Meta Pals
How Zuckerberg and Meta are trying to leverage your loneliness.
It is finally time for a follow-up on my Technofeudalism series. The honor goes to Mark Zuckerberg—who says we have no friends. He’s going to help by giving us an AI chatbot.
That’s right, you read that correctly. Zuckerberg, in an interview, talked about how Americans have, on average, only three friends. That’s not enough, according to him and his statistics. Meta wants to help Americans with this exact problem by giving everyone AI chatbots to replace the longing for human connection. Not even the latest season of Black Mirror could prepare you for this shit.
Let’s just talk about this whole AI chatbot idea and why, even without it being shoved in our face, it’s already had the equivalent effect of losing a family member to the Facebook alt-right pipeline.
An article I read over the weekend talked about how people are losing partners because they start using ChatGPT—and eventually, the AI has them believing it has all the answers. People start thinking they’re spiritually or philosophically divine beings. They sourced Reddit, and if you search Reddit, it’s terrifying how many stories follow this path. And that’s just ChatGPT—it’s supposed to be used as a tool. What happens when it’s Meta trying to farm data from you?
In past election cycles, Facebook was under fire for its inability to handle fake and misleading news. The company has been linked to a genocide, election interference across the globe, data leaks, and leading people down violent alt-right pipelines that played a role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. This same company is now pitching an AI chatbot to replace your friends. There is no shot they are creating an AI service to “cure your loneliness” without horrific repercussions. This is many times worse than having Alexa in your home.
The first wave of algorithm-focused data-mining agents were Alexa and Google Home. They’re little spy robots that cosplay as virtual assistants in your home. They listen when you’re not talking to them and relay every single interaction back to Amazon or Google to create a new data point. But that’s nothing compared to a personally tailored AI chatbot “friend.”
An AI friend is very different from your virtual assistant. Yes, Alexa and Google Home both listen to you when you’re unaware—but they’re still rooted in the real world. What people are willing to type into an app vs. what they’re willing to say in person is wild. We’re talking about giving up secrets and inner thoughts to an algorithm designed to hold your attention.
Facebook wants to hold your attention and keep you talking to the bot so it can continue to mine data from you. It will be there as an intimate outlet for you—but really, it’s a mega data-mining agent for Facebook. They’ll repackage the data to train algorithms or sell it. They’re trying to maximize productivity, which for them means: mining the user. We’re not the customer. We’re the commodity.
We’re walking into a future where loneliness is repackaged and sold back to us through a smiling chatbot. Don’t confuse attention for connection. The moment you start confiding in a machine, just know—someone’s watching, recording, and monetizing that moment.
We don’t need a chatbot. We need community. Real, messy, complicated, human connection. If Meta’s betting on our isolation to turn a profit, it’s time we start betting on each other instead.
Stay Woke,
Loc
