Social media itself has become pretty bleak.
"Today, only a fraction of time spent on Meta’s services – 7% on Instagram, 17% on Facebook – involves consuming content from online “friends” (“friend sharing”). A majority of time spent on both apps is watching videos, increasingly short-form videos that are “unconnected” – i.e., not from a friend or followed account – and recommended by AI-powered algorithms Meta developed as a direct competitive response to TikTok’s rise, which stalled Meta’s growth"
"Social" media is just media now.
It is addiction media, or dopamine hacking media.
Meta's recent earnings report was great partially because AI was used to boost engagement on ads by 5% to 10%, which was enough to get investors on board for the massive capex. ("Datacenters the size of Manhattan" as per Zuckerberg).
Datacenters the size of Manhattan and dedicated nuclear power plants, for an 8.5% boost in advertising engagement. The world is in a very sad state in some respects. The ideal end state of this optimization process is quite literally zombie consumers. I would think that heading off outcomes like this is partly why we create rules and guardrails as a society, but despite the occasional pushback, I do think that for now we are generally embracing this dystopia. I'm a positive person and think AI is incredible and will do many great things, but Meta's earnings report got to me.
I realize this is a dumb question, but: all of these advertising supported business must be downstream of the “real economy” (of products and goods) in some way. After all, for ad revenue to rise continuously it must be the case that product and service companies are continuously spending more on advertising. And yet in the stock market, nearly all growth comes from these ad-supported companies and earnings elsewhere don’t increase by as much. How sustainable is this?
Yes. I do genuinely think AI can be amazing and I quit my job to build something that I hope will be a positive use case of AI
But these stats are troubling
Not to mention a backlash is brewing amongst people who both don't want to use AI and don't want their world to change so quickly.
Well I think, to be fair, only about 7% of the default Facebook feed is your friend's (or subscribed-groups') content. They've shoved a lot of other stuff in there. So its kind of weird that they turn around and say, "Nope, people aren't interested in their friends content anymore"
Indeed. I dont use social media, so grain of salt and all that, but social media feels more like endless amateur TV shared socially.
The irony is that Zuck is trying to solve problems created by his own apps.
Make a social isolation app and attention sink, sell virtual friends to fill the void.
The best advice is to delete your Meta accounts and meet people in real life.
Staying off of social media is the best idea ever, followed by not watching TV/movies, not reading the news, and staying off of... oh, I guess I’m on HN.
I got off instagram after the great capitulation and it’s done wonders for my mental health. The hardest part was accepting the fact that I’ll probably never interact with the couple hundred acquaintances I’ve met over the last 10 years or so ever again.
deleting fb and instagram, essentially when I was a teenager (which I saw early on was contributing to my depression) was best decision I every made. I moved to a small town from the big city and learned to socialize with people. Coming back old friends comment of how outgoing and easy it is for me to connect with people.
If the social media app is optimized for profit, and the owner measures and does not care about the harm to your health and the health of society if it even slightly impacts profit, do not use it.
I still don't understand how the general public trusts anything Mark says. Investors, I understand, they only care about money, and perhaps rightfully so. But the community, why?
Where does the general public trust him? The general public uses Facebook to keep in touch with people or look at cat videos - and Facebook of course does whatever Mark wants. But I don't see how any trust between him and his users is involved.
Zuckerberg doesn't think he should be trusted. He thinks Meta users are dumb fucks for trusting him:
I still don't understand how the general public trusts anything the media says or what the general public says...
Critical thinking is not what most of the population is taught.
Meta being Meta is nothing surprising. Why do people even bother using Instagram and Facebook?
Public opinion doesn’t matter anymore, thats why billionaires like him are building doomsday bunkers on remote islands.
Their plan is to watch the world burn.
He just doesn't seem particularly untrustworthy. I don't agree with his vision for humanity, but given the amount of money he's tossing at AI researchers, it seems clear that he genuinely believes it and is genuinely pursuing it.
Mark Zuckerberg is terrifying.
This is the problem with increased wealth disparity. We're all subject to the whims and fleeting thoughts of the top 20 billionaires. If Mark Z has an idea about social media, well, he controls 80% or something of social media. Even if his idea is terrible, we have no alternatives to switch to, we just have to wait out the irrationality.
Mark became an expert at catering to investors' ears to pump the stock: buybacks, dividends, metaverse, AI...
Its the only job hes ever had.
Hes a professional sociopath whose entire existence revolves around building the most advanced social engineering platform that has ever existed.
World would be a better place if he drowned the next time he went surfing at his private beach.
Mark Zuckerberg -> Kingsman's Richmond Valentine
Jeff Bezos -> Austin Power's Dr. Evil
Elon Musk -> The 5th Element's Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel ZorgThen stop listening to him?
I hope the implication here isn’t that if you ignore extremely powerful people, they can’t affect your life.
>Deny cookies
>Deny signups
>Notification blocked.
>Scroll down 2 screens consisting or 1.7 screens worth of ads.
>The ad-video I scrolled past becomes a sticky party of the header and consumes 30% of the screen real estate. Despite this a new static ad enters my screen before the last one is out of it.
Oh yeah it's totally Zucks vision that is the horror here.