Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#131

Post by nradov » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:10 PM UTC

0xEF wrote: post #98

bluGill wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS and (to a lesser extend) email are not ways to communicate with distance friends. Someone I went to school with 30 years ago and haven't seen since isn't going to call me about their new grandkid, Facebook works well to share these types of pictures. SMS and email take too much effort, Facebook is much lower friction to share that and thus I find out, while if they uses SMS or email I wouldn't be on the list as t…

Many of the replies are saying something similar, so I apologize, as I am not trying to call you out, but to better understand; ask yourself why you need to know about the grandkid of someone you went to school with 30 years ago. So many of these things that we use to sell ourselves to hang on to social media tend to crumble under any honest scrutiny. This upsets people. I get it. I mentioned in another comment havin…

I don't need to know, but I want to know. Social media interactions doesn't cause me any stress or anxiety: rather the opposite. Most of us don't have problems with substance abuse or negative social media engagement. You shouldn't generalize from your own very limited experience or presume to give advice about things you don't understand.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#132

Post by itake » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:12 PM UTC

dartos wrote: post #6

itake wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

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.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#133

Post by usernamed7 » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:12 PM UTC

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

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#134

Post by morkalork » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:13 PM UTC

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #93

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 b…

That sounds just like the "TV show" from Fahrenheit 451, just endless conversations about nothing where you are the star.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#135

Post by nox101 » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

k1kingy wrote: post #41

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 Gro…

My feed in the mobile app is

    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - people you might know
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from frien
    - loops
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from a non-friend about a friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend
    - post from friend

I can only guess the reason mine isn't filled with spam is because I click the ... and pick "don't show me this" whenever it shows me something I don't care about.

I wish I could tell it never show me loops, never recommend friends, never show me posts of friends of friends. While annoying, it's not so bad ATM that I've felt the need to quit

On the other hand I check it less than once a week, maybe once every 2 weeks.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#136

Post by qup » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #79

nothercastle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketplace… somehow they took over the marketplace for used stuff and killed cl. OfferUp was always crap so it doesn’t count.

Craigslist is still there. They only way to keep it around is make sure you use it.

In some regions (mine) Craigslist never took off, and now is a ghost town.

I would estimate it gets less than 1% of the traffic of FB Marketplace, in terms of number of vehicles posted. And nearly all of them are car lots, not individuals.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#137

Post by nemomarx » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

Culonavirus wrote: post #128

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #93

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 b…

I don't know, I feel like you have be a pretty low IQ person (I'm talking about the millions of people on the far left of the IQ bell curve) to consider any interaction with a bot as socially meaningful or stimulating (dopamine). Maybe if you used some future LLM and hidden the "this is a bot" icon, more people would interact, but as it stands, only dumb people (and there's not that many of them, again, normal distri…

character. ai exists somewhat profitably right now, and Replika had very dedicated users, so that doesn't rule out an audience who just wants to be lied to

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#138

Post by ChrisLTD » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

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.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#139

Post by nerdponx » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:17 PM UTC

seydor wrote: post #66

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.

> you can't expect people at large to engage with nonhumans

NPCs are a big component of a lot of video games. Imagine an Elder Scrolls game with no NPCs.

A social media platform filled with AI agents pretending to be your friends is basically just a "social media simulator" video game, with all the same requirements for immersion that make it enjoyable/entertaining to use.

The fact that it's "multiplayer" (other real humans engaging with the mix of humans and AIs) doesn't change that.

Facebook has become a ghost town, so they want to turn Facebook into a Facebook simulator.

Imagine if a dying MMORPG could populate its game with NPCs that would help retain the dwindling player base, to avoid a collapsed network effect. Sounds good, right? Same thing here.

(Facebook became a ghost town in large part due to Facebook's own enshittification campaign, but that's another story)

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#140

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Jan 02, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #104

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #93

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 b…

This is sort of TikTok, right? Wasn't TikTok known for becoming viral by having tons and tons and tons of fake upvotes for everything to make everyone think TikTok was a better place to post content [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]? Facebook and Instagram had the same "problems", they just addressed it much earlier than TikTok. I would imagine they have already tested fake likes to maximize how believable the like ratio can be, b…

Reddit too... https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-...