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Dead Internet Theory Tracker
Is the dead internet theory true? A running, sourced log of how much of the internet is made by machines: the products that sell it, the times it got caught, and the numbers.
12 entries. Last entry Nov 11, 2026.
Phantomstory sells websites that run themselves
It opens automated sites on custom domains for a brand, built to rank in search and get AI assistants to recommend the brand. Its homepage headline: “Third-party sites to hack SEO and GEO.” Phantomstory
81% of long LinkedIn posts are likely AI
Originality.ai’s detector flagged 4,061 of 5,000 public posts of 100 words or more. Detectors make mistakes, so this is an estimate. Originality.ai
About half of new articles online are written by AI
Graphite ran 55,400 English-language pages through three detectors. The AI share was 36% a year after ChatGPT came out and has stayed near 50% since early 2025. Axios
Bots pass 53% of all web traffic
Imperva’s yearly report puts automated traffic above 53% of the web in 2025, up from 51% the year before. Imperva
Doublespeed’s AI influencer farm is hacked a second time
A hacker got into the startup’s systems and tried to make its AI-generated TikTok accounts post memes against its own investor, a16z, 404 Media reported. 404 Media
A hack shows Doublespeed’s 1,100-phone farm of AI influencers
The a16z-backed startup uses more than 1,000 phones to run AI-generated TikTok accounts that promote products, often without saying the posts are ads, 404 Media reported. Doublespeed did not respond to its request for comment. 404 Media
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is “slop”
The dictionary defines it as low-quality digital content, usually made in quantity with AI. Merriam-Webster
Sam Altman says the dead internet theory may have a point
The OpenAI chief posted that he never took the theory seriously, but that there now seem to be a lot of accounts on X run by language models. Futurism
74% of new web pages contain AI-generated text
Ahrefs checked about 900,000 pages that first appeared in April 2025. Only 2.5% were all AI; most mixed AI and human writing. Ahrefs
Researchers ran secret AI bots on a Reddit debate forum
Bots posted more than 1,700 comments on r/changemyview over several months without telling anyone, 404 Media reported. The researchers said they were from the University of Zurich. 404 Media
Meta removes its own AI character accounts
About a dozen AI personas on Instagram and Facebook came down after users criticized them. Meta said a bug had stopped people from blocking the accounts. NBC News
Sports Illustrated ran articles under writers who do not seem to exist
Futurism found bylines with AI-generated headshots and made-up bios. The publisher said the articles were licensed from a third party that told it humans wrote them, and it removed them. Futurism
The dead internet theory, explained
What is the dead internet theory?
The dead internet theory is the idea that most of what you see online is no longer made by people. It says bots and AI now write many of the posts, comments and articles, and that real human activity is a shrinking share of the internet.
Where did the dead internet theory come from?
The name took hold in 2021, when a forum post titled "Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet Is Fake" spread from a site called Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe. The Atlantic wrote about it that August. Earlier versions of the idea appeared on anonymous forums before then.
Is the dead internet theory true?
Not as it was first told. The original version claimed a hidden, organized plan to replace people with bots, and there is no evidence for that. But the part you can measure has moved toward it: 53% of web traffic is bots (Imperva, 2025); ~50% of new articles are written by AI (Graphite, May 2026); 81% of long LinkedIn posts are likely AI (Originality.ai, Jul 2026). This tracker logs that evidence as it comes out.
How much of the internet is bots?
53% of web traffic is bots (Imperva, 2025). That counts all automated traffic, including search engine crawlers, not only fake accounts.
How is this tracker updated?
New entries are added every week. Each entry links to a source that was opened and checked on the day it was added. Numbers that come from AI detectors are marked as estimates, because detectors make mistakes.
More background: Dead Internet theory on Wikipedia. Related guides: how to spot AI slop on LinkedIn and on Substack.
Numbers from AI detectors are estimates; detectors make mistakes. Seen something that belongs here? Send it to us. Newsreel is a news source where vetted journalists and subject matter experts publish.