this video is sponsored by the online personal information removal service in cogy protect your data and personal information from data Brokers and search sites use my link in the description to get 60% off in CG's annual plan on Tuesday December 15th 1970 season 2 episode 12 aired of the comedy sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus the title of the episode was spam in the episode there is a sketch also titled spam in which a husband and wife are lowered on wires into a cafe filled with Vikings once sat the husband and wife asked the waitress
about the meals available at the cafe the waitress proceeds to describe each menu item to the couple nearly every item has the canned meat spam in it some dishes are just Spam with multiple sides of spam spam spam spam egg and spam one dish is described as when the woman customer declares that she does not like spam and she wants a meal without any the waitress denies her request and suddenly the Vikings around them begin to sing spam spam spam spam lovely spam wonderful spam the interaction devolves further and further as the Vikings chants and
waitress's screams and supportive spam increase droning out the conversation into indiscernable absurdity then the sketch essentially ends and the customer we can reasonably assume does not get a meal without spamming it although this montypython sketch had nothing to do with media or the internet it would strangely and powerfully force for shadow forthcoming conditions of media and the internet and would ultimately lead directly to the term spam being used in Internet vernacular in the context of media and the internet the term spam broadly refers to excessive irrelevant unwanted insincere or repeated communication or content as a
result of the Monty Python sketch in the 1980s an early online chat rooms message boards and virtual games users would repeatedly type spam along with other quotes from the mon python sketch in order to knock the text of other unwanted users or competitors down and offc screen and gatekeep discourse around the same time the term spam would also come to be used to refer to the repeated and excessive posting of the same messages on file and message sharing n works of course it only helps and is all the more fitting that spam the canned meat
is highly processed and unhealthy high in calories fat and sodium and low in nutrients since the 1980s media and the internet have of course evolved tremendously between 1981 and 1989 the number of hosts connected to the internet went from hundreds to hundreds of thousands with an increase from 880,000 to over 160,000 hosts in 1989 alone also in 1989 the worldwide web was created which for the first time made digital content easily reachable and sharable for the average consumer by the mid 1990s there were over 100,000 websites on the web around 40% of American households owned
a computer which was just 15% a couple years prior suddenly new opportunities for connection and creativity abounded for the first time in history individuals could easily message people across the world in chats publish and share their art and homemade videos create digital profiles and digital stores purchase and download things like movies and books order physical Goods to be delivered to their home and innumerable other unbelievable and world changing acts now as a 2024 it's estimated that around 70% of the global population owns a smartphone that's roughly 5 billion people it's also now estimated that there
are well over 1 billion websites and the average person currently spends around 6 hours and 35 minutes online every day needless to say the internet and Internet devices have fully consumed us and the conditions of the internet are crucially important to The Human Experience of course along with new opportun ities for the distribution of enriching things on the internet so too have new opportunities for the distribution of problems and hazardous content evolved on the internet one of which is Spam and spam like media for the sake of clarity spam and spam like media here includes
anything from unwanted emails all the way to digital content that unreasonably exploits platform algorithms automation Andor acccess of posting often for the sole purpose of views and engagement the problem of spam might appear somewhat trivial at first especially when considered against much darker activities and possibilities on the internet with the increasing development and thriving of spam-like media points to a deep holistic problem about the current architecture and future of the internet and Humanity at large the internet in its current form does not merely have spam on the menu the menu is in many ways increasingly
that of the Monty Python Cafe all menu items on offer seem to contain spam in some form and worse our pallet seem to be increasingly burnt and Numb by this to actually desire it to enjoy less and less of the Nuance flavors that we previously did as both creators and consumers of media many of us seem to want quicker easier and more processed content which often doesn't challenge or require much of us and we are increasingly willing to ignore the intentions and consequences of said content inspired and led by philanthropic beasts herds of Viking creators
Chase watch time as audiences welcome the pillaging with eager eyes there is a theory about the internet that has recently garnered increasing notoriety largely as a result of the mainstream introduction and popularization of generative AI the theory is known as the dead internet Theory the origins of the theory primarily Trace back to an anonymous thread created in 2021 on the Agora roads Macintosh Cafe form its Origins specifics in conspiratorial nature are rather questionable but the broad sentiment at least now feels somewhat valid putting aside the conspiratorial and paranoid claims of the theory most broadly the
theory suggests that most online activity is fake in some way neither bought activity or AI generated content created and curated by algorithms because of this according to the theory the internet as a source of unbridled human activity and flourishing died somewhere around the year 2016 in that same year of 2016 a cyber security company by the name of impera in fact did find that boss or software applications that perform automated tasks without human intervention accounted for over half of all online activity they also found that around 30% of website visits likely came from Bad Bots
or programs designed to carry out harmful actions like theft and hacking the other roughly 20% of bots however were found to be good Bots or Bots that help Monitor and upkeep aspects of the internet this was nearly 10 years ago we can more than reasonably assume that those numbers have gone up since then of course these percentages include the entire internet in all corners and Pockets so it's not necessarily the case that the majority of the content and websites you personally consume and visit are fake assuming you engage in reasonably well curated and stable websites
and platforms but the point is no matter who you are how Savvy you are and what you do on the internet there is no avoiding fake content and fake traffic and even more so there is certainly no avoiding spam like content this year in 2024 Jack KY the founder and CEO of the Creator monetization platform patreon gave a keynote at the conference South by Southwest titled death of the follower and the future of creativity on the web the focus of his presentation was primarily on the development and effects of algorithmic feeds on social media and
content distribution platforms specifically kti's argument is that major platforms like YouTube Facebook Instagram and Tik Tok have moved primarily into algorithmic ranking based content distribution feeds and away from follow- based feeds in other words internet content is distributed based on computer algorithms that rank content using metrics of Engagement like watch time and not based on people selectively and intentionally curating what is shown to them based on who they follow or subscribe to as a result according to KY this has caused content creators and their audiences to become increasingly pulled apart in my opinion Ki says
the follow is not some handy feature of a social network the follow is foundational architecture for human creativity and organization with the follow becoming less Central to content distribution content creators increasingly need to create for an algorithm rather than for a clear audience or fan base Ki says for the first time since Web 2.0 my followers might not necessarily see my posts and the idea of a subscription started to break down if a person doesn't receive the thing I make it's not really a direct true connection between a Creator and their fans it's not really
a subscription the channel of distribution is broken and it creates another problem too around creative freedom because now suddenly my post has to be better than the other posts according to a set of criteria that I don't know or have control of or even agree with so instead of thinking what do I want to make what lights me up what is the output that I want to create as an artist what will my fans love instead of thinking about those questions now in the back of my mind I'm thinking what will the ranking algorithm favor
and that subconsciously or consciously changes my creative output to achieve the platform's goals not my goals as a Creator the primary goal for almost all social media platforms is to make money the primary means of achieving this goal for most platforms is through advertising revenue and the primary means of generating sustaining and growing ad revenue is by attracting as many users to the platform and then keeping users on the platform as long as possible at the scale of major social media platform forms algorithmic based ranking feeds seems to achieve this the best as a result
algorithms have increasingly taken control over what we see and the direction in which online media and content goes we are thus being increasingly led by these algorithms with no clear aim in terms of benefit to the individual or culture at large the cause in endgame are merely profitability of course algorithms are not inherently bad and they could provide great opportunities for things like discoverability for creators and consumers further more pursuing watch time and algorithms isn't inherently always bad either as it can be useful for improving one's work but a major problem is under these conditions
one of the forms of media and content that prospers is either full-on spam or media that has a flavor of spam to it in order to appease algorithms and either Forge or maintain a career and social relevancy creators might change their content format category or topics from what they are primarily interested in to what's popular and what works often leading to blatant copying repetitiveness redundancy dumbing down carelessness or excessively frequent posting otherwise they might risk inevitably being overlooked by the algorithms and forgotten by anyone who is not in their most core audience these problems of
fake traffic algorithmic disconnect and spam media have only become increasingly worse with the introduction and mainstream use of generative AI now ai models can message humans in chats and message other AI models create digital art and video content create and manage digital profiles and stores determine and execute purchases and economic decisions as well as innumerable other unbelievable and world changing acts but now humans are less and less involved hence the internet is at least in the way it once was dead in its wake a new sort of Internet is emerging what this new form will
ultimately become how it will feel what help and harm positives and negatives it might cause will only only be known in time but what does appear to be certain is that AI is only going to get better and the problems of disconnection fakeness and spam like media are only going to get worse of course generative AI is not all bad and there are countless great applications for it both currently and foreseeably but if we are not careful more than anything else our digital diets will continue to become unhealthier and unhealthier it will be increasingly difficult
to hear and make sense of anything to want to hear and make sense of anything to find and get what we want to order it is not hopeless though hopefully in time there will be reasonable regulations around Ai and internet media hopefully new technologies will also help mitigate against some of the existing and forthcoming problems and execute effectively on reasonable policies and cultural expectations if history is to be considered it seems that this is certainly on the table of possibilities but of course if history is to be considered regulations and new technologies designed to restrain
Bad actors and bad Technologies are always at least a little behind the people and Technologies they are designed to catch perhaps in some sense at least for now it is up to us creators and consumers of content Founders and users of platforms there's a famous saying that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with a more upto-date version of this might be that we are the average of the five creators and five content categories we spend the most time on on the internet consuming arguably now and into the future
making decisions about what we do and engage with on the internet will be as crucial as the decisions we make regarding our friends and Associates of course in some sense this has always been the case and determining what media we consume has always been crucial but crucial is a spectrum and now it is highly ultimately who cares if the dead internet theory is true or not who cares if the old internet is dead or not not what matters arguably is whether we can and will sustain what matters in new ways in the new conditions of
the world and technology and what matters is what matters to us our Humanity at its truest and deepest levels as humans we want to create communicate and connect with each other unabridged and unbridled we want reasonably healthy and sustainable relationships with others with ourselves and with the networks of the world both physical and digital we want honesty we want genuiness we want symbiosis we want Prosperity the internet is and can still be a place where this happens of course there will always be the spam cafes and spam will likely find its way on most menus
and most of us will likely indulge in it on occasion but like everything else with discipline hope and effort we can still eat healthy diets we can still build beautiful restaurants and eateries and communities with minimal spam on the menus we can still break bread together in meaningful ways in the words of kti the hardest lesson I have learned as a creative person and as an operator and CEO over the last 10 years is to know and trust what I want and to be true to that over time it's easier said than done but don't
let somebody else tell you what you want because then you'll end up with what they want instead of what you want on a somewhat more direct hazardous level one problem area where spam inevitably shows up for all of us is junk messages emails Robo calls texts physical mail and so on this sort of spam however is not just annoying and bad tasting but it can actually be dangerous it can lead not only to Relentless junk mail but also to parties knowing sensitive information about you which can lead to things like identity theft scams stalking or
harassment that's why this video sponsor incog a personal information removal service is such a fantastic fit for this video and such a fantastic service in general the reason for the widespread experience of unsolicited repeated junk mail is because of what are known as data Brokers without you knowing or giving permission every time you buy something or fill something out with your information your name social security number login credentials home address and so on the information can then be taken and sold to and buy a third party there are hundreds of data Brokers and people search
sites who make lots of of money doing this they harvest and collect your data not to sell things to you but to sell you to others in the last few years I've personally noticed a huge increase in scam like texts as well as an email inbox that is nearly impossible to sift through the good news legally you have the right to stop this and have all your information removed from these sites the bad news it's essentially impossible to do this on your own the better good news in cogni makes it not only possible but easy
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