BuzzFeed is stepping further away from traditional publishing with the announcement of an AI-driven social media platform. According to Axios, BFIsland will allow users to create posts using AI. Essentially, BFIsland will take the AI creation options of something like Midjourney and add a social component.
BFIsland will feature a freemium model, giving every user simple AI options. Users will then be able to access advanced features by paying a subscription fee. Buzzfeed has told Axios that a private beta will launch later this year.
TechCrunch also claims that while BFIsland will be human-created, it will be built on existing LLMs used in the creative industries. In a manifesto-style document, Buzzfeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti claims that the platform will use AI “to give users agency instead of stealing their agency.”
While AI will clearly play a huge role in BFIsland, doomscrolling won’t. Instead, Peretti says BuzzFeed will “do the doomscrolling for you so you can follow the biggest trends, find the hidden gems, and be in the loop without wasting your time and risking your mental health.”
The End of SNARF
The platform will also be free of what Peretti refers to as SNARF content; which stands for stakes, novelty, anger, retention, and fear.
“Content creators exaggerate stakes to make their content urgent and existential,” Peretti explained. “They manufacture novelty and spin their content as unprecedented and unique. They manipulate anger to drive engagement via outrage. They hack retention by withholding information and promising a payoff at the end of a video. And they provoke fear to make people focus with urgency on their content.”
According to Peretti, since President Donald Trump “masterfully used SNARF to win the election,” there has been “tremendous pressure” on social media platforms to proliferate SNARF content.
So, without so-called SNARF content and doomscrolling, what exactly will BFIsland look like? According to Peretti, it’ll look happier. He argues that the platform will be “built specifically to spread joy and enable playful creative expression.”
Users can join the waitlist to participate in the BFIsland Beta today.
