"Meta! It's beautiful! AIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"
Posted on 05/12/2026 7:11:38 PM PDT by Red Badger
It’s hard to even imagine now, but immediately after it launched in 2004, there was nothing on the internet cooler than Facebook.
It was initially available only to Harvard students, then gradually expanded to students at other elite colleges, giving it an aura of exclusivity that founder Mark Zuckerberg clearly coveted. By the time it opened up to public accounts in 2006, the hype was palpable, paving the way to an explosive initial public offering in 2012.
Since those salad days, its trajectory has never been quite the same. Sure, it’s maintained market share with a series of cynical acquisitions of would-be competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp, but Facebook’s feeds have been inexorably taken over by industrial-scale engagement bait and sleazy ads as users failed to stick around.
By 2026, after a failed pivot to the Metaverse — oh yeah, it changed its name to Meta back in 2021 — scrolling Facebook feels like an infinite timeline of AI slop, ads, and lazy misinformation, none of which the company seems to have an iota of interest in cleaning up.
Add it all up, and you start to wonder whether the behemoth venture has entered the long decline that eventually killed other former stars of the web like Yahoo and AOL. That’s the case that acclaimed investigative journalist Julia Angwin made today in the New York Times:
Meta’s earnings are starting to show the strain from years of growing consumer disaffection and reckless spending. The latest earnings, released on April 29, revealed a dip in user numbers for the first time since it started reporting these figures. And the slumping stock confirms what we have all known in our guts for a while: This is a company entering its zombie era.
Death is different on the internet. Lifeless companies like AOL and Yahoo are still technically with us. You can visit their websites. They have customers. They may even be profitable, as they cut staff and monetize their last remnants of traffic. But they are, as the kids say, peak cringe. Many teens wouldn’t be caught dead with an AOL account, a Yahoo email address — or a Facebook profile.
If she’s right, it’s hard to imagine that this death spiral will cause any human on Earth quite as much suffering as Zuckerberg, who got a little taste of true cultural clout during those golden years after he dropped out of Harvard and, for the one stretch in his life, was the head of something genuinely cool.
He’s trying, of course. Ever since his pivot to VR failed, he’s been practically setting money on fire to try to establish dominance in the red-hot AI space — but so far his efforts have lagged far behind the competition and the only real tangible effects are that Facebook’s feeds are more clogged with garbage than ever before.
He’s probably got some surprises left in him yet. If there’s one thing Meta’s taught us, it’s that a formerly beloved site can always get worse.
Shouldn’ta kicked me off.
"Meta! It's beautiful! AIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"
Couldn’t happen to a better quasi-human reptilian humanoid.
Or something.
Well I still have my cringe email address from AOL. I’m just too lazy to move to another woke or non woke address. I never use AOL for anything else and if they go under I will be forced to get another address but they ain’t dead yet.
they kicked me off because I wouldn’t give them my cell number ...
TikTok was annihilating META in users and quality of the algorithm and compensation for creators. So he ran to Congress screaming China and took down a competitor. But that was a dying gasp of META.
He also did a lot of damage by becoming a big time censorship leader and partner of the FBI.
All that left for him were geezers showing vacation pictures and meals. And now it’s flooded with morality fables and AI created fictional content.
Pretty much it died because Zuck is a mental case and it took on his personality.
MySpace says, “Welcome to my world!”
What is it?
Meta is Facebook?
> Facebook feels like an infinite timeline of AI slop… <
That’s not wrong. A good number of videos there now - maybe a third to a half - are deceiving AI videos just designed to gather clicks.
And what’s worse, many of those AI videos are spreading dangerous misinformation. I recall one that showed a child walking up to, and then petting, a wild baby bear.
It sure looked real. But actually try it, and mama bear would tear you apart.
Yes, Meta is the parent company of FB.
I’m annoyed by companies which use Fakebook as their primary customer access. I don’t have an account so I can’t see their info. Anymore, that’s like a company that will only publish its phone number in the yellow pages.
It served its purpose for stupid people to volunteer all their info to the CIA and FBI. They have other ways to get us now.
The VR world with late 90s graphics didn’t save the company?
I still have my aol email account and my kids are embarrassed for me but I really couldn’t care less. The other day a kid doing some work for me had never heard of aol. What’s that? he said. That’s a new one. Never heard of it. 🤣
It’s hard to believe anyone took a look at the deserted wreck of Second Life and thought to himself “this is something I want to spend billions of dollars bringing back to life, only this time with ridiculous VR headsets”.
LOL Yeah a good number are now in that never heard of it category which gives it a mystery aura to it.
Same here. "Follow us on Facebook," uh, no.
All the social media sites are garbage. I think people are finally reaching peak garbage and are turning it off. I don’t even see as many kids with their noses in this junk anymore.
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