BuzzFeed wants to fight AI-driven social media with a platform of its own

Feb 12, 2025 01:21 AM - 2 months ago 107893

Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, user tech, crypto, societal media, and overmuch more. Previously, she was a writer and editor astatine MUO.

BuzzFeed plans connected launching a caller societal level “built specifically to dispersed joyousness and alteration playful imaginative expression.” In a blog station published connected Tuesday, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti highlights the “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 the level is “designed arsenic an oasis from algorithm-driven doomscrolling” and will “introduce quirky, weird, and joyful experiences to make the net nosy again.”

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

Peretti describes this benignant of contented arsenic thing 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 the extremity of a video. And they provoke fear to make group attraction pinch urgency connected their content.

BuzzFeed, which besides owns HuffPost and Tasty, plans to tackle the addictive societal media situation by making “content that gives you a small buzz, helps you relax, person a bully time, and link pinch your friends,” while besides 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 the net tin be. It’s clip to bring backmost the net we love, wherever everyone tin find their group and unleash their creativity.”

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