Via Perplexity.ai query on the topic, it did a good job summarizing.

The dark forest theory of the internet posits that users are retreating to private, closed online spaces to avoid the hostile environment of the public internet. This theory draws its name from Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel, where civilizations hide to avoid detection by potentially hostile aliens.

Key aspects of the dark forest theory include:

  1. Users seek shelter in private channels like Slack, WhatsApp groups, Discord chats, and invite-only message boards.
  2. These “dark forests” provide psychological and reputational safety, allowing users to be more authentic.
  3. The public internet is seen as a competitive, predatory space filled with advertisers, bots, trolls, and attention-seeking behavior.
  4. Communication in public spaces is viewed as risky, potentially exposing one’s existence to hostile entities.
  5. This retreat to private spaces is a response to the increasing noise, manipulation, and surveillance on mainstream platforms.

I’ve definitely been feeling this and reacting accordingly for years and years, and even more so lately, as I trust less and less mainstream apps in the hostile information space opening up to us in the coming months. I’m mostly abandoning Slack for that reason, and for it being an over-priced way to keep in touch with a small group of friends. I will be setting up the end-to-end encrypted Rocket Chat on a Digital Ocean droplet in the coming days, and have corralled some other remainder Dark Forest activity over to Signal.

Jay Springett has a good audio piece on this topic here as well. Worth a listen:

Looks like this 2019 post from Y Strickler is one of the original pieces on this topic, some choice quotes:

Imagine a dark forest at night. It’s deathly quiet. Nothing moves. Nothing stirs. This could lead one to assume that the forest is devoid of life. But of course it’s not. The dark forest is full of life. It’s quiet, because night is when the predators come out. To survive, the animals stay quiet. […]

In response to the ads, the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors, we’re retreating to our dark forests of the internet, and away from the mainstream. […]

These are all spaces where depressurized conversation is possible because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified environments. […]

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