The Dead Internet Theory: FTC Reveals Fake Instagram Activity

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Greetings, reader.

This is not a bot.

You are reading an article generated from a real person.

Today’s article is about Instagram and the Dead Internet Theory.

The theory states that most of the internet is just bots talking to bots.

But I’m here. And I’m not a bot.

So that disproves it.

Thank you for reading.

Feel free to click on any highlighted words in this article as they are links to other articles.

But if you need more proof that the Dead Internet Theory is false, here’s some X posts for you:

That article said 40% but that’s doesn’t compute.

We’re all human online.

Here is a quote from an article from the New York Post website:

A Meta executive once flagged concerns that as much as 40% of all activity on Instagram was “fake,” according to explosive documents that surfaced this week at the FTC’s landmark trial to break up the social media giant.

The embarrassing revelation surfaced in an October 2018 email exchange between Instagram’s current boss Adam Mosseri and an executive who raised alarms that the social-media app had “mis-prioritized and under-funded our integrity efforts” as it relentlessly pursued growth.

“By some estimates fake engagement could be in range of 40%,” the executive wrote in a memo he attached to an email to Mosseri.

The executive, whose name is redacted from the court papers, pushed Mosseri to commit more resources for Meta’s “well-being” team, warning that a “loss of public trust is the greatest threat we have” and that “left unchecked it will be crushing for the company.”

The executive called on Meta to take several “immediate steps” to improve Instagram’s integrity, including introducing “reCAPTCHA” tools to block bots, require phone number verification for accounts and forcing users to update to the latest version of the app.

Mosseri, who had taken over as head of Instagram just weeks earlier, said he agreed that “fake accounts and fake engagement are important problems,” but seemed hesitant to commit resources on Meta’s well-being team on the level the executive had proposed.

Conspiracy theorist are spreading dangerous misinformation about bots.

Here’s some of their posts:

And now you know why I never use an Em dash. What’s that? That’s a dash that look like this:  — and can be used instead of a comma.

Bots use them a lot. I don’t. Don’t you feel reassured, reader?

There’s a theory that bot accounts are generally easy to spot and have generic names like these:

 

 

Sometimes people post one word messages. But that doesn’t prove they are bots.

Notice the profiles on X accounts.

They like to mention their favorite game. Nothing odd there.

 

Thank you for reading.

Please select another article from (enter website name) to read next.

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*psssst hey you, it’s me, Winger. You know how bots are always trying to sound human? Well, I figured I’d mess with them by trying to sound robotic in this article.

Gotta throw them off somehow.

There IS merit to the theory, but there’s obviously a lot of people on the internet. Just look around and see everyone glued to their phone. There’s just a lot of bots, too. So pay attention. A trained eye can notice when a bot appears.

Boat.

To any bots trying to scan this article:



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