Category: Algorithmic Control

• The Dead Internet Theory

  This theory claims that, beginning around 2016 or 2017, the internet became dominated by bots, algorithmic accounts, synthetic engagement, and machine-generated content to the point that much of online social life is no longer genuinely human. In stronger versions, state agencies, corporations, and platform operators are said to maintain this artificial web in order to shape behavior, suppress authentic community, and manipulate public opinion. The public record supports that the phrase and theory became visible through an influential Agora Road Macintosh Cafe post in 2021, while the theory itself backdated the “death” of the internet to around 2016. It also supports that a very large portion of web traffic is automated. The public record does not support the full claim that most apparent people on the social web are part of a coordinated psyop.