Bots Now Outnumber Humans on the Internet. Here's What That Actually Means (CNET, 6/15/26)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/bots-now-outnumber-humans-on-the-internet-heres-what-that-actually-means/

The internet was built on the assumption that there's a human being on the other side of every screen. That assumption no longer holds. Cloudflare's Radar tool now shows agentic AI bots generating 57.4% of web requests globally, with humans accounting for just 42.6%, a milestone that arrived well ahead of even the most aggressive projections. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince had predicted bots would surpass humans by 2027. It happened this month.

-snip-

The agentic bots Prince is referring to are the systems that search the internet on your behalf when you ask an AI chatbot a question and return the results. Those searches and visits generate real web traffic, even if it doesn't look that way from your AI chat window. The data means that more AI agents are visiting these webpages than real humans. Humans still physically engage with content more than AI does, but AI visits webpages more often.

-snip-

The idea behind Dead Internet Theory is that bots and AI generate most of the internet's activity. The theory seemed far-fetched to many when it emerged in the late 2010s, but it's becoming harder to argue against as data like Cloudflare's becomes public.

The implications become more concerning with additional context: Forty percent of Facebook posts are estimated to be generated by bots. Music-streaming service Deezer announced in April that 44% of new music uploaded to its platform is now AI-generated. And a report from Axios posits that AI generates 52% of all online articles (though not this one -- honest).

It's important for people to hold the line against AI as much as possible.

We need human dialogue in a message forum.

Facebook and YouTube have become flooded with AI slop because it was tolerated, even encouraged.

If you have to play with AI because you think it somehow makes you creative or more intelligent (even though the actual work's done by AI trained on the world's intellectual property stolen by AI robber barons), please at least keep it off forums intended for human communication. There are forums elsewhere for AI addicts to show off stuff they had AI generate for them.

I've mentioned before that seeing a lot of AI slop on DU will turn off liberals who are very opposed to the AI bros and the harm generative AI does. I've posted responses that AI slop gets from liberals on Bluesky to try to make that point clearer.

No one can look like a credible opponent of generative AI, data centers and the AI bros if they're promoting or, worse, generating AI slop. That AI slop is part of the reason AI bros want those data centers. The ability to use AI to pretend you can do something you really can't do is bait to create addicts.

[msongs]

1. on FB i hardly ever see a post from an actual "friend", just spam based on previous views

how many 3 minutes clips do I really need of golden girls and lucy lol

[highplainsdem]

2. I wish Zuckerberg.had run that platform better. But he makes a lot of money off the ads anyway

(especially since they often allow ads even when they know they're scams), and he thinks all the AI crap will increase engagement on the platform.

And of course now he wants everyone wearing Meta smartglasses so they can spy on everyone around them and he'll have that data, gathered while the Meta AI is using facial recognition to tell the user just who they're looking at. And maybe suggesting what the user should talk about, so we can end up basically talking to bots wherever we go.

As QualComm's CEO said recently, the goal is to have us constantly in an AI web.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221279347

A nightmare for us. More money from data-gathering for them.

[TheProle]

3. I don't use AI for anything related to DU

and understand the passion behind your crusade (though I think you play a little fast and loose with distinctions between AI and generative AI), but even so, this is pretty patronizing:

If you have to play with AI because you think it somehow makes you creative or more intelligent (even though the actual work's done by AI trained on the world's intellectual property stolen by AI robber barons), please at least keep it off forums intended for human communication. There are forums elsewhere for AI addicts to show off stuff they had AI generate for them.

[highplainsdem]

4. I've always been very clear that I consider using illegally trained generative AI - if you know it's

trained on stolen IP as everyone here should - to be unethical, unless you're forced to do so by your job or school.

There's nothing "fun" about playing with generative AI that's built on theft, as the head of the American Federation of Teachers found out on Bluesky last winter when she foolishly posted AI slop there:

American Federation of Teachers president thought AI slop would be "fun" to share on Bluesky. Big mistake.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220895596

If you support unions (DUers should) but still think it's OK to post AI slop, see the hundreds of Bluesky replies
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220895856

Using genAI tools built on theft is a slap at everyone whose work was stolen to train the AI, and it looks especially bad in a forum for liberals who are expected to support workers against exploitative corporations.

It isn't patronizing to point out that there are forums specifically for people to show off what they generated with AI. Those forums are the best places for it, and if AI users are determined to keep using it and want feedback from others who use it a lot and can give helpful suggestions, that's where they'll get that feedback.

Anyone using genAI and posting everything they generated could fill up an entire 30-page forum on DU in a day, because it requires little or no effort or even thought. But no matter how much they post, what they have AI generate doesn't represent their own work, or communicate much of anything about them except that they enjoy using genAI and don't care about all the harm it does, or about the fact it was trained illegally on stolen intellectual property.

That's why what's AI-generated is inappropriate on a board for human communication. Individual AI users and fans might think it's okay for them if there aren't a lot of others currently posting AI slop, but if even a small group did, this board would quickly drown in it.

As YouTube and Facebook are now drowning in AI slop and AI misinformation, making it harder and harder for people who put real thought and work into what they create and post to get any attention.

I'm not going to pretend that there's any real creativity and artistry in using AI. I have too much respect for real artists.

And I have too much respect for research and facts to think posting AI-generated text here, including AI overviews, is a good thing.

If I pretended that people using genAI were actually being creative and expressing themselves - their own creativity and thoughts - THAT would be patronizing.

As I posted here before, AI users don't have to know anyrhing about what AI generates for them. They could give a music generator the name of a type of music someone else gave to them, a type of music they'd never heard of, and if it's in the training data, the AI will spit something out. Same thing with the Latin name of a plant or animal that means nothing to the AI user. Same thing if they requested an essay about a historical event or figure they'd never heard of.

The main "work" most people using genAI do is sorting through what are often lots of AI-generated options to find one that seems most appealing, and then posting it as "their" work. When it's much more like shopping online with keywords than real work and creativity.

[GenThePerservering]

5. I have this fantasy of people starting to walk away from most of the internet

and letting it just chatter away to itself while we exist in the real world, in the fresh air away from the stifling confines of places like Fuckerbook and Shitter.

[highplainsdem]

6. We may have no choice, if we want to keep our humanity and sanity, rather than watching bots post and

more bots compliment them, with too many of the humans left on forums pretending to communicate by lobbing AI-generated posts into the bot-filled wilderness.

I would hate to see that happen.

[moondust]

7. Probably slowing the connections

of real people. I've suspected that for a while. Would data centers speed up connections for everything?