BuzzFeed is launching a new social media platform that aims to fight the tide of content designed primarily to please AI algorithms. BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti described the upcoming service in a “BF Island Manifesto” blog post that blasts SNARF media, an acronym that stands for Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, Fear. “SNARF is the kind of content that evolves when a platform asks an AI to maximize usage,” Peretti writes. “Content creators need to please the AI algorithms or they become irrelevant. Millions of creators make SNARF content to stay in the feed and earn a living.” The nearly 3,000 word manifesto name-checks TikTok and Facebook.

Though Peretti doesn’t explicitly name the pending platform, his bog post instructs interested parties to sign up for early access at BFIsland.com.

Tropical imagery is featured on both the page and a press release headlined “Buzz Feed Declares War on SNARF,” a term Peretti appears to have coined to describe a trend he loathes: “AI undermining human agency” by rewarding creators who “exaggerate stakes to make their content urgent and existential” as they “manufacture novelty” and “manipulate anger to drive engagement via outrage.”

Axios, which interviewed Peretti, states BuzzFeed will “launch a new social media platform called BF Island,” that will start as a private beta this year.

Describing it as “a joyful alternative to addictive social media feeds,” Axios adds that it won’t shy away from AI entirely, writing that “similar to apps like Midjourney, BF Island will allow users to use AI to create and share content around their interests.”

“BuzzFeed says the platform is ‘designed as an oasis from algorithm-driven doomscrolling’ and will “introduce quirky, weird, and joyful experiences to make the Internet fun again,” writes The Verge.

The outlet is being developed by “a ‘small team’ of BuzzFeed employees” according to Axios. The manifesto includes plans to leverage subsidiaries HuffPost and Tasty for content.

BuzzFeed is “designing an AI-driven social media platform as part of a continuing business overhaul,” reports The Wall Street Journal, adding that in addition to generative AI, platform will focus on “interactive storytelling” and “new content formats.”

The move “comes as the company overhauls itself,” WSJ reports, noting that “the company in December sold First We Feast, the studio behind its popular YouTube talk show ‘Hot Ones,’ for $82.5 million, amid a broader push to stabilize its business.”