TikTok, AI, and a Dead Internet

Sources: arcady_31/Getty Images; lukedesign/Getty Images; Dan Cristian Padres/Unsplash

With the recent passage of federal legislation mandating the sale of the TikTok platform, or being outlawed in the nation, controversy, and criticisms from both supporters and neutral observers alike are dominating tech headlines.?

The consensus among social media experts is forcing the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner ByteDance is a red hearing for various reasons.? The rationale for creating the legislation was the Chinese government could easily access all the data, information, and other intelligence from it over national security concerns because it is a Chinese company.? However, experts say that when the Chinese government seeks information about U.S. interests, TikTok is at best a secondary or peripheral consideration. When it seeks intelligence and sensitive information, it does what other foreign governments do; access information brokers that sell data and privacy interests. Except for HIPAA, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, or COPPA, the U.S., unlike European nations, has no or very weak federal digital privacy rights for users. Users seeking information can access them or go to the dark web when seeking data.

Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

While TikTok is headline news now, the continued advancement of AI and how it can generate, not only hallucinations but supposed real conversations and other realities as programmed is becoming another thorn more real when using social media. Instagram is experimenting with influencers using chatbots of real celebrities such as artist Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, former NFL quarterback, media personality Charlie D’Amelio, and Jane Austen yes, the 19th-century British author. The prediction from some is as technology advances, one will be unable to know if they are interacting with a real person or a chatbot programmed by AI.? And yes, TikTok has its proprietary experimental program as well.??

The concluding piece of technological development is the made-up internet. “I read it on the internet” is the equivalent of past generations, “It’s written in a book” and by now most of us are aware of the false equivalency. As AI and other advancements continue, online content is increasingly, “synthetic media” meaning it is created and produced by AI. In one study, released back in late 2022 by the European law enforcement group, Europol, experts predicted that over 90 percent of online content will be AI produced by 2026.? Past instances of AI-manipulated news include Russia’s use of fake video of Ukraine President Zelenskyy telling his soldiers to surrender to Russian troops, candidates for the 2019 UK general election Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn endorsing each other for the position, and the now common reports of face and body swaps using ordinary women in porn photos and other falsifications of body and facial images of notable people. It’s all made up.

If so, it leads to the prophecy of a “Dead Internet.”?? A theory that appeared and became popular among conspiracists some ten years ago or so postulates that human-made content on the web would eventually be replaced by artificial and other synthetic material thereby replacing the human contribution. What might have been a terrific sci-fi novel and movie brand has been eclipsed by an apocalyptic reality in condensed time.

Interestingly PC Magazine, in a story dating back to 2019 provided evidence of the dead web back then. Over 1.7 billion websites as defined as having a uniquely named site and containing an individual IP address from a server on the internet were identified. However, of that number, only around 200 million (0.6 percent), were active or active. The remaining 99.94 on the web were dead.

Which also means why bother with TikTok, and other social media platforms if artificial and imaginary information is so easy to create, manipulate, fool, or disguise the public? As one critic of TikTok cited, and writing in Fast Company says, we use social media sites like it to get our news, and everything else under the sun, from social connections to lifestyle patterns, and every other recommendation and endorsement offered. We, as users, have allowed ourselves to become overly dependent on them and therefore vulnerable to whatever appears, making us easier to sway and push in any direction.? A TikTok ban is only a band-aid approach to a much bigger information internet problem.??