Meta Experiments with Digital Blackface

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So, last week, I wrote about Meta inadvertently planning to confirm the “Dead Internet Theory,” with cringy fake people (AI bots), and how enthusiastic the Zuck was about all of this, despite there being no value, or any verifiable reason for it all to exist. And, almost immediately afterward, scores of people began planning their move away from Threads across the platform (post-2023 social media is just a game of digital hot potato). Other users scoured Instagram and Facebook to find a slew of 20 some bots … including a fake black woman pretending to have a family, and culture.

As it turns out, these weren’t actually the bots that Meta was planning to implement, rather, they were experiments from over a year ago that nobody noticed and/or completely ignored, until Mark started to bring attention to his next, biggest, worst decision. These profiles are now deleted, as complaints were made against the accounts … because you couldn’t block them, and due to major backlash, in-general.

Via 404 Media:

"There is confusion: the recent Financial Times article was about our vision for AI characters existing on our platforms over time, not announcing any new product," Sweeney said. "The accounts referenced are from a test we launched at Connect in 2023. These were managed by humans and were part of an early experiment we did with AI characters. We identified the bug that was impacting the ability for people to block those AIs and are removing those accounts to fix the issue.”

But, the aforementioned “Liv” wasn’t Meta’s only experiment with making racist caricatures, as Threads user krenaep details, with a completely different, and also now deleted account, named “Jade.”

View on Threads

It seems these bots were completely willing to de-mask their creators, showing us that both of these accounts, and the others, were all constructed by a team of mostly white guys. Which, and I’m not a genius or anything, but, looks real bad, chief. But it does further the conversation as to what exactly the goal was, or is with these things. Some have said the the goal is to “drive engagement,” but, to what end, and how? You going to use AI to boost real human beings?

Or, you’re going to ask content creators to use your AI tools in order to develop caricatures of themselves that can interact with people for them, thereby discouraging human interaction on a social media platform. Because if there’s anything billionaires hate more than losing a single cent to paying their goddamn taxes, it’s regular, real human beings, who still have functioning frontal lobes. And the assumption, is, I guess, that everyone else must be like this, too.

In the age of tomfoolery, and fuckery, and generative slop that guzzles gallons of fresh water every single time you make a prompt, I think it’s important to begin the move away from corporate social media. If you can. Albeit, I do exist on Meta social media, and that’s entirely for my own reasons–I’m conflicted, and I have work that I’d like to reach more than a few handfuls of people with, because I don’t want to work retail for the rest of my natural life, until I’m replaced by an AI bot that will inevitably hallucinate that I was never actually born.

But, this is your regular reminder that user-owned social media exists, and you have full control over the things you see, and interact with online … even if Meta will never truly delete or relinquish your data, no matter what you do with your accounts. And if we can get people en-masse to move to the protocol mentioned below, then maybe even more people will feel like they don’t have to keep one foot in the digital hell, and the other in the place where they actually want to be.

Ways to join Mastodon:

• Check out mastodon.social, the flagship instance that has the most people on it. This is good for people who don’t want to bother looking through different servers and simply want to give the place a try.

• Check out my instance, and submit a join request (please type a legible reason for joining with your request, so that I can distinguish you from bots).

• Or, surf through numerous different ActivityPub instances that span even more than just Mastodon.