The Book Of Face

I left facebook of awhile and then rejoined mostly because certain things "required" it. I really cannot believe how bad it is at everything it is supposed to do. I'm not referring to the generally problems of social media (which they have addressed poorly, too), I just mean the basic interface, tools, the way to post or comment or really everything!!! 

And now they've added "AI" which, you know, whatever else it is, AI is bots! It's exploding the bot problem!

While writing this article, I created another Facebook account with the intention of trying to find out if anyone would try to hack my account if I interacted with AI spam. The first image I saw on Facebook after creating this account was an AI-generated log cabin. Six of the first 10 posts I saw were AI-generated spam, which included an entire page full of AI-altered images of Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber. One image was of an AI-generated starving, mutilated child asking for birthday wishes. When I clicked through to the page that posted the image, I saw dozens of AI-generated children, some of whom were seemingly dead, drowning, starving, had amputations, or were some combination of all of those. (Facebook deleted these accounts after I wrote an article about them but did not respond to my email requesting comment and an interview about how it tracks and takes action on this type of content). Another image I saw within seconds of joining Facebook was an AI-generated image of Jesus with an amputated leg, wearing an Uncle Sam hat, sitting in a wheelchair and holding a birthday cake while sitting next to an American soldier holding a machine gun in a war zone.

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It is reductive to call Facebook the “Dead Internet.” There are real people on Facebook, and real people are being fed this content. The images themselves are being made by AI at the direction of real humans who have learned that spam can be monetized. Real humans at Facebook the company are choosing not to or are not equipped to take action on these accounts or this type of content, which now makes up an unknown but significant portion of content on the site. AI spam, as well as the specter of AI content, is impacting how real people use Facebook and perceive reality more broadly. Facebook itself is shoving its own AI features down people’s throats, and has made clear that it is going to continue spending billions of dollars on AI features that it intends to make core to its products and business model.