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.
The idea of random AI floating about to soothe people and give them attention is damn creepy. Ew.
have you seen the 2013 movie Her?
Knowing my luck this would be the only way to make the metaverse suddenly take off and rake in billions.
Wow you got one to spell correctly! God. We’re fucked.
I think Zuckerberg fundamentally misunderstands humans. I don’t even mean the memes of calling him a robot or lizzard or whatever, I truly believe being a billionaire in a tech bubble from a young age severely harmed his notion of his own species to the point of being pathological.
There’s a whole thing in sports psychology about what happens when you give kids millions of dollars. Not only that but they are the top in the world at what they do. They were raised to believe they are a special breed of human. It’s not just the top pros who get multi-million dollar contracts. It can happen to the kids who don’t even make it pro too. It mindfucks a person.
I’ve been saying for a long time this kind of thing happens in tech too. I grew up with a lot of guys who’ve made various levels of success in tech from average guy to multi-millionaires. It happens. They really do live in another reality. I don’t think it’s much different between the pro-sports bubble and the tech bubble. They live and breath tech. It’s their whole life. Replace tech with sport. Not much different.
One notable difference is that sports actually recognizes this phenomenon. It’s a known studied field of psychology. They make an effort to engage athletes in the community and stuff. Things that keep individuals grounded in reality.
I don’t think such things exists for tech. If anything they believe whatever latest antics they’re up to is what helps the community and helps themselves keep in touch with reality. Because what the world needs is one more world changing app, another bright idea for a startup that is totally making the world a better place and absolutely not strip mining human sanity for profit.
I don’t like Zuck, but he did not misunderstand humans. He’s just 2 steps ahead of you. Kids go on https://c.ai right now and playfully chat with AI posing as various pop culture characters or professions. While this generation grows up, Zuck will have a portfolio of made up characters ready and waiting for them on FB, where the humans can live their life without ever befriending another real human and sharing everything with Meta, to be monetized.
Tobacco company selling cigarettes to kids. More at 11.
Any source on any significant amount of children wasting time talking to AIs, or just anecdotes and a bad case of “youth these days”?
The whole concept smells like fringe NEET 4chan-adjacent behavior. LLMs aren’t capable of maintaining an even remotely convincing simulacrum of human connection, and anyone who would project companionship onto these soulless computer programs obviously has preexisting and severe mental issues (relying on AIs to fill a void in human connection is certainly unhealthy but a symptom, not the root cause).
The potential market for these AIs will never be any bigger than the market for anime waifu body pillows, because it’s same audience, different decade. Literally everyone else thinks AI girlfriends and body pillow waifus are weird as all hell, and that’s not going to change because neurotypical people want and need human connection and can tell the difference between a rock with googly eyes and a friend.
Also arguably a rock with googly eyes has more charm and personality than Musk’s horror show.
I’d entertain your theory, but Facebook is pretty much only kept alive by boomers and Mark’s AI multiverse web 3.0 became a commercial failure, so I don’t think your idea that he understands young people and is just ahead of me holds.
you don’t have to understand people to make this move. just market trends
Metaverse tells me that he doesn’t understand kids or market trends.
It’s what drives most billionaire mentalities: elite projection.
They think that what they want must be what everyone wants. They believe that what’s best for them is best for everyone as long as they believe it to be morally okay for their own interests.
For a billionaire that regularly isolates himself from not just society, but also his own company’s employees, having fake profiles where computers do the communication instead of a human, go along and agree with whatever you say, remain eternally unoffensive, and exist solely to increase engagement doesn’t seem like a bad idea, since it seems almost like what he’d want for himself.
I agree he’s a weirdo, but this isn’t engagement per se, it’s to make money. If someone seems legit and is saying how awesome a product is, people will buy stuff. Meta will create a persona for businesses for a price. Meta wouldn’t let people go rogue and create their own, they want to sell the service.
He was already a weirdo before the money, well adjusted people don’t create face match or whatever he called it
Bonus: Elon “fuck yourself in the face” Musk pretending to be shocked.
I mean, he had a point, particularly at the time.
I can’t imagine anyone getting me to delete my Twitter account faster than Elon Musk did
Question: SNS stands for social network services, but if this message predates Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, what it was? MySpace or msn Messenger?
I think he meant SSN.
People don’t seem to realize that powerful people are all the same as us; they eat, they poop, they get dressed, they sleep.
What they have is widespread recognition and resources, and enough people that listen to them and care about what they do.
Zuckerburg or Putin or Trump or anyone else in power cannot physically implement everything they want done. It takes lackeys and yes men to carry out their wishes. Sure would be nice if everyone would just be decent and quit listening to them.
Accelerating dead internet.
This is brilliantly dystopian They can create hyper-specific profiles to target specific eyeballs and feed ads from the profile itself. They no longer have to rely on users posting things others would react to. They can just write what they know will generate reactions.
That’s what the world was missing, NPCs.
I just wish they were interesting NPCs.
Hey, take what you can get.
I’ll take the guy that says “Welcome to Corneria”. He may not have much to say, but he sounds more sincere at least.
We’re only gonna get variations of the “Welcome to Revachol” guy, unfortunately
The only way to get everyone to get along is to create a new, even lower underclass of citizen for the humans to all feel smug about. This is that.
This started as a joke but the more I think about it the more afraid I am that I’m right.
Fucking toasters
Boomer Eight did nothing wrong! (Maybe I can’t remember)
how are advertisers ok with this?
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.
They’re the ones buying it.
Does it make them money?
If yes, then they’re ok with pretty much anything.
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?
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.
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?
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.
“Proud black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller,”
This sounds like a caricature.
Sounds like a honeypot or something. Idk what horrifying use it might have
It screams white person lying about their identity to justify some whackadoo comment. “I can say this racist/homophobic thing bc I’m a black queer momma of 2. If you can’t handle me, you’re bigoted”.
… sure they are …
As a black queer mom…
“As a Balck queer mom, I trust Republicans!”
… you want to tell me how awesome and life-changing Useless Product NX900 is?
Well shucks, please send me your black queer mom affiliate link so I can get in on this.
Edit: what a minute, this looks like a hetero white guy affiliate link. Dang it, tricked me again.
You cannot really pollute these platforms any more than they already are imo. The AI slop perfectly resonates with the rest of the garbage there, so it shouldn’t make a difference.
Took me a second to realise the title’s refering to “AI slop”, my inital reaction was something like “I know, it’s always been slop”.
“The never-born”
The Slopification of everything. Welcome to 2025.
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.
Wow that’s horrifying. Hilarious and horrifying.
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
