Meta Vibes - AI Quarantine

AI content has proliferated so fast in the last year that Instagram and TikTok streams, and even YouTube shorts, have turned into the garbage we call AI Slop. Italian Brainrot videos or cat soap operas got millions of views. The worst part is that kids consumed these videos over and over again without realizing they were AI.

Like me, have you ever said “I wish all AI content was collected in a separate place and I wouldn’t see it”? Meta heard us :) and announced a new platform “Vibes“ to quarantine this content.

Meta’s new “Vibes” project serves the very purpose of moving AI content to a separate “quarantine zone” from platforms like Instagram and TikTok. “So who and why would want to enter a place where there is only AI content?”

“Slop Feed” Reality

Algorithms are no longer focused on who watches what, but on how many seconds of what is watched. AI slop serves its purpose and exists only to be consumed. It is masterfully created to hypnotize viewers and steal our attention spans. It doesn’t try to make anyone think or question.

TechCrunch described Vibes as an “AI slop feed” . Like me, many tech company executives who want to quarantine AI content (and who work for competitors) have similarly roasted Vibes.

The Idea of Quarantine

“Weird” trends like Italian Brainrot or cat soap operas attract children’s attention, but they don’t realize that the source of production is AI. This makes the idea of a “quarantine zone” even more critical: Segregating AI content is perhaps the only way to protect the audience. In a sense, this platform seems to serve this purpose.

In Türkiye, there is a more political version of this. Our local and national social media platform Next Social was announced last month. The number of downloads in the Google Play Store has exceeded 1 million. I see this platform as a kind of quarantine zone. Isn’t our Twitter (yes, Twitter) stream more “clean” after those who switched to it?

The proponents of Vibes believe that this is how they can keep their Instagram feed clean. But in fact, the problem is that like a virus, it’s just spread to another platform. We can’t say, “Here’s your AI garbage, play with each other here and don’t go outside.” So these quarantine zones don’t really protect us, they just allow us to ignore the problem.

Sweeping the garbage aside is not cleaning

As a result, I think the Vibes platform is like an experiment. It’s a way of saying “here’s something we’ve done” rather than protecting the user. AI content is already in the bloodstream of social media like a virus. Confining them to a separate space will not guarantee that the platforms will remain clean. In fact, it may even arouse more curiosity and draw users to them.

Until AI content is transparently labeled, and especially content that children will be exposed to is managed, this is just sweeping the dust under the rug. It doesn’t make sense to throw a platform out there without taking responsibility. For me, the best way to quarantine is still to train my algorithm and mute some accounts.

Lastly, there is a rule inherent to quarantine zones: The moment you enter one, you too become a “potential risk” from the outside. Therefore my question is: would you enter Vibes, or would you be just looking through the window?