Pocket: Make Gizmos

I have a design background but no coding experience & this app helps me bring my ideas to life!! I’ve been able to create so many interactive pieces of art, games, and tools that I would have never tried to white knuckle on my own. My creativity is literally exploding inside of this app community… & the cool part is I get to scroll through a feed of so many others experiencing the same phenomenon!!

Meta (Facebook) acquired the team behind Gizmo and relaunched their tech here as Pocket. Before you install, look at what you’re signing up for: every gizmo you make, every one you scroll, every tap and tilt is all free training data for Meta’s AI. You’re not the customer, you’re the unpaid labor teaching their models what holds human attention. And Pocket’s own App Store privacy label shows the haul linked directly to your identity: location, search history, browsing history, your photos and content, contacts, and device identifiers. There’s no meaningful opt-out. You can’t even create a profile without a Meta account, and you can’t delete your profile without deleting your entire Meta account. A cute toy game feed is the bait. Your behavioral data, and a better Meta AI you’ll never own a piece of, is the catch. Don’t download it.

This app is a quirky way to explore creativity, your own and others’. It offers new ways of digital play, no matter what your age. (And a much better use of your phone to just relax for a few minutes than mindless scrolling!) It is also a helpful way to learn by trial and error how to give good instructions to AI.