BEWARE! On iOS, the app will have access to a five-page-long list of data, including your browsing history, purchase history, phone number, physical address, precise location, photos, videos, and more. I almost wish they’d stop f’ing around with advertising and make it a paid subscription app. I might even subscribe to it then (like I have with SuperGrok and ChatGPT Plus).
Maybe their audience is people who can’t be bothered or can’t afford it.
madeofpalk 59 days ago [-]
iOS apps cannot access your Safari browsing history. I'm not even sure what "purchase history" actually means? They can't access photos and videos without explicitly granting permission.
This surely would just refer to the massive trove of data Facebook has already gathered about you.
pornel 59 days ago [-]
Most likely it does what their other apps do: opens URLs in an in-app "browser" WebView, which is then injected with a ton of trackers that have unlimited access to everything you browse in their app.
iOS apps are allowed to add arbitrary JavaScript to any page on any domain, even HTTPS, as long as it's a WebView and not the standalone Safari app.
consumer451 59 days ago [-]
This is generally worse UX vs. just opening Safari. There have been exactly zero times where I was happy that a link opened in an app's WebView, instead of in Safari or the appropriate external app.
Why does a seemingly privacy-focused Apple create the compromisable WebView system for apps? Is there some weird edge case for apps that they need this, for a non-evil reason?
pornel 58 days ago [-]
There is SCSafariController, and even Android has CustomTabs API for private in-app browsers. It's just very inconvenient for Meta/Facebook.
WebView is very useful for UIs. You're probably using it more than you know in the "native" apps.
consumer451 58 days ago [-]
I’ve never worked on iOS apps before, but after writing my comment I looked into it. Yes, I absolutely use WebView all the time without knowing it.
Still, would be cool if I had a setting for each app that allows forcing opening 3rd party URLs in Safari, and not WebView, if that is feasible.
blm126 59 days ago [-]
They don’t allow third party browser engines. If they didn’t allow web view they are effectively banning third party browsers completely. I can’t imagine that would make their anti trust problems any better.
consumer451 59 days ago [-]
That makes sense. Thanks.
Although, it does seem like they could get more granular in app approval, which I am sure iOS devs would not like, but users would. For example, "If your app's primary use case is navigation of the open web, you may use WebView to handle 3rd party links. However, if that is not the primary purpose of your app, web links must open in iOS."
Either that, or give me a setting for each app, which the dev can set the default on. "Open links in Safari."
threecheese 59 days ago [-]
There’s a permission for Location at least, “In App Web Browsing” can have that permission disabled. Web Views don’t seem to have similar treatment otherwise, afaict. I’d sandbox them aggressively if I could .
I use Adguard which has a Safari integration that appears to apply to Web Views (based on the absence of ads), though I don’t have proof of that.
consumer451 58 days ago [-]
> I use Adguard which has a Safari integration that appears to apply to Web Views (based on the absence of ads), though I don’t have proof of that.
I have been wondering about this for a couple years now. Do Safari content filters apply to app WebViews? I assumed not.
Can any iOS dev chime in? I don't have have a modern Mac and dev account to test this at this time.
JKCalhoun 58 days ago [-]
Well, just off the top of my head, an epub is basically HTML and is simple to implement with a web view. Nice when the OS has a framework that provides one.
tantalor 59 days ago [-]
Beware? Why? The app is marketed as providing personalized experience. How is it supposed to do that if it doesn't know anything about you?
fourside 59 days ago [-]
Because Meta have repeatedly shown themselves to not be good stewards of this type of data in the past.
ASalazarMX 59 days ago [-]
If you already have Facebook/Messenger in your phone, and haven't bothered to change default permissions, I guess Meta AI will only add your voice, image, and textual interactions to your already thick dossier. Not much more harm done.
Might as well but the Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses and embrace the exposure already.
The iOS app screenshots are all about Wayfarer AR glasses. Nothing about Meta.AI.
jjordan 59 days ago [-]
The app id (com.facebook.stella) was for an app called Meta View. It looks like they just rebranded an app that was previously used for Smart glasses and is now using it as their official AI app.
Why rebrand rather than create a new app? Who knows. Maybe to demonstrate a high(ish) download count at launch, maybe for app/play store credibility.
kivlad 59 days ago [-]
They rebranded the app designed exclusively for that (Meta View) and added the chat features.
ulfw 59 days ago [-]
Yea but why? Honest question. It has a totally different purpose
tacker2000 59 days ago [-]
Users that have the old app will get the new updated one installed.
Also probably for App Store SEO/rankings.
Meta is known for scummy behaviour, as we all know…
shaneos 59 days ago [-]
Congrats Beau!
WhitneyLand 59 days ago [-]
Who is this app adding value for? How is it differentiated?
The models are not sota, the feature set is no stronger than comparable apps, the privacy situation is as expected.
Not seeing it.
mirekrusin 59 days ago [-]
They will show you personalized ads after knowing everything about your life, how cool is that?
ASalazarMX 59 days ago [-]
I'd pay to get a copy of my dossier from them. Why haven't they monetized that?
"Here, this is what we spied from you last year. Consider most data brokers have already shamelessly traded with this info. Be more careful this year.
Regards, Mark."
Adrig 59 days ago [-]
This is about strengthening their own ecosystem (glasses, whatsapp), not attracting power users from competitors
energy123 59 days ago [-]
You don't want an automated em-dash inserter?
vineyardmike 59 days ago [-]
Tons of people use Metas existing products. Like an astonishing amount of people, despite the attitude of the typical HN crowd.
Many of those people aren’t particularly tech savvy, and aren’t hip to the latest technology. By embedding “Meta AI” into each app, they’re reaching an audience far greater than can be reached by most non-Google AI products.
Once they get hooked on using Meta AI (because it was there, and they didn’t know to search for others), they’re reaching may want a dedicated app.
ToucanLoucan 59 days ago [-]
I talk and work with plenty of non-tech-savvy people. They don't give a flying fuck about Meta AI.
The HN crowd is indeed overly dismissive of Meta and their reach across numerous markets, and my experience is not the end-all-be-all of data collection of course. But I have yet to see any casual users of anything who give a ghost of a shit about AI. Like I'm not even saying they're anti-AI or skeptics or whatever, I'm saying: any time in the last like 2 years when some product or another has had some damn AI or another integrated into it: reactions range from indifference to irritation.
Most I've seen is people see it, wonder what it is, ask it a few things, and then get bored with it and go back to what they were doing.
greybox 59 days ago [-]
I don't understand why. Why would I want a Facebook AI assistant? I dont understand why its in messenger and WhatsApp either?
jajko 59 days ago [-]
Why the fuck they had to infest the only reasonable product (they bought) - whatsapp. Outside of US its more used than sms or any other chat, including apple ones even on apple platform. No other meta app has any reason to exist on the phone of any reasonable user (I know most aren't, but this is HN and not army of social network addicts wasting their life online).
I guess it was to be expected, but I hate meta products with passion and removed them from phone many years ago (when they were leeching battery hard even when not used), cancerous leech of humanity for the goal of getting fer people ridiculously rich and richer.
laweijfmvo 59 days ago [-]
Facebook doesn't, Meta does. Social media is dead, per Zuckerberg, didn't you hear?
hshshshshsh 59 days ago [-]
[flagged]
sharkjacobs 59 days ago [-]
It's astonishing how much community goodwill and excitement there was for llama when it first came out, and how much it has plummeted since then.
Partly the sheen has worn off, and of course there are other interesting "open source" llm offerings now, but I don't think it can be overstated how much Meta is just a toxic brand.
Threads had a very similar arc.
freedomben 59 days ago [-]
fwiw this really doesn't mesh with my experience. The goodwill and excitement is still there for Llama, though diluted by the abundance of model options out there. That said, my lense does tilt heavily towards self hosting where the community is probably overall much more appreciative and excited about Meta's AI
jampekka 58 days ago [-]
Llama 4 license probably needs more than one set of scary quotes around """open source""".
The Chinese are the real driver of open source/open weights models now. China's brand is overtaking Meta's, and US (corporations) in general.
WRT Llama, IMO it’s only because they couldn’t infect a model with ad tracking that it overcame the tarnish. As long as I don’t need to run their conventional software to use it, I consider it safe.
I’m on the fence about their API product( technically they could tie it to one’s identity (as OpenAI could) but I’d imagine that would be less valuable given they can’t know which human is really behind it.
alex1138 57 days ago [-]
Threads had "Oh my god, so many people are using it"
Beyond the fact it's possible that they were counting Instagram users in those metrics, yeah, people are going to sign up to try the new thing
But it's what you came to expect from Zuckerberg, absolutely no way to control the feed at all, poor excuse for federation
recursive4 59 days ago [-]
This might be interesting if it pulled data from Meta properties (e.g. the Instagram accounts I am following) in order to personally contextualize its responses.
bhl 59 days ago [-]
I'm surprised the chatbot on Instagram doesn't already have that. Giving an LLM access to a highly personalized search tool (the scroll algorithm) would make asking for recommendations so much better.
nthingtohide 59 days ago [-]
Meta can turn this App into a sort of my assistant. I can dump any link into it. And since those links form the basis of my worldview helping the assistant understand me better. Currently only Google has a monopoly on such a possible futuristic assistant.
_fat_santa 59 days ago [-]
Meta has terrible "separation of concerns" within their apps. I just downloaded Messenger the other day and realized that they now also show you your feed within messenger. Why?? If i wanted to see my feed I would have downloaded the Facebook app. Same with WhatsApp and Instagram trying to cram down AI.
My theory is you have these app "fiefdoms" that are run by different product managers and all of them are trying to steal users from the other product to show that their product is driving growth. So you end up with 10 apps that implement 90% of the same features.
Byamarro 59 days ago [-]
Probably there are many people like me - I use messenger and not the Facebook. But they REALLY want ppl like me to use the Facebook.
Which sounds great except I can't find it or make it work.
phyrex 58 days ago [-]
Friends tab on mobile? Last I looked it didn't work on web for me
atonse 59 days ago [-]
wow! let’s see if people return as a result!
frizlab 59 days ago [-]
The lowkey makes sense. It’s more or less what they did with “close friends” on instagram, no?
skizm 59 days ago [-]
Pretty sure Zuck makes these decisions and doesn’t give individual apps within Meta much freedom. I recall Instagram (after being acquired) wanting to develop their app a certain way and Zuck kept giving them a hard “no” on a lot of features he thought would steal users from Facebook. Same deal with WhatsApp. I think the Founders of WhatsApp left Meta due to this dynamic (among other things).
vl 59 days ago [-]
This is rational strategy for WhatsApp founders: why would they stay after being paid out? There is no way they can earn more on top of what was already paid.
derektank 59 days ago [-]
The WhatsApp founders received the majority of their compensation from the deal in the form of equity in Facebook. As the leaders of an important product unit, I think they could have reasonably expected that staying and continuing to improve the product would have resulted in their Facebook equity increasing in value, some of which they were probably barred from immediately liquidating.
consumer451 59 days ago [-]
It got a bit more interesting than that.
> Now he’s talking publicly for the first time. Under pressure from Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to monetize WhatsApp, he pushed back as Facebook questioned the encryption he'd helped build and laid the groundwork to show targeted ads and facilitate commercial messaging. Acton also walked away from Facebook a year before his final tranche of stock grants vested. “It was like, okay, well, you want to do these things I don’t want to do,” Acton says. “It’s better if I get out of your way. And I did.” It was perhaps the most expensive moral stand in history. Acton took a screenshot of the stock price on his way out the door—the decision cost him $850 million.
> It’s also a story any idealistic entrepreneur can identify with: What happens when you build something incredible and then sell it to someone with far different plans for your baby? “At the end of the day, I sold my company,” Acton says. “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.”
Not sure on the specifics of the WhatsApp deal, but often times the founders, or key employees will be paid in stock from the new company that vests over some number of years (4 usually). Some or a lot of it might be up front, but to get 100% of it, they might have had to stay for a few years.
0cf8612b2e1e 59 days ago [-]
Surely having billions in the bank was part of why WhatsApp left.
reverendsteveii 59 days ago [-]
it's all about getting you into the endless feed of content. that's where their money lives, and that's where they want you to be.
evan_ 59 days ago [-]
Same with Instagram. If you tap in the wrong place you're looking at Threads all of the sudden.
lurk2 59 days ago [-]
Threads supposedly has 250 million monthly active users now. I’ve always suspected there was some fraud going on there, because I don’t know anyone who uses it.
xnx 59 days ago [-]
It's a fad. Before you know it, "everything" apps will be popular.
pixl97 59 days ago [-]
"In the West"?, If I recall correctly everything apps are pretty popular in Eastern countries.
kristofferR 59 days ago [-]
This is pure speculation, but perhaps it is a way to prevent being forced to do a corporate breakup? I guess it's harder to split up if it seems less like separate products. Zuckerberg tried sucking up to Trump, but the FTC case against Meta is still in full force.
Interesting that they tie the glasses so into this new app, while all AI functionality of the glasses still being disabled in the EU.
arisAlexis 59 days ago [-]
yes I feel cheated for buying those glasses that are essentially earbuds in eu
ulfw 59 days ago [-]
Should generally not buy anything meta.
Their AI doesn't work in my country and honestly I don't feel left out. Whatever
reginald78 59 days ago [-]
Even in the US you run the risk of having your hardware soft bricked by having your linked Meta account banned for some vague infraction which is probably just cover for not exposing yourself sufficiently to Meta.
lvl155 59 days ago [-]
No thanks. I am not using anything Zuck made with clear intent of screwing it up down the road.
jajko 59 days ago [-]
"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."
bilekas 59 days ago [-]
They added some AI slip chat to their WhatsApp client that seems to have context info about my chats and I can't opt out of that. It's also got a permanent icon hovering at the bottom right which I tend to hit while scrolling through contacts.
They've become the parody of how to do AI tools badly. It's disgusting.
simonw 59 days ago [-]
You can absolutely get the voice in the iOS app to John Cena and then tell it to pretend to be Peacemaker from the TV show and have a chat about how great Eagly is.
oulipo 59 days ago [-]
Meta projects are increasingly lame, and Yann Lecun hasn't had a single useful idea for years now
markdog12 59 days ago [-]
Why do the AI web apps not have voice mode?
beAbU 59 days ago [-]
Does this mean they'll remove the meta ai stuff from whatsapp?
lurk2 59 days ago [-]
They added it onto mine about a month ago. It disappeared for a couple of weeks and showed up again a few days ago. The search bar now says: “Ask Meta AI or Search,” which I’m sure means every search you make gets sent to their servers.
siva7 58 days ago [-]
In your phantasy maybe.
cruzcampo 59 days ago [-]
Heh, no. Everything is AI now. We've spent so much money on this junk, you ungrateful users better start using it!
LeoPanthera 59 days ago [-]
This is the same model that Meta declared was "too liberal" and had to specifically fine tune it with align with its Republican masters?
Classic Meta playbook, nothing innovative to build so let's just release a copy of ChatGPT
pmlnr 59 days ago [-]
Great, now, can you get it the f* out of Whatsapp, please?
remon 59 days ago [-]
Imagine still using Meta products in 2025.
tdhz77 59 days ago [-]
I own the meta glasses. I enjoy them. Last night, I asked meta to look at the menu and calculate the best meal by price. It calculated that the protein in the chicken Marsala was the best deal for the price. I then asked it to look at the wine menu and tell me a good dry wine that wouldn’t be too expensive. The wine list was over 100 wines and the answer retuned in seconds. I enjoyed the meal and the wine. I will continue to use the glasses in 2025 as I’m finding creative ways to use them.
pmlnr 59 days ago [-]
I'll bookmark this as the saddest thing to do with food in 2025.
righthand 59 days ago [-]
How does it know the affordability of a menu item? If it’s only looking at a menu the odds are that it doesn’t have a lot of information such as serving size and calorie cost. You just asked an AI to give the statically correct item for affordability.
The wine it chose was how far down the list? Was it chosen at random or did it just match “chicken wine” with the first result?
This seems like you’re assuming the glasses help you decide but really it probably did what anyone would do and pick a random option or just give you the popular choice. Why even use glasses for that and instead just point somewhere on the menu?
tdhz77 59 days ago [-]
It reasoned its choices. Told me the vineyard, what most people say about it. It gave me 3 food options originally and I said go by best value. It would be the same as if a friend recommended it to you or a server. How do I know the AI is giving me good advice? I don’t, but I’ve lived on earth long enough to know it’s not bad advice. End of day, the human makes the decision. We don’t lose agency unless we just say ok to everything. In this case, it was reasonable other cases maybe not. We still make decisions even if we use ai.
righthand 59 days ago [-]
So in the spirit of not losing agency, out of the 3 items you told it best value, which appears to mean “lowest cost”. Best value can also mean portion size relative to cost. Further even relative to your diet restrictions and relative to the area of economic activity. All of those things I garuntee weren’t involved in the LLM “reasoning”. It’s okay to be wowed by sleight of hand LLM tricks, but expect everyone to be skeptical when you describe the situation.
The above criteria is how I would evaluate best value of menu items. If an LLM just gave me the cheapest of 3 dishes I wouldn’t use it because it is not adding any agency I already had.
Here’s another possible scenario:
The LLM retrieved “best value” or some relative synonym from the online review of the restaurant. The review says “I think the chicken marsala is the best value.” The review was posted 5 years ago and the portion sizes have changed when the new owner wanted to shrinkflate the food. Is chicken marsala still the best value? Was it ever the best value?
tdhz77 53 days ago [-]
I think it’s clear you don’t understand llm’s and how they operate. The data is trained on orthotic patterns. Your description would be the contrary of real world llm.
jahsome 59 days ago [-]
I'm trying very hard not to be judgemental, but this comment fascinated (or horrified) me.
I grew up with some relatively minor food insecurity, and so outsourcing my food and beverage choice to a soulless machine sounds like my own personal hell.
the_snooze 59 days ago [-]
All that fancy technology just to address an optimization problem that's entirely solvable with a can of Vienna sausages and a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck.
tdhz77 59 days ago [-]
I will optimize for health next. That won’t be so easy.
jjulius 59 days ago [-]
Unless I'm really watching my budget (though, why would I be eating out at a place with a huge wine list and buying Meta glasses if that's the case?), I cannot possibly imagine the joy behind having a nice meal based on what AI told me is "the best deal" rather than trusting my own palate/gut and ordering what I know will bring me the greatest pleasure (or working with the sommelier to discuss my tastes and find something best-suited to both myself and my choice[s] of food).
You do you, by all means, if it brings you the most joy. But removing my own agency while allowing a company to track my entire dining experience to better serve me ads sounds so... hollow and dystopic.
WD-42 59 days ago [-]
This is what normal people used to discuss with the people they were eating with. Sad.
hu3 59 days ago [-]
Thanks for providing a practical example of usage.
Made me tempted to buy one.
A question I have is, how are you presented with the prompt result?
Does it send you a message on your phone or does it tell you in a headphone?
And you you ask it verbally or can you also ask it using mobile phone?
tdhz77 59 days ago [-]
The glasses have audio, bone induction and tells you the answer without anybody really being able to hear.
You can do both text or audio.
NBJack 59 days ago [-]
And now Meta knows your location at that time, can use that lovely menu to derive ads better suited for its competition, has data on when you like to eat out, who else was there (let's not forget about DeepFace!), etc. While you ate your meal, you fed some juicy tidbits to their data repo on you and those around you.
Oh, hey, is that an ad for a local winery?
tdhz77 59 days ago [-]
I’m in favor of banning all ads too. That ain’t an argument against ai.
liendolucas 59 days ago [-]
Do you really need a pair of glasses to tell you what to eat and drink? Wow, that must be the latest techie way to order food. A friendly reminder: you don't own those glasses, Meta does.
tdhz77 59 days ago [-]
What does owning the glasses get me?
rzz3 59 days ago [-]
I agree with you apart from WhatsApp. I automatically know you’re from America if you don’t use WhatsApp.
pmlnr 59 days ago [-]
This.
Never thought that once we had Skype we'll still not solve video calls cross-platform on every bloody device by 2025, including, but not limited to, linux, TVs, Android boxes, Chromecast with Google TV, and so on.
I really want to get off Whatsapp, but everyone simply refuses to do so out of simplicity, lazyness, and ignorance.
Signal is the easy and obvious alternative.
XMPP/Matrix are different paths that also work (and both rely on TURN/STUN, like everything), but that requires someone running those servers in your vicinity of friends.
lurk2 59 days ago [-]
It’s not particularly popular in most of the Anglosphere.
joefarish 59 days ago [-]
There are plenty of people who are aware of the "trade-off" of using their products but are still happy to do so. Just because they've come to a different conclusion to you doesn't mean they are in some way "wrong" to do that.
pmlnr 59 days ago [-]
No, not always. In this case, yes.
brap 59 days ago [-]
I mean, every single person I know uses either WhatsApp/IG/FB
cruzcampo 59 days ago [-]
Why would I want my AI App to be by the privacy nightmare, cambridge analytica people?
AI is becoming more and more of a commodity. What does the FB one offer to make up for its terrible reputation?
jsheard 59 days ago [-]
> AI is becoming more and more of a commodity
Ironically in large part due to Meta releasing their models. For now at least, we'll see how long their commitment to open weights lasts when the time comes to actually justify the tens of billions they're spending on all this.
cruzcampo 59 days ago [-]
There's also deepseek :-)
bilbo0s 59 days ago [-]
At least until Trump makes running Chinese models illegal in the US.
Maybe their audience is people who can’t be bothered or can’t afford it.
This surely would just refer to the massive trove of data Facebook has already gathered about you.
iOS apps are allowed to add arbitrary JavaScript to any page on any domain, even HTTPS, as long as it's a WebView and not the standalone Safari app.
Why does a seemingly privacy-focused Apple create the compromisable WebView system for apps? Is there some weird edge case for apps that they need this, for a non-evil reason?
WebView is very useful for UIs. You're probably using it more than you know in the "native" apps.
Still, would be cool if I had a setting for each app that allows forcing opening 3rd party URLs in Safari, and not WebView, if that is feasible.
Although, it does seem like they could get more granular in app approval, which I am sure iOS devs would not like, but users would. For example, "If your app's primary use case is navigation of the open web, you may use WebView to handle 3rd party links. However, if that is not the primary purpose of your app, web links must open in iOS."
Either that, or give me a setting for each app, which the dev can set the default on. "Open links in Safari."
I use Adguard which has a Safari integration that appears to apply to Web Views (based on the absence of ads), though I don’t have proof of that.
I have been wondering about this for a couple years now. Do Safari content filters apply to app WebViews? I assumed not.
Can any iOS dev chime in? I don't have have a modern Mac and dev account to test this at this time.
Might as well but the Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses and embrace the exposure already.
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/meta-ai/id1558240027
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.s...
The iOS app screenshots are all about Wayfarer AR glasses. Nothing about Meta.AI.
Why rebrand rather than create a new app? Who knows. Maybe to demonstrate a high(ish) download count at launch, maybe for app/play store credibility.
Also probably for App Store SEO/rankings.
Meta is known for scummy behaviour, as we all know…
The models are not sota, the feature set is no stronger than comparable apps, the privacy situation is as expected.
Not seeing it.
"Here, this is what we spied from you last year. Consider most data brokers have already shamelessly traded with this info. Be more careful this year.
Regards, Mark."
Many of those people aren’t particularly tech savvy, and aren’t hip to the latest technology. By embedding “Meta AI” into each app, they’re reaching an audience far greater than can be reached by most non-Google AI products.
Once they get hooked on using Meta AI (because it was there, and they didn’t know to search for others), they’re reaching may want a dedicated app.
The HN crowd is indeed overly dismissive of Meta and their reach across numerous markets, and my experience is not the end-all-be-all of data collection of course. But I have yet to see any casual users of anything who give a ghost of a shit about AI. Like I'm not even saying they're anti-AI or skeptics or whatever, I'm saying: any time in the last like 2 years when some product or another has had some damn AI or another integrated into it: reactions range from indifference to irritation.
Most I've seen is people see it, wonder what it is, ask it a few things, and then get bored with it and go back to what they were doing.
I guess it was to be expected, but I hate meta products with passion and removed them from phone many years ago (when they were leeching battery hard even when not used), cancerous leech of humanity for the goal of getting fer people ridiculously rich and richer.
Partly the sheen has worn off, and of course there are other interesting "open source" llm offerings now, but I don't think it can be overstated how much Meta is just a toxic brand.
Threads had a very similar arc.
The Chinese are the real driver of open source/open weights models now. China's brand is overtaking Meta's, and US (corporations) in general.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43676254
I’m on the fence about their API product( technically they could tie it to one’s identity (as OpenAI could) but I’d imagine that would be less valuable given they can’t know which human is really behind it.
Beyond the fact it's possible that they were counting Instagram users in those metrics, yeah, people are going to sign up to try the new thing
But it's what you came to expect from Zuckerberg, absolutely no way to control the feed at all, poor excuse for federation
My theory is you have these app "fiefdoms" that are run by different product managers and all of them are trying to steal users from the other product to show that their product is driving growth. So you end up with 10 apps that implement 90% of the same features.
Mark Zuckerberg suggested wiping everyone’s Facebook friends and making users start again to boost the platform’s relevance - https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-inst... | https://archive.today/01pLO
What a tool.
> Now he’s talking publicly for the first time. Under pressure from Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to monetize WhatsApp, he pushed back as Facebook questioned the encryption he'd helped build and laid the groundwork to show targeted ads and facilitate commercial messaging. Acton also walked away from Facebook a year before his final tranche of stock grants vested. “It was like, okay, well, you want to do these things I don’t want to do,” Acton says. “It’s better if I get out of your way. And I did.” It was perhaps the most expensive moral stand in history. Acton took a screenshot of the stock price on his way out the door—the decision cost him $850 million.
> It’s also a story any idealistic entrepreneur can identify with: What happens when you build something incredible and then sell it to someone with far different plans for your baby? “At the end of the day, I sold my company,” Acton says. “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive...
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/4/15/mark-zuckerberg-...
Their AI doesn't work in my country and honestly I don't feel left out. Whatever
They've become the parody of how to do AI tools badly. It's disgusting.
No thanks.
https://gizmodo.com/meta-says-its-latest-ai-model-is-less-wo...
The wine it chose was how far down the list? Was it chosen at random or did it just match “chicken wine” with the first result?
This seems like you’re assuming the glasses help you decide but really it probably did what anyone would do and pick a random option or just give you the popular choice. Why even use glasses for that and instead just point somewhere on the menu?
The above criteria is how I would evaluate best value of menu items. If an LLM just gave me the cheapest of 3 dishes I wouldn’t use it because it is not adding any agency I already had.
Here’s another possible scenario:
The LLM retrieved “best value” or some relative synonym from the online review of the restaurant. The review says “I think the chicken marsala is the best value.” The review was posted 5 years ago and the portion sizes have changed when the new owner wanted to shrinkflate the food. Is chicken marsala still the best value? Was it ever the best value?
I grew up with some relatively minor food insecurity, and so outsourcing my food and beverage choice to a soulless machine sounds like my own personal hell.
You do you, by all means, if it brings you the most joy. But removing my own agency while allowing a company to track my entire dining experience to better serve me ads sounds so... hollow and dystopic.
Made me tempted to buy one.
A question I have is, how are you presented with the prompt result?
Does it send you a message on your phone or does it tell you in a headphone?
And you you ask it verbally or can you also ask it using mobile phone?
You can do both text or audio.
Oh, hey, is that an ad for a local winery?
Never thought that once we had Skype we'll still not solve video calls cross-platform on every bloody device by 2025, including, but not limited to, linux, TVs, Android boxes, Chromecast with Google TV, and so on.
I really want to get off Whatsapp, but everyone simply refuses to do so out of simplicity, lazyness, and ignorance.
Signal is the easy and obvious alternative.
XMPP/Matrix are different paths that also work (and both rely on TURN/STUN, like everything), but that requires someone running those servers in your vicinity of friends.
AI is becoming more and more of a commodity. What does the FB one offer to make up for its terrible reputation?
Ironically in large part due to Meta releasing their models. For now at least, we'll see how long their commitment to open weights lasts when the time comes to actually justify the tens of billions they're spending on all this.