Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts.
Instagram is a necessity for many artists, who use the platform to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta is using public posts to train its generative AI systems, and only European users can opt out, since they’re protected by GDPR laws. Generative AI has become so front-and-center on Meta’s apps that artists reached their breaking point
Unfortunately that isn’t really the reality. Apps like Vero have plenty of creators, but no regular users. And since there’s no regular users, it never grows beyond a network of creators trying to make it big.
Critical mass is almost impossible to overcome for a new platform. Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter all still have exponentially more users than any of their supposed alternatives, and no matter how they treat their users the vast majority of them have no problems staying.