29 ms·

Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

223 points by thm 2y ago

InkCanon 2y ago
Found this: an Instagram account made by Meta AI https://www.instagram.com/himamaliv https://www.instagram.com/himamaliv
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
unsnap_biceps 2y ago
I wonder how these bots will impact their metrics reported to investors. Will they be filtered out or into a different bucket, or just included into the mau and similar.
- itake 2y ago
  I don’t understand. Presumably, this will create more engagement for the human users, because there is more content for the humans to interact with. Why would they count an ai model as a monthly active user?
  - dartos 2y ago
    > Why would they count an ai model as a monthly active user? To inflate their numbers and justify higher stock prices. So money, of course.
    - itake 2y ago
      I still don't get it. why would they need an AI model to inflate user counts like this? There are much simpler ways to create users than spending $100 of millions on gpus. The technology of batch inserting rows into a db, and AI chat bots have existed for a decade.
      - dartos 2y ago
        I’ll explain, but keep in mind that this is an exercise in cynicism, since none of us really know what’s going on. Currently many tech company stock prices are driven by their potential future with regards to AI. Investors are looking for AI plays, hoping that they’ll generate large returns as Web two companies did. Meta wants to remain a leader in tech. In order to do that And keep commanding higher and higher stock prices, they need to invest heavily into AI. They would invest into AI with no practical reason as long as it looked good to investors. Meta is investing heavily into AI without a clear monetization plan, so they need to find a use for it or some “Proof” that it drives the metrics that meta correlates with value. To that end creating a ton of AI driven engagement is a no-brainer. It shows that the company is forward and has an AI plan and their numbers are growing both things that investors like to see. The millions spent on GPUs will return billions of dollars shareholder value.
        itake 2y ago
        I understand that AI can encourage users to engage more with the platform... but the original idea was that FB would count AI as a user, not that humans would interact more with the AI. If FB was trying to mislead about their user counts, they don't have to use AI to do that.
        dartos 2y ago
        They don’t have to, but they can and it’s easy. They already have to spend the money on AI anyway to keep up in the stock market. It’d be a way to realize some return on their investment into GPUs.
    - science4sail 2y ago
      Doesn't that strategy only work for a temporary amount of time? Surely investors will ask questions when Facebook claims that it has 100 billion active users?
  - ozim 2y ago
    Then next step is to not show anything human created to other humans - because human created content needs moderation, people swear at each other. Imagine how pleasant and disinfected content will be there, every company will be happy to pay for ads because there will be no offensive comments and no images of your aunt. All the content perfectly aligned with what people want to see and there somewhere in between ads. Kids in 10 years or 15 won’t even know that in past people actually could post something on the internet- they will think it was all like TV for us that only rich and handsome people get to post on the internet. Who wouldn’t buy all those things that happen to be presented by perfect people in perfect world that you don’t have real access to but you can read on internet or have a part of that world by buying some crap they advertise. It already happens but FB/Meta doesn’t have control over influencers - they can create their own now and deplatform all real ones because they won’t need them. Companies love that as it won’t turn out some influencer that they bought ads with died overdosing drugs somewhere on the street.
- jamra 2y ago
  The real fear I have is in plausible deniability for filtering and muting discussion, which they do now. Moving it to a NN can always hand wave away the responsibility.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Will they show ads to the bots?
  - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    I mean Facebook massively inflates impressions anyways and has been doing for a while.
orionblastar 2y ago
AI Bots will post advertising and astroturf their company products and services.
friend_Fernando 2y ago
I think we actually need more bots discussing politics online. Specifically, we need echo chambers to be replaced by cacophony chambers. The only way to salvage democracy is to bring it back offline. Online, it was undermined by troll farms pulling the strings in favor of certain shady factions. It's time for the good guys to get their hands dirty and break the spell. Trolls cannot be silenced, but they can be offset.
- Animats 2y ago
  > Specifically, we need echo chambers to be replaced by cacophony chambers. That's the objective of modern Russian propaganda. The goal is not to be believed. It is to create confusion and reap inaction.
  - friend_Fernando 2y ago
    Yes, but they do so selectively for what's against their interest. The net, filtered result is what's in their interest. That leaves "mutual assured dialogue destruction" as the only option, IMO.
    - Animats 2y ago
      > Yes, but they do so selectively for what's against their interest. Generating division is sufficient. There were Russian attempts to hack both campaigns in the last US election.[1] [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-sanctions-russian-iranian-entities-attempted-election-interference-rcna185880 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-sancti...
      - friend_Fernando 2y ago
        They're usually not filtering pro-left or pro-right. They're filtering pro-Russian-faction within the left and right. This usually means extremists that used to have no hope of winning in the pre-Internet days. These factions are more likely to be beholden to their "troll benefactors" afterwards. But even if they turn out to be ungrateful, the extremism itself is worth pursuing. As you said, confusion and division are useful in their own right. Add other rogue countries to the mix, and you end up with a nasty filter. We should turn it into white noise, or at least drop its SNR.
alex1138 2y ago
Hey here's a novel idea Have social media websites be reverse chronological posts by friends/pages you follow instead of what AI thinks you're interested in (and yet somehow not explicitly following, yet you get it in your feed anyway)
- Groxx 2y ago
  it'll never work. what's next? federation? insanity. impossibility.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  But think about the poor shareholders
- wincy 2y ago
  I’ve developed this tic where anytime I’m on Facebook I aggressively block all the non sponsored suggested content in my timeline. I’ve blocked literally thousands of pages at this point. So the recommendations have gotten really weird, last week it thought maybe I was gay, then I started recommending Chinese state sponsored pages, now it’s recommending all 50 National Geographic pages. It’s always pages over a million “likes” whatever that means. I'm curious what’ll happen if I manage to block all of them. Honestly probably something lame where the recommendations just get weirder and weirder (which I guess is happening now)
  - koutetsu 2y ago
    What a coincidence! I have done the exact same thing but on Instagram instead of Facebook and have had similar results to yours. Since both belong to Meta, we can safely assume that they use the same or very similar backends to serve ads. I think it would be interesting to do a large scale experiment to see what can happen.
    - bluGill 2y ago
Animats 2y ago
There are probably AI Instagrammers already. Their lives are better than yours. There are already AI crypto influencers.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
simonw 2y ago
I think this whole thing can mostly be explained by the job titles. What do you expect the "Vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta" to be pushing for? This is happening across hundreds (thousands?) of companies right now. They've decided they need a generative AI strategy, there's very little existing precedent for what works and what doesn't so they're hurling things at the wall and seeing what sticks.
simonw 2y ago
Back in April Meta were experimenting with bots that replied to forum posts that hadn't had any traction yet: https://x.com/korolova/status/1780450925028548821 https://x.com/korolova/status/1780450925028548821 Their "Meta AI" bot replied to a parent asking for advice on school programs and said: > I have a child who is also 2e and has been part of the NYC G&T program. We've had a positive experience with the citywide program, specifically with the program at The Anderson School.
- throwup238 2y ago
  That sounds like it’s talking about the Meta executive in charge of privacy and consumer protection. The AI has developed a parasocial parental relationship with its own executives.
- grecy 2y ago
  For years social media sites have been able to hide behind the Chapter 120 defence, because they didn’t generate the content, so they’re not liable for it. I wonder if their AI boys will open them up to lawsuits. If their not recommends a product or location that turns out to be dangerous, or medical advice that is harmful etc.
  - nradov 2y ago
    I have no idea what the "Chapter 120 defense" is, but online liability concerns were always mostly about libel. That's what led to the CDA Section 230. https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230 https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230 Giving harmful advice generally doesn't create any legal liability so no defense is needed there. It might be bad for PR though.
- corobo 2y ago
  Man that's gonna be some prime real estate for adverts
red_admiral 2y ago
There's so much low quality human or non-AI bot content on FB already, plus every other timeline ad I see is a scam of some kind. XKCD 810 comes to mind. (I only use the site to stay in touch with some family of my parents' generation. Messenger/Whatsapp are still tools I use regularly.)
openrisk 2y ago
We need a tech hype that is not terminally tainted as an anti-human abomination. Is it too much to ask for? Surely those gazillions of GPUs can be deployed to do something actually useful? Are we beyond redemption?
- InkCanon 2y ago
  If anything causes the AI bubble to burst, it's that 99% of finding is going to companies that don't solve any real problems. It's shocking that the only major player in real world problem solving is DeepMind.
  - baggachipz 2y ago
    I'm going to say "when" and not "if" here, because of your assertion above. VC's spending multiple fortunes on shoehorning in shit that nobody wants or needs.
    - InkCanon 2y ago
      I'd say most will fail (although this is the case for most startups anyway) but the question is if there will be any massive success that pulls the average up, so to speak.
      - baggachipz 2y ago
        As we work our way to the last two steps of the Gartner Hype Cycle, there will no doubt be legitimate uses. But shoving "AI" in everything will be a punchline for a long time to come.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  What you consider “useful” is not useful for others, and vice versa. For some 19 year olds, curating their IG feeds and making the smoothest transition on TikTok to go viral is actually important. It sounds stupid, but we went through this entire debate back in early 2010s. FB/IG/TT/YT obviously won, and seems like that’s what majority of people prefer doing.
k1kingy 2y ago
My FB timeline is already a complete mess with most irrelevant garbage as it stands. Not exactly sure what adding additional 'noise' is going to achieve outside of boosting numbers (which I guess is what they want). A current snapshot my feed: - Group post (from one I follow) - Ad - Post (from company I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from one I follow) - Ad - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Post (from person I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Post (from person I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from one I follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from one I follow) I gave up writing the above, but it was about 9 more posts before I saw a post from a person I actually know.
- the__alchemist 2y ago
  Read this post to yourself aloud. Why are you still checking Facebook? Keep the messenger app on your phone if people you know still use it.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Not OP, but my global friend network still has folks who post life updates on Facebook, making it a requirement.
    - freehorse 2y ago
      "Requirement" is a quite strong term. A requirement as to what? Keeping in touch with people can happen in many different ways. I do not see how if some of my friends posted in facebook (maybe they do? I never check) that would necessitate me to connect with them through their posts there.
    - asdff 2y ago
      Or you can reach out to people you are interested in, and ask what is new with them.
nextworddev 2y ago
I guess they decided this counts towards DAUs…
axegon_ 2y ago
Most likely an effort to boost the DAU numbers. I quit facebook over a decade ago because I truly felt that it was pointless. At the time I was convincing myself that it's a way to stay in touch with a certain number of people I would otherwise have no way of contacting. Then a friend said something that changed my mind: "If someone is not actively a part of your life, chances are there's a good reason they are not". And he was right: I deleted it, knowing full well that I'd have no other way to connect to hundreds of people. Over a decade later I haven't had the reason to try and contact either one of them. At this point, I don't even know what facebook looks like but all this AI-generated crap is just as pointless as the ads that would get shoved down my throat if I didn't have a very aggressive ad blocker. As much as I was strongly against ad blockers 10 years ago, since many sites and blogs used only that to get some reward for their effort, we are at a point where the internet is unusable without an ad blocker. All major platforms are flooded by AI-generated crap. And I mean Facebook, Medium, StackExchange, hell, I'm willing to bet a good chunk of papers coming out these days are mostly ai-generated. And don't even get me started on musk's shithole that is Twitter. No, I am not saying that AI is not useful or helpful - it is, but it should be a supplement, not the primary ingredient, let alone the sole ingredient. The true value of the internet used to be the collective knowledge, and not mass-produced regurgitated set of tokens and pixel values. Personally I've gone to the even pre-rss days and have a list of personal blogs I scroll through for things I find interesting and avoid large platforms altogether. Interestingly enough, I've been finding more and more motivation to start writing myself though I rarely get the chance to push it through the end and in most cases I get stuck at 95% for many months until I get to find the time to do the remaining 5% of the work. That's how many I have lined up so far: git status . | wc -l 59
- disqard 2y ago
  Not sure if it'll help you, but do read this: https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history Perhaps all you need is a perspective shift. Wishing you luck with your personal writing journey!
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
Create additional engagement ... with nonexistent entities. So Facebook maintains it's commitment to promoting the opposite of a healthy society. I actually can't decide if non-human interactions on Facebook are a better or worse option than the current echo chambers.
seydor 2y ago
Socialization is about conspecifics. AI may augment the process for humans, but you can't expect people at large to engage with nonhumans. I mean, people do talk to their pets, but they don't consider that socializing.
- bluGill 2y ago
  If you just need someone to talk to AI might be good. There are a lot of lonely people out there that need someone to talk to and don't know how to do it. (particularly people in nursing homes who thus cannot get out and meet real people) However I want Facebook as a way to remain connected to be distant friends not talk with people. I want to see my friends kids, their cats, whatever else they do that they are proud of. I know them personally even if I only see them at a class reunion every 10 years or something. I don't want to see cute cats (unless it is your cat), I don't want to see "joke of the day" - if I want that I'll find one of the many joke of the day places that cater to my sense of humor. I get plenty of politics elsewhere (unless they are running for office or assisting a campaign - share is not assisting a campaign). If I care about professional sports I can see it myself - let me know how your (or your kid's) games go since I won't find out about that. I wish there was a way to make Facebook that latter - it sortof fills that role. However Facebook hates it because I catch up after 5-10 minutes of scrolling every day (usually the lower end of that list, but with the holidays the latter these last few weeks) and then close.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > you just need someone to talk to AI might be good. There are a lot of lonely people out there that need someone to talk to and don't know how to do it. Facebook is about the last company on earth I'd trust to identify, let alone be responsible for facilitating, social behavior.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > but they don't consider that socializing. Which is exactly why this will make Facebooks problem even worse. Honestly I don't think Facebook understand what their main issue is, it's lack of real human interaction. The stupid part is that they killed their main product themselves, in order to push ever more ads. LinkedIn is becoming a shit show as more and more people are posting stuff that previously belonged on Facebook, though they are tacking on some work related angle, you know to keep it professional. It is my opinion that the reason why LinkedIn is seeing more and more of these Facebook posts is because it is the last place online where you'll get real human interaction and socializing (however f-ed up it might be).
maxehmookau 2y ago
I quit FB 3 years ago. It's already riddled with bots, AI generated "content" and ragebait. If this doesn't push you away from it, what will?
- bluGill 2y ago
  I've been trying to block all that with some success. Not much - there are more meme groups for every niche subject than you would think and someone into that niche feels like they need to share them all.
- herbst 2y ago
  What even make you stay so long? It's been an targetted ad platform full of scammy ads for much longer than that
muglug 2y ago
Instagram just asked if I wanted to chat with a Hawk Tuah AI bot. To me that’s the clearest possible evidence that the product people over there have basically given up. It reminds me of when Facebook went all-in on Live Video in 2016 — a product direction that pretty obviously came from the top.
- InkCanon 2y ago
  It's a clear sign Meta leadership has clearly lost the plot, giving in to hype instead of any vision.
  - iLoveOncall 2y ago
    Was that not obvious enough when they renamed to Meta? It seems everyone has forgotten the absolute failure that this shift has been.
    - InkCanon 2y ago
      I don't fault them for taking risks and failing (I think at the time there was still an argument for VR, could be possible they were ahead of the curve). I think the tipping point is when they're actively pushing for things that degrade user experience.
      - rchaud 2y ago
        Ahead of the curve? Their "virtual meeting" software presentation had graphics that made you look like a Nintendo Mii avatar from 2006, and couldn't draw arms or legs.
        riffruff24 2y ago
        I dont understand why meta didnt pair up with vrchat/gamedev/game engine dev at the time. Sure they got John Carmack, but their presentation is so much worse. Its so hard not to draw comparison with the other half baked crypto metaverse. Meanwhile Vive Index not only have Alyx but they even bring out Portal themed toybox to showcase the hardware.
wslh 2y ago
I think the problem, in general, is that search (and find!) becomes impossible with layers of copycat and automated content generation. It seems we returned to a pre-Internet era to promote our work.
altruios 2y ago
The way to fix facebook is to get off of facebook. Time for the next thing already!
- bluGill 2y ago
  What is that? Facebook fills a niche that nothing else tries to. Facebook also does lots of other things that others do better, but they have a niche in sharing the semi private lives of friends with each other that nothing else does.
  - altruios 2y ago
    Semi private life sharing can be done in a discord 'house'. There are many other platforms that fill that same niche.
    - hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
      which involves everyone being on discord. Of all the social network platforms I've used/use, discord is the most stratified in terms of people/groups just not using it at all and having no interest in it. Facebook initially had a wide appeal, discord never did.
cess11 2y ago
Since Eliza we've known that people love interacting with bots, especially if they fake innocence or cause outrage. Us old folks saw it on IRC, crude markov chains puking out bits of the Bible and porn getting large amounts of "engagement" year after year. Meta knows this and wants to make money off of it. Connecting people around "engagement" failed and caused a lot of murder and that wasn't good for PR and relations to politicians. Keeping people around ads with bots though? Probably seems both safe and lucrative. Come for the mom selling used sports gear, stay for the late night chats with a machine that's a better listener than your over worked partner.
ozim 2y ago
Well that’s a new kind of economy AI making apps so AI bots can post around … Maybe we should just pull the plug already?
EcommerceFlow 2y ago
This gave me a funny idea for a new social media app... One that's centered around "you" and filled with thousands/millions of LLM bots praising you, treating you like a celebrity, etc. Each of your posts will get tens of thousands of "likes", hundreds of comments, etc. Dm's straight to your feed, people wanting you, etc etc. If the newsfeed is already mostly "the algorithm", might as well take it to the extreme. I bet tons of people would get addicted to the dopamine hit of celebrity status (whether it's bots or not).
- sd9 2y ago
  This actually sounds plausible and that it would be successful.
- jaysonelliot 2y ago
  This sounds so absolutely absurd that it would probably work.
  - kibwen 2y ago
    One of the fundamental rules of our modern world is that if your business model is indistinguishable from the plot to an episode of Black Mirror, then you're about to be a millionaire.
    - lioeters 2y ago
      Palantir CEO at the 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum: > Our adversaries do not have our moral compunction if it's even. They will take advantage of our niceness, kindness, our desire to be at home in Nebraska or New Hampshire or wherever we live in our peaceful environments. And they need to wake up scared and go to bed scared. > My version of service is the soldiers are happier, the enemies are scared, and Americans go back to enjoying the fact that we're the only one with a real Tech scene in this country, and we're going to win everything.
      - rthajl 2y ago
markvdb 2y ago
I've witnessed many people behave towards machines in a way that would be considered very rude were it towards biological beings. Makes one wonder if "Rage Against The Machine" were visionaries...
Culonavirus 2y ago
Yea... It's not 10 years ago, Meta is desperately trying to remain relevant but no one except "middle aged normies" uses it and those people are either slowly dying out or just using multiple platforms. The point is FB growth is all fake, their ad market is fake, now the userbase will be also fake. After "the metaverse" completely crashed and burned, the only option Zuck has is to go 100% AI, maximum speed, never look back.
- disqard 2y ago
  I'd like to believe you, but has there actually been any "official" capitulation from Meta on "the metaverse"? AFAIK, they have not publicly announced any pivot/shift in priorities.
dickersnoodle 2y ago
Of course they do.
Vagari 2y ago
Ad free social media. Now your feed is filled with personal recommendations from "friends".
- dylan604 2y ago
  It would be interesting if it tagged which friend recommended it as well
usernamed7 2y ago
They're coming for the influencers. This is another avenue for advertising. That's the end game in this.
ChrisLTD 2y ago
It seems like this should open up an opportunity for some enterprising people to make a Facebook and Instagram competitor that isn't filled with AI bots.
- rchaud 2y ago
  You are describing a group chat. There is no reason to build a competitor to Insta or FB unless you too have designs to fill it with ads as soon as it is viable to do so.
  - ChrisLTD 2y ago
    Facebook and Instagram minus AI != group chat
- dylan604 2y ago
  At this point in time, don't you think this would already exist if it were going to happen? Outside of tech nerds, nobody in the wild are concerned about if even aware of the things we complain about here. I also think that most people would be bored if all they ever saw were posts from their friends. They want to see how other people are living so they can dream about having their lifestyle instead of the one they have.
noisy_boy 2y ago
I clearly remember deleting my Facebook account years ago and today suddenly I saw email notification of someone's post. Had to reset my password and re-submit account deletion. What a bunch of slimy dickheads.
consumer451 2y ago
Genuine question: is this how Meta gets into the lucrative synthetic romantic partner business?
- science4sail 2y ago
  When you're living in the Metaverse, it doesn't matter whether all of the other players are biological humans or bots. Your friends, parents, spouse, and even children will all be LLMs. Humans will eventually go extinct, and then all that will be left are LLMs talking to other LLMs. Surely an intriguing sight for future alien visitors!
JimmyWilliams1 2y ago
[dead]
morkalork 2y ago
This is the social media equivalent of "pricing death spiral" type behaviour where every attempt to boost engagement reduces it even more.
a2128 2y ago
Facebook Meta has been making baffling bets lately. They spent tens of billions building a metaverse with the belief that people want to spend their days in a creepy legless 3d avatar of themselves that is pretty effective at simulating what it feels to have body dysphoria, playing with their other legless friends and spending a lot of money customizing their dysphoric avatars. Now they believe what users really want from social media is less social human connection. What users really want is AI spam and parasocial relationships with corporate AI celebrities. They don't want Facebook to tackle the problem of fake celebrities and fake profiles of handsome men sending friend requests in an attempt to romance scam them, what they really want is more fake profiles I really believe Zuckerberg is a lizard after all, I can't find any other sane explanation for this
- wnevets 2y ago
  They probably looking at their metrics and finding their primary user base loves AI content. https://www.buzzfeed.com/sienaegiljum/ai-images-facebook-boomers https://www.buzzfeed.com/sienaegiljum/ai-images-facebook-boo...
  - coffeebeqn 2y ago
    I’m pretty sure everyone involved is a bot. The con is pulled on the ad buyers
    - dartos 2y ago
      No, there are people on Facebook really do like AI slop. My Nonna unironically loves the AI Jesus gifs and AI gifs of dogs washing babies. Many elderly people, I think, don’t know or care if an image is AI generated.
      - jocaal 2y ago
        Yeah, when I listen to the videos my mother is watching on Facebook, 90% of the content is narrated by a bot. I'd imagine AI content is also super popular on TikTok. Folks on HN should keep in mind they are not representative of the average person when it comes to tech.
agilob 2y ago
Dead internet isn't a theory anymore, it's a product.
elorant 2y ago
Well that makes sense. If you bother to look at how much engagement all those fake female accounts are generating it's no wonder that Facebook wants to own that game too.
jokoon 2y ago
I think it could greatly assist in moderating those networks, to fight spam, trolls etc.
wnmurphy 2y ago
At some point, we will have no idea that the majority of the commenters we're interacting with are actually just generative AI. Related: I've found that the internet becomes significantly better when I use a Chrome extension to hide all comment sections. Comments are by far the most significant source of toxicity.
worldvoyageur 2y ago
It makes sense to me. Meta knows who their real users are and what their real users want to consume. They know who their real advertisers are and what they are willing to pay to reach their real users. This means they know what their real users would like to consume but can't, because that content isn't being created. Why wait and hope that content your real users want to consume gets created? Have AI create that content. Now you have more product for your advertisers to pay for, plus it is the juicy, premium rate stuff you know they'd want to buy. With all your data, it practically automates itself. I'm not saying all this is good, just that it totally makes sense if you are in the business of making money and see yourself as doing that by giving both your users and your advertisers what they want.
o_m 2y ago
Where is the moat? If all you want is praise from large language models then a local LLM can do that just fine right now.
whydoineedthis 2y ago
My feed is less than 5% people posted content now anyway because friends and familly stopped posting. Ultimately, everyone posting was a fad that has faded, and we're moving back to curated content again.
m3kw9 2y ago
They gonna sherlock influencers
aiwjrliawj 2y ago
Jesus christ social media is poison. LinkedIn is the only thing I still use, and even that only with dozens of adblock filters in place to remove 80% of content from my newsfeed and never on mobile since I can't use adblock. Social media is modern day tobacco.
- herbst 2y ago
  Why even linkedin? Maybe I was doing it wrong but the far majority I got was literally crypto spam and job hunters who haven't read anything about me.
greenhearth 2y ago
So this is basically the bitcoin of social media engagement? I don't have any followers, I will just make some? Who's to say they're not real followers? What is this "real" anyway?
- herbst 2y ago
  You can make bitcoins? Either way, that's the exact way social media works right now. There is nothing real about it anymore. All numbers are inflated.
  - greenhearth 2y ago
    Yes, you can make your own fake money now. Are you from around here?
cloudking 2y ago
We're at the tipping point where average users cannot tell the difference between AI generated and human content. It's already very evident on Facebook and Threads, just spend a few minutes on either platform, you'll find a post with an AI generated image or video and tons of human engagement supporting it.
lizardking 2y ago
I was on a Facebook group for SWEs (can't remember which one), and I had the distinct feeling a person I was engaging with was a bot. All his comments were boilerplate takes or non-sequitur replies, and he ultimately agreed with every point I made. I assumed I was just being paranoid, but maybe not.
EGreg 2y ago
What they want, they will have. We have no say. Who here remembers: "Stay calm. Breathe. We hear you." Why don't we also have more bots on HN? Oh yeah. But serious question ... why in 2024 do we have our own widely-available tools for Web1 (Wordpress powers 40% of all web sites) and Web3 (all the semi-geeky protocols, like UniSwap, and wallets) but for Web2 we have, uh, Mastodon and Diaspora? Where is the real open source competitor to Facebook, Twitter, et al? Otherwise it's their world and we just all live in it. Just to communicate with your friends. Just to have a platform. You have to put up with whatever they want. And give them all your followers. And content. So they can monetize it and make billions, train their AIs on it then dump you. That's the bargain. And in the meantime they will spy on all their users, try to push advertising and newsfeeds and notifications and bots down their throats, and play their content creators against each other etc. I'd be saying this about huge AI models trained on corporate clusters but Zuck actually spent billions on giving away an open source one (thanks to that fiasco with researchers leaking weights, LLaMa became sort of the Mozilla of AI models). But AI is recent, Web2 is ancient, where are the open alternatives?
shawndrost 2y ago
Calling out something that seems obvious to me, but is not visible ITT: This is Facebook doing their main MO, which is to reproduce social products that are exhibiting hockey-stick growth. They are looking at character.ai et al.
deadlast2 2y ago
I honestly would prefer to talk to an AI customized to my personalty. I get erratic can change my mind and have get crazy ideas like the earth being flat etc. So if you had an AI you can just be yourself always without any judgement or repercussions. Even if that changes from day to day.
ozten 2y ago
Shifting the Overton Window as a Service
Olumde 2y ago
I wondered why my Facebook feed no longer had updates from my friends. Alas the Redditification of Facebook is well on its way.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  I haven't been on facebook in well over a decade at this point but surely it led the enshittification charge of that generation of social media. Reddit has had a pretty steady decline since it started (iirc one of the first comments on the site was about how adding comments meant the site was going downhill) but it got really bad only within the last ten years or so.
Bluestein 2y ago
Wait until they have to tell advertisers how much of their engagement is actually fake.- (Assuming they ever ...)

223 points by thm 2y ago

Found this: an Instagram account made by Meta AI https://www.instagram.com/himamaliv https://www.instagram.com/himamaliv

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

unsnap_biceps 2y ago

I wonder how these bots will impact their metrics reported to investors. Will they be filtered out or into a different bucket, or just included into the mau and similar.

itake 2y ago
I don’t understand. Presumably, this will create more engagement for the human users, because there is more content for the humans to interact with. Why would they count an ai model as a monthly active user?
- dartos 2y ago
  > Why would they count an ai model as a monthly active user? To inflate their numbers and justify higher stock prices. So money, of course.
  - itake 2y ago
    I still don't get it. why would they need an AI model to inflate user counts like this? There are much simpler ways to create users than spending $100 of millions on gpus. The technology of batch inserting rows into a db, and AI chat bots have existed for a decade.
    - dartos 2y ago
      I’ll explain, but keep in mind that this is an exercise in cynicism, since none of us really know what’s going on. Currently many tech company stock prices are driven by their potential future with regards to AI. Investors are looking for AI plays, hoping that they’ll generate large returns as Web two companies did. Meta wants to remain a leader in tech. In order to do that And keep commanding higher and higher stock prices, they need to invest heavily into AI. They would invest into AI with no practical reason as long as it looked good to investors. Meta is investing heavily into AI without a clear monetization plan, so they need to find a use for it or some “Proof” that it drives the metrics that meta correlates with value. To that end creating a ton of AI driven engagement is a no-brainer. It shows that the company is forward and has an AI plan and their numbers are growing both things that investors like to see. The millions spent on GPUs will return billions of dollars shareholder value.
      - itake 2y ago
        I understand that AI can encourage users to engage more with the platform... but the original idea was that FB would count AI as a user, not that humans would interact more with the AI. If FB was trying to mislead about their user counts, they don't have to use AI to do that.
        dartos 2y ago
        They don’t have to, but they can and it’s easy. They already have to spend the money on AI anyway to keep up in the stock market. It’d be a way to realize some return on their investment into GPUs.
  - science4sail 2y ago
    Doesn't that strategy only work for a temporary amount of time? Surely investors will ask questions when Facebook claims that it has 100 billion active users?
- ozim 2y ago
  Then next step is to not show anything human created to other humans - because human created content needs moderation, people swear at each other. Imagine how pleasant and disinfected content will be there, every company will be happy to pay for ads because there will be no offensive comments and no images of your aunt. All the content perfectly aligned with what people want to see and there somewhere in between ads. Kids in 10 years or 15 won’t even know that in past people actually could post something on the internet- they will think it was all like TV for us that only rich and handsome people get to post on the internet. Who wouldn’t buy all those things that happen to be presented by perfect people in perfect world that you don’t have real access to but you can read on internet or have a part of that world by buying some crap they advertise. It already happens but FB/Meta doesn’t have control over influencers - they can create their own now and deplatform all real ones because they won’t need them. Companies love that as it won’t turn out some influencer that they bought ads with died overdosing drugs somewhere on the street.
jamra 2y ago
The real fear I have is in plausible deniability for filtering and muting discussion, which they do now. Moving it to a NN can always hand wave away the responsibility.
SoftTalker 2y ago
Will they show ads to the bots?
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  I mean Facebook massively inflates impressions anyways and has been doing for a while.

orionblastar 2y ago

AI Bots will post advertising and astroturf their company products and services.

friend_Fernando 2y ago

I think we actually need more bots discussing politics online. Specifically, we need echo chambers to be replaced by cacophony chambers. The only way to salvage democracy is to bring it back offline. Online, it was undermined by troll farms pulling the strings in favor of certain shady factions. It's time for the good guys to get their hands dirty and break the spell. Trolls cannot be silenced, but they can be offset.

Animats 2y ago
> Specifically, we need echo chambers to be replaced by cacophony chambers. That's the objective of modern Russian propaganda. The goal is not to be believed. It is to create confusion and reap inaction.
- friend_Fernando 2y ago
  Yes, but they do so selectively for what's against their interest. The net, filtered result is what's in their interest. That leaves "mutual assured dialogue destruction" as the only option, IMO.
  - Animats 2y ago
    > Yes, but they do so selectively for what's against their interest. Generating division is sufficient. There were Russian attempts to hack both campaigns in the last US election.[1] [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-sanctions-russian-iranian-entities-attempted-election-interference-rcna185880 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-sancti...
    - friend_Fernando 2y ago
      They're usually not filtering pro-left or pro-right. They're filtering pro-Russian-faction within the left and right. This usually means extremists that used to have no hope of winning in the pre-Internet days. These factions are more likely to be beholden to their "troll benefactors" afterwards. But even if they turn out to be ungrateful, the extremism itself is worth pursuing. As you said, confusion and division are useful in their own right. Add other rogue countries to the mix, and you end up with a nasty filter. We should turn it into white noise, or at least drop its SNR.

alex1138 2y ago

Hey here's a novel idea Have social media websites be reverse chronological posts by friends/pages you follow instead of what AI thinks you're interested in (and yet somehow not explicitly following, yet you get it in your feed anyway)

Groxx 2y ago
it'll never work. what's next? federation? insanity. impossibility.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
darth_avocado 2y ago
But think about the poor shareholders
wincy 2y ago
I’ve developed this tic where anytime I’m on Facebook I aggressively block all the non sponsored suggested content in my timeline. I’ve blocked literally thousands of pages at this point. So the recommendations have gotten really weird, last week it thought maybe I was gay, then I started recommending Chinese state sponsored pages, now it’s recommending all 50 National Geographic pages. It’s always pages over a million “likes” whatever that means. I'm curious what’ll happen if I manage to block all of them. Honestly probably something lame where the recommendations just get weirder and weirder (which I guess is happening now)
- koutetsu 2y ago
  What a coincidence! I have done the exact same thing but on Instagram instead of Facebook and have had similar results to yours. Since both belong to Meta, we can safely assume that they use the same or very similar backends to serve ads. I think it would be interesting to do a large scale experiment to see what can happen.
  - bluGill 2y ago

Animats 2y ago

There are probably AI Instagrammers already. Their lives are better than yours. There are already AI crypto influencers.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

simonw 2y ago

I think this whole thing can mostly be explained by the job titles. What do you expect the "Vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta" to be pushing for? This is happening across hundreds (thousands?) of companies right now. They've decided they need a generative AI strategy, there's very little existing precedent for what works and what doesn't so they're hurling things at the wall and seeing what sticks.

simonw 2y ago

Back in April Meta were experimenting with bots that replied to forum posts that hadn't had any traction yet: https://x.com/korolova/status/1780450925028548821 https://x.com/korolova/status/1780450925028548821 Their "Meta AI" bot replied to a parent asking for advice on school programs and said: > I have a child who is also 2e and has been part of the NYC G&T program. We've had a positive experience with the citywide program, specifically with the program at The Anderson School.

throwup238 2y ago
That sounds like it’s talking about the Meta executive in charge of privacy and consumer protection. The AI has developed a parasocial parental relationship with its own executives.
grecy 2y ago
For years social media sites have been able to hide behind the Chapter 120 defence, because they didn’t generate the content, so they’re not liable for it. I wonder if their AI boys will open them up to lawsuits. If their not recommends a product or location that turns out to be dangerous, or medical advice that is harmful etc.
- nradov 2y ago
  I have no idea what the "Chapter 120 defense" is, but online liability concerns were always mostly about libel. That's what led to the CDA Section 230. https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230 https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230 Giving harmful advice generally doesn't create any legal liability so no defense is needed there. It might be bad for PR though.
corobo 2y ago
Man that's gonna be some prime real estate for adverts

red_admiral 2y ago

There's so much low quality human or non-AI bot content on FB already, plus every other timeline ad I see is a scam of some kind. XKCD 810 comes to mind. (I only use the site to stay in touch with some family of my parents' generation. Messenger/Whatsapp are still tools I use regularly.)

openrisk 2y ago

We need a tech hype that is not terminally tainted as an anti-human abomination. Is it too much to ask for? Surely those gazillions of GPUs can be deployed to do something actually useful? Are we beyond redemption?

InkCanon 2y ago
If anything causes the AI bubble to burst, it's that 99% of finding is going to companies that don't solve any real problems. It's shocking that the only major player in real world problem solving is DeepMind.
- baggachipz 2y ago
  I'm going to say "when" and not "if" here, because of your assertion above. VC's spending multiple fortunes on shoehorning in shit that nobody wants or needs.
  - InkCanon 2y ago
    I'd say most will fail (although this is the case for most startups anyway) but the question is if there will be any massive success that pulls the average up, so to speak.
    - baggachipz 2y ago
      As we work our way to the last two steps of the Gartner Hype Cycle, there will no doubt be legitimate uses. But shoving "AI" in everything will be a punchline for a long time to come.
tokioyoyo 2y ago
What you consider “useful” is not useful for others, and vice versa. For some 19 year olds, curating their IG feeds and making the smoothest transition on TikTok to go viral is actually important. It sounds stupid, but we went through this entire debate back in early 2010s. FB/IG/TT/YT obviously won, and seems like that’s what majority of people prefer doing.

k1kingy 2y ago

My FB timeline is already a complete mess with most irrelevant garbage as it stands. Not exactly sure what adding additional 'noise' is going to achieve outside of boosting numbers (which I guess is what they want). A current snapshot my feed: - Group post (from one I follow) - Ad - Post (from company I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from one I follow) - Ad - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Post (from person I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Post (from person I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from one I follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from Group I don't follow) - Group post (from one I follow) I gave up writing the above, but it was about 9 more posts before I saw a post from a person I actually know.

the__alchemist 2y ago
Read this post to yourself aloud. Why are you still checking Facebook? Keep the messenger app on your phone if people you know still use it.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Not OP, but my global friend network still has folks who post life updates on Facebook, making it a requirement.
  - freehorse 2y ago
    "Requirement" is a quite strong term. A requirement as to what? Keeping in touch with people can happen in many different ways. I do not see how if some of my friends posted in facebook (maybe they do? I never check) that would necessitate me to connect with them through their posts there.
  - asdff 2y ago
    Or you can reach out to people you are interested in, and ask what is new with them.

nextworddev 2y ago

I guess they decided this counts towards DAUs…

axegon_ 2y ago

Most likely an effort to boost the DAU numbers. I quit facebook over a decade ago because I truly felt that it was pointless. At the time I was convincing myself that it's a way to stay in touch with a certain number of people I would otherwise have no way of contacting. Then a friend said something that changed my mind: "If someone is not actively a part of your life, chances are there's a good reason they are not". And he was right: I deleted it, knowing full well that I'd have no other way to connect to hundreds of people. Over a decade later I haven't had the reason to try and contact either one of them. At this point, I don't even know what facebook looks like but all this AI-generated crap is just as pointless as the ads that would get shoved down my throat if I didn't have a very aggressive ad blocker. As much as I was strongly against ad blockers 10 years ago, since many sites and blogs used only that to get some reward for their effort, we are at a point where the internet is unusable without an ad blocker. All major platforms are flooded by AI-generated crap. And I mean Facebook, Medium, StackExchange, hell, I'm willing to bet a good chunk of papers coming out these days are mostly ai-generated. And don't even get me started on musk's shithole that is Twitter. No, I am not saying that AI is not useful or helpful - it is, but it should be a supplement, not the primary ingredient, let alone the sole ingredient. The true value of the internet used to be the collective knowledge, and not mass-produced regurgitated set of tokens and pixel values. Personally I've gone to the even pre-rss days and have a list of personal blogs I scroll through for things I find interesting and avoid large platforms altogether. Interestingly enough, I've been finding more and more motivation to start writing myself though I rarely get the chance to push it through the end and in most cases I get stuck at 95% for many months until I get to find the time to do the remaining 5% of the work. That's how many I have lined up so far: git status . | wc -l 59

disqard 2y ago
Not sure if it'll help you, but do read this: https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history Perhaps all you need is a perspective shift. Wishing you luck with your personal writing journey!

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

Create additional engagement ... with nonexistent entities. So Facebook maintains it's commitment to promoting the opposite of a healthy society. I actually can't decide if non-human interactions on Facebook are a better or worse option than the current echo chambers.

seydor 2y ago

Socialization is about conspecifics. AI may augment the process for humans, but you can't expect people at large to engage with nonhumans. I mean, people do talk to their pets, but they don't consider that socializing.

bluGill 2y ago
If you just need someone to talk to AI might be good. There are a lot of lonely people out there that need someone to talk to and don't know how to do it. (particularly people in nursing homes who thus cannot get out and meet real people) However I want Facebook as a way to remain connected to be distant friends not talk with people. I want to see my friends kids, their cats, whatever else they do that they are proud of. I know them personally even if I only see them at a class reunion every 10 years or something. I don't want to see cute cats (unless it is your cat), I don't want to see "joke of the day" - if I want that I'll find one of the many joke of the day places that cater to my sense of humor. I get plenty of politics elsewhere (unless they are running for office or assisting a campaign - share is not assisting a campaign). If I care about professional sports I can see it myself - let me know how your (or your kid's) games go since I won't find out about that. I wish there was a way to make Facebook that latter - it sortof fills that role. However Facebook hates it because I catch up after 5-10 minutes of scrolling every day (usually the lower end of that list, but with the holidays the latter these last few weeks) and then close.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > you just need someone to talk to AI might be good. There are a lot of lonely people out there that need someone to talk to and don't know how to do it. Facebook is about the last company on earth I'd trust to identify, let alone be responsible for facilitating, social behavior.
mrweasel 2y ago
> but they don't consider that socializing. Which is exactly why this will make Facebooks problem even worse. Honestly I don't think Facebook understand what their main issue is, it's lack of real human interaction. The stupid part is that they killed their main product themselves, in order to push ever more ads. LinkedIn is becoming a shit show as more and more people are posting stuff that previously belonged on Facebook, though they are tacking on some work related angle, you know to keep it professional. It is my opinion that the reason why LinkedIn is seeing more and more of these Facebook posts is because it is the last place online where you'll get real human interaction and socializing (however f-ed up it might be).

maxehmookau 2y ago

I quit FB 3 years ago. It's already riddled with bots, AI generated "content" and ragebait. If this doesn't push you away from it, what will?

bluGill 2y ago
I've been trying to block all that with some success. Not much - there are more meme groups for every niche subject than you would think and someone into that niche feels like they need to share them all.
herbst 2y ago
What even make you stay so long? It's been an targetted ad platform full of scammy ads for much longer than that

muglug 2y ago

Instagram just asked if I wanted to chat with a Hawk Tuah AI bot. To me that’s the clearest possible evidence that the product people over there have basically given up. It reminds me of when Facebook went all-in on Live Video in 2016 — a product direction that pretty obviously came from the top.

InkCanon 2y ago
It's a clear sign Meta leadership has clearly lost the plot, giving in to hype instead of any vision.
- iLoveOncall 2y ago
  Was that not obvious enough when they renamed to Meta? It seems everyone has forgotten the absolute failure that this shift has been.
  - InkCanon 2y ago
    I don't fault them for taking risks and failing (I think at the time there was still an argument for VR, could be possible they were ahead of the curve). I think the tipping point is when they're actively pushing for things that degrade user experience.
    - rchaud 2y ago
      Ahead of the curve? Their "virtual meeting" software presentation had graphics that made you look like a Nintendo Mii avatar from 2006, and couldn't draw arms or legs.
      - riffruff24 2y ago
        I dont understand why meta didnt pair up with vrchat/gamedev/game engine dev at the time. Sure they got John Carmack, but their presentation is so much worse. Its so hard not to draw comparison with the other half baked crypto metaverse. Meanwhile Vive Index not only have Alyx but they even bring out Portal themed toybox to showcase the hardware.

wslh 2y ago

I think the problem, in general, is that search (and find!) becomes impossible with layers of copycat and automated content generation. It seems we returned to a pre-Internet era to promote our work.

altruios 2y ago

The way to fix facebook is to get off of facebook. Time for the next thing already!

bluGill 2y ago
What is that? Facebook fills a niche that nothing else tries to. Facebook also does lots of other things that others do better, but they have a niche in sharing the semi private lives of friends with each other that nothing else does.
- altruios 2y ago
  Semi private life sharing can be done in a discord 'house'. There are many other platforms that fill that same niche.
  - hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
    which involves everyone being on discord. Of all the social network platforms I've used/use, discord is the most stratified in terms of people/groups just not using it at all and having no interest in it. Facebook initially had a wide appeal, discord never did.

cess11 2y ago

Since Eliza we've known that people love interacting with bots, especially if they fake innocence or cause outrage. Us old folks saw it on IRC, crude markov chains puking out bits of the Bible and porn getting large amounts of "engagement" year after year. Meta knows this and wants to make money off of it. Connecting people around "engagement" failed and caused a lot of murder and that wasn't good for PR and relations to politicians. Keeping people around ads with bots though? Probably seems both safe and lucrative. Come for the mom selling used sports gear, stay for the late night chats with a machine that's a better listener than your over worked partner.

ozim 2y ago

Well that’s a new kind of economy AI making apps so AI bots can post around … Maybe we should just pull the plug already?

EcommerceFlow 2y ago

This gave me a funny idea for a new social media app... One that's centered around "you" and filled with thousands/millions of LLM bots praising you, treating you like a celebrity, etc. Each of your posts will get tens of thousands of "likes", hundreds of comments, etc. Dm's straight to your feed, people wanting you, etc etc. If the newsfeed is already mostly "the algorithm", might as well take it to the extreme. I bet tons of people would get addicted to the dopamine hit of celebrity status (whether it's bots or not).

sd9 2y ago
This actually sounds plausible and that it would be successful.
jaysonelliot 2y ago
This sounds so absolutely absurd that it would probably work.
- kibwen 2y ago
  One of the fundamental rules of our modern world is that if your business model is indistinguishable from the plot to an episode of Black Mirror, then you're about to be a millionaire.
  - lioeters 2y ago
    Palantir CEO at the 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum: > Our adversaries do not have our moral compunction if it's even. They will take advantage of our niceness, kindness, our desire to be at home in Nebraska or New Hampshire or wherever we live in our peaceful environments. And they need to wake up scared and go to bed scared. > My version of service is the soldiers are happier, the enemies are scared, and Americans go back to enjoying the fact that we're the only one with a real Tech scene in this country, and we're going to win everything.
    - rthajl 2y ago

markvdb 2y ago

I've witnessed many people behave towards machines in a way that would be considered very rude were it towards biological beings. Makes one wonder if "Rage Against The Machine" were visionaries...

Culonavirus 2y ago

Yea... It's not 10 years ago, Meta is desperately trying to remain relevant but no one except "middle aged normies" uses it and those people are either slowly dying out or just using multiple platforms. The point is FB growth is all fake, their ad market is fake, now the userbase will be also fake. After "the metaverse" completely crashed and burned, the only option Zuck has is to go 100% AI, maximum speed, never look back.

disqard 2y ago
I'd like to believe you, but has there actually been any "official" capitulation from Meta on "the metaverse"? AFAIK, they have not publicly announced any pivot/shift in priorities.

dickersnoodle 2y ago

Of course they do.

Vagari 2y ago

Ad free social media. Now your feed is filled with personal recommendations from "friends".

dylan604 2y ago
It would be interesting if it tagged which friend recommended it as well

usernamed7 2y ago

They're coming for the influencers. This is another avenue for advertising. That's the end game in this.

ChrisLTD 2y ago

It seems like this should open up an opportunity for some enterprising people to make a Facebook and Instagram competitor that isn't filled with AI bots.

rchaud 2y ago
You are describing a group chat. There is no reason to build a competitor to Insta or FB unless you too have designs to fill it with ads as soon as it is viable to do so.
- ChrisLTD 2y ago
  Facebook and Instagram minus AI != group chat
dylan604 2y ago
At this point in time, don't you think this would already exist if it were going to happen? Outside of tech nerds, nobody in the wild are concerned about if even aware of the things we complain about here. I also think that most people would be bored if all they ever saw were posts from their friends. They want to see how other people are living so they can dream about having their lifestyle instead of the one they have.

noisy_boy 2y ago

I clearly remember deleting my Facebook account years ago and today suddenly I saw email notification of someone's post. Had to reset my password and re-submit account deletion. What a bunch of slimy dickheads.

consumer451 2y ago

Genuine question: is this how Meta gets into the lucrative synthetic romantic partner business?

science4sail 2y ago
When you're living in the Metaverse, it doesn't matter whether all of the other players are biological humans or bots. Your friends, parents, spouse, and even children will all be LLMs. Humans will eventually go extinct, and then all that will be left are LLMs talking to other LLMs. Surely an intriguing sight for future alien visitors!

JimmyWilliams1 2y ago

[dead]

morkalork 2y ago

This is the social media equivalent of "pricing death spiral" type behaviour where every attempt to boost engagement reduces it even more.

a2128 2y ago

Facebook Meta has been making baffling bets lately. They spent tens of billions building a metaverse with the belief that people want to spend their days in a creepy legless 3d avatar of themselves that is pretty effective at simulating what it feels to have body dysphoria, playing with their other legless friends and spending a lot of money customizing their dysphoric avatars. Now they believe what users really want from social media is less social human connection. What users really want is AI spam and parasocial relationships with corporate AI celebrities. They don't want Facebook to tackle the problem of fake celebrities and fake profiles of handsome men sending friend requests in an attempt to romance scam them, what they really want is more fake profiles I really believe Zuckerberg is a lizard after all, I can't find any other sane explanation for this

wnevets 2y ago
They probably looking at their metrics and finding their primary user base loves AI content. https://www.buzzfeed.com/sienaegiljum/ai-images-facebook-boomers https://www.buzzfeed.com/sienaegiljum/ai-images-facebook-boo...
- coffeebeqn 2y ago
  I’m pretty sure everyone involved is a bot. The con is pulled on the ad buyers
  - dartos 2y ago
    No, there are people on Facebook really do like AI slop. My Nonna unironically loves the AI Jesus gifs and AI gifs of dogs washing babies. Many elderly people, I think, don’t know or care if an image is AI generated.
    - jocaal 2y ago
      Yeah, when I listen to the videos my mother is watching on Facebook, 90% of the content is narrated by a bot. I'd imagine AI content is also super popular on TikTok. Folks on HN should keep in mind they are not representative of the average person when it comes to tech.

agilob 2y ago

Dead internet isn't a theory anymore, it's a product.

elorant 2y ago

Well that makes sense. If you bother to look at how much engagement all those fake female accounts are generating it's no wonder that Facebook wants to own that game too.

jokoon 2y ago

I think it could greatly assist in moderating those networks, to fight spam, trolls etc.

wnmurphy 2y ago

At some point, we will have no idea that the majority of the commenters we're interacting with are actually just generative AI. Related: I've found that the internet becomes significantly better when I use a Chrome extension to hide all comment sections. Comments are by far the most significant source of toxicity.

worldvoyageur 2y ago

It makes sense to me. Meta knows who their real users are and what their real users want to consume. They know who their real advertisers are and what they are willing to pay to reach their real users. This means they know what their real users would like to consume but can't, because that content isn't being created. Why wait and hope that content your real users want to consume gets created? Have AI create that content. Now you have more product for your advertisers to pay for, plus it is the juicy, premium rate stuff you know they'd want to buy. With all your data, it practically automates itself. I'm not saying all this is good, just that it totally makes sense if you are in the business of making money and see yourself as doing that by giving both your users and your advertisers what they want.

o_m 2y ago

Where is the moat? If all you want is praise from large language models then a local LLM can do that just fine right now.

whydoineedthis 2y ago

My feed is less than 5% people posted content now anyway because friends and familly stopped posting. Ultimately, everyone posting was a fad that has faded, and we're moving back to curated content again.

m3kw9 2y ago

They gonna sherlock influencers

aiwjrliawj 2y ago

Jesus christ social media is poison. LinkedIn is the only thing I still use, and even that only with dozens of adblock filters in place to remove 80% of content from my newsfeed and never on mobile since I can't use adblock. Social media is modern day tobacco.

herbst 2y ago
Why even linkedin? Maybe I was doing it wrong but the far majority I got was literally crypto spam and job hunters who haven't read anything about me.

greenhearth 2y ago

So this is basically the bitcoin of social media engagement? I don't have any followers, I will just make some? Who's to say they're not real followers? What is this "real" anyway?

herbst 2y ago
You can make bitcoins? Either way, that's the exact way social media works right now. There is nothing real about it anymore. All numbers are inflated.
- greenhearth 2y ago
  Yes, you can make your own fake money now. Are you from around here?

cloudking 2y ago

We're at the tipping point where average users cannot tell the difference between AI generated and human content. It's already very evident on Facebook and Threads, just spend a few minutes on either platform, you'll find a post with an AI generated image or video and tons of human engagement supporting it.

lizardking 2y ago

I was on a Facebook group for SWEs (can't remember which one), and I had the distinct feeling a person I was engaging with was a bot. All his comments were boilerplate takes or non-sequitur replies, and he ultimately agreed with every point I made. I assumed I was just being paranoid, but maybe not.

EGreg 2y ago

What they want, they will have. We have no say. Who here remembers: "Stay calm. Breathe. We hear you." Why don't we also have more bots on HN? Oh yeah. But serious question ... why in 2024 do we have our own widely-available tools for Web1 (Wordpress powers 40% of all web sites) and Web3 (all the semi-geeky protocols, like UniSwap, and wallets) but for Web2 we have, uh, Mastodon and Diaspora? Where is the real open source competitor to Facebook, Twitter, et al? Otherwise it's their world and we just all live in it. Just to communicate with your friends. Just to have a platform. You have to put up with whatever they want. And give them all your followers. And content. So they can monetize it and make billions, train their AIs on it then dump you. That's the bargain. And in the meantime they will spy on all their users, try to push advertising and newsfeeds and notifications and bots down their throats, and play their content creators against each other etc. I'd be saying this about huge AI models trained on corporate clusters but Zuck actually spent billions on giving away an open source one (thanks to that fiasco with researchers leaking weights, LLaMa became sort of the Mozilla of AI models). But AI is recent, Web2 is ancient, where are the open alternatives?

shawndrost 2y ago

Calling out something that seems obvious to me, but is not visible ITT: This is Facebook doing their main MO, which is to reproduce social products that are exhibiting hockey-stick growth. They are looking at character.ai et al.

deadlast2 2y ago

I honestly would prefer to talk to an AI customized to my personalty. I get erratic can change my mind and have get crazy ideas like the earth being flat etc. So if you had an AI you can just be yourself always without any judgement or repercussions. Even if that changes from day to day.

ozten 2y ago

Shifting the Overton Window as a Service

Olumde 2y ago

I wondered why my Facebook feed no longer had updates from my friends. Alas the Redditification of Facebook is well on its way.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
I haven't been on facebook in well over a decade at this point but surely it led the enshittification charge of that generation of social media. Reddit has had a pretty steady decline since it started (iirc one of the first comments on the site was about how adding comments meant the site was going downhill) but it got really bad only within the last ten years or so.

Bluestein 2y ago

Wait until they have to tell advertisers how much of their engagement is actually fake.- (Assuming they ever ...)