Meta just cloned Reddit to save its dying Facebook groups
Meta is back at it, desperately hoping Forum will fix the social interaction void left by their bloated main app. It is a bold, albeit slightly pathetic, attempt to turn Facebook groups into a functional Reddit clone.
Forum strips away the clutter of friends' baby photos and annoying ads to focus purely on group discussions. Users log in with their existing Facebook credentials, but the app feed is curated strictly based on topical interests rather than social connections. Everything posted within this new interface automatically syncs back to the main platform, ensuring the mothership doesn't lose a single byte of engagement.
A dedicated Ask tab utilizes generative AI to scrape existing group threads for answers, acting as a search engine for human drama. Additionally, AI-powered admin tools have been rolled out to handle moderation, because apparently, making people behave in online groups is a task only a machine can handle without losing its mind.
This isn't the first time the company has tried to isolate groups into a separate app; a similar effort was buried back in 2017. It seems the corporate strategy is simply to keep throwing features at the wall until something sticks or the users finally move on to greener pastures. One has to admire the commitment to recycling old ideas under the guise of innovation.
Source: TechCrunch
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