I am not one for self deprecation, but I do look suspicious by those criteria. Especially since I have a habit of intentionally misunderstanding or misrepresenting things for comedic effect, which could look like a bot actually being confused.
I dunno, I think websites sandbagging their userbase and sometimes content with fake accounts has some implications for society as a whole. I think that the *entire* internet falling victim to this is farfetched, but it seems clear enough to me that the practice is at least widespread. Then again, I suppose everyone here is just jaded enough to accept or even outright assume that companies would be willing to do such a thing in the first place.
"Fake" accounts exist (they aren't really fake as such, the overwhelming majority serve a purpose and are bought and sold). This is not at issue. The issue is needing to imagine that the majority of activity on the extant Internet is done by fake accounts because you've run out of things to feed your Internet addiction, and no longer get the same rush you used to from your old haunts.
I feel like the profiles gathered on us are much more extensive than we might think. I don’t think that we’re all divided into “seperate instances” of the internet or specific websites, with the missing users filled by bots, but I am almost certain that once a profile is built on you, search results are completely tailored to bury opposing opinions under pages of spam. It’s like the internet is designed to push you down a path of radicalization, with the intended endpoint obviously being leftist. We need some kind of shibboleth to identify actual people on the internet. It can’t be a simple question and response, has to be sort of like a knock-knock joke, customizable for any situation, with the answer impossible to determine by just the question because it requires a basic degree of human wit.
I think that's an overly narrow interpretation of why people are inclined to believe this theory. I would say a lot of it is much more rooted in people's mistrust of corporations and conspiracies (real or imagined, I leave this part up to the reader) related to controlling the narrative than it is some kind of convoluted apparatus surrounding a person's internet overuse.
Pretty much this.
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I think it's Snow Crash that has "gargoyles" which are people covered in cameras and sensors that go around recording things.
Respect your adversaries, especially when it comes to political goals.
I haven't read "Dead Souls", and all I know is that uploaded (and then kinda enslaved to be used instead of AI) human minds are called gogols in those books. The guy put in a LOT of literary references in there, and I don't get a tenth of them. Starting from about a billion references to Arsene Lupin in the first novel, to just as many reference to 1001 Nights and so on... I don't really understand why they call them "gogols", I just liked the ring of it ^^I'm not entirely getting the Dead Souls reference; the dude was doing it as a tax scam.
There is a SciFi novel that escapes me now, maybe something by Gibson, where in the future most of the information posted on the internet is done by bots. And this information will be about actual events, either historical or current, just with tons and tons of articles that all have slightly different details. This is done so it is impossible to ever figure out what really happened at a given time and place.... unless you happen to hold on to an earlier accurate account of things (or hire a literal internet detective
The problem with solipsism is that you, by necessity of that belief, look like a retard while expressing it to anyone else.
