Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has expressed his frustration with the current state of the internet, saying it is becoming less human and more filled with AI bots, and predicted the emergence of new social networks.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has expressed his frustration with the current state of the internet, saying it is becoming less human and more filled with AI bots, and predicted the emergence of new social networks.
«You all argue that a large part of the internet is dead right now,» Ohanian said. He mentioned the «dead internet theory,» which claims that there is more bot activity online than people, Business Insider reports .
The Reddit co-founder believes the internet should be the opposite of dead, with «live viewers and live content.» He said that «evidence of life» is needed to keep attention.
«I think we’re going to see a new generation of social media that will be human-verified, because right now everything happens in group chats,» Ohanian said.
A conspiracy theory that claims that the Internet after the 2010s consists mostly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithms, marginalizing organic human activity.
Proponents of the theory believe that these bots were created intentionally to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results to ultimately manipulate real users.
Group chats have become very popular in recent years. It’s not just text messages; users are also turning to apps like Telegram and Discord to connect with people. However, they are also starting to use artificial intelligence to create and edit their messages.
Ohanian noted that these group chats are the gold standard, but they are not «new technology.» «There has to be some next iteration of this because that’s where we’re all getting the best information right now,» he said.
Earlier this year, after Meta CEO Connor Hayes announced plans to launch AI-powered accounts on Facebook and Instagram that were indistinguishable from humans, reporters found dozens of similar bots from the company’s early experiments. Real users were reluctant to interact with them because they were little different from accounts that ask for AI birthday wishes.
