WEBVTT - We're Watching Facebook Die 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:06.920 All Zone Media. Hello, welcome to Better Offline. I'm your 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:21.639 host ed ze Trunk. Last episode, I walked you through 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:26.360 how Mark Zuckerberg and his top people intentionally ruined Facebook 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:29.120 and have been doing the same thing with Instagram. Which 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.400 you're probably wondering is what the net effects of that are, 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:35.800 and they're not great. In the first quarter of twenty 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.880 twenty four, Meta made thirty six point four y five 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:41.960 billion dollars, of which twelve point three seven billion dollars 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:45.360 was pure profit. Though the company no longer reports daily 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:51.160 active users, it now uses another metric, family daily active people. 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:54.160 This number, which could also be the name of a gym, 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:57.640 refers to registered and logged in users of one or 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:00.600 more of Facebook's family products who visited at least one 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:04.880 of these products on a particular day. This, again seemingly 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:09.080 innocent change to how Facebook reports growth, is quite significant 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:11.840 in that Facebook will no longer have to report its 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:15.440 daily or monthly active users, meaning that the only source 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.960 of truth in Meta's growth story is an extremely vague 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:21.800 growth metric that could be manipulated to mean just about anything, 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:26.520 Though Meta doesn't really explain this number anywhere. Three billion 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:31.679 daily active people across Meta's family could combine WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:36.800 Facebook Messager, Facebook portal, Oculus, threads, and maybe some other 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:40.000 dead Facebook product that they've forgot to kill off of 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.200 the app store. I'm not really sure, and it's not 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:46.800 like they tell us. What's confusing is that in their 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:50.040 fourth quarter twenty twenty three earnings, Meta reported that it 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.120 had two point one one billion daily active users across 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:56.640 its properties, a number that is somehow distinct from the 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.200 three point one to nine billion family daily active of 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:04.000 people that they reported in the same quarter. Daily active 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.600 users is a fairly simple metric. It's how many people 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.200 engage with a product in a given day on average, 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.359 across the month or the quarter, I guess. But daily 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:16.800 family active people is a number that's somehow so distinct 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.440 that it's a billion users higher. It smells. It smells 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:24.360 like doodoo to me. I'll digress. When a company starts 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.400 playing these weird games with how they report user activity, 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.120 something's going very, very wrong. In general, when a company 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:35.480 tries to obfuscate the true numbers about their revenue, growth 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:39.000 or profit, it's one of the worst science and Enron 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:41.480 is probably the best example of it, with the company's 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:45.600 notorious use of esoteric metrics in their quarterly financial statements, 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.839 being used to disguise the fact that they were overleveraged, dysfunctional, 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.400 hemorrhaging money. While I don't really want to draw the 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:56.640 comparisons between Meta and Enron, there's an undeniable truth in 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:59.280 the adage that if you have nothing to hide, you 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:03.519 have nothing to fear. Healthy, stable, functional companies. They don't 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.000 feel the need to move the goalposts or create new 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:10.240 weird metrics. They just don't. It's a very very bad sign. 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:13.359 Between the first quarter of twenty twenty one and the 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:15.680 fourth quarter of twenty twenty three, which was the last 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.000 one where reported metrics actually came from Meta, the company 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:21.440 would increase its daily active users by two hundred and 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:24.120 thirty million and its monthly active users by two hundred 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.920 and twenty million. That's a growth ray of just under 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.800 eleven percent in daily actives and just over a seven 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:34.440 percent increase in monthly actives in three years. In that 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.200 time period, Meta launched its Horizon Metaverse and its Twitter 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.360 competitor Threads, which it claimed in its Q four earnings 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:43.840 in twenty twenty three had hit one hundred and thirty 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:47.480 million monthly active users, which was an increase of thirty 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:51.080 percent over the third quarter. Yet between the third and 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:55.320 fourth quarters, Metas overall monthly active users across their platforms 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:59.400 only increased by around twenty million, and this heavily suggests 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.720 that despite adding over one hundred million new monthly active 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:06.120 users on the property, it's shedding tens of millions of 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:11.880 them everywhere. Meta's entire product strategy revolves around growth of 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:16.840 these arbitrary metrics time spent on app engagement, meaningful time 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:20.120 spent all numbers that have dictated their strategy across a 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:23.320 multitude of properties like Facebook and Instagram for years. And 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.599 thanks to these really nasty growth tactics and a sheer 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:29.960 force of capital and monopolies, Meta has grown a pretty 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:34.080 much unstoppable position in social networking, controlling two of the 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:38.359 major platforms Instagram and Facebook, and two prevalent messaging services 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.880 in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Yet Meta has become a 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:45.560 company that just shows contempt for users, and they turn 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:49.160 their products Facebook and Instagram in particular, into these horrible 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:53.440 algorithmic nightmares that undermine their core purpose. They don't connect people, 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:57.400 They intentionally allow malignant actors like anti vaxxers and spammers 0:04:57.400 --> 0:04:59.560 to thrive on there, and they make it harder to 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.080 see the things that you want to see. To send 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:07.599 these arbitrary mentricks upwards, Mark Zuckerberg, he lied. He lied 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.159 to investors when he told them that his company doesn't 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:12.839 build services to make money, but makes money to build 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.200 better services, because for over a decade, metter has allowed 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:20.640 its services to decay while actively monetizing the frustration, paying 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:26.359 and confusion created by the horror show that is Meta. 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.640 When you look at Instagram or Facebook, I want you 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:31.680 to look a them a little different For me, just 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.280 for a moment. I want to view them not a 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:40.480 social networks, but as a kind of anthropological experimentation. Every 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.240 single thing you see on either of these platforms is 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.000 built or selected to make you spend more time on 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.520 the app and see more things that Meta wants you 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.640 to see, like ads or sponsored contents or suggested groups 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:55.680 that you can interact with, and in doing so, you're 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.400 increasing your time spent on the app and increasing the 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.680 amount of meaningful interactions you have with the content. Now, 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:03.920 what's important there is You'll notice I'm not saying anything 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.680 about you enjoying it or liking it or being able 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.320 to get to stuff or anything about a service. That's 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:15.280 because that isn't why it's there. Indeed, I want you 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:17.960 to realize that anything bad or frustrating you see on 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:21.520 the platform is a direct symptom of Mark Zuckerbug's unwillingness 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.960 to rate, limit, or really moderate the platform. Logically speaking, 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:27.680 one would think the meta would want you to have 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.360 a high quality Facebook experience, and they'd want to prove 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:32.080 in content that I don't know, I might be in 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:37.400 cindiary spammy, scammy, unhelpful or at the very least from 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:40.320 someone you know and want to hear from. But when 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:43.880 you only concern is growth, content moderation is more of 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:46.880 an emergency measure or just something you talk about in 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.320 earnings or in front of Congress. And to be clear, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.160 this is all part of metas cultural DNA. In an 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:57.160 interview with journalist Jeff Horwitz in his book Broken Code, 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.520 Facebook's VP of Ads and Partnerships Brian Bowland, said that 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:03.440 building things is way more fun than making things secure 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:06.600 and safe, and until there's a regulatory or press fire, 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:10.360 you don't deal with them. Horwitz also cites that metas 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:15.200 engineer's greatest frustration was that the company perpetually needed something 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:18.040 to fail, often fucking spectacularly, and that is a quote 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:22.160 to drive interest in fixing it. Horwitz's Brooke describes Meta's 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.360 approach to moderation as having a light touch, considering it 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.560 a moral virtue, and that the company wasn't failing to 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:33.800 supervise what users did. It was neutral. As I briefly explained, 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:36.160 the logic here is that the more stuff there is 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:38.800 on Facebook or Instagram, the more likely you are to 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:41.800 run into something you'll interact with, even if said interaction 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.800 is genuinely bad. Horwitz notes that in April twenty sixteen, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.560 Meta analyzed Facebook's most successful political groups, finding that a 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:52.560 third of them routinely featured content that was racist and 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:56.520 conspiracy minded, with their growth heavily driven by Facebook's group 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.920 you should Join and discover features algorithmic tools that face 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.200 used to recommend content. The researcher in question added that 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.360 sixty four percent of all extremist group joins are due 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:10.480 to Facebook's recommendation tools. Now here's something that will really 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:13.520 annoy you. At least they annoyed me. When the researcher 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.160 in question took their concerns to Facebook's Protect and Care team, 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.480 and that is their name. They were told that there 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:21.679 was nothing the team could do as and I quote, 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.880 the accounts creating the content were real people, and Facebook 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:30.440 intentionally had no rules mandating truth, balance or good faith. Cool. 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:34.680 That's the thing. Every time I read one of these things, 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.400 I just want to scream, because this is how this 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:40.760 company runs. There are many evil companies out there, but 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:43.600 it's so rare you read text that it's just like, yeah, 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:45.959 so if we do this, it will be good for people, 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:48.839 and someone just says, nah, mate, you don't want to 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.520 do that. Bring the numbers down. It's so strange and 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:53.960 it's so craven, and it's so often as well. And 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:56.880 this is only a tiny subset of the I imagine 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:00.840 tens of millions of emails at Meta. There's probably so 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:02.400 much worse that's going to come out one day. That 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.960 drives me insane. Ah. But I get back to the point, 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:07.960 which is that Meta at its core is a rot 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.720 economy empire, and it's entirely engineered to grow metrics and 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:16.079 revenue at pretty much the expense of anything else. In practice, 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:18.720 this means allowing almost any activity that might grow the 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:22.720 platform even if it means the groups balloon by tens 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.400 or hundreds of thousands of people a day, or allowing 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:27.680 people to friend fifty or more people in a single day, 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:31.080 even if it's obvious spam. It means allowing almost any 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:33.720 content other than that which it's legally required to police, 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.920 like mutilation or child pornography, which thank god they get 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.560 rid of. Fucked. I'm actually surprised that they take the 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:45.400 action there, and it's just it's very depressing, and even 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:50.000 in the worst cases, they're extremely hesitant to intervene. This 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:52.200 is why, by the way, when you log onto Facebook, 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:55.400 you can find multiple groups with the most bizarre names. 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:59.760 But I picked a particularly weird one search for Facebook complaints. 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:05.160 When you look, you'll find thousands of members in I 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:09.160 think like twenty different groups, all people that believe they're 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:11.880 talking to Facebook customer support, but what they're really doing 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.200 is engaging with the most obvious scammers in the world 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:20.120 asking to go private on Facebook Messenger. These groups are 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:24.680 a great example about Meta's total lack of any quality control, 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:28.760 and it's just utter contempt for their users. Typing Facebook 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:31.440 complaint into a search bar on the Facebook app should 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.240 if Meta gave a shit direct you I don't know 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:38.320 to Facebook's customer service department, and that would be if 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:40.319 one really existed, which it does not, which we will 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:44.680 get to later. Instead, it introduces you to multiple and 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:47.480 I've seen one. There's one group that had seventeen thousand, 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:50.719 one had five thousands. There's multiple groups with at least 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:55.280 a thousand people, and they're honey traps. They're obvious honeytraps 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:57.560 for scam artists, and Meta doesn't get rid of them, 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:01.000 I imagine because these groups have relatively high activity, boosting 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:06.000 Facebook's meaningful interactions, even if said interactions are a seventy 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.600 five year old being conned into sharing their username and 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:12.120 password via Facebook Messenger, or an irate Australian claiming that 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:15.679 hackers have changed his Facebook to Chinese, or another person 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:18.280 that I saw that was genuinely saying I ordered Lobster. 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:20.120 Where is it? I don't know on that one, mate, 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.800 I just don't know. Like most social networks, and you'll 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:25.880 see this with Twitter and Google in particular, even though 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.599 Google are realized not social network. In this case, these companies, 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:31.760 they have a kind of a black box approach to 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.800 customer service, meaning that when you submit or a complaint 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.520 or a problem or a query. Through these regular channels, 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.600 you're rarely going to get a substantive response or any 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.439 help of any kind. What makes Meta unique is that 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:48.160 they actively monetize the problem. In March twenty twenty three, 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:53.679 Meta launched paid verification, charging users fifteen dollars a month 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:56.679 to get a verified badge on their account, exclusive stickers 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.960 as well, and I quote as direct access to customer support, 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.000 which really has You've got to wonder, Hey, what does 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:07.120 Facebook think they're providing Otherwise is it not Facebook doing 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:09.480 their support? I'm just guessing, man, because it's not like 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.480 it's O the bloody website. It's just very annoying. It's 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:17.079 very annoying, and it's very It turns my stomach, it 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:22.120 really does. It's because customer support should be just a given, 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:24.920 especially when you're a company that makes tens of well 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:29.079 over ten billion dollars of profit a quarter. It's really frustrating, 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.040 and as shameless as it is, it's also just profoundly unimaginative. 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.320 As I've argued in the past, both on this podcast 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:39.760 and in my newsletter. By the way, Mark Zuckerberg is 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:44.319 a man bereft of ideas, Meta is a company bereft 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:49.760 of ideas. They stole Twitter's pivot, they stole Elon Musk's 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.840 paid verification idea, which in its first few moments allowed 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.840 pranksters to impersonate multi billion dollar pharmaceutical multinationals and white 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.280 billions from their stock valuation. And it just kind of 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:05.160 shows Meta's willingness to scrape from the bottom of the barrel, 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.800 even if it's just an horrible idea and also just 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:11.160 a very noxious one, like, yeah, we'll help you, mate, 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:13.120 if you pay fifteen dollars a month for our website 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:15.480 that we heavily monetize to such an extent that you 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:19.800 can barely get anything done on it. Good lord. But 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.760 as I've kind of suggested for Meta, any group is 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.040 an opportunity for engagement, and any content is an opportunity 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.360 for engagement, and any action taken on the platform is 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.200 a meaningful one. Anything that keeps a person engaged with 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:37.360 Instagram or Facebook, even if it's bad for the user, 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:41.040 is a good thing, and that mentality pervades the entirety 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:45.679 of this asshole company. To quote Facebook VP Andrew bos 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:48.200 Bosworth in a memo from twenty sixteen, and boz is 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.000 now the CTO of Meta. By the way, anything that 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.120 allows this company to connect more people more often is 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.520 de facto good, and all the work that this company 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.679 does in growth is justified, including questionable will contact, importing practices, 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.160 and subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.719 by which he meant terms and condition changes. While Mark 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.800 Zuckerberg might have claimed that Meta never believe the ends 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:14.559 justify the means when this memo came out, and when 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:18.400 BuzzFeed asked him and stop him from making Bosworth metas 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:22.720 CTO in twenty twenty two, or for that matter, from 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:35.680 doing anything else nakedly evil Meta's growth at all cost. 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.800 Mindset means that both Facebook and Instagram incentivize the creation 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.080 of more stuff far more than they incentivize any kind 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:46.040 of meaningful interaction of any kind. And as I've mentioned previously, 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:50.080 both of them have algorithms that aggressively force sponsored and 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:54.520 suggested content onto users based on this unknowable leviathan of 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:59.480 data points. One particularly noxious engagement trick Facebook uses is 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:02.320 to show a our cell of reels short vertical videos, 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:04.960 but instead of playing the entire thing, you're shown a 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.160 two or three second loop of the content In the 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:09.840 hopes that you'll be intrigued enough to click. This kind 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.400 of design decision is entirely built to create more engagement. 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:15.880 Meta could just play the videos in their entirety and 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:17.800 let you view them and maybe click through and hear 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.160 the sound if you are interested. But Facebook is built 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.880 to please Mark zuckerbergen his nasty, dirty little numbers game. 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:30.120 It's gross. Yet by incentivizing as much content and as 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:33.200 many interactions as possible, rather than curating the experience in 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:38.680 any way, Facebook is being killed. It's being destroyed in 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:43.000 real time. A study out of Stamford and Georgetown University 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:46.560 found that AI generated images have begun to dominate Facebook, 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:51.640 garnering hundreds of millions of interactions thanks to Meta's recommendation algorithms, 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.480 with one AI generated image becoming one of the twenty 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:57.040 most viewed pieces of content in the third quarter of 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.960 twenty twenty three. These pages, according to the study, regularly 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:04.640 and I quote used clickbake tactics and attempted to direct 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.040 users to off platform content farms and low quality debates 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:10.600 and scam pages that attempted to sell products that do 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.800 not exist or to get users to divulge personal details. 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:16.040 I don't know if you remember in the previous episode, 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:19.200 but I mentioned that Facebook has made changes like this before, 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:21.880 promoting clickbait content that doesn't tell you what it is 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:26.400 really until you click it. In essence, Mayre's algorithm is 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:30.160 actively monetizing, sending users to questionable groups that, according to 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:34.160 the study, used known deceptive practices such as as count, 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:38.480 theft or takeover to spread these horrible images, and that 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:42.280 these accounts exhibited suspicious follower growth showing them ads through 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:46.800 the entire experience. Four h four Media's Jason Koebler also 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.000 analyzed the phenomena and found that groups were using AI 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:53.200 altered pictures of Simon Cowell to direct people toward a 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:56.480 page called Thoughts, which routinely encourage people to click through 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:00.640 to a spamming website called Planet tree Panetee, which was 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:05.040 in turn full of horrible, invasive ads. Cobler also found 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:09.000 that Planet and Thoughts dramatic growth began when they started 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.280 using these AI generated images, and that many other groups 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:14.960 were doing the same thing, and they were generating these 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:17.640 bizarre images like a picture of Jesus made of shrimp 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.520 or an AI generated picture of a one hundred and twenty 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:23.760 one year old woman celebrating her birthday and this image, 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.000 by the way, her eyes are like smudges. It does 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:30.439 not look real. But these AI generated image they're running 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.920 absolutely rampant on the platform. All bookers. Meta has absolutely 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:38.639 no duty towards their users or even the platform itself. 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:42.879 Four o four Media also reported recently that Facebook's recommendation 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:47.159 algorithm is now promoting anime pornography, combining a mixture of 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:51.200 AI generated cartoon porn and plagiarized artwork to garner tens 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.560 of thousands of likes and reports to Jason Koebler mentioned 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:57.280 that a user complained that they'd been shown nude pictures 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:02.400 of Disney princesses and Misty from Pokemon. This is particularly 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:07.639 grotesque when you realize how many children use Facebook. Although 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:10.639 Facebook's relevance has kind of waned with gen z and younger, 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:13.640 it's still a major social network property in this demographic. 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:16.320 A report from twenty twenty one found that forty five 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:18.960 percent of kids under the age of thirteen used Facebook daily, 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:22.520 and speaks to a larger trend of recklessness within this company. 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.200 Going back to when an engineer was fired after raising 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:28.560 concerns that Facebook's people you may know feature allowed and 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:32.000 I quote millions of pedophiles to target tens of millions 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:37.159 of children. I guess Meta just doesn't really give a 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:39.760 shit as long as the number goes up. It doesn't 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:44.320 matter that Facebook's algorithm is actively recommending AI generated images 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:47.960 of mutilated children, garning hundreds of thousands, if not millions, 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.560 of engagements. It's also that Facebook can serve your ads 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.199 next to them. It doesn't matter that Facebook is saturated 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.320 with engagement bait, much of it created with generative AI, 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:01.159 because Meta is able to express it has three billion 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.359 or more family daily active people, whatever the hell that 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.960 means on the platform, even if it means that these 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.200 three billion daily active people, and I really question whether 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:14.199 it's actually three billion people, even if they're watching this 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:19.320 thing fall apart in real time. Yeah. Arguably the most 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:24.200 confusing addition to the platform in any recency is Meta AI, 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.800 a free and impossible to disable, by the way, artificial 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:32.320 intelligence assistant that uses generative AI to answer user questions 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:36.480 and generate images from virtually any Facebook property. Meta also 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.680 allows users to add metas AI to their groups, letting 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:43.080 commenters ask it questions. But they also did something really 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.240 weird they've allowed you to add it to the group 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:51.240 and respond to comments that aren't getting enough engagement, which 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:53.600 led metas Ai to respond to a comment in a 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:57.199 parenting group that it referring to metas ai had a 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:00.320 gifted child and recommended a specific school for help with 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.760 their child's needs. And when I say there, I'm referring 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:08.359 to a generative AI on the Facebook platform. It's so strange. 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:12.040 It's all so strange, And you know what, it doesn't 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:15.360 make any sense until you consider that every single decision 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:18.840 that Mark Zuckerberg makes is to keep users on metas platforms. 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:22.840 By adding a generative AI assistant, Meta gives users more 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:25.800 things to play with, more reasons to interact with the platform, 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.320 and more ways to generate content to put onto the platform, 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:32.440 which in turn creates more reasons for others to interact 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:36.200 with it. It doesn't matter that the things being created 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:43.119 are useless or harmful, or profoundly inane or intrusive or annoying, 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:47.040 or that by giving people the ability to lasily generate 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.720 posts which all kind of sound the same, because all 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.679 generative AI is trained on basically the same data sets, 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:57.160 except by the way Chacebooks is trained on Facebook data. 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:00.280 You're just going to normalize everything on there. Every Thing 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.880 already kind of sucks on Facebook, but now generative AI 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:07.000 will allow it to suck in greater numbers. This is 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:13.200 the future everyone now, this nonsensical act of pushing AI 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:16.480 onto Facebook and Instagram. Whats happened all these things? It's 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:20.080 just another silly, senseless way that Mark Zuckerberg is burning money, 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:23.879 and Meta is raising its spending forec US in twenty 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:27.200 twenty four to thirty five billion to forty five billion dollars, 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:30.280 which is up from thirty to thirty seven billion. Zuckerberg's 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:33.440 blown over forty billion dollars on the metaverse so far 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:35.560 and seems to be intent on doing the same thing 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:38.840 with AI. And he's going to sink billions more into 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.000 graphics processing units and other assorted hardware to spin up 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:46.760 features that nobody wants, that nobody asks for that Every 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.080 time I've seen someone discuss, they are saying something along 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:52.760 the lines of why is this here? Or why do 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:55.280 I need this? And I don't want this. I have 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:59.560 never seen such an unpopular product other than the meta us. 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:02.840 I think genuinely, had the metaverse been easier to access, 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:05.760 it would have been even more unpopular than this, but 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:09.399 let's be honest, it's already pretty unpopular already. Not to 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:12.800 sound too dramatic, but I believe that Meta is a 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:15.680 deeply evil company and it's run by people that treat 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:19.840 human beings as pawns. Pawns to increase engagement metrics and 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:22.879 make money on advertising. And what makes the company so 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:27.360 unique is that the services it provides are just unquestionably awful. 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:30.760 Using both Facebook and Instagram is a battle with an 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:33.480 algorithm to see the people that you choose to follow, 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:37.960 and Meta as a company seems incapable of developing anything new, intivative, 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:41.439 or even useful. Yet it made over thirty six billion 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:43.960 dollars in revenue in Q one twenty twenty four, and 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:47.200 it did so by abusing and manipulating its users while 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:51.040 also failing to maintain any integrity or utility within two 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:55.200 of the most important platforms on the Internet. And I believe, 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:57.720 as crazy as it sounds, that this strategy will lead 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:00.520 to the contraction and eventual death of face Book at 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:03.800 the very least, and possibly Instagram. And I anticipate that 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:07.040 as things get more difficult for the company, it's going 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:10.840 to hit Instagram so much worse. According to data provided 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:12.960 to me by Similar Web, in the last three years, 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:16.919 Facebook's US website audience has declined by thirteen point seven percent, 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:19.200 and in the year of a year period from April 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:22.240 twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four, monthly active users 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:25.600 on Facebook's app have declined by two point two percent, 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:29.280 while Instagram's web aardy inscrewed by twenty three percent over 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:31.360 the last few years. In the last twelve months, its 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:34.439 growth has slowed to six point eight percent, and between 0:23:34.440 --> 0:23:37.960 March and April twenty twenty four, Instagram's app monthly active 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:42.719