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Tech Thread

axlsalinger said:
What is the purpose of these things, and who wants them?
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Zuckerberg in particular has been convinced for years that everyone is desperate to stop interacting with real people, and would instead like to belly-up to a bottomless trough filled with infinite amounts of AI-generated slop.

The first big step was changing the Facebook newsfeed so that, instead of being able to see actual content posted by actual people on your friends list, that gets drowned out by a torrent of complete unrelated garbage that Facebook’s algorithm figures you should like .

Next was Zuck’s big bet that a critical mass of people were actually interested in leaving the real world behind and joining him on his shitty “Meta-verse”.

And now comes his brilliant idea that somehow people will enjoy his platforms even more if they’re absolutely flooded with AI-generated cardboard cutouts. Which is insane, but right in line with what Zuck’s previously done.
 
but there has to be some financial incentive here.

and it can't just be that he thinks he can fool advertisers with AI-driven clicks, can it?
 
zeke said:
but there has to be some financial incentive here.

and it can't just be that he thinks he can fool advertisers with AI-driven clicks, can it?
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The financial incentive is that the long term outlook of the facebook platform is death, and he's trying to do whatever he can think of now to recreate the platform in a way that it avoids the obvious future death that's coming.

Facebook has the oldest demographic picture among major social media platforms, and see less to far less time spent per user per day. I don't think it's about fooling advertisers (though as someone who has run a lot of facebook campaigns for clients....shit is grim these days, with all major metrics down massively over the last ~5 years, and I have some personal theories that they're fucking about with the data they provide to advertisers), but more that they want to give the appearance that a ton of conversation and engagement is happening on the site, and betting that real humans won't notice how much of what they're engaging with is AI bot.
 
I don't agree that Zuck thinks everyone wants to stop interacting with real people, I think it's more the opposite.

The reason why they changed the Facebook algorithm had to be because it resulted in better engagement. People probably respond more to articles and videos related to topics they're interested in. If it's just friend posts, most people weren't getting enough new posts to keep people on the site for very long. It also made it easier to sneak paid ads that look like articles into the feed.

And I understand the allure of the Metaverse as well, many folks have been waiting years for a real VR experience. People love MMOs where they can play a character much cooler than themselves while interacting with other people. This will eventually happen, maybe Meta jumped the gun because the tech isn't quite there yet, headsets still too cumbersome and expensive. And from what I understand, it didn't help that the Metaverse was so cartoony. People don't want to enter a world of dopey childish avatars, they want to enter the matrix.

I don't understand the need for AI posters at all, though.
 
zeke said:
but there has to be some financial incentive here.

and it can't just be that he thinks he can fool advertisers with AI-driven clicks, can it?
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Facebook knows that people get a dopamine hit from notifications, even AI driven ones. If an AI tells you your "dress looks awesome" even if you know it's from an AI, a lot of people will get some level of stimulant from that. These AI bots are going to know exactly what kind of person you're drawn to, and know exactly what kind of feedback they need to supply to optimize engagement. Placebos work, even when the subjects are TOLD they're given the placebo.
 
zeke said:
honestly it's kinda cool that social media is eating itself.

hopefully it continues.
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They're a slave to their valuations as well. You think of a company like Apple or Nvidia that makes physical products that are ridiculously in demand and it's a much more straight forward value proposition. How good is their new shit, how much is it selling, how confident are we that their next new shit is going to be better than this new shit and people are going to keep buying? Boom, trillion dollar valuations because they're awesome at what they do.

Social media companies though? Their only product is their users and the information of their users. There is no new product coming, only new ways of juicing the old product over and over again. That well doesn't even need to go dry for those trillion dollar valuations to run into a brick wall.
 
Aberdeen said:
Facebook knows that people get a dopamine hit from notifications, even AI driven ones. If an AI tells you your "dress looks awesome" even if you know it's from an AI, a lot of people will get some level of stimulant from that. These AI bots are going to know exactly what kind of person you're drawn to, and know exactly what kind of feedback they need to supply to optimize engagement. Placebos work, even when the subjects are TOLD they're given the placebo.
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Yup, I check my FB very infrequently and I've tried to optimize settings for max privacy and minimal bullshit and even then, whenever I log in I have like 20 fucking notifications that are all junky bullshit.
 
MindzEye said:
Yup, I check my FB very infrequently and I've tried to optimize settings for max privacy and minimal bullshit and even then, whenever I log in I have like 20 fucking notifications that are all junky bullshit.
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Zuck has made FB basically unusable. Only keep the account for messaging/to follow businesses etc who exclusively provide updates via social media
 
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