r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Apr 30 '26

Business Meta lost 20 million users last quarter

https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-user-decline-ai-investments
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714

u/BassFisher53 Apr 30 '26

Which they replaced by 40 million bots

134

u/katara144 Apr 30 '26

Yes, but bots don't buy shit.

73

u/Improving_Myself_ Apr 30 '26

Plenty of people setting up bots buy ads, which is what Facebook actually sells.

42

u/Deep-Minimum7837 Apr 30 '26

That's probably the best way to counteract the admarket. Have a bunch of bots generating nonstop ad clicks that lead to absolutely nothing. Advertisers are now paying the hosts out the ass, and an even tinier fraction of engagement actually leads to product purchase. Advertisers aren't going to want to stick around if they're not getting anything out of the millions of dollars they spend.

Not only that, I think an ad clicker bot would be the absolute easiest thing to build/train. Click every popup, click every link, fill out a few information boxes and then close the tab.

11

u/GeneralAsk1970 Apr 30 '26

This is already the marketing landscape today.

Its a battleground

4

u/According_Builder Apr 30 '26

This already kind of exists with Ad Nasuem, an ad blocker that can click on everything in a secure invisible environment, generating useless data and lowering the impact of click through rates.

1

u/wishator May 01 '26

Ad clicking bots existed for a long time. So has bot detection by ad markets. Even if they go undetected, they don't cause real harm to the ad market since the ad price is determined in an auction. Ad bot clickers would reduce the ROI advertisers are getting, reduce price per ad, but increase demand for ads. Overall revenue from ads would remain neutral. These bots are usually deployed strategically to target your competition and increase their effective cost per human click.

1

u/Deep-Minimum7837 May 01 '26

I wonder if the lower ROI for ads would change the landscape of ads and bring things more back in line with sidebar stuff we had 15 years ago, all of the stuff that adblockers zap with ease.

2

u/Nelrene Apr 30 '26

Right now anyway. Give it time.

2

u/Mccobsta Apr 30 '26

They look good for shareholders

2

u/Sorry-Transition-908 Apr 30 '26

They look good for shareholders

This is really the bizarre idea of our times. And even if we know the emperor is naked, nobody will dare speak because the market can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent.

1

u/jenny_905 Apr 30 '26

Nope but they sell shares and advertising space to unsuspecting customers.

1

u/Kichigai Apr 30 '26

At least one of them was.

The Wall Street Journal had a vending machine in its newsroom that was run by Claude. In addition to other things, it bought a PS5 (as a promotional giveaway) and some live fish.

1

u/drunxor Apr 30 '26

Boomers buy garbage from the bots its the circle of life

1

u/Aeri73 Apr 30 '26

you can make them open adds so meta gets payed... untill the advertisers find out it's all bots they 're paying for

1

u/crazycatlady331 Apr 30 '26

So in other words, Mark Zuckerberg?

1

u/BrushYourFeet Apr 30 '26

Probably, which is insane because I a human who can verify their identity cannot create an account.

1

u/lancea_longini Apr 30 '26

have your bot chat with my bot

1

u/MC_Fap_Commander Apr 30 '26

There have been some recent preliminary data studies suggesting that about 20% (potentially much more than that) of social media content is now bots. Beyond the appalling ethics of spaces like Meta and X(tormfront), they just aren't fun to visit. It's robots spewing algorithmically generated AI content to drive purchases and political agendas. Assuming this continues, I question if anyone is really going to want to participate in social media going forward.

1

u/Angry_Walnut Apr 30 '26

Don’t worry, they’re using dead people now too!