Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian says 'so much of the internet is dead'-and the rise of bots and 'quasi-AI, LinkedIn slop' killed it | Fortune

"In the last four years, the "dead internet theory" emerged as a conspiracy claiming the online world was being taken over by bots and automatically generated content run by an algorithm that would eventually thwart human activity online and control the global population. Last month, OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman came to a similar conclusion: "i never took the dead internet theory that seriously but it seems like there are really a lot of LLM-run twitter accounts now," he wrote on X."

"According to Alexis Ohanian, investor and Reddit co-founder, there's some truth to the idea, and a new era of social media will emerge because of it. "You all prove the point that so much of the internet is now just dead-this whole dead internet theory, right, whether it's botted, whether it's quasi-AI, LinkedIn slop," Ohanian said speaking to the hosts of the TBPN podcast on Monday. "Having proof of life, like live viewers and live content is really f-king valuable to hold attention.""

"Data from cybersecurity firms increasingly confirms the worldview of the IlluminatiPirate. Nearly one-third of all internet traffic has come from bots over the last 12 months, according to data from cybersecurity platform Cloudflare. Meanwhile, Imperva's "Bad Bot report" in July found nearly 50% of internet traffic was coming from non-human sources, including 20% from "bad bots" taking part in malicious activities."

Dead internet theory asserts that bots and automatically generated content increasingly populate the web, displacing genuine human activity and skewing online interactions. Cybersecurity measurements indicate a substantial share of recent internet traffic originates from automated sources, with estimates roughly between one-third and nearly half and a non-trivial portion engaged in malicious behavior. Automated accounts can produce generic comments, fake pageviews, and inflated engagement metrics. The rise of non-human interaction increases the value of verifiable human signals. Platforms and creators are placing greater emphasis on live viewers and authentic content as a countermeasure.

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