Ask Lemmy

I don't want to say never, but probably never. Regardless of AI slop filling social media there will always be places where people congregate that are at least less-impacted by these trends than others. Personally I live in Texas and aside from a few family members everyone else I know lives elsewhere in the country/world and I would have no contact with them whatsoever if not for the internet, so that's always going to be a draw for me no matter what else is going on. Also I don't think it's quite as apocalyptic as you make it out to be; before AI the big concern was 'zomg the ads will be everywhere', but then adblock came along and aside from walled-garden mobile apps I virtually never see ads. Dissatisfaction with AI slop will lead to tools meant to find, identify, and combat it, just like it has with everything else. The only danger is if we let companies wall us totally into their little app ecosystems where it's illegal to modify them to block the stuff you don't want to see.

there is not specific time to quit. Usage pattern will change over time. For me change started years ago, when enshittication accelerated, long before ai. The good, in a while ai will talk to ai without humans being involved. Lets see how ad industry reacts. The bad, all the energy wasted The ugly, somebody has to pay for all

Never.

It's still usable for pirating books and movies and tv.

I'd just have to ignore most "user-generated" content.

Dead Internet hypothesis is only applicable to user-generated content platforms.

There will always be dandelions of genuine community pushing through the asphalt of enshittification

There will always be areas online with real people. Namely, my irl friends.

As long as you can do messaging / video / voice chat, do work, taxes and groceries over cable, internet will be here. Everything else is called entertiment and it's optional. You can as well play games or watch movies or read books or listen to music instad of watching news and nothing will hapen because it's just another type of entertiment at this point.

If you're scared of music or movies generated by AI listen to music and watch movies produced before year 2020. That's it. You won't have enough time in your life to experience all of content humanity created to this point no matter how much you will try.

I see more of a future with a parallel internet similar to the dark web and fragmented local mesh networks on one side, and the other side corporate slop internet.

The internet is already, to a huge extent, untrustworthy and soulless.

When I think back to the 2000s, it was wild west. And it was fun. Not efficient but adventurous fun.

At this point today I don't care anymore. Give me the items and information I need, anything else like Lemmy is just a small bonus.

Quitting is not an option! Nor should it be. New ways to flag and call out “A1” crap should be there. It could be just a phase a lot like societies trends.

I seriously don't think that would be what happens.

Things that have gone shit with AI were things that were previously shit anyway. Unpaid intern, bot farms, AI... All the same. I don't think it would be much of an issue. I'm more worry about the ending of free adless internet. That were I've been seeing more and more of a decline.

And probably some fuckers with the excuse of "AI threat" will start to put golden walls around some spaces.

My red line is that I don't pay for things that should be free. If most of internet became paywalled I suppose I would have to live with all the data I've hoarded over the years.

Though I suspect there will always be a free internet.

I think there are going to be tools to identify networks of people and content you don't want to interact with. This website is pushed by that social media account, which is boosted by these 2000 account that all exhibit bot-like behavior? Well let's block the website, of course, but also let's see who else those 2000 bots promote; let's see who else promotes that website.

The people identified as part of that web will either be bots, disingenuous actors (trolls, state-sponsored propaganda, etc), or gullible people pushing bullshit they have given no thought to understanding.

I think the internet might just get better in the future, rather than worse. But we'll see.

We just collectively need to improve vetting sources. It's something we can do individually, or collectively through moderation.

I mainly just share pics here, but I do try to give a decent chunk of educational content as well. I take what I share seriously, because I want it treated seriously at times. I'm honest I'm not an expert, just a hobbyist. I always include sources or share if it's something from my personal limited experience. I try to verify things from at least 2 sources before sharing things if it's a new source. I always try to be clear if I'm hypothesizing about something and I'm not certain of it.

It's probably taking my content more seriously than necessary, but I take pride in what I post and I want to be seen as a trusted person in the community.

I think the last few years have made it clear to anyone capable of understanding that we can no longer just take people at their word without some process of establishing trust. Like anything else, we can wait for someone else to fix it, or we can up our own games, on both providing and receiving information.

When I'm dead.

The moment I find that there's not enough opportunity for self-growth on it for it to be worth it

Maybe (?) that's controversial but "human connection" is not the first thing that comes to my mind when I consider what I'm consuming online.

So losing the humanity of the internet sucks but I can find way to work around it.

I have pretty much just 3 websites I use regularly (here, youtube, twitch) and some random ones I look up if i need something specific. If I couldn't block ads anymore, I dont think i'll keep using youtube. I don't expect anything meaningful regarding other people outside non-corporate services anyway.

I already left mainstream social media a decade ago. I limit myself to old games, limited news sources, and direct connections with people i know in real life.

I think I largely did. I watch Youtube with an adblocker and Lemmy is my only social media. Everything else is corporate. 95% of the internet could be gone tomorrow and I wouldn't notice.

I think this is a very doom and gloom way of thinking about it. If a particular place becomes too shit then I'll quit going to that place. But quit the internet altogether? Doubtful. People are already putting ai free disclaimers on their sites and i expect that to continue. Perhaps there will even be a network of verified ai free sites.

Will things continue to get bad? Sure. But the fact that you are even asking this suggests that there are other people out there that want to see things differently.

I don't imagine quitting the internet, but I can picture the internet fracturing into smaller sites with resistance to AI through obscurity - sort of similar to how we DO get occasional spam bots on Lemmy, but it largely isn't worth bad actors' time to target this platform.

Either that, or larger platforms with some sort of verification process, but that seems like a losing battle in the long run.

Honestly, while I can still get information (of any kind) I won't quit, just use it less. At the very least, I'll use it to download DRM free music, movies, books, and TV shows and consume them offline locally.

Heat death of the universe.

Never, I have to work with it. Maybe when I retired I'll restrict everything to RSS feeds.

Never.

There's a lot to unpack here.

Lets start with the attempt to define "usefulness" as the degree to which connection to humans happens. Human connection on the internet has always been illusory. Yet we still find utility in it.

"Trusted sources" have always been 100% biased in favor of whoever owns them. We all have equal free speech rights, but some of us are more free than others because the ability to purchase a bigger megaphone scales with access to capital.

Organized, capitalized propaganda farms existed before LLMs and have been engaged in the same kind of destructive information warfare. LLMs seem to be more persuasive than the wage-slave humans employed by troll farms and other mass media outlets, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if it manufactures a more rational public opinion.

LLMs lower the capital requirement to begin competing in the propaganda war. The biggest players who could afford to buy enormous media empires and fund human-generated influence operations are going to have to compete against the rest of us.

This planet has been a soulless hellscape longer than any of us have been alive, and LLMs are more likely to improve the situation than make it worse.

Gen ai has been around for a while. It's made things worse, but it's not like there aren't real users anymore. I don't see why that would suddenly change now