Social:Dead Internet theory

From HandWiki
Short description: Concept involving online bot activity

An AI-generated image of an object resembling the Wikipedia globe in snow

The dead Internet theory[lower-alpha 1] is a concept that asserts that the Internet consists primarily of bot activity and automated content manipulated by algorithmic curation. Originally conceived as a conspiracy theory alleging that the phenomenon is a coordinated effort to control the population and reduce genuine human interaction, the concept is also employed colloquially to describe the impacts of generative AI, emphasizing only the core observations without speculating on the driving forces.[1][2][3][4]

Supporters of the full theory claim that social bots were deliberately created to manipulate algorithms and enhance search results to influence consumers.[5][6] Some proponents also accuse government agencies of using bots to shape public perception and opinions.[1][5][7] The dead Internet theory gained renewed interest following the AI boom that began in the 2020s, with large language model (LLM) chatbots and text-to-image models emerging as technologies that could theoretically drown out human-authored content on the web.[8][9][10] In the time since, social media sites have seen a measured increase in bot activity, such as algorithmic feeds displaying low-quality AI slop at the expense of user-generated content.[11][12]

Commentators have linked some aspects of the dead Internet theory to this rise in generative content across social media.[1][10][12][13][14] Sources see the theory as having some amount of truth behind it, or as offering a potentially realistic prediction of the Internet's future.[10][11][12][15][16][17][18] One source uses the term "Dead Internet" to describe spaces online that host generative content, explicitly dropping the word "theory".[19] Within the academic literature, a "leaner" version of the theory has been discussed that focuses on core principles, and explicitly strips the conspiratorial elements.[3]

Origins and spread

Academic literature often struggles to document online subcultures and conspiracy theories, making the origins of the dead Internet theory difficult to precisely identify.[20] The first post on the dead Internet theory is thought to have originated on the image board Wizardchan.[21] In 2021, a post titled "Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake" was published onto the forum Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe esoteric board by a user named "IlluminatiPirate",[22] claiming to be building on previous posts from the same board and from Wizardchan,[1] and marking the term's spread beyond these initial imageboards.[1][8][23] The conspiracy theory spread into online culture through widespread coverage on platforms such as YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, where it was amplified by online communities and content creators.[1] It gained more mainstream attention with a September 2021 article in The Atlantic titled Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet 'Died' Five Years Ago.[24] This article has been widely cited by other articles on the topic.[23][25]

In 2023, the dead Internet theory entered academic literature when a book published by the CRC Press included a definition of the dead Internet theory in its glossary, and in 2024, when an opinion piece titled Artificial influencers and the dead internet theory was published in the Curmudgeon Corner of AI & Society.[2][15] The glossary definition discussed the full theory, while the opinion piece did not, focusing instead on AI-generated content and AI-driven Interactions. These two sources have been cited by other academic articles that discuss the topic.[16][17][24][26] In 2026, a publication in Computer (magazine) built upon the AI & Society article by distinguishing between a "Leaner" version of the dead Internet theory, centered on the core evidence, and the "conspiracy-laden" full version.[3]

The recent growth of interest in the dead Internet theory has been linked to increasing public awareness of bots, algorithmic content distribution, and advances in artificial intelligence.[27] With the increase in public awareness, a 2026 article identified that the dead Internet theory has been used colloquially to refer to the assumption that bots are creating the majority of the content online.[4]

Claims

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A broken link usually leads to an error message. These broken links over time contribute to link rot.

The dead Internet theory has two main components: that organic human activity on the web has been displaced by bots and algorithmically curated search results, and that state actors are doing this in a coordinated effort to manipulate the human population.[2][28][29] The first part of the theory is described as the main argument, and the second where the conspiracy portion begins.[29] This first part, that bots create much of the content on the Internet and perhaps contribute more than organic human content, has been a concern for a while, with the original post by "IlluminatiPirate" citing the article "How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually" in New York magazine.[1][28][30] The dead Internet theory goes on to include that Google, and other search engines, are censoring the Web by filtering content that is not desirable by limiting what is indexed and presented in search results.[2] While Google may suggest that there are millions of search results for a query, the results available to a user do not reflect that.[2] This problem is exacerbated by the phenomenon known as link rot, which is caused when content at a website becomes unavailable, and all links to it on other sites break.[2] This has led to the theory that Google is a Potemkin village, and the searchable Web is much smaller than we are led to believe.[2] The dead Internet theory suggests that this is part of the conspiracy to limit users to curated, and potentially artificial, content online.

AI Overviews, an example of AI use on search engines

The second half of the dead Internet theory builds on this observable phenomenon by proposing that the U.S. government, corporations, or other actors are intentionally limiting users to curated, and potentially artificial, AI-generated content, to manipulate the human population for a variety of reasons.[1][2][28][29] In the original post, the idea that bots have displaced human content is described as the "setup", with the "thesis" of the theory itself focusing on the United States government being responsible for this, stating:

The U.S. government is engaging in an artificial intelligence-powered gaslighting of the entire world population.[1][5]

"Weak" and "Strong" versions

A 2025 chapter in the book Market-Oriented Disinformation Research described the theory as having a "weak" and "strong" version.[24] The "weak" version of the theory asserts that there is a group of elites using bots to shape public discourse, while the "strong" version of the theory asserts that society itself collapsed because of some catastrophic event, and some entity (perhaps aliens or highly advanced artificial intelligence[31]) is keeping people connected to the internet to disguise this reality.[24]

"Leaner" dead Internet theory

In a 2026 article, Hal Berghel discussed what he called a "leaner" dead Internet theory, "stripped of paranoia, prejudice, politics and polemic."[3] In this discussion, Berghel points to the 2024 publication in AI & Society by Yoshija Walter, and lists algorithmically generated content, generative AI byproducts, the difficulty for some people to distinguish between those and human-generated content, and the resulting mistrust and misinformation as the core of the dead Internet theory. Berghel laments that conspiracy theorists take these phenomena and make implausible claims, while arguing that its core criticisms should not be dismissed.[3]

Expert view

Caroline Busta, founder of the media platform New Models, was quoted in a 2021 article in The Atlantic calling the conspiratorial aspect of the dead Internet theory a "paranoid fantasy", despite acknowledging that there are legitimate criticisms involving bot traffic and the integrity of the Internet, and agreeing with the "overarching idea".[1] A 2021 Ouest-France article, which heavily referenced the 2021 article in The Atlantic, went on to compare the dead Internet theory to flat Earth and COVID-19 conspiracy theories.[32] The article stated that even though bots do produce online content, the dead Internet theory is still not realistic.[32] In 2023 in The New Atlantis, Robert Mariani called the theory a mix between a genuine conspiracy theory and a creepypasta.[5] A 2023 book published by CRC Press discussed the dead Internet theory, specifically mentioning Google censoring the web.[2] The book included an entry for the term in its glossary defining it as:

The Dead Internet Theory is a conspiracy theory that suggests the Internet has died and that much of the content we see online is now artificially generated by AI to manipulate the world population. The theory raises concerns about the impact of AI on propaganda, art, and journalism.[2]

A 2024 IFLScience article stated:

Like all good conspiracy theories, the Dead Internet Theory takes a kernel of truth or agreed sentiment (that the internet is getting worse, and that bot activity is increasing) and twists it into something it isn't.
—James Felton[28]

In 2024, "dead Internet theory" was sometimes used to refer to the observable increase in content generated via large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT appearing in popular Internet spaces without mention of the full theory.[10][15][16][17][33] In a 2024 opinion column in AI & Society's "Curmudgeon Corner", Yoshija Walter stated that the once speculative theory is now observable with the introduction of AI generated content.[15] In a 2025 article by Thomas Sommerer, this portion of the dead Internet theory is explored, with Sommerer citing Walter and calling the displacement of human generated content with artificial content "an inevitable event".[16] Sommerer states the dead Internet theory is not scientific in nature, but reflects the public perception of the Internet.[16] Another article in the Journal of Cancer Education discussed the impact of the perception of the dead Internet theory in online cancer support forums, specifically focusing on the psychological impact on patients who find that support is coming from an LLM and not a genuine human.[17] The article cited both Walter and the CRC Press book when defining the dead internet theory, but did not mention the conspiracy aspect. The article also discussed the possible problems in training data for LLMs that could emerge from using AI-generated content to train the LLMs.[17] In a 2025 paper, Roland Leikauf described the dead Internet theory as "pseudoscientific" while questioning if new AI tools would justify our fear that the theory might become reality.[26] Leikauf cites Walter's 2024 publication for his definition of the dead Internet theory.[26] In a chapter of the 2025 book Market-Oriented Disinformation Research, it states:

What makes the Dead Internet a nameworthy conspiracy is that even though it is rooted in selective truths that are exaggerated or even taken to their logical extremes, it also draws attention to a legitimate problem.
— Carlos Diaz Ruiz[24]
Photograph of Adam Aleksic in 2025.

In a 2025 interview with Time, linguist Adam Aleksic stated that the dead Internet theory "used to be a lunatic fringe conspiracy theory, but it's looking a lot more real".[9]

In a 2026 paper published in Computer (magazine), Hal Berghel discusses a "leaner" version of the theory, without the conspiratorial elements, focusing on the core claims.[3] In this paper he states:

We must admit that some of the core principles of the DIT are convergent with our technical and historical experience. Unfortunately, the conspiracy theorists augment these very plausible observations with their own mix of biases and agendas that lead to implausibility and absurdity, which in turn leads to rejection. But it is a mistake of the first order to dismiss the core criticisms unequivocally.
—Hal Berghel[3]

Criticism

Research has shown that automated bot accounts makeup a significant portion of internet traffic, though experts emphasize that this provides no proof of a coordinated effort to replace human activity online.[27] Critiques argue that the theory is based largely on unverified observation, such as perceived declines in content quality or repetitive online interactions, rather than verifiable data. Researchers also note that many forms of bot activity such as spam filtering, Denial-of-service attacks, and web scraping serve specific functions, sometimes maliciously, but do not indicate in any way that human participation on the internet is being replaced.[34]

Researchers have also compared the dead Internet theory to other internet related conspiracy theories and note that these theories often stretch current trends, like artificial intelligence and increased bot activity, into speculative claims without using concrete evidence.[35]

Evidence

Bot traffic

In 2016, the security firm Imperva released a report on bot traffic after examining over 16.7 billion visits to 100,000 randomly selected domains, and found that automated programs were responsible for 52% of web traffic.[36][37] This report has been used as evidence in reports on the dead Internet theory.[1] Imperva's report for 2023 found that 49.6% of Internet traffic was automated, a 2% rise from 2022, which was partly attributed to artificial intelligence models scraping the web for training content.[33] A 2023 policy paper from the Institutul Diplomatic Român cited this increase in bot traffic as the basis for the dead Internet theory.[38]

Large language models

Original GPT model

Generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) are a class of large language models (LLMs) that employ artificial neural networks to produce human-like content.[39][40] The first of these to be well known was developed by OpenAI.[41] These models have created significant controversy. For example, Timothy Shoup of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies said in 2022, "in the scenario where GPT-3 'gets loose', the Internet would be completely unrecognizable".[42] He predicted that in such a scenario, 99% to 99.9% of content online might be AI-generated by 2025 to 2030.[42] These predictions have been used as evidence for the dead Internet theory.[25]

In 2024, Google reported that its search results were being inundated with websites that "feel like they were created for search engines instead of people".[43] In correspondence with Gizmodo, a Google spokesperson acknowledged the role of generative AI in the rapid proliferation of such content and that it could displace more valuable human-made alternatives.[44] Bots using LLMs are anticipated to increase the amount of spam, and run the risk of creating a situation where bots interacting with each other create "self-replicating prompts" that result in loops only human users could disrupt.[45] In an article in AI & Society, Henrique Marcos discusses the possibility of LLMs impacting linguistic communities as they become more widespread in a scenario like the dead Internet theory.[46]

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot whose late 2022 release to the general public led journalists to call the dead Internet theory potentially more realistic than before.[8][47][48] Before ChatGPT's release, the dead Internet theory mostly emphasized government organizations, corporations, and tech-literate individuals.[8] ChatGPT gives the average Internet user access to large language models.[47][48] This technology caused concern that the Internet would become filled with content created through the use of AI that would drown out organic human content.[45][47][48][49][21]

Facebook

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In 2024, AI-generated images on Facebook, referred to as "AI slop", began going viral.[53][54] Subjects of these AI-generated images included flight attendants, black children next to artwork they supposedly created, and various iterations of "Shrimp Jesus", depictions of Christ "meshed in various forms" with shrimp. Many of these posts had hundreds or even thousands of comments saying "Amen".[7][55] The images were cited as an example of the Internet of the time having begun to feel "dead".[12][56] Sommerer discussed Shrimp Jesus in detail within his article as a symbol to represent the shift in the Internet, specifically stating:

Just as Jesus was supposedly the messenger for God, Shrimp Jesus is the messenger for the fatal system [we've] maneuvered ourselves into. Decoupled, proliferated, and in a state of exponential metastasis.[16]

— Thomas Sommerer

Facebook includes an option to provide AI-generated responses to group posts. Such responses appear if a user explicitly tags @MetaAI in a post, or if the post includes a question and no other users have responded to it within an hour.[57]

In January 2025, interest renewed in the theory following statements from Meta on their plans to introduce new AI-powered autonomous accounts.[8][58] Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta stated, "We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do ... They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform."[59] These accounts were quickly removed.[according to whom?]

Reddit

"Reddit Is Killing Third-Party Applications (And Itself)" written in big white text on a black background
An image posted on many subreddits as protest during the blackout[60]

In the past, the Reddit website allowed free access to its API and data, which allowed users to employ third-party moderation apps and train AI in human interaction.[49] In 2023, the company moved to charge for access to its user dataset. Companies training AI are expected to continue to use this data for training future AI. As LLMs such as ChatGPT become available to the general public, they are increasingly being employed on Reddit by users and bot accounts.[12][49] Professor Toby Walsh, a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales, said in an interview with Business Insider that training the next generation of AI on content created by previous generations could cause the content to suffer.[49] University of South Florida professor John Licato compared this situation of AI-generated web content flooding Reddit to the dead Internet theory.[49]

Twitter

Twitter bots posting similar messages five days after the 2016 United States elections

In 2020, several Twitter accounts started posting tweets starting with the phrase "I hate texting" followed by an alternative activity, such as "i hate texting i just want to hold ur hand", or "i hate texting just come live with me".[1] These posts received tens of thousands of likes, many of which are suspected to be from bot accounts. Proponents of the dead Internet theory have used these accounts as an example.[1][23]

In September 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on Twitter (by then called X), bringing attention to the dead Internet theory.[61] He stated that:

i never took the dead internet theory that seriously but it seems like there are really a lot of LLM-run twitter accounts now.[62]

This post went viral and lead to discussion about the impact of generative AI on society at large, including online experience, human language, and education.[61]

TikTok

In 2024, TikTok began discussing offering the use of virtual influencers to advertising agencies.[29] In a 2024 article in Fast Company, journalist Michael Grothaus linked this and other AI-generated content on social media to the dead Internet theory.[29] In this article, he referred to the content as "AI slime".[29]

YouTube

YouTube is susceptible to fake views generated by computers, not human users,[63] and fake views were so prevalent that some engineers were concerned YouTube's algorithm for detecting them would begin to treat the fake views as default and start misclassifying real ones.[1][63] YouTube engineers coined the term "the Inversion" to describe this phenomenon.[30][21][63] YouTube bots and the fear of "the Inversion" were cited as support for the dead Internet theory in a thread on the Internet forum Melonland.[1]

SocialAI

SocialAI, an app created on September 18, 2024, by Michael Sayman, was created with the full purpose of chatting with only AI bots without human interaction.[64] An article on the Ars Technica website linked SocialAI to the dead Internet theory.[64][65]

Digg

On June 23, 2025, Alexis Ohanian, one of the Reddit co-founders, said he thought he "long subscribed to the dead Internet theory" ever since AI has started being able to pass the Turing test,[66] and on October 29, 2025 at TechCrunch Disrupt, Alexis reportedly told Kevin Rose, one of the original founders of Digg (a social media website originally created in 2004), "the dead internet theory is real", whilst Kevin said that he wanted to use zero-knowledge proofs to make a platform full of trusted users.[67]

On January 14, 2026, Digg was relaunched in open beta by Alexis Ohanian and Kevin Rose, but was closed 2 months later on March 14 due to an "unprecedented bot problem" among other issues,[68] and on May 11, it was rebooted again as an AI news aggregator taking from X (formerly called Twitter).[69] Digg said on their homepage, that they are doing this because of the very bot problem that shut them down in the first place.[70]

The dead Internet theory has been discussed among users of the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter).[61] Users have noted that bot activity has affected their experience.[1] Numerous YouTube channels and online communities, including the Linus Tech Tips forums and the Joe Rogan subreddit, have covered the dead Internet theory, bringing the idea into mainstream discourse.[1]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ also referred to as the dead Internet or as the dead Internet conspiracy theory. Sometimes abbreviated DIT.

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 Tiffany, Kaitlyn (2021-08-31). "Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet 'Died' Five Years Ago" (in en). https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/08/dead-internet-theory-wrong-but-feels-true/619937/. 
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Dao, Bridgit (2023). The Metaweb The Next Level of the Internet. CRC Press. ISBN 9781000960495. https://books.google.com/books?id=MKPREAAAQBAJ. Retrieved 1 March 2024. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Berghel, Hal (2026). "Generative AI is Breathing New Life Into the Dead Internet Theory". Computer 59 (1): 132 - 139. doi:10.1109/MC.2025.3616665. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/11320999. Retrieved 20 April 2026. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Boatwright, Brandon C.; DiRusso, Carlina; Pyle, Andrew (2026). "Somebody’s poisoned the water hole! Advancing social media data collection principles to account for the effects of AI slop on public relations scholarship". Public Relations Review 52 (3). doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2026.102716. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0363811126000512. Retrieved 30 May 2026. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Mariani, Robert (2023). "The Dead Internet to Come". The New Atlantis 73 (73): 34–42. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27244117. Retrieved 23 January 2024. 
  6. ↑ Gonzales III, Vic (28 June 2023). "The Internet is Dead: The Truth Behind the Dead Internet Theory". Capiz News. https://capiz-news.com/the-internet-is-dead-the-truth-behind-the-dead-internet-theory/. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Renzella, Jake; Rozova, Vlada (20 May 2024). "The 'dead internet theory' makes eerie claims about an AI-run web. The truth is more sinister". University of New South Wales. https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/05/-the-dead-internet-theory-makes-eerie-claims-about-an-ai-run-web-the-truth-is-more-sinister. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Lapowsky, Issie (May 8, 2025). "Maybe Al Slop Is Killing the Internet, After All". Bloomberg News. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/maybe-ai-slop-is-killing-the-internet-after-all. "The dead internet theory became popular in 2021, following a post from a user named IlluminatiPirate on an obscure online forum. IlluminatiPirate argued that the internet [sic] had become a vast, inhuman wasteland, filled with algorithmically optimized copycat posts. The theory blamed the entire thing on a covert government conspiracy, which made it easy to dismiss. But the arrival of tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney has made it look downright prophetic. Social media feels weirder. Search feels worse. Entire AI-generated news networks have sprung up overnight. Meta Platforms Inc. envisions a future where AI is involved in the creation of a substantial share of the posts on Facebook and Instagram. Sites such as Wikipedia are straining under the weight of AI crawlers that root around their pages, searching for fresh information to feed their models. All of this is creating a feedback loop, where AI-generated content is being created to please AI-powered recommendation systems, threatening to turn humans into bystanders." 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Ostrovsky, Nikita (10 September 2025). "What to Know About the 'Dead Internet' Theory—and Why It’s Spreading". Time. https://time.com/7316046/sam-altman-dead-internet-theory/. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Murray, Conor (13 October 2025). "Ohanian And Altman Warn Of 'Dead Internet Theory'—What Is It And How Is AI Making It Happen?". Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/10/13/ohanian-and-altman-warn-of-dead-internet-theory-what-is-it-and-how-is-ai-making-it-happen/. "Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman have warned on social media in recent weeks of the “Dead Internet Theory,” an idea that the internet is dominated by bot activity instead of humans—but experts who once dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory are warning it may actually be legitimate amid the rise of artificial intelligence." 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Knibbs, Kate (28 October 2024). "AI Slop Is Flooding Medium". Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/ai-generated-medium-posts-content-moderation/. "It also suggests a future in which the Dead Internet theory comes to fruition. The theory, once the domain of extremely online conspiratorial thinkers, argues that the vast majority of the internet is devoid of real people and human-created posts, instead clogged with AI-generated slop and bots. As generative AI tools grow more commonplace, platforms that give up on trying to blot out bots will incubate an online world in which work created by humans becomes increasingly harder to find on platforms swamped by AI." 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Ball, James (14 September 2024). "Is anyone out there? — Dead Internet Theory says that you’re the only human left online. It started out as a conspiratorial joke, but it is edging ever closer to reality". Prospect. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/technology/internet/67864/dead-internet-theory-ai. "This is the idea at the core of what became known as Dead Internet Theory, a joke-cum-conspiracy that says if you’re reading these words online, you’re the last person on the internet. Everyone else is a bot. [...] The idea began to gain traction almost a decade ago, with the “time of death” of the internet typically given as being around 2015 or 2016—but in the years since, reality has begun to mirror this once unserious conspiracy. The complaint of the modern internet is that it is filled with 'slop' content, the spiritual successor to email spam." 
  13. ↑ Vladisavljević, Radovan; Stojković, Predrag; Marković, Svetlana; Krstić, Tamara (2023). "New challenges of formulating a company's marketing strategy based on social network analysis". in Premović, Jelena. Challenges of modern economy and society through the prism of green economy and sustainable development. Educational and business center for development of human resources, management, and sustainable development. pp. 374–380. ISBN 978-86-81506-23-3. 
  14. ↑ Colls, Tom (17 May 2025). "How dead is the internet?". BBC. https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0lbq62j. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Walter, Y. (5 February 2024). "Artificial influencers and the dead internet theory". AI & Society 40: 239–240. doi:10.1007/s00146-023-01857-0. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-023-01857-0. Retrieved 8 February 2024. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 Sommerer, Thomas (2025). "Baudrillard and the Dead Internet Theory. Revisiting Baudrillard's (dis)trust in Artificial Intelligence". Philosophy & Technology 38 (54). doi:10.1007/s13347-025-00878-5. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 McLean, Aaron Lawson; Hristidis, Vagelis (2025). "Evidence-Based Analysis of AI Chatbots in Oncology Patient Education: Implications for Trust, Perceived Realness, and Misinformation Management". Journal of Cancer Education 40 (4): 482–489. doi:10.1007/s13187-025-02592-4. PMID 39964607. 
  18. ↑ "The Internet Will Be More Dead Than Alive Within 3 Years, Trend Shows" (in en-US). 2025-09-09. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a65997294/dead-internet-explained/. 
  19. ↑ Grothaus, Michael. "The ‘zombie internet’ has arrived—and it has devastating consequences for advertising, social media, and the human web". https://www.fastcompany.com/91489308/zombie-internet-devastating-consequences-advertising-social-media-human-web-dead-internet-moltbook-ai-tbpn. 
  20. ↑ Venturini, Tommaso (2022). "Online Conspiracy Theories, Digital Platforms and Secondary Orality: Toward a Sociology of Online Monsters". Theory, Culture & Society 39 (5): 61–80. doi:10.1177/02632764211070962. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02632764211070962. Retrieved 6 November 2025. 
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Berry, David M. (2025-03-19). "Synthetic media and computational capitalism: towards a critical theory of artificial intelligence" (in en). AI & Society 40 (7): 5257–5269. doi:10.1007/s00146-025-02265-2. ISSN 1435-5655. 
  22. ↑ IlluminatiPirate (January 5, 2021). "Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake". https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-theory-most-of-the-internet-is-fake.3011/. 
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Gopani, Avi (6 September 2021). "Conspiracy Theorists Says The Internet Has Been Dead Since 2016". Analytics India Magazine. https://analyticsindiamag.com/conspiracy-theorists-says-the-internet-has-been-dead-since-2016/. 
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 Diaz Ruiz, Carlos (2025). "Bots Talking to Bots: Synthetic Media, AI-Generated Content, and the “Dead Internet” Conspiracy Theory". Market-Oriented Disinformation Research. UK: Routledge. pp. 196–218. doi:10.4324/9781003506676. ISBN 9781003506676. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003506676-9/bots-talking-bots-carlos-diaz-ruiz. Retrieved 6 November 2025. 
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Naraharisetty, Rohitha (2022-10-31). "What the 'Dead Internet Theory' Predicted About the Future of Digital Life" (in en-US). https://theswaddle.com/what-the-dead-internet-theory-predicted-about-the-future-of-digital-life/. 
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 Leikauf, Roland (2025). "The human use of humans in the age of AI. A look forward and back". History Australia 22 (4): 576–579. doi:10.1080/14490854.2025.2570456. https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2025.2570456. Retrieved 13 January 2026. 
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 "What Is the Dead Internet Theory?" (in en). https://builtin.com/articles/the-dead-internet-theory. 
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 Felton, James (1 February 2024). "Dead Internet Theory: According To Conspiracy Theorists, The Internet Died In 2016". IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/dead-internet-theory-according-to-conspiracy-theorists-the-internet-died-in-2016-72617. 
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 29.4 29.5 Grothaus, Michael (4 April 2024). "Is the 'Dead Internet' theory suddenly coming true? This could be a sign". https://www.fastcompany.com/91092650/dead-internet-theory-true-tiktok-ai-influencers. 
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Read, Max (26 December 2018). "How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.". New York:Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html. 
  31. ↑ Diaz Ruiz 2025, p. 206
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 "Une théorie du complot affirme qu'internet est « mort » depuis 2016" (in French). Ouest-France.fr. 6 September 2021. https://www.ouest-france.fr/leditiondusoir/2021-09-06/une-theorie-du-complot-affirme-quinternet-est-mort-depuis-2016-73427393-4453-4b08-b85e-be4a6712844f. 
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Griffin, Andrew (17 April 2024). "Humans now share the web equally with bots, report warns amid fears of the 'dead internet'". The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/dead-internet-web-bots-humans-b2530324.html. 
  34. ↑ Zeifman, Igal (2017-01-24). "Bot Traffic Report 2016 | Imperva" (in en-US). https://www.imperva.com/blog/archive/bot-traffic-report-2016/. 
  35. ↑ "Dead Internet Theory: According To Conspiracy Theorists, The Internet Died In 2016" (in en). 2024-02-01. https://www.iflscience.com/dead-internet-theory-according-to-conspiracy-theorists-the-internet-died-in-2016-72617. 
  36. ↑ LaFrance, Adrienne (31 January 2017). "The Internet Is Mostly Bots". The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/bots-bots-bots/515043/. 
  37. ↑ "Bot Traffic Report 2016 | Imperva" (in en-US). 2017-01-24. https://www.imperva.com/blog/archive/bot-traffic-report-2016/. 
  38. ↑ Codreanu, Claudiu (2023). Policy Paper Nr. 35/2023: Departe de utopii și distopii. Impactul AI asuprasecurității cibernetice. Institutul Diplomatic Român. https://www.idr.ro/publicatii/Policy_Paper_35.pdf. Retrieved 7 April 2024. 
  39. ↑ "Generative AI: a game-changer society needs to be ready for". 9 January 2023. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/davos23-generative-ai-a-game-changer-industries-and-society-code-developers/. 
  40. ↑ "The A to Z of Artificial Intelligence". Time. April 13, 2023. https://time.com/6271657/a-to-z-of-artificial-intelligence/. Retrieved June 16, 2023. 
  41. ↑ "Improving language understanding with unsupervised learning" (in en-US). https://openai.com/research/language-unsupervised. 
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 Hvitved, Sofie (24 February 2022). "What if 98% of the Metaverse is made by AI?". Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies. https://cifs.dk/news/what-if-99-of-the-metaverse-is-made-by-ai. 
  43. ↑ Tucker, Elizabeth (5 March 2024). "New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search". https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-march-2024/. 
  44. ↑ Serrano, Jody (5 March 2024). "Google Says It's Purging All the AI Trash Littering Its Search Results". https://gizmodo.com/google-search-updates-downrank-seo-ai-generated-content-1851309904. 
  45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 Stenzel, Gerhard; Zorn, Maximilian; Altmann, Philipp; Mansky, Maximilian Balthasar; Kölle, Michael; Gabor, Thomas (July 2024). "ALIFE 2024: Proceedings of the 2024 Artificial Life Conference". The 2024 Conference on Artificial Life. doi:10.1162/isal_a_00813. 
  46. ↑ Marcos, Henrique (28 October 2024). "Can large language models apply the law?". AI & Society 40 (5): 3605–3614. doi:10.1007/s00146-024-02105-9. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-024-02105-9. Retrieved 8 August 2025. 
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 47.2 Hennessy, James (18 Dec 2022). "Did A.I. just become a better storyteller than you?". The Story. https://thestory.au/articles/ai-chatgpt-storytelling/. 
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 48.2 Beres, Damon (27 January 2023). "Death by a Thousand Personality Quizzes". The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/01/buzzfeed-using-chatgpt-openai-creating-personality-quizzes/672880. 
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 49.2 49.3 49.4 Agarwal, Shubham (8 August 2023). "AI is ruining the internet". Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-scam-spam-hacking-ruining-internet-chatgpt-privacy-misinformation-2023-8. 
  50. ↑ Hern, Alex; Milmo, Dan (2024-05-19). "Spam, junk ... slop? The latest wave of AI behind the 'zombie internet'". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/19/spam-junk-slop-the-latest-wave-of-ai-behind-the-zombie-internet. 
  51. ↑ Notopoulos, Katie. "Why doesn't Facebook just ban AI slop like Shrimp Jesus?". Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-facebook-ban-ai-slop-images-shrimp-jesus-why-2024-6. 
  52. ↑ Field, Matthew (1 January 2025). "Why the internet is filling up with nonsense 'AI slop'". The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/01/why-the-internet-is-filling-up-with-nonsense-ai-slop/. 
  53. ↑ Gault, Matthew (2024-08-07). "Facebook's Twisted Incentives Created Its AI Slop Era" (in en-US). https://gizmodo.com/facebooks-twisted-incentives-created-its-ai-slop-era-2000484110. 
  54. ↑ Koebler, Jason (2024-08-06). "Where Facebook's AI Slop Comes From" (in en). https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/. 
  55. ↑ Yang, Angela (19 March 2024). "Facebook users say 'amen' to bizarre AI-generated images of Jesus". NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-users-say-amen-bizarre-ai-generated-images-jesus-rcna143965. 
  56. ↑ Hern, Alex (30 April 2024). "TechScape: On the internet, where does the line between person end and bot begin?". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/30/techscape-artificial-intelligence-bots-dead-internet-theory. 
  57. ↑ "AI chatbots are intruding into online communities where people are trying to connect with other humans". May 20, 2024. https://theconversation.com/ai-chatbots-are-intruding-into-online-communities-where-people-are-trying-to-connect-with-other-humans-229473. 
  58. ↑ Whalen, Ryan (2024-12-31). "'Dead Internet Theory' Looms as Meta Unveils Plans to Flood Facebook and Instagram with AI 'Users'" (in en-US). https://thedebrief.org/dead-internet-theory-looms-as-meta-unveils-plans-to-flood-facebook-and-instagram-with-ai-users/. 
  59. ↑ "Meta envisages social media filled with AI-generated users". Financial Times. December 27, 2024. https://www.ft.com/content/91183cbb-50f9-464a-9d2e-96063825bfcf. 
  60. ↑ Grantham-Philips, Wyatte (2023-06-16). "The Reddit blackout, explained: Why thousands of subreddits are protesting third-party app charges" (in en). https://apnews.com/article/reddit-blackout-api-91f60aaec2eaf7cd0e3751e2fb3dd653. 
  61. ↑ 61.0 61.1 61.2 Duffy, John D. (2025). "On dead classrooms". Phi Delta Kappan 107 (3): 42–45. doi:10.1177/00317217251405525. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00317217251405525. Retrieved 17 January 2026. 
  62. ↑ Altman, Sam. "Post". https://x.com/sama/status/1963366714684707120. 
  63. ↑ 63.0 63.1 63.2 Keller, Michael H. (11 August 2018). "The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/11/technology/youtube-fake-view-sellers.html. 
  64. ↑ 64.0 64.1 Edwards, Benj (18 September 2024). ""Dead Internet theory" comes to life with new AI-powered social media app". Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/dead-internet-theory-comes-to-life-with-new-ai-powered-social-media-app/. 
  65. ↑ "What is the dead internet theory?" (in en). 2024-09-27. https://theweek.com/media/what-is-the-dead-internet-theory. 
  66. ↑ "Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian on Rebooting Social Media in the Age of AI - Tech News Briefing - WSJ Podcasts" (in en). June 23, 2025. https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/tech-news-briefing/kevin-rose-and-alexis-ohanian-on-rebooting-social-media-in-the-age-of-ai/ac946f73-0fe3-45cf-b76d-884f10319ecf. 
  67. ↑ Perez, Sarah (October 29, 2025). "Digg founder Kevin Rose on the need for trusted social communities in the AI era" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/29/digg-founder-kevin-rose-on-the-need-for-trusted-social-communities-in-the-ai-era/. 
  68. ↑ "Digg" (in en). https://digg.com/. 
  69. ↑ Perez, Sarah (May 11, 2026). "Digg tries again, this time as an AI news aggregator" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/11/digg-tries-again-this-time-as-an-ai-news-aggregator/. 
  70. ↑ "Digg - AI news, before it trends" (in en). May 11, 2026. https://digg.com/ai. "Why this approach? Bots are everywhere now - the real question is who's human, and which humans to trust. So we mapped 9 million connections, found the 2,000 voices that move first, and surface what they touch before it spreads. Kick the tires, AI news first, more topics coming soon." 



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