Mastodawn

Meta is now using AI-generated profiles to drive up “engagement” on Facebook and Instagram.

Now why would they do this?

Well, for one thing, organic engagement on both those platforms is dead—and it’s been dead for awhile. And now they’re stuck in a loop where influencers aren’t talking to people—they’re talking to algorithms.

So what about the 98% of users who aren’t influencers? Well, most of their content gets stuck in a void with no engagement. And this drives down satisfaction. Why post your breakfast to Instagram if no one sees it?

Therefore, Meta needs to build the illusion of engagement to satiate that need for connection. And Zuckerberg assumes most people will be satisfied with bot interaction.

But what I suspect is that this will lead to a diminishment of trust on those platforms.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/meta-ai-users-facebook-instagram-1235221430/

Facebook and Instagram to Unleash AI-Generated ‘Users’ No One Asked For

Meta says it will integrate AI-generated characters into Facebook and Instagram with their own user accounts.

Rolling Stone

Johannes Ernst Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet not a bad theory. I would add that it will transform advertising and product placement by replacing human influencers and ads with likable fictional characters that focus on you.

Chris Trottier Dec 31, 2024

@j12t As a short-term bet, that’s not bad. But long-term, that eats away at customer satisfaction and is a detriment to the overall health of the platform.

If you don’t serve the basic human need of providing connection, then your social media platform fails.

B. A. Balackus Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet
Has anyone looked into how many generated profiles exist on other networks?
@j12t

TrickTim Jan 1, 2025

@BigAngBlack @atomicpoet @j12t
Hmmm... sounds like something a BOT would say!!! Get 'em!!

😂😂

Johannes Ernst Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet TikTok is doing fine. Arguably that's not a "social" media platform, but maybe it does not need to be?

Chris Trottier Dec 31, 2024

@j12t TikTok might be algorithmic, but is subsists because of parasocial relationship-building. And that still serves a basic need for human connectedness – even if superficial.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet @j12t I don't even think it will work short-term. People are already bouncing because what they came for, the social connections, is nothing but an afterthought at this point - the only ones trying to make it work are influencers & companies who still believe in SoMe marketing. We're probably months from FB being just bots talking to other bots & Meta pretending that's still worth spending your advertising budget on.

Cassandrich Jan 1, 2025

@jwcph @atomicpoet @j12t IOW Facebook turning into

🙃 🤷 🤣 🤡

@atomicpoet zuckerberg and trust do not belong in the same sentence

Chris Trottier Dec 31, 2024

@NeonPurpleStar The problem with trust isn’t with Zuckerberg. It’s with who you are interacting with. Is it with a bot or a genuine human?

As LLMs get better, it will be harder to know – and this will cause a diminishment in trust.

anubis2814 Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet @NeonPurpleStar Other than be had the chance to prevent the rise of fascism and two genocides and did nothing

C.W. Smith 🇺🇲Dec 31, 2024

Unless you use Instagram for its one true purpose...

... Bikini Models.

Chris Trottier Dec 31, 2024

@CWSmith I left Instagram because they put me in content jail for posting too much. Screw ‘em.

C.W. Smith 🇺🇲Dec 31, 2024

Understandable.

Antonio Páez 🇲🇽🇨🇦Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet @CWSmith

I left facebook because someone posting pictures of their guns with the message that PM Justin Trudeau needed a lesson did not violate community guidelines, but me posting "stupid gringos" did.

Alexander The 1st Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet Zuckerberg: "People used to joke that I was robotic - go talk to actual robots, and then tell me I was robotic!"

Jack Yan (甄爵恩)Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet They literally killed organic engagement in c. 2013, forcing people to pay for boosts to get what they used to get. They are reaping what they sowed.
I agree with you that trust will diminish—at least for people like you and me. But given that Facebook is at least half bot, reporting does nothing, and there are a lot of sheep online who leave bot comments on their Facebook and Instagram, I truly wonder.

Jack Yan (甄爵恩)Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet In 2014, I was going, 'There is a bot epidemic on Facebook!' and no one cared. Cambridge Analytica and other scandals came and went, and Facebookʼs share price only diminished briefly before rebounding. I really hate to say this, but there are a lot of sheep out there, and I want to see a heck of a lot of people wake up.

ISD Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet Zuck ought to have stuck to chat with bots himself...

🗦 𝙴𝚞𝚋𝚒𝚎 𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚠 🗧（🦣)Dec 31, 2024

End-stage Facebook. Or, as they say in hospice care, "transitioning".

Final Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet Sadly (or not), the whole of Meta is now lame. The one thing left is the ability to build communities of interest quickly, but it's still not as good at that as Yahoogroups (RIP) in it's prime.

I still miss G+. And Orkut.

Griff Ferrell Dec 31, 2024

@jbond @atomicpoet

anubis2814 Jan 1, 2025

@griff @jbond @atomicpoet I couldn't appreciate G+ because it was more like Twitter and less like myspace which was the pinnacle of personal friend connections instead of global friend connections of which G+ was king.

CrickettGrrrl Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet
Mark Zuckerberg is another fascist traitor to humanity.

@infosec_jcp 🐈🃏 done differently Jan 1, 2025

@CrickettGrrrl @atomicpoet

They covered this on that Cuke episode of FriendFace.Co.Uk*

* Harvard Graduate.
#ITCrowd🧯💨🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

* Cuke, IT's Heaven In a Can™**

** Fun Fact: They actually _said_ "Coke™" in the English🇬🇧Subtitles of that episode.

Golden Ratboy Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet we do all this instead of meeting other people face to face in a park or at a cafe.

cpsask Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet When I saw this the other day, I did not have time to think through why they would do this, but your explanation makes sense.

Daniele10 Dec 31, 2024

@atomicpoet Thank you, I knew something was a mess. Fake users, fake videos.

Darnell Clayton

@atomicpoet @dansup I stopped using #Instagram not because of the lack of user engagement, but because I no longer saw people who I followed in my default timeline! It is frustrating, & yes, I use the following timeline, but it is annoying to have to constantly click that.

Also, many of the ads are…for the wrong person! 😂

Nicole Parsons Jan 1, 2025

One purpose of AI is to devalue the labor that goes into content creation.

Amazon, Google, & Meta are desperate to figure out ways to demonetize content. Their business model is built on unpaid labor.

1. They want free "news" & don't want to pay journalists or media organizations.

2. They want content moderation to avoid regulatory oversight, but don’t want to pay moderators.

3. They want tech advertised but don't want to pay experts to provide expertise.

1/5

Nicole Parsons Jan 1, 2025

2/5

4. They want products flogged & services shilled, but don’t want to pay influencers.

5. They want users to consume content, even if attention & eyeballs must be coerced or tricked.

6. They want what Fox News has, a captive audience at every military base & VA hospital where users can't change the channel

7. They want a version of AI that disguises the offshoring of jobs to low wage overseas mechanical turks.

8. They want IP & don't want to pay for copyrights

Nicole Parsons Jan 1, 2025

3/5

9. They want to amplify self-dealing to enrich themselves, without letting the Wall Street & the SEC becoming aware of their pump & dumps, frauds, or ponzi schemes

10. They want to shift accountability & liability for the harms of their products off to AI for plausible deniability, just like banks blame rogue traders or telecoms blame insider hacks

11. Petro-state investors want regime protections via disinformation & to avoid a fossil fuel phase out, so social media offers a ...

Nicole Parsons Jan 1, 2025

4/5

...wasteful energy hog & surveillance capitalism as a service

12. The 1% wants to suppress wages using bigotry. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia are promoted on social media to thwart unions, stop #medicare4all, & social mobility.

13. Industry wants to continue polluting so "jobs programs" are auto-platformed on social media fostering false dichotomies, like unemployment vs pipelines

14. The 1% wants an end to messy democracy and citizens having a say in government....

Nicole Parsons Jan 1, 2025

5/5

...Social media promotes tax-free fascism as a "solution" to the likes of Andreesen, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, & Elon Musk

15. Media outfits don't want to pay actors, artists, musicians, models, or movie makers, etc

AI lets social media sell royalty-free content & low cost ersatz copies that duplicate the original

It's a business model like 19th c food adulteration, where milk was contaminated with chalk or flour with plaster

Tech oligarchs see AI as the solution to all their problems

Mastodon Migration Jan 1, 2025

You mean, kind of like sex doll?

@infosec_jcp 🐈🃏 done differently Jan 1, 2025

Wait, Rolling Stone is just _NOW_ posting about this? Probably the dirty sekrit is this..

*checks notes*

Isn't. New.

Maybe to the wider public, iGuess.
┐( ∵ )┌

Mark has been running bots posing as ' people for almost 20 yrs ' though. Thanks for this article about the... Pst though R.S. 🙄

KanaMauna Jan 1, 2025

So when the humans are gone it will just be a self-contained AI universe. Awesome. Thoughts and prayers.

🇬🇱🇨🇦🇵🇦Jan 1, 2025

Between this and the "metaverse" it should be clear as day that only Shit-lon can hold a candle go Cuckerberg in terms of rank stupidity, sheer incompetence, and total unfitness for running a lemonade stand, let along a multinational company.

HELLO, we're in trouble Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet
"influencers aren’t talking to people—they’re talking to algorithms."

Does this mean something to anyone here?

Zen Zero ☯️ ◯Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet @SRDas 🙀

AlgoCompSynth by znmeb 🇺🇦Jan 1, 2025

I left Facebook in May of 2010 after about nine months and haven't been back since. Frankly, I hope they can sell their servers for enough money to make the bondholders whole when the damn thing collapses from the bots choking on their own feces.

patcanfield Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet No, offense-you're FOS

katana crimson Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet ...so, what's the odds on how long it is until Facebook utilizes the shadow profiles they've been building to dress their fake users as real people?

Doug 🌈🇨🇦

@atomicpoet we need some king of attack that makes the bots go insane

Noah Jin Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet i literally have bot accounts request to follow me on Instagram every single day. And I left Bluesky because WAY too many bot accounts kept following me on there and I didn’t liked how I couldn’t make a private account on there like I can with Instagram. Here, I actually don’t see a lot (or any) bot accounts

Chancerubbage Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet @mastodonmigration

Gee, people are on to us, that this is all just a big falsifed engagement hustle. And they are leaving! That’s like, I dunno, the opposite of engagement! What do we do?

I’ve got an idea! Let’s really double down with the fake engagement hustle EVEN MORE! That should win them back!

McWabbit 🇺🇦🍋🌻🍉Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet And it will lead to more influencing on the 98% of the user base.
Remember folks, that FB was used to install questionable regimes over the world, if Cambridge Analytica still rings any bells.

Berkubernetus Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet One thing I wonder about: at this point, 80% of activity on FB is in Groups. Does that mean that Zuckmeister is going to force these bots into our Groups? Because group mods have spent the last few years honing the ability to keep bots out.

Arcane Brew Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet it seems increasingly clear that the focus is not people but profits with a dotted line to needing people for views and content for that. If there are AI users because Meta can, how soon does the line blur between actual engagement (non-AI users) as well as advertising hits? It feels like the Meta eclipse has begun, and value for people is even less now.

Eniko (moved ➡ gamedev.place)Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet wouldn't it be easier to just tweak their algorithm to stop purposefully black holing content?

anubis2814 Jan 1, 2025

@eniko @atomicpoet No, then you wouldn't see crap you didn't want to see and spend less time on line.

Martin EA7KRC Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet
Hopefully the days of social media are coming to an end

vulgalour - Free Range Queer Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet I've found Instagram actively working *against* my efforts to post regularly and drive up engagement, just flat out refusing to let images I post upload to the platform. Everything about the platform seems engineered to push me, a human, away from it even though I keep getting told it's "great for promoting your business!" by people who don't run businesses.

Christoph G.Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet
Normal users are the cattle of the platform, digesting adds to produce money for Meta.
This concept of "we create the illusion of social interaction using bots to keep the cattle happy" gives me strong #BlackMirror vibes.

nounoursfaisdeschoses Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet Speedruning the dead internet theory

Trumtins Electro Shark 325ppm Jan 1, 2025

@atomicpoet so advertisers are gonna pay exclusively for bot attention in the future?
Do the bots go shopping afterwards?
What a stupid system, what a stupid time to live in…