Talk:Dead Internet theory

::::The talk pages of this have had many people trying to scrape and cherry pick every source possible to advance the POV that the DIT is not a conspiracy, while ignoring every source that is inconvenient. I've been busy, and a bit stressed out, and honestly repeating myself to everyone pushing the same sources, making the same arguments, is exhausting. Doing so has got me nothing but accusations of tendentious editing or brigading. To answer your question: That source was taken to the reliable source noticeboard [[Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_487#Asian_Journal_of_Research_in_Computer_Science|here]]. Summarizing the discussion, it is published by an organization listed as predatory, and based on one AI detection software, was 95% AI-generated. The fact "academics at reputable institutions like the University of Texas" cited it does not give credibility to the article, it undermines the credibility of those authors publications, and the journal that published it, the reviewers who claim to have read it, and the editor who approved it. Great example of why the [[Argument from authority]] is a fallacy.

::::The talk pages of this have had many people trying to scrape and cherry pick every source possible to advance the POV that the DIT is not a conspiracy, while ignoring every source that is inconvenient. I've been busy, and a bit stressed out, and honestly repeating myself to everyone pushing the same sources, making the same arguments, is exhausting. Doing so has got me nothing but accusations of tendentious editing or brigading. To answer your question: That source was taken to the reliable source noticeboard [[Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_487#Asian_Journal_of_Research_in_Computer_Science|here]]. Summarizing the discussion, it is published by an organization listed as predatory, and based on one AI detection software, was 95% AI-generated. The fact "academics at reputable institutions like the University of Texas" cited it does not give credibility to the article, it undermines the credibility of those authors publications, and the journal that published it, the reviewers who claim to have read it, and the editor who approved it. Great example of why the [[Argument from authority]] is a fallacy.

::::I've been periodically reading sources on the DIT for years now, it is a very common topic for garbage, click-bait, AI-Slop publications that misinform and misrepresent the theory to people by half explaining the concept with sensationalist language. There are so many venues to publish across the world, it is impossible to know them all, and therefore necessary to start from the assumption that everything is a poor source until otherwise demonstrated. Each source evaluated takes a bit of work, which I've been doing and including sources that pass in the article. I was doing this on the table linked above that I assume you used as inspiration for this. You made this table pretty fast, probably because you spent almost no time actually checking if the sources were any good. Going through, one at a time, to do so is not something I have time to do at this moment, so the damage is done. A quick glance though, one other example of a problematic source is [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/403225277_The_Synthetic_Consumer_Singularity_of_a_Dead_Internet_Quantifying_the_Collapse_of_Attention-Based_Business_Models_Under_High-Fidelity_Agentic_Noise The Synthetic Consumer Singularity of a "Dead Internet": Quantifying the Collapse of Attention-Based Business Models Under High-Fidelity Agentic Noise]. This is a conference paper published on ResearchGate, not a peer-reviewed journal. That essentially a self published paper, anyone can upload on ResearchGate. You have at least one paper that is published on [[arxiv]], which unless it is published elsewhere, are essentially self-published. [[Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples#arXiv_preprints_and_conference_abstracts|Reliable source examples]] goes into both conference abstracts and arXiv papers. Google Scholar is only good at narrowing the results, it doesn't filter out everything, so it takes work before you accept a source. '''None of that work was done,''' and it is presented in a RfC to editors who will take the sources at face value, and requires hours of work for anyone to disagree. Hopefully, sources are actually evaluated and this isn't decided by a [[WP:NOTDEMOCRACY|vote]]. [[User:GeogSage|GeogSage]] ^{([[User talk:GeogSage|⚔Chat?⚔]])} 05:12, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

::::I've been periodically reading sources on the DIT for years now, it is a very common topic for garbage, click-bait, AI-Slop publications that misinform and misrepresent the theory to people by half explaining the concept with sensationalist language. There are so many venues to publish across the world, it is impossible to know them all, and therefore necessary to start from the assumption that everything is a poor source until otherwise demonstrated. Each source evaluated takes a bit of work, which I've been doing and including sources that pass in the article. I was doing this on the table linked above that I assume you used as inspiration for this. You made this table pretty fast, probably because you spent almost no time actually checking if the sources were any good. Going through, one at a time, to do so is not something I have time to do at this moment, so the damage is done. A quick glance though, one other example of a problematic source is [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/403225277_The_Synthetic_Consumer_Singularity_of_a_Dead_Internet_Quantifying_the_Collapse_of_Attention-Based_Business_Models_Under_High-Fidelity_Agentic_Noise The Synthetic Consumer Singularity of a "Dead Internet": Quantifying the Collapse of Attention-Based Business Models Under High-Fidelity Agentic Noise]. This is a conference paper published on ResearchGate, not a peer-reviewed journal. That essentially a self published paper, anyone can upload on ResearchGate. You have at least one paper that is published on [[arxiv]], which unless it is published elsewhere, are essentially self-published. [[Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples#arXiv_preprints_and_conference_abstracts|Reliable source examples]] goes into both conference abstracts and arXiv papers. Google Scholar is only good at narrowing the results, it doesn't filter out everything, so it takes work before you accept a source. '''None of that work was done,''' and it is presented in a RfC to editors who will take the sources at face value, and requires hours of work for anyone to disagree. Hopefully, sources are actually evaluated and this isn't decided by a [[WP:NOTDEMOCRACY|vote]]. [[User:GeogSage|GeogSage]] ^{([[User talk:GeogSage|⚔Chat?⚔]])} 05:12, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

:::::I have to say, I am not a big fan of you casting [[WP:ASPERSIONS]] about me and other Wikipedia editors who have looked at the available evidence and disagree with your conclusions. Especially when you start with an easily-checkable lie (''"...many people trying to scrape and cherry pick every source possible to advance the POV that the DIT is not a conspiracy, while ignoring every source that is inconvenient."'') Name three Wikipedia editors who have argued that "DIT is not a conspiracy". Now name three Wikipedia editors who have argued that "DIT is not a conspiracy '''theory'''", which is what I suspect you meant but were distracted by your insulting pretty much everyone else in the discussion.

:::::Wikipedia doesn't say whether something is or is not a conspiracy. Wikipedia doesn't say whether a conspiracy theory is true or false. We simple report what reliable sources say. Some sources (mostly older) say that it is a conspiracy theory. Other sources (mostly recent) say that some percentage of what is on the Internet is indeed "Dead" (not created by humans). I have never seen anyone outside of 4chan or Infowars claim that the percentage is 0% or 100%. --[[User:Guy Macon|Guy Macon]] ([[User talk:Guy Macon|talk]]) 10:04, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

* '''A''' The 'Dead Internet theory' is not the same thing as 'there are lots of bots online'. ''[[User:TarnishedPath|TarnishedPath]]''^{[[User talk:TarnishedPath|talk]]} 07:28, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

* '''A''' The 'Dead Internet theory' is not the same thing as 'there are lots of bots online'. ''[[User:TarnishedPath|TarnishedPath]]''^{[[User talk:TarnishedPath|talk]]} 07:28, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

*: It didn't use to be, but my source review shows that the definition has changed over time and become something close to 'there are lots of bots online' [[User:BilledMammal|BilledMammal]] ([[User talk:BilledMammal|talk]]) 12:00, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

*: It didn't use to be, but my source review shows that the definition has changed over time and become something close to 'there are lots of bots online' [[User:BilledMammal|BilledMammal]] ([[User talk:BilledMammal|talk]]) 12:00, 17 April 2026 (UTC)