Soon people discovered that Meta’s ghoulish posters had been among us for months, even years. There’s Liv, a “Proud black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller,” according to its Instagram profile. Add to that Brian, “everybody’s grandpa;” Jade, “your girl for all things hip-hop;” and Carter, a “relationship coach.” I’m sure there are more yet to be discovered.
All four of these posters have pages on both Facebook and Instagram with mirrored content and all four have post histories that go back to September 26, 2023. The accounts have the blue verified check marks and a label indicating that they’re an AI “managed by Meta.” Users can block them on Facebook, but not on Instagram. Users can also message them across all of Meta’s platforms, including WhatsApp.
That’s the thing about the Age of Information - it’s also the Age of Misinformation. The invention of television was hailed as a landmark in worldwide education and bringing people together. Instead it became almost entirely whatever people were willing to sit through ads for to feed their growing addiction to entertainment. The Internet enabled anyone to broadcast whatever quality of content they feel like spewing out. It’s really not even intelligent to expect random content to be true without doing any cross-checking, but few people do. Most just happily consume any material they already agree with, like Patrick sucking up SpongeBob’s grandma’s cookies.