Hollow-eyed insincere robot posters are already flooding Meta's sites and they're everything we dreaded.

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.

  • Lev_Astov@lemmy.worldEnglish
    393·
    4 days ago

    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.

    • bobalot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      35·
      4 days ago

      Dead internet theory is becoming true.

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

      • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        3 days ago

        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.

        • bobalot@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 days 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.

    • Clam_Cathedral@lemmy.mlEnglish
      18·
      3 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.

    • dellish@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      4 days ago

      I’d suggest they know growth of the platforms is waning, if not going backwards, but if they create a heap of bots and call them “active users” then the share price won’t go down. That’s the only reason I can think of.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        3 days ago

        That was my first thought too. It seems like that would be an easy way to get sued by advertisers though. You can’t sell stuff to bots.