Casey Newton in Platformer at Meta Connect:

⁠⁠It went all but unmentioned on stage, but Meta says it is beginning to test content “imagined for you” by Meta AI on Facebook and Instagram. Meta will use your likeness and interests to generate photos and videos with AI, and you’ll be able to swipe to generate additional related posts.

This information has gone largely unreported, or at least kept under the radar, as most publications rave over a product that doesn’t and will never be launched—Orion.

In their never-ending pursuit of more engagement, Meta will begin showing AI slop in your Facebook and Instagram feed. That’s right, instead of actually showing you the reason you use social media — the people you follow — Meta have run out of engagement bait posts from strangers and are now going to just make everything up.

The truth that Meta now realise is that no-one wants to post anymore. The family and friends you once logged into Meta products to see what they are up to are not interested. The people you may have met on those products and began following because their post were good, have also been driven away by Meta. The only people left are posting simply to farm your attention for their gain. Be it dopamine hits or downright grifts.

Even though we’ve long suspected otherwise, Meta still claim that their mission is to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” but now they are stating loud and clear they are only interested in users attention.

If they truly wanted to connect people, they would build a social platform that encourages sharing. That promotes posts from the people you follow into your timeline and fosters communication. Meta would be focused on ensuring the things you post get to the people you want them to and foster a safe space for users to flourish. Instead, it does the opposite.

They promote garbage and harmful content to all users. Hiding posts from the people you choose to follow in exchange for those from ‘creators’ made to farm attention. Building algorithms that showcase the worst the platform has to offer in the desperate attempt to show more ads next to them.

Sure, Meta’s chief product officer claims that “AI-generated art in certain verticals is really compelling” but the reality is found in their words. They stated that generative AI ads have an 11 percent higher click-through rate and 7.6 percent higher conversion rate — and this dear reader is the reason the company can never be trusted to do right by its users.

As Marks shirt from Connect proudly claimed it’s Zuck or nothing. He can try to hide the reality in an ancient Latin, or meanness company statements about connecting people. The reality is they only care about advertising revenue, and it has always been about the company before anything else.