internet

"They asked me, plain and proper: “Doesn’t the work of these archives undermine the business model of German media and by extension, democracy itself, truth, justice, and the whole Teutonic order?” Well now, the natural answer to that is another question: What undermines that business model more — a quiet archive that does not advertise its accidental remedy, or a big newspaper article that reminds precisely those who can afford subscriptions that paywalls can be avoided? What can kill their business model is a public debate that marches straight into every German living room and says: “You don’t actually have to pay for this”, that in fact it is not “pay for access”, but merely “donate for our democracy”, and who would subscribe to that? That kind of idea spreads faster than any archive ever could."

"In the autumn of 2025, I published a subpoena received from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I published that subpoena as an act of responsible disclosure. I resolved upon a simple principle: should any authority send me a legal instrument, I would publish it forthwith. And that is precisely what transpired. Since that day, I have been asked time and again: “And what happens next?” Imagine my surprise, then, when the matter spilled into the mainstream news and reached million eyes. But let us be clear: these were not news reports in any genuine sense. The standard refrain read, “We have reached out to the site’s operator and will update this story upon receiving a response.” Yet no journalist ever contacted us (only exception is Meduza, asking for an interview and a bigger article later). This was not investigative journalism; it was dissemination - pure and simple. A prepackaged narrative, delivered to newsrooms with the polite request: “Dear comrades, here is the truth - please publish it.”"

"After EDNS, captchas (that can pop up instead of any one of a hundred included JavaScript files), random de-platformings, did I miss anything? — that makes Cloudflare a kind of natural antagonist. Not exactly an enemy. More like a sparring partner you keep finding yourself matched against, again and again, in different disciplines, in different rings, each time convinced this bout will finally settle something, and each time walking away a little more bruised and a little more aware of how strange the whole fight has become."

"Honestly, the bigger trend we’re dealing with lately is front-enders shipping a hundred JavaScript files per page, so if even one of them fails to load the whole page collapses like a house of cards."

"the dead internet consists of spaces that host content that is generated by artificial intelligence but is intended for human consumption."

"The Dead Internet Theory is a conspiracy theory that suggests the Internet is now mostly made up of bot activity and automatically generated content, marginalizing human activity. The theory claims that the Internet “died” around 2016 or 2017, making it difficult to find genuine information or interact with real people online. The theory also suggests that this is done to manipulate consumers and create new cultural products."

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

"The theory that the internet is 100% dead can be easily disproven, but the theory does hint at something real. The internet certainly is full of “bots”, autonomous bits of software that are definitely not alive."

"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."

"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."

"In short, social media is becoming less about connecting humans to other people but about consuming content and getting hooked by deliberately targeted dopamine hits in our brains, leading to a multiplication of online addictions and behavioral difficulties. An emerging problem of this shift is encapsulated in the so-called “Dead Internet Theory”, which posits that the internet is predominantly populated by AI-generated content, relegating human activity to isolated instances. Ten years ago, the theory used to be rather speculative, but with the wake of generative AI, it can now be observed first-hand, and it highlights a disturbing trend: the blurring lines between human and AI-driven interactions."

"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"

"(translated) What at first glance appears to be stupidity actually has artistic potential for many observers. Is what's happening digital Dadaism? Some celebrate the movement as an ironic protest genre—a deliberately senseless response by the younger generation to an equally senseless world. While real wars rage outside and the climate is deteriorating, Gen Z responds to the absurdity of reality with even more absurdity."

"They do this democratic Disney thing that doesn’t belong to anybody."

"Despite, or because of, its weirdness, the meme became a staple in TikTok’s ever-growing catalog of “brainrot” content."

"(translated) Many dismiss this nonsense as the creative low point of a youth that is already lost. Is that fair? If art students were to show similar paintings in class, people would discuss meaning, intention, and aesthetics."

"There is also Indonesian brain rot, notably Tung Tung Tung Sahur (“which is like a stick figure with a bat, telling people to wake up for a meal during Ramadan”) and Boneca Ambalabu (“a frog with a tyre for a body..."

"By late January 2025, the “Tralalero Tralala” sound was unavoidable on TikTok. From Brat-font overlays to phonk remixes, users leveraged the audio to gain massive views. Notable creators used it in anime edits, soccer highlights, or skits dramatizing absurd betrayal scenarios."

"Yet its massive popularity with young people is worth at least attempting to wrap your head around as an indicator of the direction of travel of online culture."

"Translation in English: Once upon a time, a "Kionig Avto" microbus drove the Kaliningrad-Marijampolė-Kaunas route. The route was also "cancelled". Ivano-Frankivsk is further than Kaliningrad..."

"Translation in English: EU can even finance the monorail, if the need is substantiated, but you won't be able to substantiate a 10 billion project for train track with a Russian railway gauge."

"Original in Lithuanian: Apskritai pastebėjau, kad rusų turistai kone užgulę bene visus "karštus" ir netgi ne tokius karštus turizmo taškus visame pasaulyje (arba bent jau ten, kur man teko lankytis per paskutinius kelis metus). Čia kaip ir viena didžiausių ir lengviausių pinigų melžyklų."

"Original in Lithuanian: Kažkada anksčiau "Kionig Avto" mikrius pavažinėjo maršrutu Kaliningradas-Marijampolė-Kaunas. Maršrutas irgi "užsilenkė". Ivano-Frankovskas už Kaliningradą toliau..."

"Original in Lithuanian: ES gali prafinansuoti nors ir monoreilą jeigu pagrįsi jo reikalingumą, bet beveik dešimtmiljardinio europinio traukinių tinklo projekto su rusiška vėže niekaip nepagrįsi."

"Translation in English: In general, I've noticed that Russian tourists are almost overrunning almost all the "trendy" and even the not-so-trendy tourist spots around the world (or at least where I've visited in the last few years). It's like one of the biggest and easiest moneymakers."

"A central concern of Jihad Watch is that American laws will be replaced by Sharia law..."

"And who was this speaker, anyway? I waited to the end, enduring the nonsense of it all just to find out. It turned out to be William Dalrymple. Ah, of course. William Dalrymple, described here long ago, quite accurately, as an up-market Barbara Cartland, whose tales of trans-racial passion at the Mughal Court, or at this or that princely court in the time of the Mughals, has it all: star-crossed lovers, and of course the Splendor That Was India, or rather the India of the Muslim rulers who lived off of their Hindu subjects, the subjects who were killed by the Muslims in numbers without any historical parallel. Now a love of luxe, and of luxe combined with heaving breasts, is the kind of thing that the Barbara-Cartlands of this world love, including even the plausible sort who put in a bit more history and a little less of the Romance-novelette lord or duke or Arab prince (see “The Sheik”), who picks up the girl in her swoon at the very end (the promise of sex has always been just beyond what Nabokov calls “the skyline of the page”) — that is, William Dalrymple. He’s as vulgar and stupid as they come, behind the plummy voice and the pretense of being a historian."

"Recently, for example, PayPal blocked the Jihad Watch website in response to a spurious claim that Jihad Watch was a hate group."

"Jihad Watch is a well-known and popular website hosted by Robert Spencer that is aimed at alerting people to what he perceives as the danger of Islam to Western societies."

"Child marriage is sanctioned in Islam.Islamic tradition records that Muhammad consummated his marriage with (i.e., raped) Aisha when she was nine, and the resultant fact that child marriage is accepted in wide swaths of the Islamic world. Child marriage has abundant attestation in Islamic tradition and law."

"There is, of course, domestic violence in all cultures. So to post this is just “Islamophobic,” right? Wrong: there is domestic violence in all cultures, but only in one does it have divine sanction. Islam doesn’t teach that man may kill his wife, but once you’ve allowed him to beat her, accidents will happen."

"For Sen is an example of the Indian who becomes famous in the Great World and who wants to make sure that he can never be accused of what in India is called “communalism,” but which really means all those Hindus who are aware of their being Hindus, and aware too of what Islam did to India’s civilization of Hinduism, a way of life and thought rather than a religion as we understand it in the West."

"No surprise here. Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide."

"Why Jihad Watch? Because non-Muslims in the West, as well as in India, China, Russia, and the world over, are facing a concerted effort by Islamic jihadists, the motives and goals of whom are largely ignored by the Western media, to destroy their societies and impose Islamic law upon them — and to commit violence to that end even while their overall goal remains out of reach. That effort goes under the general rubric of jihad."

"“Islamophobia” is a propaganda term that is used for two unrelated phenomena: vigilante attacks against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology behind jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others. The goal of this conflation is to inhibit such analysis and intimidate people into thinking it’s wrong to oppose jihad terror. And it’s working great."

"SPLC and Discover Card presently combine to prohibit contributions to Jihad Watch."

"However, in some sense, that may be a blessing in disguise. At least to the extent it motivates Congress to finally address, in a bipartisan way, the defects that the past quarter century of experience has revealed."

"Petitioners respectfully pray that this Court grant a writ of certiorari to review the judgment and opinion of the United States Court of Appeals entered on June 22, 2021."

"Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields providers of "interactive computer service[s]," including websites, from claims that seek to treat the provider "as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1)."

"[Section 230] shelters more activity than Congress envisioned it would."

"In February, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, and its decision could radically alter the way that Americans use the internet."

"The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in Gonzalez v. Google — the first time the justices have taken up the fate of social media’s content immunity granted under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. At stake: whether Google is exempt from content liability after YouTube, its subsidiary, allegedly promoted terrorist videos through its algorithm."

"You can't use TikTok for now"

""Pakistan Wants to Ban TikTok for “Immorality”" by Marco Respinti, Bitter Winter (January 6, 2025)"

"Defendants did not create the Challenge; rather, they made it readily available on their site. Defendants’ algorithm was a way to bring the Challenge to the attention of those likely to be most interested in it. In thus promoting the work of others, Defendants published that work — exactly the activity Section 230 shields from liability."

""How TikTok Killed The Preteen Era by Evita Duffy-Alfonso, The Federalist (January 6, 2024)"

"Founded by Joshua Moon, a former 8chan administrator, Kiwi Farms evolved into a popular platform for creating harassment campaigns. Its users often fixated on transgender people, relentlessly stalking and doxing them. At least three of its victims died by suicide."

"Named for their ability to be milked for laughs, lolcows are Kiwi Farms’ raison d’etre and site owner Joshua Moon has devoted the majority of the last 10 years to cataloging the names, faces, and online activity of the people he deems worthy of public ridicule."

"Kiwi Farms bills itself as a "community dedicated to discussing eccentric people," though researchers who study extremist communities say it's notorious for degrading and harassing its targets – often those they perceive as deviant and many of whom struggle with existing mental health issues."

"On Kiwi Farms, every trench-coat wearing stereotype is catered for, including boards where users share videos of people being killed. No act is too extreme and the Farmers [users of Kiwi Farms] wear their homophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia with pride."