this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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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.

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[–] vastard@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 1 day ago

This is great. If it keeps up my remaining family on FB will give up and I can finally delete my stagnant account.

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 38 points 2 days ago (3 children)

All the ones I’ve seen so far are minorities. This is fucking blackface.

[–] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I can't wait for the AI to reach this level of peak comedy

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

So brave, as a white man, to speak out as a black woman.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago

It is so much worse. Humanfacing

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 7 points 2 days ago

Why do you hate de-versity?!

If you don't engage with them, you are a bigot and social score will be reduced.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 days ago

Pretty good article, this stood out for me:

Something about George Romero’s 1978 film about doomed survivors riding out the zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall feels resonant today as I look across Meta’s suite of AI-created profiles. The movie’s blue-skinned corpses don’t know they’re dead. They just wander through the shopping center on autopilot, looking for something new to consume.

That’s how many of our social media spaces feel now. Digital town squares populated by undead posters, zombies spouting lines they learned from an LLM, the digested material from decades of the internet spewed back at the audience. That’s what Meta is selling now.

[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 days ago
[–] Draegur@lemm.ee 23 points 2 days ago

You've heard of the Dead Internet Theory, now get ready for the UNDEAD Internet Theory!

[–] xenomor@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is some legit dystopian shit right here. I almost wish I hadn’t abandoned these platforms years ago, so that I could take this opportunity to do it. I hope that more people wake up to the insidious nature of this company and these services.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 9 points 2 days ago

Join once. Leave seven hundred and twelvety times.

[–] kadup@lemmy.world 240 points 3 days ago (12 children)

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.

[–] themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 134 points 3 days ago (1 children)

He was already a weirdo before the money, well adjusted people don't create face match or whatever he called it

[–] loutr@sh.itjust.works 108 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

Bonus: Elon "fuck yourself in the face" Musk pretending to be shocked.

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[–] ArchRecord@lemm.ee 59 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] conicalscientist@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

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.

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[–] neineon77@lemmy.blahaj.zone 46 points 2 days ago (4 children)

This all really feels like a desperate attempt to save their dying social networks, just filling their sites with garbage to make it look like they're not declining

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago

They're doing it to sell to companies to sell positive opinions and politics from "real" people.

[–] Zementid@feddit.nl 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's great to see them scramble to do anything of monetary value with their platforms. It only seems to be good for fake news and spreading hate (and remembering birthdays).

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago

I also use them to advertise Lemmy

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[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Those apps are legitimately dead. They just haven’t caught up yet.

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[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The best part is no one is going to leave the platform over this except a small minority of nerds like us. The average person is addicted to social media. Ain't nothing going to drive them away.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not even all of us. If I left the platform, I would lose all contact with a significant proportion of my not very large family, who are spread across the globe. I don't really have another good option if I want to be able to keep in touch with all of them. Incidentally, that includes my own brother.

I do make sure to curate my experience with every meagre tool they give me to do so, however. That's the best I can do.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 10 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Heard that. I hear people complaining about being forced to use WhatsApp to keep in touch with "boomer relatives." Man I wish WhatsApp was the worse tool I was compelled to keep an account on.

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[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 102 points 3 days ago (8 children)

That’s what the world was missing, NPCs.

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[–] AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

I don't need anymore fake content. Real people are doing an amazing job of that already.

[–] abolishredditnaw@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] ClamDrinker@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Seems a bit strange to blame AI for this. Meta has always been garbage and using technology to it's worst effects.

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[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 94 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Best thing you can do is not use any Meta products. What a shit company

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[–] Lev_Astov@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

I still don't understand why they're doing it. They can't possibly think this will be good long-term, can they?

And what's with the article ending on a note of trying to make it sound bad that reviving nuclear power is a negative thing? If that's the result of AI slop, then I'd call it a net positive.

[–] sirboozebum@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Dead internet theory is becoming true.

Bots talking to bots will be 90% of the internet.

[–] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In around 2005 or so I went back to look at a Usenet newsgroup which had been a major part of my online life in the 1990s. All the people had gone, but the spambots were still there and the entire group was just bot spam posted at nobody and read by no one. The bots were even replying to one another's threads. A forum where multiple IRL human friendships had been forged over the years was nothing more than grifting robots spamming at each other.

It's fully 20 years later and the same shit is going down with a new coat of paint.

[–] sirboozebum@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

I really miss the BBS forums.

I made a load of friends on those.

When I quit reddit, it occurred to me that after 10 years, I hadn't made a single friend there.

Now many of these remaining BBS forums have a constant battle against bots.

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[–] Clam_Cathedral@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 days ago

If I had to make business sense of this, it might be a pilot for eventual functions like a "sentiment injection" tool to really sway public opinion. With enough halfway believable accounts, not only does the site look more active, but companies/advertisers could pay Facebook to have the bots shovel opinions and products to users in a more overwhelming and coordinated approach than is currently possible with external bots.

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[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 58 points 3 days ago

Wow that’s horrifying. Hilarious and horrifying.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 66 points 3 days ago (5 children)

“Proud black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller,”

This sounds like a caricature.

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[–] Veedem@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It feels like Zuckerberg is out of ideas and just chases the trends to stay relevant. He was all in on the “metaverse” until he wasn’t because the concept disappeared. Now, he’s all in on AI because everyone else is. Even the quest, before it became the face of the metaverse, was him chasing another big idea from someone else.

He and the company haven’t had original ideas in a very long time. Even the smaller ones, like Stories and Reels, are just ideas copied from someone else.

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[–] GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 50 points 3 days ago

Proud black queer momma of 2

Way to try to force a stereotype there Meta.

Absolutely disgusting whatever the fuck this platform is trying to do with this AI nonsense

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)
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[–] ATDA@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The idea of random AI floating about to soothe people and give them attention is damn creepy. Ew.

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[–] nutsack@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I avoid any multiplayer game that has bots that you can't filter out and you have to play with them not knowing that they're bots. it removes all the font of any game ever

[–] Clanket@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Thank fuck I deleted my Facebook when I did (around the time of the Cambrige Analytica scandal). Never had an Instagram.

For anyone reading, delete them all. Load of shite, you won't miss them.

This type of stuff will get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

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