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Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

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Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#201

Post by Cheer2171 »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #180
wnevets wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably looking at their metrics and finding their primary user base loves AI content. https://www.buzzfeed.com/sienaegiljum/ai-images-facebook-boo...

I’m pretty sure everyone involved is a bot. The con is pulled on the ad buyers

Nope, my mother sends these to me all the time and even said that Facebook was getting more interesting every day. She's completely addicted to her phone that at Christmas this year, I felt like I was the parent. She couldn't stop scrolling through her phone while her grandkids were opening presents. I thought she was recording video, but no. A perfect user in Zuck's eyes.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#202

Post by coldcode »

a2128 wrote: post #171

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…

I mostly use Facebook for posting tiling/tesselation art in a moderated speciality group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/tiling) that has 72,000 people in it. There are some really nice speciality groups you don't find anywhere else. Facebook's UI is horrific for comments, I think even a bad AI design couldn't be much worse, but the comments are generally pleasant.

I check my regular facebook friends occasionally, but not very often. I ignore everything else.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#203

Post by blululu »

dagmx wrote: post #155
InkCanon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a clear sign Meta leadership has clearly lost the plot, giving in to hype instead of any vision.

Meta leadership have rarely had a vision beyond “how do we capture the success others are having in this space”. I suppose that’s a vision in and of itself but not a very inspired one. This is the case for most of their successful products: - Facebook itself started this way for Zuck - Instagram and WhatsApp were purchases to corner that market against incumbents, as is Thread - Oculus was a purchase to try and get t…

In general this all feels right, but I don' think that a lack of a grandiose vision is necessarily a problem for a company (Facebook's mission of 'make the world more open and connected' boiled down to 'senator - we sell ads'). Product design is about delivering things that people want. Observing trends and trying to get ahead of them somehow is a big part of what makes for a successful product. The bigger issue for Meta right now is that they are not as effective at this game as they used to be. To some extent this might be an issue of brand (the Facebook portal was a great product but nobody trusts the company). But based on my experiences with their products I feel like this gets things backwards. People don't like their brand because their products suck (Apple sucks up way more personal data, but thousands of Apple fans will crawl from the woodwork to defend them) If their core products were good experiences things would be different. The engineering talent at Facebook is truly top notch and while they are good on recruiting I think a lot of it comes from a culture of excellence on the technical side. But the product and UX directions of Meta feel off. Accounts alone has personally burned me. I have an Oculus quest that was effectively reset because of Meta's accounts transitions. My Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook accounts were all separate, and are all now partially merged but transition sucked for all of them with no benefit to me the user.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#204

Post by kridsdale1 »

Retr0id wrote: post #115
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…

There are several of these already. Example: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/socialai-ai-social-network/id6... Surprisingly, it has broadly positive reviews. Maybe Meta is onto something.

Matt Sayman was a PM in my org at FB in 2015. Smart guy. He was 18 at the time.

I watched his journey on Threads as he taught himself to program this year in order to make that app. Proud of his success.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#205

Post by riffruff24 »

rchaud wrote: post #150
InkCanon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#206

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

wnevets wrote: post #176
a2128 wrote: post #171

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…

They probably looking at their metrics and finding their primary user base loves AI content. https://www.buzzfeed.com/sienaegiljum/ai-images-facebook-boo...

Buzzfeed also went in the direction of churning out slop, if I remember correctly. They were more respectable when they were about their dumb quizzes.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#207

Post by kridsdale1 »

sheperd wrote: post #112
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…

Already exists, social AI. Meta hired the owner to implement this feature. Doesn't hurt to create a competitor if you're interested though!

Wait really? Matt was boomeranged?

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#208

Post by paganel »

FredPret wrote: post #130
paganel wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook the app/website is already dead, as only boomers and people like me (not yet boomers but not young, either) are now its only remaining users, while IG is going into the same realm of irrelevance, mostly because millennials (its main audience) have spiritually become boomers-like themselves. As such, Meta is throwing everything at the wall hoping that something, anything, will stick.

You mean it’s a social network that advertises exclusively to people in their prime spending years? Sounds like a roaring success to me. Looking at their financials, I’m right about that: https://valustox.com/META . Our culture is obsessed with youth. But economically the young are not a great demographic to have frequenting your site: - fashions change quickly - they can be demanding - they have no money Contrast to…

Yes, it’s in its BlackBerry 2005-2006 moment (optimistically), more like its 2008 moment (realistically). There was still lots of money coming in for both BB and Nokia around 2005-2006, too much money, for that matter, which eventually made them collapse.

Ask yourself this, who do you see still using Facebook (the app) in 5-10 years’ time?

But, then again, lots of people here which have a direct stake in Meta, either through owning shares or through direct employment (the same discussion applies to whenever other big US tech companies are discussed in here), so there’s no use debating.

As per the focus on youth thing, which you’re correct about, how do you expect Meta to pitch to potentially future 20-something employees in, let’s say, 5 years’ time? “Come work for us cause we’ve got the boomers’ market cornered?”. That won’t work, and, at best, it will attract only people chasing the big comps, which doesn’t help at all with innovation.

Granted, they still have “AI” in order to attract future worthwhile and non-mercenary talent, plus bringing in future revenues that are supposed to replace Facebook the app eventual demise, but imo that’s still an open bet at this point.

Re: Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram

#209

Post by jameshart »

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…

The original value proposition of Facebook - keep people you don’t see in person very often up to date on what’s happening in your life, and keep up with what’s going on with them - still feels like something people actually want, but it’s been clear for a long time that no service that tries to offer that can sustain it.

Facebook got too excited with its ability to leverage the ‘friend graph’ and broke the very reason people wanted to ‘friend’ people on FB in the first place.

Feels like people have generally decided that WhatsApp group chats are the preferred model for keeping in touch.

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