Meta has launched a new app called Forum, an independent platform focused on Facebook groups and designed to transform community conversations into an AI-assisted response system. Currently available only in the United States and for iPhone, the app represents a new attempt by the company to reposition the value of Facebook in a digital environment where Reddit, specialized forums and generative engines have gained relevance as spaces for consultation and discovery.

The proposal thus mixes elements of Reddit, Quora and Google’s AI Overviews. After logging in with a Facebook account, Forum automatically imports the user’s groups and generates a feed based on those communities, along with recommendations for new groups related to their interests. The result is an experience more focused on topical conversations and shared knowledge than on passive content consumption.

And one of the central elements is “Ask”, a functionality based on artificial intelligence that allows you to ask questions and receive answers generated from existing posts in Facebook groups. The system uses conversations accumulated in communities as a knowledge base, similar to how Google uses Reddit to enrich its search results or its AI-generated summaries.

According to tests shared by American media, the chatbot is capable of responding using specific references to publications from groups in which the user participates and suggesting new communities related to the query. Meta thus proposes an alternative to the increasingly widespread behavior of adding “Reddit” to the end of Google searches to find real opinions and experiences.

Meta tries to rescue the value of communities

The initiative also involves a strategic revaluation of Facebook groups, one of the few spaces on the platform that continue to generate recurring interaction and organic conversation. While the main Facebook feed has progressively filled with algorithmic recommendations, suggested videos, memes and advertising, communities continue to function as environments of affinity and exchange between users.

Forum’s own description in the App Store talks about “real answers” and “real people”a narrative that seems to indirectly recognize the wear and tear of the traditional feed and the growing saturation of automated content on social networks.

Although Forum is presented as an independent app, it is still completely linked to the Facebook ecosystem. Groups continue to exist within the main social network and any posts made to Forum will also be visible there. The platform, however, introduces some differences in operation, such as the possibility of publishing using nicknames in certain contexts.

In addition to the question and answer system, Meta has also incorporated AI tools for group administrators. These features will help moderate conversations, manage communities and detect problematic content, although the company ensures that administrators will maintain control over final decisions.

The launch comes at a particularly relevant time for the digital ecosystem. Over the last year, Reddit has strengthened its position as one of the great reference sources for generative engines and Google searches, driven precisely by the value of human conversations and contextualized recommendations. Meta seems to want to compete directly in that arena: taking advantage of the enormous archive of knowledge accumulated in Facebook groups to turn it into an AI-powered conversational layer.

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