Meta: What an Outstanding Idea
July 14, 2026
Okay, so they’re not marketed as gambling games for kids, but we must acknowledge that Meta is going after kids by instilling addictive habits in them. GHacks has another story about Meta’s latest accomplishment in this area: “Meta Tests Pocket, An Experimental App for AI-Generated Mini-Games Called “Gizmos”” Meta is testing a new social app called Pocket that allows users to create, share, and discover AI-generated mini games. Coding skills are not needed.
These AI-generated mini games are called “gizmos.” The app is not available for public download as of yet. Meta also defines gizmos as small, interactive experiences that users can tap and play. Here’s more of detailed description of the game:
“Users do not need any programming experience to build a gizmo. Meta states that the creator simply writes a description of the game they want, and the platform generates the interactive experience based on that prompt. The creator can then refine the prompt before publishing. Pocket is designed as a social app for mini-games, similar to TikTok or Instagram. Users can browse a feed of gizmos created by others, like and comment on them, and save gizmos into playlists, much like saving audio tracks. They can also share playlists with other users and grant access to the phone’s camera and photo gallery, given the necessary permissions. The app’s approach to playlists and sharing positions it more as a social discovery and remix platform than a traditional game distribution service.”
Pocket is based off an app called Gizmo originally designed by Atma Sciences, an AI startup founded by former Snapchat developers. Meta purchased Atma Sciences and received a license for the underlying technology. Pocket is one of many apps that relies on AI:
“Pocket joins an increasing number of Meta apps that rely on generative AI as the main tool for content creation. Meta already has the AI video creation app Vibes, which allows users to generate videos from prompts and browse them through a feed where they can like, comment, and share. Paluzzi has mentioned that Meta is likely to promote Pocket alongside its other apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.”
Pocket sounds like fun. TikTok sounded like fun too until it became a nightmare rabbit hole of content addiction aka the same behaviors that promote gambling. Mr. Zuckerberg you are despicable.
Whitney Grace, July 14, 2026
Eheu, Caesar false, cecidisti! Or, Bad Move, Zuck
July 13, 2026
Zuckerberg acted too rashly when he fired a large portion of his workforce. Okay, he didn’t exactly come out and say he was wrong, but according to Baller Alert he did say that projections for AI are not where he expected them to be. The details are in the article: “Mark Zuckerberg Cut Thousands Of Jobs For AI, Now He Admits Meta’s Agents Are Moving Too Slow.” Meta AI agents are runner slower than Zuckerberg expected and now he, along with the rest of Big Tech, are wondering when they can replace humans with automated systems.
It is embarrassing for Zuckerberg because he had big plans for Meta AI:
“The moment lands awkwardly because Meta has been operating like AI agents were right around the corner. These systems are supposed to complete tasks on behalf of users, assist employees, automate workflows, and eventually make companies leaner. The pitch has been that AI will not just answer questions, but take action. The problem is that getting software to reliably do real workplace tasks is proving much messier than the boardroom hype made it sound.”
Meta fired 10% of its global workforce and reassigned 7000 employees to work on AI-focused teams. That was a a big whoopsie. The employees were either sent to Applied AI or to work on AI agents, such as Agent Data and Optimization and Agent Transformation Accelerator. The Meta workers were told that their moves were not optional. They felt like they had been drafted and were confused about their new roles. They were also worried that Meta’s flexible culture would disappear.
Zuckerberg told his people that the executives are worried that Meta is not moving fast enough. Meta is fearful it is trailing behind its competitors. Meta wants to expand beyond the typical chatbots and make Llama 3.1 405B an integral component in social media platforms, smart glasses, workplace tools, and ads businesses. If that becomes the case then Meta can build an AI system with billions of users.
That is very expensive:
“But the money behind that vision is enormous. The company expects 2026 capital expenditures, including finance lease payments, to land between $125 billion and $145 billion. That raised spending forecast rattled investors, especially as Meta also confirmed May layoffs and continued pouring billions into AI infrastructure.”
Meta employees are also worried about their futures. Mouse tracking software was introduced and they’re worried they are training AI agents as their replacements.
AI is harder to develop than expected. Zuckerberg is a genius, though. In 2022, he thought he had this AI stuff nailed down. Yeah, absolutely.
Whitney Grace, July 13, 2026
Meta Has Another Fine Idea: Gambling
July 7, 2026
Meta and other social media companies are already under fire for purposely making their platforms addicting, thus contributing to depression, anxiety, and more mental health issues. They are already facing a lawsuit from Morgan and Morgan (the largest legal practice in the United States). They are also responsible for encouraging other maladaptive behaviors. Guess what? Mart Zuckerberg of Meta wants to encourage kids to continue “nurturing” these behaviors says Mother Jones in the article: “Mark Zuckerberg Sure Sounds Eager to Get Young People Hooked on Online Gambling.”
Zuckerberg along with his company believe that gambling is the way of the future. The new jargon for online gambling is called “prediction markets” and they are gaining in popularity. Zuckerberg wants a piece of that pie, so Meta is considering partnering with Kalshi and Polymarket. He also plans to develop an in-house app called Arena that will target 18-34 year olds. Arena will be added to parts of Facebook and Messenger, attaching betting options to various features, including group chats, videos, and news feeds.
While prediction markets might be the new content wave of the future, there are negative aspects that Meta is overlooking:
“The strategy appears to be: betting as content, gamifying gambling to become social. It’s a framing that could open the door to harmful situations, especially for the young people he’s going after.According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, 2.5 million US adults, or about 1 percent of Americans, meet the diagnostic mental health criteria of severe gambling addiction. An Epic Research study published on Friday analyzing electronic health records found that gambling disorder diagnoses have risen more than 60 percent since 2018 in states that have legalized sports betting. The largest increase came from young people, aged 18 to 29, whose rate more than doubled.”
Meta wants to make everything a gambling feature.? ? By doing so, Meta will blur the lines between regular content and gambling. Can you imagine reading the news or talking to friends then you’re plagued by ads to gamble? Zuckerberg already has enough problems but he wants to create more. Is he a great leader? Nah, but he plans to be one in gambling. Remember everyone: the house always wins.
Whitney Grace, July 7, 2026
Modern Management Methods: The 30 Minute Meta Exemption
June 10, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
If I were younger, I would catalog some of the Silicon Valley and Stanford MBA precepts into a book called “Modern Management Follies.” I am old. I really don’t have the energy.
However, I can muster up the strength to react to the information in the BBC write up “Meta Workers Can Opt Out of Being Tracked at Work – But Only for Half an Hour at a Time.” I like the half hour angle. I recall a time when I was a salaried employee with some responsibility. I also suffered a kidney stone attack. I left my desk, went out in the corridor, and sat down. I then writhed and walked to the cafeteria. I sat down. I writhed some more. I walked out the front door which, believe it or not, provided a grassy area with trees. I plopped under a tree in the shade and writhed. This continued for about 45 minutes when the excitement of a kidney stone went away. I went back to my office and noted that I had been indisposed. No one cared.
Romans had to row the boat. When the praetorian said, “30 minutes,” he meant 30 minutes. Thanks, Midjourney. Four tries and Photoshop. Good enough, sport.
If I were at Meta, I would have been in violation of the Meta exemption: 45 minutes without working.
The write up says:
new controls will allow employees to pause the data collection for “up to 30 minutes at a time” as well as request exemptions from the initiative altogether.
Would I have been terminated? I was an officer of the company, but I just violated a Meta exemption.
The article reports:
…one Meta employee, who asked not to be identified, telling the BBC that having their actions train AI models felt “very dystopian” – as workers expected a slew of additional job cuts.
Why does Meta need the “meta exemption” aka Model Capability Initiative or MCI? Here’s the answer, according the the BBC:
Meta told the BBC: “If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them.”
Several observations are warranted because I am an old dinobaby:
- The 30 minute window seems arbitrary
- Workers at home or in the office can experience what I call “stuff happens” moments. A quick break became a 45 minute unexplained absence. No human cared what I did. But if I were plugged into the Meta matrix, something would notice. I have considered operating a taco van but were I a Meta professional, that career would have been forced upon me.
- The Silicon Valley approach to work may not be a positive for some employees’ mental health, their physical well being, their families, and their work itself.
Those 30 Meta minutes, like the consequences of moving fast and breaking things like employee spirit, are because of the values of the “leadership.” Since there is one leader at Meta, what’s that say about a modern captain of industry?
Stephen E Arnold, June 10, 2026
Modern Management Methods: Zuck-ocles and His Threatening Pink Slip Sword
June 1, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
According to Google in its new and improved form, the Sword of Zuck-ocles — hey, sorry, I meant sword of Damocles — refers to an impending disaster. The operative idea is that the sword can fall at any time and kill a career, smash a planned vacation, or keep one’s child from attending an expensive private elementary school.
The Sword of Zuck-ocles fell on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, and severed an alleged 8,000 surplus humans from their pay check. The blow arrived by electronic mail, and I don’t think any of the former Zuck admirers expired. In fact, in an interesting post-termination write up, that old sword of Zuck-ocles is still out there and ready to go.
The Sword of Zuck-ocles is poised to strike. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
Meta employees are currently being forced to train agents expressly designed to do exactly what they do.
But don’t worry, Meta professionals. The article says:
Zuckerberg further noted in the memo that he doesn’t expect another large culling to take place this year. You know, the year that’s already close to halfway over. The not-particularly-comforting guarantee comes as morale at Meta is already wildly low.
In my long and completely undistinguished career, I have been exposed to a number of management methods and techniques. There was the crazed nuclear engineers replicating frantic work like that done for Fat Ralph or whatever the device was called. There was the cookie cutter “that’s how we have done dot points since 1917” approach of the blue chip consulting firm silly enough to hire me. There was the chaos now and tomorrow approach of the start ups with which I have been involved. There was the “everyone in the newspaper business does it this way” approach. And, of course, others.
I cannot recall what I would call the Sword of Zuck-ocles management tactic. The idea is that not one person, not a group, but thousands of people could be terminated in 200 days (maybe more, maybe less, who knows?) I suppose the idea is a good one. Obviously Meta leadership does not have any interest in old fashioned management methods; for example, communicating a specific goal, generating staff support and enthusiasm for that goal, and an fostering an organization-wide desire to solve customer problems.
Like the Greek story, the Sword of Zuck-ocles hangs over the heads of Meta professionals. Instead of being supported by a single hair from a horse, the Sword of Zuck-ocles is supported by marketing collateral about artificial intelligence. I know I would find working with assertions about the value of AI floating over me in my cube in Silicon Valley unpleasant. My reaction just underscores how out of touch this dinobaby is with today’s sophisticated management methods.
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2026
Modern Management: The Zuck Snoop Motivator Method
May 18, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I read “An Engineer’s Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta.” My dinobaby mind recalled a quote from the Marx Brothers’ film “Duck Soup”:
Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send him back to his father and brothers, who are waiting for him with open arms in the penitentiary. I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth.
The cited article explains that Meta’s surveillance push is motivating some employees to push back. There is a petition that states:
“it should not be the norm that companies of any size are permitted to exploit their employees by nonconsensually extracting their data for the purposes of Al training.”
One of the realities of running a commercial enterprise is that when one takes a job and gets paid, the company expects employees to do what they are told to do. A friendly agreement exists in the mind of employees; that is, hey, if a company does something we don’t like, we can protest. This is a popular idea among some cohorts. But as a dinobaby, I generally line up on the side of “we pay, you obey” folks.
Management white phosphorous can have unexpected consequences. Thanks, Venice.ai. Just barely good enough.
In general, well managed companies take care to avoid triggering a today version of the Pullman Strike of 1894. Facebook, sorry, Meta seems to have struck a nerve among some employees. The write up states:
In Meta offices in California and New York, workers have been posting flyers in cafeterias and other communal areas pointing colleagues to the petition. Two employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, say the company has removed some posters, with those on bathroom walls seemingly staying up longer. Meta declined to comment on the allegation.
In the UK, employees want to unionize. Yikes. That’s a signal that Meta’s Zuck Snoop Motivator Method is facing headwinds. The cited article reports:
The [Meta] engineer’s internal post this week chronicled what they believe to be a degradation in Meta’s culture over the past 11 years, with much of the shift happening in the past five. “Layoffs, budget cuts, years of efficiency and intensity—all of it contributed to a growing sense of dread,” the employee wrote. They described growing apathetic about their work and workplace, until the rollout of the tracking software stunned them.
Several observations seem warranted:
- It seems that Meta’s management methods are distracting employees from what they are paid to do; that is, work on what generates revenue.
- The introduction of the surveillance approach has become a labor vs. management cause. I wonder if anyone in Meta’s Carpetland knows about the Pullman issue?
- The linkage of surveillance to AI is an explosive combination. Unwitting high school chemistry students learn that white phosphorous as if it were table salt. MBAs are likely to think that whipping some white phosphorous during a presentation would be cool. Hey, it is just an MBA. It is okay, right?
Meta’s leadership has its hands full. The mixed signals about encryption. The white wail of AI can be heard in some casual meetings at smart software conferences. The protests and petitions may not allow a modern Gene Debs to post to social media, but the PR can be annoying.
Net net: I think that the Zuck Snoop Motivator Method could become a case study for some future MBAs whom I hope remember their chemistry class guidelines. As Duck Soup captured, “I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth.”
Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2026
Meta Faces Headwinds and May Have to Fork Over Some Cash
April 24, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold. Did you know that the freedom loving cyclist at BearBlog thinks my essays are generated by AI. Censorship is okay, right?
Meta seems to be facing some headwinds related to mental health damage incurred by Facebook users. This includes children who were allegedly allowed to speak with predators. The New York Post reports that, “Meta Whistleblower Warns Mark Zuckerberg’s Time Is Up: ‘You Can’t Run From Consequences Forever.’” Frances Haugen started Zuckerberg’s potential downfall by sharing how Meta is harming kids’ mental health in 2021. Not much happened. Then in March 2026, Meta was ordered to pay $4.2 million to a woman who claimed Instagram harmed her mental health. Meta allegedly will pay $375 million for allowing kids to interact with predators.
Haugen worked for Google, Pinterest, and Yelp. She revealed internal documents to the public that Meta knew that Facebook was harming kids. She couldn’t be complicit to a company and a social media platform that was harming millions. She has hope after these rulings:
“ ‘[People] look at how big these companies are, and it feels like it’s impossible for any individual or any small group of people to do anything,’ Haugen told The Post in an interview. However, that has now been proven untrue. She says the rulings give her ‘a lot of faith in humanity.’”
She also said she was fascinated by Zuckerberg’s testimony because he’s hardly spoken outside of puff pieces or ways for him to be safely filtered. She continued by saying he’s lived in a bubble since he was nineteen years old. She alleged that the Zuck is accustomed to people agreeing with him. These individuals empower his decisions and opinions. Those who support the zucked up operation receive praise are benefiting from his favors.
Haugen continued:
“‘When we give up our own agency to direct these systems and make an algorithm that is making our decisions for us, that algorithm is inherently reductive,’ she said. ‘The question is: do we want our attention directed by people or by machines?” Meta whistleblower warns Mark Zuckerberg’s time is up: ‘You can’t run from consequences forever’”
What is Haugen complaining about? My colleagues and I know in our hearts that Meta and its leader are outstanding thinkers, managers, and ethicists.
Whitney Grace, April 24, 2026
Meta: Very Stable Management Moves. Yes, Stable, Very
April 20, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold. Did you know that the freedom loving cyclist at BearBlog thinks my essays are generated by AI. Censorship is okay, right?
About 12 days ago, Meta was going to end its oversight board. Where did I get this information? From an influencer, of course. According to Platformer.news, “Exclusive: Meta Has Discussed Ending Funding To The Oversight Board” in an effort to cut more costs. The main idea was that the Meta Oversight Board might not be funded post 2028.
The Zuck is not embracing outside inputs to the world he is building. Meta reduced spending on the board in 2026 and planned to make more cuts in 2027. Board staff members are preparing for more layoffs, possibly becoming influencers or AI consultants. Meta could reshape his board to sell its services to other firms.
Our source said:
“The news comes at a time when Meta has been shifting more of its trust and safety functions from humans to automated systems and as the company looks to cut costs to support its AI infrastructure buildout. Sources tell Platformer that Meta’s referrals of cases and policy questions to the board have slowed in recent months.”
The very stable management had its own ideas. According to “Meta Isn’t Setting Its Oversight Board Free Just Yet”:
Over the last year, board members have become increasingly interested in artificial intelligence policy and how their experience shaping Meta’s content rules could translate into advising companies in the generative AI space. That interest has intensified as some AI companies have privately signaled they would be open to working with the board, according to a source familiar with the organization who was not permitted to speak publicly. The board began talks with Meta last fall about the possibility, which would require the company to sign off on changes to the legal documents that govern the board’s operations. But Meta officials have not indicated whether the company is willing to make those changes, which would likely require approval from top executives.
Is this good management? Is this stable management? Absolutely. We love Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. We love Facebook Marketplace. We love everything about the Zuck from his Hawaii real estate to his view of advertising. I ask you, “What’s not to love?”
Whitney Grace, April 20, 2026
Google and Meta Need to Block the End Around Play… and Quickly
April 8, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
CNBC published an item I found interesting. “Meta, Google Under Attack As Court Cases Bypass 30-Year-Old Legal Shield.” The news item reports:
For the last three decades, internet giants have been able to avoid legal exposure for content on their platforms, thanks to a law that differentiates the companies from online publishers. But those safeguards appear to be weakening.
I immediately thought about one of those high school football games. One large, high school fields a team of big, brawny, and mean players. The other team comes from a small high school. The players are overmatched in human resources and fan support. Somehow after the first half, the team from the larger school is losing.
Everyone is stunned. How can this be? How can a group of puny players get the better of a high school with a larger school band than the small school. What’s going on?
The write up says:
a jury in New Mexico found Meta liable in a case involving child safety, while jurors in Los Angeles held the Facebook parent and Google’s YouTube negligent in a personal injury trial. Days after those verdicts were revealed, victims of the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein filed a class action lawsuit against Google and the Trump administration over allegations related to the wrongful disclosure of personal information. In that complaint, the plaintiffs argue that Google’s AI Mode, which serves up AI-powered summaries and links, is “not a neutral search index,” a clear effort to make the case that Google isn’t just a platform sitting between users and the information they seek.
The penalties are trivial within the scope of the losers’ finances. But if the champions cannot knock off the wimps, there might be more hassles in conference games. One of these outfits wants to be the champion, and defeats by minnows do not make the big sharks look as fierce. The CNBC story points out:
… the cases establish a troubling precedent for tech giants that are betting their future on AI.
The operative words are “precedent” and “future.”
The report adds some color to the plight of the social media studs:
The verdict … against Meta and YouTube was the first time a jury found social media platforms liable for what plaintiff attorneys alleged was intentionally engineering addiction in minors with their products. The case went after how the platforms were designed, not just what content they carried. Plaintiffs argued that the combination of features like autoplay, recommendation algorithms, notifications and certain filters acted like “digital casinos,” leading to serious mental health problems for a young girl who claimed she couldn’t stop using the apps. The class action suit against Google, filed last week by a plaintiff with the pseudonym Jane Doe, alleged that the company’s AI Mode created its own summaries and links, exposing Epstein victims’ personal identifying information (PII), including names, phone numbers and email addresses.
The studs are not going to accept the outcome of the losses. The alums, the players, and the fans may complain to the objective, impartial, and fair athletic board. The article puts the protest this way:
Legal experts said appeals in the latest cases could find their way to the Supreme Court, which could determine whether the companies should be protected by law against the claims.
Did the wimps just get lucky or did the coaches come up with a new play? Answer: Who knows? But a win is a win. And there is another game coming and the season is not over.
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2026
Great Stuff: Synthetic Undead or Hi, Grandma
February 24, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
One of my team sent me a patent to look at. The document is US12513102B2.pdf, “Simulation of a User of a Social Networking System Using a Language Model.” The USPTO patent server was dead on February 17, 2026. But I had a couple of urls, one official and one unofficial. You can, however, look at what appears to be the full text of the patent using Google’s patent service. View the Google version of the patent using this hot link: US12513102B2. If you want a copy, it may be findable online when you poke around.
(By the way, Google Patents did not display a download PDF option in either Opera or Edge for me on February 17, 2026. To be candid, locating US government information is quite an adventure. If anyone reading this post wants to be part of an informal group focused on finding US government information, please, write kentmaxwell @ proton dot me.)
If you don’t want to fool around with the techno-legal lingo of a real US patent, you can read “Meta Patents AI That Takes Over a Fead Person’s Account to Keep Posting and Chatting” yourself.
I am not going to pass judgment on the novelty of the Meta patent. The USPTO okayed the uniqueness of the Meta innovation. Syfarth Shaw LLP did its job.
In a nutshell, a dead person posts online. Meta ingests the info and crafts a large language model representing the deceased’s utterances. Then the LLM allows a person who wishes to converse with the departed spouse, friend, colleague, etc. to enter a prompt and then the system outputs what the LLM predicts the unalive entity would say.
Will the system allow the presentation of audio in the unalike’s voice? Will the system allow synthetic video of the unalive? I think so. Here’s the relevant passage from the patent document:
“According to an embodiment, the bot 150 performs direct interactions with specific users, for example, a chat or direct messaging. According to an embodiment, the responses generated by the language model are converted to audio signal to perform an audio call with a user. According to an embodiment, a video generation model generates a video of the target user combined with audio signal generated from text generated by the language model to simulate a video call with the target user.”
Will an implementation of this make money and permit advertising? My view is that this will be a winner, assuming the deceased left behind sufficient digital dust, artifacts, and Facebook posts.
Who will pay to talk to a representation of a formerly living person? Here’s a rundown my team and I worked up at lunch:
- Grieving family members
- Co-dependent colleagues
- Abandoned lovers
- Clients of an expert who want the deceased person’s point of view
- Funeral homes offering this as a “day of the visitation” service.
The advertising would slot into the stateful user’s online profile.
What could go wrong? My hunch is that careful filtering of the synthetic unalive will not be included in Version 1.0 of the system. What if the formerly living had a bit of a sporty life in Meta’s online properties? Yeah, well, that might be interesting.
Meta is fresh in my mind. One of its professionals suggested that a young person spending 16 hours of a 24 hour day exploring Instagram is not addicted. Interesting idea just like this nifty idea.
Stephen E Arnold, February 24, 2026
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