name
Social media and consolidation of all traffic into a few platforms has led us to the dystopia of today.
> in a lot of the identity verification and age gating
This won't change anything. Likely will just open a market for trading verified accounts and spam will continue.
Many of those are self-reporting, anyway. It's not there to stop bots.
I think that could get shot down real quick though.
Accounts/identities that are known to have been shared could be flagged as stolen and now anyone who tries to use it gets burned.
Then the question is, what happens to the poor guy whose identity was stolen? As it is I already can't view half the sites on the internet due to endless captcha loops.
Where's the dupe guy when we need him most?
Apparently there is a "conspiracy" theory that age/ID verification is secretly being pushed as a solution to bots.
https://a.imagem.app/G3QHnV.png
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