BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti on Tuesday said Big Tech companies like Meta and TikTok, as well as the emergence of artificial intelligence, “destroyed the internet.”
At the same time, Peretti, in an open letter, said his company will be launching a new social media platform to “spread joy and enable playful creative expression.” Ironically, the new platform — which does not have a launch date or a name yet — will “use AI to give users agency,” Peretti said, after he lamented earlier in his letter that AI had undermined the ability for internet users to make decisions for themselves.
Peretti’s open letter details how he plans to jumpstart BuzzFeed, which was a digital media darling a decade ago, but has since lost readers and influence as social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have become more dominant. The BuzzFeed chief said he saw where this was headed in 2017, after a meeting with TikTok founder Zhang Yiming.
“He explained that this talent allowed him to make his AI so good that the content didn’t matter,” Peretti said. “He just needed raw tonnage of content so the AI could create a personalized experience and get the flywheel going.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Peretti added, is similar to Yiming in that he “doesn’t care very much about the content on his platforms and is much more interested in technology and AI.”
The rise of AI algorithms and the move away from having humans curate content on the internet has been bad for society, Peretti argued. The dependence on AI, he said, has led to SNARF — or Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, Fear — content that is designed to keep users addicted to searching out their next slice of media; this shift has left internet users feeling “depressed, scared, and dissatisfied,” he added.
“We have an opportunity to fight back against SNARF and bring some joy and fun back to the internet,” Peretti said. “People are craving the ‘beer and wine’ era of the internet and we can bring that back on BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Tasty.”
(Beyond BuzzFeed, Peretti owns HuffPost and Tasty, the food-focused website.)
His game plan for fighting SNARF and ushering in a new era for his websites includes having Buzzfeed lean on human creation “of the best of the internet,” and having HuffPost focus on stories where the “stakes are legitimate” and the “novelty is real.” Still, the site will not be above “using clever retention tactics,” he said.
The new strategy comes after HuffPost laid off 30 employees to start 2025. It also comes after BuzzFeed sold Complex last year for $108.6 million, as well as First We Feast, the studio behind the popular YouTube series “Hot Ones,” for $82.5 million.
Peretti said he knows BuzzFeed and his other media properties are “swimming against the tide,” but that he is optimistic it can work.
“I know we can still have success, and look forward to counter-programming with our human creativity fighting against the machine,” he said. “The tide is starting to shift and we will benefit from the growing dissatisfaction with the big platforms.”
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