Slight twist on dead internet theory.
It's not that the internet is full of bots, it's that the internet is full of self promotion. Finding real people to have real conversations is more difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for their "brand".
Similar to the Black Mirror episode about social credit score.
The hyper commercialization of the internet has turned people into spam bots. That’s why todays internet, with billions of users feels less populated than what we had in the early to mid 2000s.
I know it sounds very “old man yells at cloud” but I truly miss many parts of the old internet, when YouTube was new and social media was still in its fledgling phase. There are a lot of perks and quality of life improvements thanks to all the advancements, but being subjected to 4 ads per 11 minutes on YouTube, Google being much less useful thanks to SEO optimization and all the self-indulgent self- promotion on just about every site has gotten incredibly old. It’s all so boring and repetitive yet seemingly impossible to escape.
Grab YouTube premium to not see ads. You have to pay for it somehow, either you watch ads for free or you swap out your LTV for cash by just paying outright.
This isn’t a mark of degradation at all. “Back in the day” of non-monetization isn’t sustainable for any decent length of time because eventually the people donating (VCs) will want a return or will run out of money.
Are there truly no ads? Have been putting it of thinking it just removes the google injected ads, but keeping all the promotions and such
There are no ads at all provided by YouTube. Obviously Google can't prevent content creators from embedding their own ads, which is becoming increasingly common.