BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti Criticizes AI's Impact on Media, Launches New AI-Powered Platform

Jonah Peretti, Who Filled BuzzFeed With AI Slop, Now Says AI Is Threatening Human Agency

After an embarrassing pivot to AI content, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti says he's had enough of all the ragebait, clickbait, and fake news. Peretti, who proudly announced in May 2023 that AI will "replace the majority of static content," and gloated that its AI-generated content was outperforming its pesky human employees, has seemingly turned another leaf. In a rambling new blog post, Peretti argued that a "future where AI takes away our human agency, devalues our labor, and creates social discord" is already here, pointing the finger at tech companies who he said coerced the media into producing a flood of what he calls SNARF ("stakes, novelty, anger, retention, fear") content, which he says manipulates readers into sticking around. According to Peretti, the use of AI has "already shipped the dystopian AI future many people are worried might come in the future." "They've already delivered a MAGA President that spews SNARF and a woke counter-culture that celebrates the assassination of a health insurance executive -- big stakes, lots of novelty, and plenty of anger, retention, and fear!" he wrote. After all those grandiose claims, Peretti announced the launch of a "new social media platform built specifically to spread joy and enable playful creative expression" called -- we are not kidding -- "BF Island." Oh, and how will BF Island work? It'll "allow users to use AI to create and share content," per Axios. It all rings very hollow. After surrendering BuzzFeed to AI, Peretti is complaining that Facebook and TikTok used AI to trap users, and his solution is to build yet another AI-powered social network. And that's without getting into how BuzzFeed has been using AI to fill the internet with insipid slop for years now, from borderline unintelligible quizzes to incredibly lazy travel guides. "This post was enhanced with AI creativity tools," reads a note appended to countless posts published on the site. In other words, BuzzFeed itself has quickly become the epitome of the manipulative media landscape Peretti is claiming to decry. Instead of acknowledging his own role in giving up "human agency" and "devaluing labor" -- BuzzFeed has lost huge swathes of its workforce over several rounds of layoffs and wiped out most of the company's stock value over the last four years -- Peretti is blaming the tech sector for his failings. "It is hilarious to me that so many people still blame 'The Media' when the behaviors of the media are largely shaped by the much larger tech platforms, who distribute most of the world's content, despite being mostly disinterested in the content itself," he wrote. "Nevertheless, they love to blame the media and take zero responsibility for the media ecosystem that they were instrumental in creating, almost by accident as a byproduct of the AI wars." To be clear, Peretti is right about a few things. Tech companies do have a long history of coercing the media into tapping into what he's calling SNARF content through the use of algorithms. In simple terms, the loudest piece of content wins, creating a toxic feedback loop. But where Peretti's "anti-SNARF manifesto" falls apart is in his continued pursuit of AI slop. And considering Meta's disastrous attempts to populate its increasingly abandoned social media platforms with fake AI users and AI engagement bait, relying on the same tech may not even be the path to profitability Peretti thinks.

Guy Who Ruined Buzzfeed With AI Now Says AI Is Bad, Launches New AI Platform

Jonah Peretti, the founder and CEO of Buzzfeed, pissed off a lot of people a couple of years ago when he decided to gut the website's sizable (and, at one time, award-winning) newsroom and pivot the platform towards a business model that favored AI-generated content. Now, Peretti says he's worried about the rise of AI and its potentially noxious impact on our lives. He also says he has a solution to that problem: launching a new AI platform. Yes, according to a weird, long blog post that Peretti published to his site Tuesday, the media executive isn't feeling so great about the growing glut of AI-generated bullshit that is now roiling through the internet. Peretti starts the blog with an empathetic monologue about the troubling technological times we're living through: "Most anxieties about the future are really about the present," Peretti writes. "We worry about a future where AI takes away our human agency, devalues our labor, and creates social discord. But that world is already here and our meaning, purpose, and agency has already been undermined by Artificial Intelligence technologies." Peretti goes on to complain about something that he calls SNARF, an acronym for "stakes, novelty, anger, retention, fear," which are the primary emotions that content creators go after when they're attempting to create compelling 14-second videos that can hijack your attention. Again, it is very ironic that Peretti is worried about SNARF, given the fact that Buzzfeed was a pioneer in SNARF-like creation. According to Peretti, AI is making it easier and easier for SNARF to take over our lives: "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." Peretti has a way to fight SNARF, and it is... a new social media platform that will "allow users to use AI to create and share content around their interests," according to Axios. At first glance, it might seem like a deeply asinine move for Peretti to write a long online screed against a certain phenomenon, only to then announce that he's in the process of trying to make money off of that very same phenomenon. But, having thought about it for a minute, I think I'm beginning to see his logic: the only way you can fight the SNARF is to...become the SNARF. Truly genius, Jonah. Seriously. Really smart stuff. Oh, and we saved the best part for last: the name of Peretti's new SNARF-fighting/creating platform is BF Island. Yes, BF Island. How cool is that? BF Island. Maybe Peretti is earnestly perturbed by the AI bullshit that he sees all around him. Maybe he's realized that AI-generated content isn't really a huge revenue earner and he's looking to diversify his business. Maybe he's just really good at taking the national temperature and regurgitating what people want to hear. Maybe it's all of the above. Any which way you slice it, though, we know one thing for sure: if there's one guy who knows something about SNARFâ€"the apparent epitomization of mindless, emotionally manipulative online contentâ€"it's gotta be Peretti.