Soon people discovered that Meta’s ghoulish posters had been among us for months, even years. There’s Liv, a “Proud black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller,” according to its Instagram profile. Add to that Brian, “everybody’s grandpa;” Jade, “your girl for all things hip-hop;” and Carter, a “relationship coach.” I’m sure there are more yet to be discovered.
All four of these posters have pages on both Facebook and Instagram with mirrored content and all four have post histories that go back to September 26, 2023. The accounts have the blue verified check marks and a label indicating that they’re an AI “managed by Meta.” Users can block them on Facebook, but not on Instagram. Users can also message them across all of Meta’s platforms, including WhatsApp.
It feels like Zuckerberg is out of ideas and just chases the trends to stay relevant. He was all in on the “metaverse” until he wasn’t because the concept disappeared. Now, he’s all in on AI because everyone else is. Even the quest, before it became the face of the metaverse, was him chasing another big idea from someone else.
He and the company haven’t had original ideas in a very long time. Even the smaller ones, like Stories and Reels, are just ideas copied from someone else.
The Facebook wasn’t even his idea. The Winklevoss Bros came up with it and he was the programmer they got to code it, and subsequently stole it from them.
This is great. If it keeps up my remaining family on FB will give up and I can finally delete my stagnant account.
I don’t need anymore fake content. Real people are doing an amazing job of that already.
This is getting really fucking creepy. I suppose next they’re going to start following and sending private messages because anything is worth it for our precious “engagement”.
I just want to skip from here to getting murdered by a Megan Fox sexbot maid
Best thing you can do is not use any Meta products. What a shit company
Replace “meta” will “all of big tech and surveillance capitalism” and I agree.
Instructions unclear, ended up in a cabin alone in the woods.
But dead men do tell tales
Of how we’ve run out of luck
And we’re all fucked
Because society is weak and frailAll I can think of is one of Mr. Lovenstein’s comics… we’re finally free now!
I still don’t understand why they’re doing it. They can’t possibly think this will be good long-term, can they?
And what’s with the article ending on a note of trying to make it sound bad that reviving nuclear power is a negative thing? If that’s the result of AI slop, then I’d call it a net positive.
Dead internet theory is becoming true.
Bots talking to bots will be 90% of the internet.
A new odd language will develop that us meatbags won’t understand.
On god no cap frfr
In around 2005 or so I went back to look at a Usenet newsgroup which had been a major part of my online life in the 1990s. All the people had gone, but the spambots were still there and the entire group was just bot spam posted at nobody and read by no one. The bots were even replying to one another’s threads. A forum where multiple IRL human friendships had been forged over the years was nothing more than grifting robots spamming at each other.
It’s fully 20 years later and the same shit is going down with a new coat of paint.
I really miss the BBS forums.
I made a load of friends on those.
When I quit reddit, it occurred to me that after 10 years, I hadn’t made a single friend there.
Now many of these remaining BBS forums have a constant battle against bots.
I’d suggest they know growth of the platforms is waning, if not going backwards, but if they create a heap of bots and call them “active users” then the share price won’t go down. That’s the only reason I can think of.
That was my first thought too. It seems like that would be an easy way to get sued by advertisers though. You can’t sell stuff to bots.
If I had to make business sense of this, it might be a pilot for eventual functions like a “sentiment injection” tool to really sway public opinion. With enough halfway believable accounts, not only does the site look more active, but companies/advertisers could pay Facebook to have the bots shovel opinions and products to users in a more overwhelming and coordinated approach than is currently possible with external bots.
Meta got it wrong. People want AI that generates brain rots and sad cat stories, not this dumb thing! /s but not really
how are advertisers ok with this?
They’re the ones buying it.
Good question. I imagine it’s too niche to make much difference right now, but I can see this eventually being a reprise of the display ad industry shooting itself in the foot by doing nothing about click fraud.
Does it make them money?
If yes, then they’re ok with pretty much anything.
You say that, but then why do things like Tumblr and Reddit keep trying to ban the sex to appease advertisers?
That’s apples and oranges. They don’t want users with fetishes and gore. They can’t control those narratives. Some bot that they can control? That’s fine.
How does it make them money?
If an AI mentions their product, either by chance or deliberately, it can drive engagement and sales. These AI aren’t here just to be generic personalities or space fillers, they’re here to drive engagement and make money.
Does it make them money? Or is this a bubble?
I already saw dishonest advertisers making fake ai profiles to promote their shit
On the short term it works.
On the long term, who’s going to check Facebook if it’s all ads and slop?
No idea. If they want to waste their money on it it’s not my problem. I don’t participate in any social media that uses them.
Thank fuck I deleted my Facebook when I did (around the time of the Cambrige Analytica scandal). Never had an Instagram.
For anyone reading, delete them all. Load of shite, you won’t miss them.
Wow that’s horrifying. Hilarious and horrifying.
How would you even tell AI slop from the normal, human-generated slop on Facebook anyway?
It has a common meter.
“The never-born”
