Buzzfeed Wants To Fight Ai-driven Social Media With A Platform Of Its Own

BuzzFeed plans connected launching a caller societal level “built specifically to dispersed joyousness and alteration playful imaginative expression.” In a blog position published connected Tuesday, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti highlights nan “growing discontent” pinch platforms utilizing AI-driven algorithms to support users glued to their screens, adding that BuzzFeed’s societal web would usage AI to “give users agency” alternatively than return it away.

BuzzFeed says nan level is “designed arsenic an oasis from algorithm-driven doomscrolling” and will “introduce quirky, weird, and joyful experiences to make nan nett nosy again.”

Peretti’s blog position goes into overmuch point astir why BuzzFeed is creating a societal media platform. He outlines really companies for illustration Meta and TikTok prioritize nan judgement of AI algorithms alternatively than nan thoughts of their employees, starring to nan proliferation of contented that “elicits nan astir compulsive and predictable consequence from nan value brain.”

Peretti describes this benignant of contented arsenic point he calls “SNARF,” which stands for Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, and Fear (emphasis Peretti’s):

Content creators exaggerate stakes to make their contented urgent and existential. They manufacture novelty and rotation their contented arsenic unprecedented and unique. They manipulate anger to thrust engagement via outrage. They hack retention by withholding accusation and promising a payoff astatine nan extremity of a video. And they provoke fear to make group attraction pinch urgency connected their content.

BuzzFeed, which too owns HuffPost and Tasty, plans to tackle nan addictive societal media business by making “content that gives you a mini buzz, helps you relax, personification a bully time, and nexus pinch your friends,” while too launching this caller societal media level of its own.

“We’re building an alternative,” Peretti said. “The early of societal media should beryllium designed for productivity and connection, not addiction. This isn’t astir making BuzzFeed better, it’s astir reimagining what nan nett tin be. It’s clip to bring backmost nan nett we love, wherever everyone tin find their group and unleash their creativity.”

You tin mobility up for early entree to BuzzFeed’s societal web connected nan company’s website.