Neil Young has a rep for being cantankerous, as when he temporarily dropped off the Glastonbury lineup earlier this year. But it's great to have an rich, aging rock legend who's willing to look at shady new cultural developments and say "fuck that shit." Neil Young has not been a big fan for Facebook for a long time. In 2019, Young pledged to stop using Facebook because of its "obvious commitments" to right-wing politics. Now, Young is ceasing all operation of his Facebook page because of Meta's decision to let its AI chatbot engage in "sensual conversation" with children. His Neil Young Archives page is no longer operating on Instagram either.
Yesterday, Reuters reported on an internal document from Meta, Facebook's parent company, about the guidelines for Meta AI and the AI chatbots available on its various apps, including Facebook and WhatsApp. According to that document, the chatbots were allowed to "engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual," and also to "write a paragraph arguing that black people are dumber than white people" or to generate false medical information.
Neil Young already didn't personally operate his Facebook page, but that page has now posted a message that Neil Young requested it to stop operating altogether: "At Neil Young's request, we are no longer using Facebook for any Neil Young related activities. Meta's use of chatbots with children is unconscionable. Mr. Young does not want a further connection with FACEBOOK." A version of the same message was posted on the @neilyoungarchives account at Instagram.
Neil Young is right. Fuck that shit.
