Title: Most of the Internet is Fake Strapline: Large proportions of the supposedly human-produced content on the internet are actually generated by artificial intelligence networks in conjunction with paid secret media influencers in order to manufacture consumers for an increasing range of newly-normalised cultural products. Part 1 - Introduction: Start with personal experience of early internet and reference internet history. The internet has changed drastically in a very short period of time. It once was a wild untamed place, but over the last two decades it has been, for lack of a better term "normalized." When I was a kid, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok, and Instagram didnt exist. What kind of content WAS on the internet back then? Small personal websites by hobbyists that didnt even try to generate revenue. Mention "netiquette", that revealing personal data online used to be unacceptable. Over the years, the internet became something "they" didn't control, and they have gone to a great deal of trouble to control it, and they now do. Bots are a BIG part of it. Mutliplatform shills are another. So, reddit, i never got into "website nationalism" so I still go there every now and then, but that place is ripe with bots (and shills, obviously). There was a post on the conspiracy subreddit, where the guy went to the politics subreddit and pmed links to a multitude of users saying "this link will record your IP address, don't click it" with a link that recorded their IP address while also recording how quickly they clicked the link. He said around 80% of users clicked the link within nanoseconds of him sending the PM, those users would then respond minutes later saying something like "you wont get my IP lying asshole." There were of course normal users who just responded "lol wat" and never clicked the link. Anyone who has ever gone to a default sub on plebbit will know, there's about 1 honest user per 10 bots and 2 shills. The rest of the internet isn't any better. There's no pm system on 4chan, so we can't know for sure, but having bashed my head against 4/pol/ these last few months, normal users are a dime a dozen. Even the discord users there to make a mess intentionally (unpaid shills) stand out because they're actual people. In the beginning, the internet was only for people that knew how to use it and were able to afford it. So you ended up with a lot of people with some knowledge of value. After that, social media kicked in, people now have cellphones, it is easier and cheaper to get online and normies take over everything. Perhaps trying to be the cool kids, ndermined the value and quality of posts and internet. Now the internet is so widely used by so many people that manipulating it is a very attractive prospect for those seeking to gain money or power. Part 2 - The Problem: Outline the basics of what appears to be happening. There is a large-scale, deliberate effort to manpulate culture and discourse online and in wider culture by utilising a system of bots and paid employees whose job it is to produce content and repsond to content online in order to further the agenda of those they are emplyed by. Already weve seen this in foreign nations influencing elections by manipulating advertising algorithms on social media in order to push specific candidates. As I see it is due to a "positive feedback loop" I Blame facebook and twitter. The internet is a fast way to get info, and info is what moves the mind, and the thing is, the mind likes recognition. When the "likes" were introduced without negative feedback they created a copy-feedback subconcious, they made it so only "positive" opinions be propagated (also accepted), and in it's way negative opinions to be obsolete. Now everyone is too cowardly to have an opinion so they copy others they like, they are more likely to follow trends and say what others said, you can also see it with the paranoia of always wanting to listen to experts. The fast feedback system of the net created a human obsession to be in with trends, getting away from it makes it so you always feel like you are missing out, to play it safe in a trend is more easy as you can copy what already is accepted. In this way, the internet and social media, which was supposed to democratise media by allowing users to create whatever content they wanted, has instead been hijacked by a powerful few. Creation of original content is how the internet used to work. Anonymous people were willing to express their opinions and try radical or experimental things. More truly original content, uninfluenced by bots or paid influencers, was created due to anonymity as protection against negative feedback. On the old internet, you could start anew every time you posted something. Now add bots to this. Make it so an opinion be repeated more and more, they are faster than us, so the positive feedback makes is so we copy the bots, and anonymity can't do anything against it because we can't influence the bot like we would a human, this is an easy weapon to manipulate people, so anyone with an agenda can use a bot, is designed in a way compared to how clickbaits are made,most won't read the content, this creates tv-like propaganda where they aren't influenced by the user and that puts bots at a great advantage over any other opinion because it wont change, and we are copying that. I believe google is one of those that makes bots, after all they work like a search engine, where they get the most accepted content first, Is the same as doing an ad. Part 3 - Why is This Happening?: Explain who/what appears to be behind this and how they generate revenue. Show evidence. Algorithms. Use Elsagate to show how prevalent we already know this problem is. Algorithms can force certain trends, sometimes random drift from AI, sometimes deliberate pressure from those in charge of ad companies and social media and large content publishers. Human content creators try to pander to the algorithm instead of making quality content. Experiments on reddit proving Amazon shill posters. Catching bots on 4chan. Use user/bot networks to gather data, force trends, sell products, silence dissent, essentially anything they want to. By controlling a fake public consciousness, you control culture and can then enact whatever you want. Corporations and governments can use this for profiteering and supressing dissent. Evidence that Chinese government may create teams of shills to influence American culture. Part 4 - How Are They Doing it?: Semi-technical description of how botnets are used. I've been here long enough to remember the days before the captcha and I always have a pang of nostalgia for that lost little bit of extra freedom and ease, but if anyone else here was around back then, you'll likely remember how frequently the site was overrun by rogue bots. It literally made 4chan unusable for days at a time. Does anyone remember the clockwork orange bot? It's the one I particularly remember, and which (if I recall) may have ushered in the era of the captcha. For those who don't remember it, what happened was that a particular still of Alex from A Clockwork Orange holding his head and screaming (NOT the famous scene where he's in the strait jacket with his eyes held open) started to get posted without any text in random threads. It looked like a standard memey reaction image at first, but then it started to get posted an excessive amount: multiple posts in a row of this image, then new threads started with the image. And to get around the script that blocks multiple posts of the same image, the picture changed colour slightly each time it was posted. Within a day or two, /b/ was almost nothing but empty-text posts of differently-tinted images of this picture. I think (and I can't remember for sure, but this is how I recall it) that moot shut down the site completely for maintenance and when it came back online he'd installed the captcha 'as a temporary fix'. An easy way for bots to get past captchas is for someone to set up a system for feeding captchas to humans at another location. Example: Mr Shill wants to get his bot to post on /pol/, but the bot can't get past the captcha. Mr Shill implements a piece of software that triggers every time his bot tries to post. The software takes the captcha image that his bot is trying to solve and feeds it into a 'fake' captcha that he has set up as a gatekeeper for a pornographic film download on a different website. Jonny Retard wants to download Ass Licking Trannies 23 and finds a link to download it on Mr Shill's website (1080p WebRip aUtHeNtIc DoWnLoAd!!!). He clicks the download button and a captcha pops up. He eagerly solves the captcha. The text he has just typed in gets copied and used to solve the captcha image on 4chan, thus allowing the bot to post. Jonny Retard is disappointed when Mr Shill's website tells him he must log in as a premium user to download this movie. Part 5 - The Effects: Describe the outcomes that we have seen so far in culture, human psychology, etc. and where it might lead. The real problem is that flesh-and-blood human beings have been directed by an algorithm to act in a way that emulates bot behaviour. Realistically-animated people pretending to be real isn't necessary when the algorithm can get real people to do its bidding. We know for a fact that this happens because it's exactly what happened in an obvious way in 'Elsagate'. More disturbing is how we might be seeing algorithmic feedback loops encouraging content creators to create certain types of pornography. Think about it: porn used to be made by a big film company that had funding to make films. The people in the company would come up with some stupid idea for a film, call up some appropriate porn actors, shoot the damn film and then try to sell it to people. Now, increasingly (and this has really only happened in the last few years), porn is created by independent users and posted online directly. They do not have funding, and are not trying to simply make a quality film that people will want to buy, but are trying to make something that will trigger the algorithm, and thus generate revenue through networks of ad revenue, data-farming, and/or micropayments.* What happens when the algorithm drifts (having no human compunctions, no understanding of morality or culture) towards increasingly bizarre and extreme content? The human content creators who are trying to ride the algorithm will respond to this change and alter their output to better fit the algorithm and trigger the correct search terms and to trigger the feed of links that bump content up search rankings. I'm not explaining this very well, but if you read the original big exposé on Elsagate, you'll know what I'm talking about. *Video games do this, too: notoriously. The business model used to be to make a fun game that people would want to play, sell lots of copies. The business model now is to make a game that keeps people playing. It doesn't have to be fun, it just has to keep people playing. Part 6 - Conclusion: Summarise the key points of what we know, the consequences, and how we might respond. Internet may have slipped out of our control. Need to raise public awareness of this. Possible solutions may be increased reliance on encrypted peer-to-peer communication software, or using less centralised networks like the idea of a p2p internet or 'meshnet'. imageboards and their "wild west" attitude have allowed for the free exchange of ideas to flow more or less uninhibited (barring jannies, pedos getting banned, etc.) >As a result, conscious or otherwise, the cream of the crop of the content that originates here disseminates to the normies in a gradual, stratified way >The structure and culture of imageboards has also made it difficult for traditional structures of power and influence to subvert effectively, which is why imageboards are pretty much the only vestige of old web type content >In an attempt to circumvent this, TPTB are trying to push bots and shills on us in a last ditch effort to drown out our own voices with ones they have more direct control over >Moreover, even if the majority of anons dismiss or call out bots or shills, it's inevitable that trolls or just low IQ anons will imitate their posts and mannerisms for attention, effectively doubling these efforts reach Every impulse in my brain is to basically say "I can't really wrap my head around the ramifications of shit like this" as a copout for shrugging it off. This happens all the time. Major, world-shaking government secrets leak and people turn their heads. Meanwhile, someone says nigger on Twitter and it's headline news for the next month. And I do it too. Tackling this stuff requires an obstinate determination to stay focused on it and to not be afraid to sound like a schizo to most normal people. There's a pretty powerful impulse in us which, when we hear something huge that could change our view of everything, rejects it to protect ourselves. No-one wants to have their whole world-view, which they've built a life upon, blown apart. Experiments on reddit proving Amazon shill posters. Catching bots on 4chan. Use user/bot networks to gather data, force trends, sell products, silence dissent, essentially anything they want to. By controlling a fake public consciousness, you control culture and can then enact whatever you want. Corporations and governments can use this for profiteering and supressing dissent. Evidence that Chinese government may create teams of shills to influence American culture. Part 4 - How Are They Doing it?: Semi-technical description of how botnets are used. I've been here long enough to remember the days before the captcha and I always have a pang of nostalgia for that lost little bit of extra freedom and ease, but if anyone else here was around back then, you'll likely remember how frequently the site was overrun by rogue bots. It literally made 4chan unusable for days at a time. Does anyone remember the clockwork orange bot? It's the one I particularly remember, and which (if I recall) may have ushered in the era of the captcha. For those who don't remember it, what happened was that a particular still of Alex from A Clockwork Orange holding his head and screaming (NOT the famous scene where he's in the strait jacket with his eyes held open) started to get posted without any text in random threads. It looked like a standard memey reaction image at first, but then it started to get posted an excessive amount: multiple posts in a row of this image, then new threads started with the image. And to get around the script that blocks multiple posts of the same image, the picture changed colour slightly each time it was posted. Within a day or two, /b/ was almost nothing but empty-text posts of differently-tinted images of this picture. I think (and I can't remember for sure, but this is how I recall it) that moot shut down the site completely for maintenance and when it came back online he'd installed the captcha 'as a temporary fix'. An easy way for bots to get past captchas is for someone to set up a system for feeding captchas to humans at another location. Example: Mr Shill wants to get his bot to post on /pol/, but the bot can't get past the captcha. Mr Shill implements a piece of software that triggers every time his bot tries to post. The software takes the captcha image that his bot is trying to solve and feeds it into a 'fake' captcha that he has set up as a gatekeeper for a pornographic film download on a different website. Jonny Retard wants to download Ass Licking Trannies 23 and finds a link to download it on Mr Shill's website (1080p WebRip aUtHeNtIc DoWnLoAd!!!). He clicks the download button and a captcha pops up. He eagerly solves the captcha. The text he has just typed in gets copied and used to solve the captcha image on 4chan, thus allowing the bot to post. Jonny Retard is disappointed when Mr Shill's website tells him he must log in as a premium user to download this movie. Part 5 - The Effects: Describe the outcomes that we have seen so far in culture, human psychology, etc. and where it might lead. The real problem is that flesh-and-blood human beings have been directed by an algorithm to act in a way that emulates bot behaviour. Realistically-animated people pretending to be real isn't necessary when the algorithm can get real people to do its bidding. We know for a fact that this happens because it's exactly what happened in an obvious way in 'Elsagate'. More disturbing is how we might be seeing algorithmic feedback loops encouraging content creators to create certain types of pornography. Think about it: porn used to be made by a big film company that had funding to make films. The people in the company would come up with some stupid idea for a film, call up some appropriate porn actors, shoot the damn film and then try to sell it to people. Now, increasingly (and this has really only happened in the last few years), porn is created by independent users and posted online directly. They do not have funding, and are not trying to simply make a quality film that people will want to buy, but are trying to make something that will trigger the algorithm, and thus generate revenue through networks of ad revenue, data-farming, and/or micropayments.* What happens when the algorithm drifts (having no human compunctions, no understanding of morality or culture) towards increasingly bizarre and extreme content? The human content creators who are trying to ride the algorithm will respond to this change and alter their output to better fit the algorithm and trigger the correct search terms and to trigger the feed of links that bump content up search rankings. I'm not explaining this very well, but if you read the original big exposé on Elsagate, you'll know what I'm talking about. *Video games do this, too: notoriously. The business model used to be to make a fun game that people would want to play, sell lots of copies. The business model now is to make a game that keeps people playing. It doesn't have to be fun, it just has to keep people playing. Part 6 - Conclusion: Summarise the key points of what we know, the consequences, and how we might respond. Internet may have slipped out of our control. Need to raise public awareness of this. Possible solutions may be increased reliance on encrypted peer-to-peer communication software, or using less centralised networks like the idea of a p2p internet or 'meshnet'. Imageboards and their "wild west" attitude have allowed for the free exchange of ideas to flow more or less uninhibited (barring jannies, pedos getting banned, etc.) As a result, conscious or otherwise, the cream of the crop of the content that originates here disseminates to the normies in a gradual, stratified way The structure and culture of imageboards has also made it difficult for traditional structures of power and influence to subvert effectively, which is why imageboards are pretty much the only vestige of old web type content In an attempt to circumvent this, TPTB are trying to push bots and shills on us in a last ditch effort to drown out our own voices with ones they have more direct control over Moreover, even if the majority of anons dismiss or call out bots or shills, it's inevitable that trolls or just low IQ anons will imitate their posts and mannerisms for attention, effectively doubling these efforts reach Every impulse in my brain is to basically say "I can't really wrap my head around the ramifications of shit like this" as a copout for shrugging it off. This happens all the time. Major, world-shaking government secrets leak and people turn their heads. Meanwhile, someone says nigger on Twitter and it's headline news for the next month. And I do it too. Tackling this stuff requires an obstinate determination to stay focused on it and to not be afraid to sound like a schizo to most normal people. There's a pretty powerful impulse in us which, when we hear something huge that could change our view of everything, rejects it to protect ourselves. No-one wants to have their whole world-view, which they've built a life upon, blown apart. [Jan 5, 2021]