If you already suspected that your morning Facebook scroll was a mere reflex – I’ve got some bad news.
Meta Platforms is quietly testing a new AI tool that could turn your feed into what’s essentially a personalized daily digest.
Dubbed Project Luna internally, the experiment holds out the promise of delivering personalized morning briefings based on your Facebook habits – plus headlines from across the web – and could be just the push that finally makes A.I. a daily habit for millions of people.
The company is kicking off in a small way: It has begun testing the feature this week with a handful of users in cities including New York and San Francisco, according to people familiar with the service.
But even that modest rollout suggests something larger – a slow pivot from the social feed to the A.I.-curated briefing, where instead of scrolling and scrolling you begin your day with one tidy summary of what’s important.
Meta is not the only player looking at this space. Competing platforms have already introduced machine learningenabled tools that provide curated news, reminders and digests based on user behavior and preference.
By opening Project Luna, Meta appears ready to challenge those rivals head on – and quite possibly disrupt the way we consume information in general.
At the same time, all is not sunshine and roses. Embedding AI this deeply in social apps brings new questions: what content gets surfaced, who decides what’s relevant and how much control users have over what “personalization” even means.
After some recent shuffling in Meta’s AI division – layoffs, restructuring – it feels like they’re pushing the kitchen sink all-in on getting this one right.
The prospect makes me feel a weird pinch of excitement and caution. On the one hand: great – a daily briefing that is really yours, cut through the noise.
On the other: any tweaks the summary gets from algorithms pursuing engagement or ads, are we waking up to insight … or just amassing influence dressed as convenience?
Personally, I say the best approach might be to treat it as you would a newspaper subscription: Enjoy it, but don’t let it warp your worldview.
You’ll want to keep your feed varied, research what you see in it so that it doesn’t become an echo chamber, and use it as a tool – not a crutch.