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BuzzFeed has announced that it will be creating a new social media platform built specifically to "spread joy" and "enable playful creative expression", according to Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed.
"This social media platform will use AI to give users agency instead of stealing their agency. I'm fed up with giving the platform companies advice about how to fix the internet, if we want this done right, we have to do it ourselves," he wrote in a blog post.
In his post, Peretti talked about how the world is worried about a future where "AI takes away our human agency, devalues our labor, and creates social discord."
He went on to say that that world is already here and that our meaning, purpose, and agency has already been undermined by artificial intelligence technologies. In the US, he said, this began with the launch of TikTok. He explained that he had a conversation with ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming in 2017 who said that he wanted to launch an app in the US but that he needed a source of video content.
"I asked what kind of content and he said it didn't matter, he just needed tens of thousands of videos each day. He explained that Chinese universities produce more Deep Learning PhDs each year than the total number employed in every Silicon Valley company combined," said Peretti.
"He explained that this talent allowed him to make his AI so good that the content didn't matter. He just needed raw tonnage of content so the AI could create a personalized experience and get the flywheel going. He subsequently bought Musical.ly, evolved it into TikTok by adding advanced AI, and the rest is history," he added.
Peretti added that similar to Zhang, Mark Zuckerberg "doesn't care very much about the content on his platforms" and is much more interested in technology and AI. "The deep learning approach leveraging massively parallel computation made the metrics go up, but the teams at Meta didn't know why one piece of content was winning over another because the decisions were being made inside the deep learning black box," he said.
He added that these deep learning AIs are designed to maximize the time we all spend on these apps. "While you are reading this memo, you are probably jonesing to switch over to Instagram or TikTok. It turns out when an app company doesn't care about content and asks an AI to maximize usage the result is a service that incentivizes content that maximizes addictiveness," he said.
When the platforms don't care about content and ask the AI to maximize usage, the content evolves into what I call “SNARF," said Peretti.
SNARF stands for Stakes/Novelty/Anger/Retention/Fear, he said. SNARF is the kind of content that evolves when a platform asks an AI to maximize usage. Content creators need to please the AI algorithms or they become irrelevant. Millions of creators make SNARF content to stay in the feed and earn a living.
"We are all familiar with this kind of content, especially those of us who are chronically online. Content creators exaggerate stakes to make their content urgent and existential. They manufacture novelty and spin their content as unprecedented and unique. They manipulate anger to drive engagement via outrage. They hack retention by withholding information and promising a payoff at the end of a video. And they provoke fear to make people focus with urgency on their content," he said.
This dynamic is causing many different types of content to evolve into versions of the same thing. Once you understand this you can see how much of our society, culture, and politics are downstream from big tech's global SNARF machines, Peretti added, noting that despite the growing revenue and usage of the big social media platforms, we are beginning to see the first cracks that suggest there might be an opportunity to fight back.
He explained that it was time to fight back and how they will do it is using their platform. Buzzfeed will provide human curation of the best of the internet, providing an alternative to algorithmically recommended SNARF while HuffPost will break through by zeroing in on topics where the stakes are legitimate, the novelty is real, and the fear and anger are justified, and it won't be above using clever retention tactics, all while maintaining high journalistic standards, he said.
Tasty will fight SNARF with utility and social connection, as a food entertainment brand, on the forefront of food trends, bringing audiences entertaining formats with beloved creators and famous faces and BuzzFeed Studios will escape SNARF by creating well-developed, quality longform video and premium content that is distributed on streamers and platforms that do care about what they air.
While Peretti said that he can't share much more about the new social media platform it is building, he is excited to take this step "after years of being beholden to other platforms".
He added that the team is currently in the lab developing the platform now.
"This social media platform will use AI to give users agency instead of stealing their agency. I'm fed up with giving the platform companies advice about how to fix the internet, if we want this done right, we have to do it ourselves," he wrote in a blog post.
In his post, Peretti talked about how the world is worried about a future where "AI takes away our human agency, devalues our labor, and creates social discord."
He went on to say that that world is already here and that our meaning, purpose, and agency has already been undermined by artificial intelligence technologies. In the US, he said, this began with the launch of TikTok. He explained that he had a conversation with ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming in 2017 who said that he wanted to launch an app in the US but that he needed a source of video content.
"I asked what kind of content and he said it didn't matter, he just needed tens of thousands of videos each day. He explained that Chinese universities produce more Deep Learning PhDs each year than the total number employed in every Silicon Valley company combined," said Peretti.
"He explained that this talent allowed him to make his AI so good that the content didn't matter. He just needed raw tonnage of content so the AI could create a personalized experience and get the flywheel going. He subsequently bought Musical.ly, evolved it into TikTok by adding advanced AI, and the rest is history," he added.
Peretti added that similar to Zhang, Mark Zuckerberg "doesn't care very much about the content on his platforms" and is much more interested in technology and AI. "The deep learning approach leveraging massively parallel computation made the metrics go up, but the teams at Meta didn't know why one piece of content was winning over another because the decisions were being made inside the deep learning black box," he said.
He added that these deep learning AIs are designed to maximize the time we all spend on these apps. "While you are reading this memo, you are probably jonesing to switch over to Instagram or TikTok. It turns out when an app company doesn't care about content and asks an AI to maximize usage the result is a service that incentivizes content that maximizes addictiveness," he said.
When the platforms don't care about content and ask the AI to maximize usage, the content evolves into what I call “SNARF," said Peretti.
SNARF stands for Stakes/Novelty/Anger/Retention/Fear, he said. SNARF is the kind of content that evolves when a platform asks an AI to maximize usage. Content creators need to please the AI algorithms or they become irrelevant. Millions of creators make SNARF content to stay in the feed and earn a living.
"We are all familiar with this kind of content, especially those of us who are chronically online. Content creators exaggerate stakes to make their content urgent and existential. They manufacture novelty and spin their content as unprecedented and unique. They manipulate anger to drive engagement via outrage. They hack retention by withholding information and promising a payoff at the end of a video. And they provoke fear to make people focus with urgency on their content," he said.
This dynamic is causing many different types of content to evolve into versions of the same thing. Once you understand this you can see how much of our society, culture, and politics are downstream from big tech's global SNARF machines, Peretti added, noting that despite the growing revenue and usage of the big social media platforms, we are beginning to see the first cracks that suggest there might be an opportunity to fight back.
He explained that it was time to fight back and how they will do it is using their platform. Buzzfeed will provide human curation of the best of the internet, providing an alternative to algorithmically recommended SNARF while HuffPost will break through by zeroing in on topics where the stakes are legitimate, the novelty is real, and the fear and anger are justified, and it won't be above using clever retention tactics, all while maintaining high journalistic standards, he said.
Tasty will fight SNARF with utility and social connection, as a food entertainment brand, on the forefront of food trends, bringing audiences entertaining formats with beloved creators and famous faces and BuzzFeed Studios will escape SNARF by creating well-developed, quality longform video and premium content that is distributed on streamers and platforms that do care about what they air.
While Peretti said that he can't share much more about the new social media platform it is building, he is excited to take this step "after years of being beholden to other platforms".
He added that the team is currently in the lab developing the platform now.
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