TIL about the "Dead Internet Theory" Some think that since ~2016 most of what we read online is cranked out by bots and AI. They point to armies of government- or corporate-run scripts that flood comment sections, fake trends, and bend public opinion.

Apparently, there is some research to back it up by Imperva's that says 40.8 % of web traffic came from bots, and ~25% of those were flat-out malicious (scraping, brute-forcing, etc.). Then there are full-blown AI influencers—algorithmic “people” racking up thousands of followers with zero human behind the selfies.

When I would run Google Ads campaigns for finbox, I would often feel like we were just being spammed by bots.

That's the excuse anyway. More likely, I was just bad at buying ads. ¯_(ツ)_/¯