The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation, minimising organic human activity to manipulate the population. Proponents of the theory believe these bots were created intentionally to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to manipulate consumers. Some proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception. The date given for this "death" was generally around 2016 or 2017.