I reset my pw and logged back in to Google People for the first time in 10 (?) years just now and discovered the following: 1. 10 years of updates on my account, written by me
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OK so if you remember this thread you may also remember that Google People doesn't show up in the Google Graveyard apparently (according to a Googler) the reason for that is because the project never "died", because internally it was never considered to be "alive" (cont.)https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1164301933949128709 …
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2. also 10 years of "updates" for every other person I knew on there! I guess they made some algorithm to simulate continued activity? current hypothesis is that this was an attempt to game their metrics after it was really unpopular
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4. the algorithm is startlingly good at imitating my writing style for updates at first but it wanders way off topic and starts repeating itself because, you know, it's a bot. like how predictive text challenges always get locked in a loop
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(going to stop numbering these) so by the time of present-day updates it's going in psychotic circles talking for thousands of words about "metal" and "low ceilings" and it generally seems to be quite unhappy for a bot
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Other current theory is that they kept this going as a semi-actual social network which they could experiment on
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which is actually quite cool because Facebook had that problem where they were doing ethically dubious experiments on their users and, Google People, the users are all screaming mad bots, problem "solved"...?
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of course it could be that classic "AI" thing where they're actually just woefully underpaid real people writing miserable fake posts in trash conditions
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whatever's going on this latest auto generated photo of "me" looks pretty angry and like legitimately sick
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"turn on your monitor" yuk yuk but seriously it's like they used a "radiation sickness" filter. it's actually legit upsetting to look at. no thank you
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this rings a bell but it could have been Google Plushttps://twitter.com/zarawesome/status/1170481130933575685 …
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basically if this is a dead social network, re-animated to do long-term experiments on, they are evidently not nice fun experiments and the "participants" do not enjoy them
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ah yeah all those bizarrely-phrased reminder emails after not logging in for a while "Don't forget about completing your Person!"https://twitter.com/literal_machine/status/1170748559311953920 …
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"Your Person is empty" "Your Person is lonely" just say you want more details about my hobbies or whatever, cripes. unsubscribe
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End of conversation
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