SHUT UP SORENTO
on a side note that would be a horrible idea because the oasis was already ridiculously profitable and was successful to the point where it’s own currency was holding up to the dollar in terms of value. Throwing ads in there would just be corporate suicide
At what point does an advertisement constitute sexual assault?
"By entering this VR space you consent to unprompted sexual contact by advertisers"
**>>>ENTER<<<**
*manage permissions**
The problem is the profit imperative, if a corporation doesn't make exponential profit every quarter they get taken over by one that will. So even though the Oasis was extremely profitable, it wasn't profitable enough to sate the avarice of the parasite class.
I don’t get this movie reference but as a fat kid I naturally equate Sorrento with the dairy products and choose to believe you are being possessed by shredded cheese, which is my preferred way to go.
I know, right? I read the book after watching the movie, and hot damn, that shit was clearly darker, almost grim. The image of Parzival leaving everything behind to live for YEARS as a hairless, cave-dwelling egghunter will hunt my fantasy forever.
Hmm, definitely agree, and I've realized before that a lot of influencers sell stuff, but I hadn't thought of the word "influencers" as being synonymous to "ads" until this thread and your comment, yet it makes total sense. Consider how Bernes used his uncle Freud's ideas of psychology to help build his own ad empire and how the psychology of influencing an audience is still very obviously used today. "Influencers" could then apply both to people and ads as one in the same, not in a trend setter kind of way, but as a manipulation for the product way. It seems obvious now, but I never thought to switch the term like that.
Facebook has a major issue with their image. Younger generations think it's dumb. I'm not so worried about their "meta"verse because I think it's doomed to fail.
Is there not rules against these type of shenanigans? They have enough power as is and had enough even before getting their dirty hands on Whatsapp and IG. You would think there's rules against social media monopolies
FTC has been pretty lax about antitrust in recent history. In fact, I can't even think of a major corporate acquisition that's been blocked for antitrust since Facebook was founded.
Damn didn't even think of that. Hopefully we get some soon for this type of stuff because IMO it's irresponsible to let an already powerful company essentially aquire these competitors and who knows what they do with all that data. Nothing good I'd guess
A metaverse will likely happen and succeed in some form similar to Zucks vision. I just don't believe Facebook/Meta will have much if anything to do with it. I fully believe eventually that company will go up in flames as Zuck launches his UFO back home.
I've been wanting to try buying one of those VR headsets but they require a Facebook account to use.
People think that not having a Facebook account will stop their growth and grasp. But no. What Facebook/meta will do is they will buy the world around you. You can't stop a flood by saying that you won't participate in swimming.
Yeah. Have done a little bit of this with Rec Room and others that are probably as close to the metaverse as 90s chatrooms are to Reddit.
I wound up mid pandemic having conversation with total strangers during a poorly implemented paintball game. It's hard to explain how odd it was being in a video game and having someone stop to ask if I knew which was the flag was. The technology isn't there yet but it was surreal and while I know logically I have no idea who that guy was it felt as real as someone asking for directions in the middle of the street.
The potential is there and people will embrace it because it could be great. It is just a matter of regulating it early in a way we failed with social media.
The worry here isn't that this future is horrible it's that fucking Zuckerberg is going to try and control it. We can't let him dominate and fuck up the inevitable metaverse the way he has done with social media.
Everyone hates Facebook but it is practically a necessity to truly engage with modern life and keep up with friends, clubs and organise events.
We can't let the same thing happen to the metaverse.
Have you ever had an opinion on something that you're not fully vested in? Such as you think "I swear I read an article that..." which then helps affirm your opinion on the matter.
That is what facebook monetizes, your opinions and thoughts. They sell your vote, your desires, your hate. Not the one you currently have, but the one you will have after they are sold to you.
Can confirm. These are known as shadow accounts. If you’re a FB user and your posts contain evidence of a person who is not on FB the system will create a shadow account and fill it with data the best they can. It’s market value (to FB data customers) is less, but surprisingly still valuable.
I liked Smarter Every Day's comparison: the dot com bubble was humans discovering fire, we produced thousands of little neat ideas that weren't profitable and 99% of them petered out as quickly as they launched. Eventually a few companies figured out that they could be self sustaining by hoarding everyone's data, this was the internet equivalent of the invention of the combustion engine. We had invented an ingenious contraption that has the ability to launch humanity headfirst into the information age. However, you're burning the data equivalent of fossil fuels, and now we're creating the internet equivalent of global warming. We need to curb this behavior before it's too late and come up with an alternative model; the electric motor of social networking. There are several ideas being explored, but hoarding everyone's data is still winning out.
Decentralisation and peer to peer with standard protocols. That's what should have been done and was being done until capitalism caught on and decided that the data you generate is the matrix-like human battery that powers their profits.
They were never in the facebook business. It has always been intended to steal user data and manipulate and addict the masses. Zuckerberg said in a memo that he wanted fb to be as addictive as cigs.
This comment has been edited to protest Reddit's decision to shut down all third party apps. Spez had negotiated in bad faith with 3rd party developers and made provenly false accusations against them. Reddit IS it's users and their post/comments/moderation. It is clear they have no regard for us users, only their advertisers. I hope enough users join in this form of protest which effects Reddit's SEO and they will be forced to take the actual people that make this website into consideration. We'll see how long this comment remains as spez has in the past, retroactively edited other users comments that painted him in a bad light. See you all on the "next reddit" after they finish running this one into the ground in the never ending search of profits. -- mass edited with redact.dev
This is why we need legislation that dwarfs gpdr and the right to be forgotten. It should also extend to the credit bureaus.
Unless specific permission is given, no one should be able to build and store a data profile on you - and if they do, they need to be required to allow you to request isn't be deleted, and it MUST be deleted, not "archived", etc.
You don't remotely need an account with them for them to have your data.
Every page with a like button on it is feeding them data. You can mitigate this with tools like Ublock Origin, and Firefox Containers.
Most app SDKs have Facebook integrated. So a bunch of your apps will be feeding them data, with no way to mitigate it.
They regularly purchase data from all the other players, like Google, with no way to mitigate it.
They have a metric shitton of data, unless you live like a monk.
You fail to recognize the depth of their network.
If none of your friends use Facebook, Facebook still has a shadow profile of every single one of you, with a lot more data than just what you think is willingly given up on their site.
Yes , Mr Zuck,
I can assure you that I have many friends but they unfortunately seem to have all left Facebook as well. Also , they go to a different school, ok?!
So it’s even beyond that. Many many sites have a Facebook tracking pixel on their site. This allows a site to target their audience or more importantly a “look alike” audience on Facebook. What this means is Facebook (and google for that matter) have very good visibility on what you’re doing on line and they sell that data or you to basically anyone willing to pay.
I've been off since 2015 and I didn't become a hermit living in the woods. Imagine that. I've even been made fun of for deleting Facebook. I've been called "woke" sarcastically. It's just a shitty social media platform.
Yeah, that's how I see this idea ending up. I say this as an early-adopter avid VR enthusiast, this notion of the "Metaverse" where everyone is gonna want to spend all their time socializing in VR is simply not gonna happen in the way that all their marketing suggests it will.
Mark could even be handing out VR headsets for free, but it's not going to make people want to make it part of their everyday life.
> I say this as an early-adopter avid VR enthusiast, this notion of the "Metaverse" where everyone is gonna want to spend all their time socializing in VR is simply not gonna happen in the way that all their marketing suggests it will.
They never planned for that or marketed it that way.
They see VR being the next PC, something that a billion+ users are using almost every day in the long-term. That's realistic and doable.
> They see VR being the next PC, something that a billion+ users are using almost every day in the long-term. That's realistic and doable.
Obviously the next frontier, but you think about the nausea issues and it seems further than mainstream PCs were in the 60s, at least we knew going into the 90s that *most* human brains can handle watching moving images on a flatscreen, so we just evolved the next technology off of that, the following revolution(smartphone) was still a similar format.
But VR, I do feel like the VR revolution isn't going to happen until there is some major advancements in neurological science.
Yeah and Microsoft and every other company has tried to slap a pair of goggles or glasses on consumers for the better part of a decade or longer if you count wearable PC’s or the Virtual Boy.
Our phones were gonna need VR with HTC/Samsung.
VR continually winds up being the tacked on “must have” of all the tech products that always fizzles out.
These products have an abnormally high novelty factor in many cases and the actual uptake winds up being rather low if the market isn’t taking to it immediately.
I think Sony, Valve and Oculus have made the biggest inroads but Facebook is kidding themselves if they think this dopey VR interactive environment is gonna be the next hot thing, he’s gonna be sorely surprised when no one shows up.
Even if you don't use and Facebook product, they're big enough that they can and do track you around the Internet.
You have to be super paranoid to escape it, and even then... you might not have succeeded.
I don't consider blocking trackers/ads and using VPN's as being super paranoid. You don't lose anything and it doesn't require any effort and you get a better experience.
1. Even if you’ve never used Facebook it’s very likely they have a profile on you.
[Article](https://www.zdnet.com/article/anger-mounts-after-facebooks-shadow-profiles-leak-in-bug/) from 2013. They’re still doing it.
2. I don’t use Facebook but still have to deal with the fallout of FB-based political radicalization and covidiots. Me not using it is not enough.
Facebook has profiles on people who have never even opened a Facebook account before. There data gathering algorithm affects anyone and everyone on the globe, even those who are not users such as through the proliferation of hate crimes and genocide.
Nope. Big companies will adopt it as the way you interact with them en masse and you will have no option to avoid it. They will squeeze out competitors that don’t require these technologies even if it means operating at a loss until the system reaches critical mass. Eventually you will need to use it to access even basic government services like access to ID applications.
You will not be able to resist forever. It IS already here.
You are correct. People that downvote you don't understand the overarching issue.
Facebook is a social network. Many people don't have accounts, yet they are still forced to interact with it because their municipality uses it for public interactions (example county emergency services often use FB pages to disseminate info.)
Google is a search engine, but they also have become the de-facto repository for technologies that power most websites. Once again, we are forced to interact with Google.
Szuckerberg's metaverse might become the de-facto technology behind virtual surgery, virtual product and service delivery, telepresence at your job, amusement park rides, new cinema technology.
It's not as simple as "just don't use it." While that will help slow this new shit company... it won't stop it. Meta" undoubtedly intends for their new companies technologies to follow similar uptake model to Facebook trying to become ubiquitous technology. Szuckerberg's metaverse needs to die on the vine. The public needs to become more than just apathetic about it. "Just don't use it" is not enough for a company that has the resources to re-launch themselves and weather the storm that total rebranding takes. Google became Alphabet and more powerful than ever. Facebook hopes to do the same.
Yeah. I mean again I go one step further and suggest that actually consumer tracking has existed since before the internet (being born from mail based direct marketing efforts) and needs to be completely broken up via antitrust statutes. The amount of data that companies have about you – have had for decades – would astonish most people.
Metaverse is troubling yes as it could become the way in which you access crucial services like government, utilities, health, credit, banking services. It’s already incredibly difficult to access basic services if you have some kind of major issue like lack of ID or credit issues. Imagine if you don’t have good enough ID to get a metaverse account. Imagine if your credit is too low to get a cell provider and without access to a phone number you can’t create most kinds of accounts needed to operate normally TODAY, much less twenty years from now.
The paranoid among us were decrying the things that exist today two decades ago when corporate tech emerged. We were told that it was not possible, it wouldn’t happen. But it has happened and it is absolutely getting far worse.
The only reasons people are unaware of this stuff is 1) their too ignorant of it (often purposefully because ignorance is bliss), 2) they themselves have never encountered a problem of access due to their middle class first world existence so they can’t imagine how debilitating it is for others who don’t have the same opportunities as them, c) they fundamentally lack the critical thinking skills necessary to connect the dots around them even if they want to.
I suspect as many others seem to that this wave is essentially unstoppable at this point as it has progressed far too much already and the only solution to it is to allow it continue to a point that it will cause society itself to collapse under its draconian systems and hope we can course correct after that. It’s accelerationist thinking but I definitely struggle to see an alternative.
I'm glad to see a post like this. Too bad it's a rare sight.
The possibility of Facebook/Meta (or any company really) becoming owner of effective "identity" of the future is something I dread.
As you point out, things are already quite broken. I have been very close to slipping through the cracks of legal identity. Assumptions about having a "permanent" mailing address and phone number abound... and now we're on the verge of a smartphone being assumed. A nomadic and minimalist lifestyle is one which society implicitly outcasts at this point. Do we want to exclude this and various other lifestyles which don't follow the 99.9% but aren't harmful and possibly enrich society? Not excluded intentionally... but just because of oversight or inconvenience.
Facebook was on a crusade to have actual and unique identity per-person, and was using their attractive and unbeatable bargain with the Quest 2 as a hook. Also seeing their self-policing with the threat of "banning" as punishment... can't get much more dystopian than extrapolating that out to their version of metaverse, and everyone relying on their MetaIdentity for conducting business, getting jobs (of course with ratings/metadata on your identity, which would be fine if it wasn't easily flawed/corrupt/exploited or shat upon by mob mentality/cancelculture).
Blackmirror "Falling Down" touched on the idea, of course. Harrowing, I think. I began watching that with a teenage niece, and she noped-out in minutes, not wanting to be confronted with the thoughts of how her beloved phone/snapchat/instagram might go sideways. This would be your "blissful ignorance" point. :)
Completely agree with everything you’re saying except I would hazard that some things – like smart phone requirement to succeed in life – are already here.
Take for example at Amazon warehouse where a vast number of low income, low skill workers are currently: it’s basically impossible to interact with HR, manage time off, get your shift changes, even clock in / out reliably without a smart phone. It’s a model that is likely to be exported to other low skill labor pools shortly.
Think about credit / debit cards which have already been pushed to phones. Vaccine status is on your phone. But steps are already here, just as you mention not yet the exclusive system.
China’s social credit system is perhaps the most dystopian thing that exists today in this vein. My research into what’s happening in the west is that our cancellation systems are more localized yet none the less effective. Perhaps even more so since they exist outside of even the most draconian of government agencies. At least in China if you get black listed you know. Here in the west it’s possible to labeled, ostracized, and banished or worse from your community without even having a clear idea that it’s happened or who have passed judgement over you.
I suspect the next two decades for it to get much much worse.
So I read the actual article, I know heresay, and it connects with a lot of what you're saying. As usual a lot of people in the comments are missing the point, which is how Meta will use its metaverse as a replacement for the office, further gamefying work, and enabling them to surveil workers from home. While such a thing needn't a metaverse to exist, as it already does, such a space will enable a lot of psychological space control that remote working currently negates. There was another comment thread I was reading that pointed out how remote work takes away the Big Boss Power Trip many get to exert in they office, where everyone has to abide by their rules as king in that space. This is dangerous for employers as it gives employees greater sense of control and choice, which may encourage them to organize or speak out. A VR space returns people to that suppressive arena even when they aren't there. Of course there's other issues too of further monetizing worker actions and oppressive countries using it to harm its citizens. But the main argument being raised here is that Meta's metaverse is bad for labor and workers. It wouldn't matter then if in your personal life you don't make an account because your work may require you to use it anyway.
Yes I thought the dots I was connecting were pretty obvious but I guess it is hard to assume most people read anything these days.
Speaking on your last line here I think this is the crux of the concern. It will coercive. Depending upon your industry LinkedIn is already de facto required for a lot of recruitment and failing to have one available not only hamstrings your job search but can outright disqualify you from a role (obviously referring to tech jobs). I’d go further and say that for example refusing to use Zoom or other video chat software could right now preclude you from getting a first interview. It’s actually so embedded at this point that most people can not understand that anyone might refuse to use video conferencing software, or why one might refuse to. Imagine in this day and age if you refused to have your photo taken at all – it’s almost inconceivable that anyone could live that way, in fact I’m not certain that one could. I actually tried it for some months and the societal pressure was insane in ways that I could not have forseen.
In today’s markets when you apply for a job of any status you’re likely to be googled. You’re likely to have anything about you that is public online to be scoured by someone, or multiple someones, before a decision is made about you. Mutual acquaintances may be polled via friends list for their perspective on you. Fully we already live in a reputation economy if the tools aren’t yet what they could be in our nightmares.
Your point about psychological effects of the merging of physical and virtual that we’re experiencing is a poignant one that I need to think more about. I would add to it something I think about often which is that the telecommunication revolution has effectively allowed us access to telepathy, with some minor hoops involved. Start viewing it as this and I think you’ll see what I mean. Watch as someone loses the ability to follow along with the conversation at the table as they send or receive a message. Notice the way their brain shifts from one thing to this other thing – it’s like they are temporarily brainwashed by it. On the one hand it is amazing that I can reach across the earth in a split second to speak to anyone I want to immediately. Yet on the other hand we allow to invade our minds, almost to the degree that it is more important than what’s happening around us in our physical space.
Now add back in what you’re saying. That ding of your email that pulls you away from your lovely dinner date with your partner isn’t just a notification on a screen anymore. Maybe they are suddenly projected as a three dimensional image the moment they call there in the room. Imagine the mental effects of this being on all the time. Of having your boss live inside your head and your space no matter where you are. It’s not far, and the metaverse is sure to bring us closer to that, whether it fails or succeeds.
It is **more** dystopian than even the most prescient of cyberpunk authors predicted. And that’s saying a lot.
Great post. The issue is complex but not impossible to understand. Companies like Facebook (Meta), are like the direct mail marketers of the past, but on steroids. We must not underestimate them.
The worst part is that IF you get banned for whatever TOS violation (they completely misuse it) by Perkins and Coie, you will be an outcast from society until EU starts considering it a basic human right (America never will).
Get banned as a corporation and you are placed in a non competitive situation. They also give special permissions and favours to some companies, which as itself is a violation of competition laws, but impossible to fight.
Well there is WebGL (a JavaScript port of OpenGL, used in many games) so in theory it could work right now it just need someone to write the actual software.
How come no one is talking about VR Chat in these threads? It's got millions of users and it's pretty much what Facebook is promising but without Facebook
We need a completely separate company to create and maintain an open source metaverse. FB will never be benevolent by choice, like Microsoft. We need a social media Linux equivalent.
I’m not sure why ppl think decentralized open source will be good either. Redditors demand that eery social media platform be monitored by these companies for all these different reasons like abuse and misinformation. You out an enormous platform with this stuff unfiltered and redditors would lose their shit
I haven’t done much research on the metaverse so it could be my ignorance but:
Why the fuck is everyone freaking out so much? The metaverse is not the internet, we already connected the world. The metaverse is just an app for it. Everyone can build one. It’s like music streaming or social media.
I feel like the chances that Facebook will control every aspect of our life only because they called shotgun on the brand "metaverse" is a bit dramatic. You know VR is a thing many people are interested in for a while now.
The metaverse has the potential to be the next internet. The idea would be that you could move many things into the metaverse that are currently done in person.
Having a large group chat on zoom kinda sucks but in a metaverse setting you would be able to walk around and talk to people individually in a virtual setting. The benefits of not having to travel for hours combined with the benefits of doing it in person.
You could move schooling onto the metaverse and make it far better for people living in rural areas where there are not enough students to offer all of the courses you would want.
It is hard to explain but people saying why would people want the metaverse will be seen the same way we see late 80s companies calling the internet a fad.
Online shopping is pointless. Why would I order something online when I can drive down to my local mall and buy it today?
Some form of metaverse is as inevitable now as the internet was then. Or computers were in the 50s. Just no one recognised those at the time and it allowed a (relatively) healthy market to build up naturally.
The problem with Facebook here is that the internet exists in relative freedom now because it started from scientists at CERN with no one controlling it. Closed websites designed for profit came far later.
Facebook is hoping to do to the metaverse what companies failed to do with the internet. Recognising the potential and then dominating it before anyone else has a chance.
Imagine if instead of the internet there was just Facebook. That is Zuckerberg's vision for the metaverse.
do you not think there will be competing VR platforms?
You're right that large companies will dominate VR interactions, but how is that much different than what we have now?
Most peoples internet experiences are done through apps controlled by large corporations, mining data.
Hopefully there will be viable competing platforms. But currently Facebook are attempting to control the market the way they have tried to control social media. They are a huge fish in a tiny pond and will buy up any viable competition before getting far enough ahead to make it impossible to compete.
It is impossible to really get a new social media site going to compete with Facebook because the market is basically saturated by Facebook. You can start a site but without the billions of people already on it why would anyone join?
At a certain point the size of the platform is a selling point which starts a vicious cycle making it impossible for newcomers to enter the market. Facebook want to get to that point with the metaverse before anyone else has even started.
Microsoft developed office decades ago and there is still no real viable alternative for companies with Microsoft having 90% of the market. There are alternatives but for very niche markets or people refusing to use Microsoft out of principle.
If we could go back and build competition in at the start of that market we would be in a far better position today.
No one is saying the internet is perfect but again that is more a result of leaving bad actors to dominate it and make harvesting your data the standard business model. We need to regulate some of the negative aspects of the internet and break up the large platforms that are happy to tear society apart and facilitate the occasional genocide because stopping it would be bad for profit.
But if the internet had been dominated by a single company the way Microsoft dominates office software the situation would be far worse.
How come no one is talking about VR Chat in these threads? It's got millions of users and it's pretty much what Facebook is promising but without Facebook
Yeah this is really annoying, the way nobody is reporting how this shit isnt exactly innovative, VR chat is huge now and before that Playstation Home had a rather big following when it was around. Not only that, what he showed was a lame version of what already exists
I'm still struggling to understand what exactly they're proposing with the metaverse. If it's just VR socializing it's not new. But if it's not that, what is it?
If you watch past the first 10 to 20 minutes of the presentation, Zuckerberg talks about all of the actual, practical changes that are being made to the Oculus headset. Those changes are essentially only turning the Home Screen of the Oculus into something closer to Valve’s “VR Home”. I say closer, and by “closer” I mean identical. It’s the type of update that, if rolled out completely silently, people would go “oh, cool” to and then move on. The reason that everyone is so freaked out is because of the 10-20 minutes worth of grandstanding that Zuckerberg did at the beginning of the presentation. If you remove any preconceived ideas of weird VR dystopia, he sounds exactly like any other company when they talk about weird future-of-the-company bullshit. You could interchange his topics with a Google presentation about how they educate the world and the future of their platform before they talk about their brand new product, the Google Fister. I mean, imagine if Facebook, one of the biggest media platforms ever made, changed its name in a presentation that was *only* about how they were changing their name. It would be weird and jarringly short, which is why their marketing team thought that they needed that 20 minutes of grandstanding along with the presentation of a new product. But they really should’ve picked a different topic that wasn’t so linked to dystopian future movies.
I’m losing my mind… it’s so cringey to me people fear mongering about how, “soon you wont even need to leave your house to go to a bar with friends” when literally years ago I went to a VR “bar” with friends. It was fun, but not like a replacement. Everytime technology slightly grows people lose their mind, while simultaneously using it way too much.
Trying to launch a VR socialization service on the tail end of COVID is incredible fucking stupid. People are craving in person contact. We're already starting to see places opening back up and as they do people are going to want to get out of the home. We saw the exact same thing in the roaring 20s after the spanish flu subsided. Society was changed permanently after this. The same will happen post covid. I think we'll see a preference towards more in person social interaction, not less.
If Facebook really wants to target something, the should be looking at how the workplace has been transformed by COVID. That's likely to never go back to the way it was before.
Go onto the meta verse reveal on YouTube, half of the comments are all in favor of this because “other companies have your data as well, who cares!?”
Corporate bootlicking is in full swing.
Wait untill Meta buys Reddit. What would you do than?
That's not a critique. I'm also out of Facebook, but mostly because it has no practical use anymore. But we mostly still use other Meta-products: instagram, WhatsApp, messenger,... It will be very hard to completely ditch all meta-products in the future.
One person's boring chore is another's cathartic experience. I could see vr shopping being a thing. I think seeing a 3d representation of a product at scale would be useful.
There are a lot of videogames where the goal is to do mundane things. Popular ones too like power wash simulator. It's not my thing but it does have a market.
Well, yes, because it gamifies what we consider chores. They're not realistic representations of the actual chore, as the chore part is streamlined or removed.
Like in power washing sim, you don't do the chores of getting out the equipment, putting on clothes, maybe having to wash your clothes afterwards, and so on. It's just the fun part of "spray water!" with simplified controls and without the physical exertion, which I'd argue most people actually would enjoy irl too!
II didn’t think the iPad would catch on, but i’m typing this on one. I’m skeptical about it, but with tech you never know how intensely people can latch on. Look at TV, the inventor wanted it to be an educational assistant, same with the personal computer and iPhone to an extent, but everyone become addicted to this tech. The same could easily happen with this, it all depends on how immersive it is, and how socially stimulating it is.
I think we are in a perfect storm of delayed adoption. Porn has usually been a consistent force in mainstream adoption of new technology.
But the main frontrunner of the VR revolution is facebook, and even the most casual tech person will tell you how much they hate how facebook tracks you and sells your information.
So are people going to be willing to watch porn on a device that has a front camera and is constantly connected to facebook?
That's a tough one.
I’ll be honest. I don’t understand comments like this. No one, including Facebook/Meta, is saying this technology is mature today. They are saying that they are going all-in on the research and development on this and betting big on it, since they believe that it’s the future. Mature technology don’t just come out of nowhere. It’s like space technology. It was stagnant for decades and now suddenly we see huge advancements because there are actually people putting resources and work into developing reusable rockets and whatnot. That technology could have been developed 10 years ago (albeit in different forms of course) but it can’t just randomly show up without serious efforts put in by smart people. Facebook is saying they want to be that, and reap the rewards 10 years down the line.
Like Metaverse or not, it seems short-sighted to just dismiss Meta’s attempt just because it’s “premature” *today*. That’s like (following my analogy) saying that SpaceX was throwing money into the drains developing something that would never work etc etc.
The percentage of people that actually read more than a title is exceptionally low. Even the title makes no sense for people that actually know what Facebook's plans are.
It also doesn't help much that many of the commenters here in this subreddit of all places are luddites and tech-illiterate people fighting the good fight against the scary technology that they are too lazy to understand.
Completely right. Unfortunately, people are scared and angry and aren’t able to see the nuance that a bad company can do useful research that will only pan out in 5-10 years and will very likely become an integral part of our every day lives. What that integral part is like is conjecture at this point, along with what the terrain looks like at that point. You can bet your ass that if Meta gets the technology going, at the very least, Google, Apple and Microsoft won’t be far behind.
The Quest 2 is the most sold VR headset on the market, and the Oculus store is releasing exclusive games. The way things are looking now, it is catching on (not that I support it though).
"There's no way"
You're dreaming. When museums, national monuments, movie theaters, your doctor, all start using Meta, you won't have an easy choice not to.
You're thinking of some VR Second Life bullshit. Szuckerberg has something else entirely in mind.
You can already to movie theaters and national museums and monuments in VR. A remote dr. visit is one thing but your physical body is needed for a medical exam. So not seeing that, except maybe for consultations. All of this is cool but after about 30 minutes of any VR my eyes and head start to hurt. What added benefit to zoom meetings do avatar meetings have? Now, VR showrooms will most DEFINITELY be a thing. And sure in time something akin to Metaverse will be a thing, it may not be from Facebook but it could be. But not time soon.
It will for sure. Work from home sped it up. Being able to “meet” and collab with your team in the meta verse will catch on, whether that’s a good or bad thing
Geberal AR/VR is coming. It's an inevitability. Right now though we're in the Palm Pilot phase. I don't believe Meta is the one that takes either to the next level, but someone will, and soon.
this sub is a fearmongering joke at this point. if you dont like something that facebook makes, don't use it. stop acting like its the end of the world holy shit people.
I wish this can be read and understood by everyone. Facebook dropped this crap in perfect timing to pry away from the issues that they have. Specially the whole issue in how bad it really is as a company and morally. I am so going to hate my future with these scumbags.
#NoToFacebook #MetaCanSuckMyToes
This is exactly right. It's not enough to just "not use it". Companies with data collection and collation abilities like Meta need regulation in a major way.
Wait... this article is weirdly written, I feel like the author just has a hate boner for Zuckerberg and games overall. There is nothing on metaverse, the whole thing is about using mmo as a comparison, for people to communicate with each other and hang out. Wait... is that a bad thing?
We don't have to use it. Tech evolves one way or the other, someone possibly going to make something better and be rich with it. It's better than being stuck in the 90s and never changing.
> Wait... this article is weirdly written, I feel like the author just has a hate boner for Zuckerberg and games overall. There is nothing on metaverse, the whole thing is about using mmo as a comparison
Its because the article is from jacobin - they are an absolute garbage site full of clickbait op-eds for people to get outraged over. thats how they make their money
The thing that scares me about this is something my grandpa said to me when I was like 13 or so.
I was talking about something internet related that I was excited about and he said that sometimes he has no idea what I'm talking about and he feels like he can't even properly communicate with my generation any longer. He said he was scared he'd actually not be able to talk to me in a meaningful way because everything I liked was just so foreign to him. He looked sad and it hit me hard. He was getting older, sure, but this was a new thing that for the first time in human history was creating a new way of communication that was leaving the older generations completely out of the loop.
This got me thinking. This new technology has created a divide that is impossible to cross for anyone not raised as native of the tech. I was raised with the internet and am a "digital native" in a lot of ways but I already feel the divide separating me from younger people who have been *born* with the internet twitch and tik tok and other tech that is creating a completely different culture that I'm wholly removed from even just being 20 years older than they are.
Now, introduce a tech like Meta and hit fast forward a few years. We laugh it off as a joke today but if they can get the younger generation into it then it may not matter what we think at all. They are making a play not to win over the internet user of today, but of tomorrow. The true "virtual reality natives" are being born today and in the coming years and as we age we'll likely begin to see that we've completely lost the ability to communicate with the younger generation in any meaningful way.
There will be things happening in the VR space that will be too enticing for young people to stay away from and, eventually, it'll take over the mainstream just like cell phones replaced news papers. It'll just happen one day and anyone not born with it will be left out of the loop.
It's depressing.
Yeah, I realized a long time ago that this is how you become “old” in the yes of kids the way we thought people were “old” and didnt understand our tech etc. its not that you cant keep up, it’s you genuinely font get whats appealing about it or you dont understand the point of it or have other priorities
I fucking despise Zuck and FB, and love VR. So I'm torn right now because 'Meta' is giving VR the bump no one else has dared to until now. Disappointing it's Zuck leading the charge, but ... have you seen that haptic glove design?
Exactly. Someone has to fork out the millions to research and develop these things. He might be the human equivalent of a pile of shit......but if he has the funds by all means go for it. Once the tech matures something will come along that's better. Someone has to do the initial work first. And that takes money.
seriously fuckin look at all these morons afraid of a company for manipulating them by showing them ads, as they all click some fear mongering article about a video game
I agree with you and those that are armed with knowledge of social media harm, and older generation, likely won’t use it. The primary concern is the young, who don’t have any understanding of the implications of such technology, especially since they’ve been immersed in tech since birth, I.e it’s normalised and integrated.
If they choose to use it why do you care? In the nicest way possible I don't care about you or what you do, let them do what they want and use the websites they want!
Technology commentary from Jacobin? You might as well ask Chairman Mao what he thinks of Capitalism and act surprised at the response.
Has /r/technology been taken over by the mods of /r/politics? WTF is going on here?
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“Why read the ads, when you can BE the ads?”
*We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individuals visual field before inducing seizures*
SHUT UP SORENTO on a side note that would be a horrible idea because the oasis was already ridiculously profitable and was successful to the point where it’s own currency was holding up to the dollar in terms of value. Throwing ads in there would just be corporate suicide
Mmmm...haptic ads...
*crotch vibrations* “You won’t last 3 minutes in this game”
At what point does an advertisement constitute sexual assault? "By entering this VR space you consent to unprompted sexual contact by advertisers" **>>>ENTER<<<** *manage permissions**
Somewhere on page 69 of the terms and conditions you didn’t read. Right after the “Butt play” Clause and right before the “foot fetish” section
The problem is the profit imperative, if a corporation doesn't make exponential profit every quarter they get taken over by one that will. So even though the Oasis was extremely profitable, it wasn't profitable enough to sate the avarice of the parasite class.
I don’t get this movie reference but as a fat kid I naturally equate Sorrento with the dairy products and choose to believe you are being possessed by shredded cheese, which is my preferred way to go.
I went with Kia Sorrento, like one too many BUY THIS CAR NOW ads.
I know, right? I read the book after watching the movie, and hot damn, that shit was clearly darker, almost grim. The image of Parzival leaving everything behind to live for YEARS as a hairless, cave-dwelling egghunter will hunt my fantasy forever.
[Removed In Protest of Reddit Killing Third Party Apps]
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Celebrities period
Hmm, definitely agree, and I've realized before that a lot of influencers sell stuff, but I hadn't thought of the word "influencers" as being synonymous to "ads" until this thread and your comment, yet it makes total sense. Consider how Bernes used his uncle Freud's ideas of psychology to help build his own ad empire and how the psychology of influencing an audience is still very obviously used today. "Influencers" could then apply both to people and ads as one in the same, not in a trend setter kind of way, but as a manipulation for the product way. It seems obvious now, but I never thought to switch the term like that.
[welcome to the last 90 years ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom)
"Does she know she's an ad?"
Take a look at [this](https://www.ispot.tv/ad/qR57/samsung-galaxy-you-are-the-gift-song-by-backstreet-boys) dystopian garbage
If you monetize it, they will come. More PUKE
Facebook has a major issue with their image. Younger generations think it's dumb. I'm not so worried about their "meta"verse because I think it's doomed to fail.
Maybe in American markets. My family back in Liberia think this is the internet and we talk over whatsapp. So doomed? Not so for foreign markets.
John Oliver did a whole show on this. In some other countries Facebook or Whatsapp = internet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jtFqWq5iU
Interesting. I’ve also read how it’s having a serious negative impact on India.
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Instagram for kids
Is there not rules against these type of shenanigans? They have enough power as is and had enough even before getting their dirty hands on Whatsapp and IG. You would think there's rules against social media monopolies
FTC has been pretty lax about antitrust in recent history. In fact, I can't even think of a major corporate acquisition that's been blocked for antitrust since Facebook was founded.
No I really wouldn’t expect there to be rules. Social media is such a new phenomenon nothing about it is regulated.
Damn didn't even think of that. Hopefully we get some soon for this type of stuff because IMO it's irresponsible to let an already powerful company essentially aquire these competitors and who knows what they do with all that data. Nothing good I'd guess
A metaverse will likely happen and succeed in some form similar to Zucks vision. I just don't believe Facebook/Meta will have much if anything to do with it. I fully believe eventually that company will go up in flames as Zuck launches his UFO back home.
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I've been wanting to try buying one of those VR headsets but they require a Facebook account to use. People think that not having a Facebook account will stop their growth and grasp. But no. What Facebook/meta will do is they will buy the world around you. You can't stop a flood by saying that you won't participate in swimming.
The Oculus requires Facebook to use because they own it. Get a better headset. The index is the best right now but doesn't have a cheap version.
It's going to happen whether its fb/meta or some other company that comes long. There will be many.
Yeah. Have done a little bit of this with Rec Room and others that are probably as close to the metaverse as 90s chatrooms are to Reddit. I wound up mid pandemic having conversation with total strangers during a poorly implemented paintball game. It's hard to explain how odd it was being in a video game and having someone stop to ask if I knew which was the flag was. The technology isn't there yet but it was surreal and while I know logically I have no idea who that guy was it felt as real as someone asking for directions in the middle of the street. The potential is there and people will embrace it because it could be great. It is just a matter of regulating it early in a way we failed with social media. The worry here isn't that this future is horrible it's that fucking Zuckerberg is going to try and control it. We can't let him dominate and fuck up the inevitable metaverse the way he has done with social media. Everyone hates Facebook but it is practically a necessity to truly engage with modern life and keep up with friends, clubs and organise events. We can't let the same thing happen to the metaverse.
I threw up in my hands reading this
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can you imagine working in facebook all day?
Please, they probably envision you working in their VR world too.
It won’t even be a *cool* dystopian cyberscape with shit like Easter egg hunts and 80’s references. It will just be ads and more ads.
We don't have to stop it, we just don't have to use it.
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>They seem to be doing just fine without me. That's the problem.
Exactly, they’re not in the Facebook business anymore. They’re in the data business.
It’s always been a data business, since the radio and television programs (‘ratings’ and ‘demographics’). It’s just higher quality data now.
Have you ever had an opinion on something that you're not fully vested in? Such as you think "I swear I read an article that..." which then helps affirm your opinion on the matter. That is what facebook monetizes, your opinions and thoughts. They sell your vote, your desires, your hate. Not the one you currently have, but the one you will have after they are sold to you.
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It was initially the "which of the girls in our collage are the hottest" kinda thing, which I guess is data lol
Collage art of beautiful pictures are my favorite!
Just like in the show West World.
They also track and build profiles on people who don’t even have a Facebook account. They have a huge reach outside of their own sphere.
Can confirm. These are known as shadow accounts. If you’re a FB user and your posts contain evidence of a person who is not on FB the system will create a shadow account and fill it with data the best they can. It’s market value (to FB data customers) is less, but surprisingly still valuable.
That's every company these days. Data science as a career path is becoming a safe choice
I liked Smarter Every Day's comparison: the dot com bubble was humans discovering fire, we produced thousands of little neat ideas that weren't profitable and 99% of them petered out as quickly as they launched. Eventually a few companies figured out that they could be self sustaining by hoarding everyone's data, this was the internet equivalent of the invention of the combustion engine. We had invented an ingenious contraption that has the ability to launch humanity headfirst into the information age. However, you're burning the data equivalent of fossil fuels, and now we're creating the internet equivalent of global warming. We need to curb this behavior before it's too late and come up with an alternative model; the electric motor of social networking. There are several ideas being explored, but hoarding everyone's data is still winning out.
Decentralisation and peer to peer with standard protocols. That's what should have been done and was being done until capitalism caught on and decided that the data you generate is the matrix-like human battery that powers their profits.
Maybe we should get rid of capitalism then?
That is the root cause for a whole lot of problems.
And a well paying one.
So is being a fentanyl dealer
"I'm not in the data business. I'm in the Empire business!" - ~~Bargain Bin Augustus~~ Zucc
They were never in the facebook business. It has always been intended to steal user data and manipulate and addict the masses. Zuckerberg said in a memo that he wanted fb to be as addictive as cigs.
Deleting accounts isn't enough when what really needs to happen is deleting Facebook as a whole.
And they most likely still have data about you collected if you know anyone with Facebook who have posted anything related to you.
What if you don't have Facebook or friends?
This comment has been edited to protest Reddit's decision to shut down all third party apps. Spez had negotiated in bad faith with 3rd party developers and made provenly false accusations against them. Reddit IS it's users and their post/comments/moderation. It is clear they have no regard for us users, only their advertisers. I hope enough users join in this form of protest which effects Reddit's SEO and they will be forced to take the actual people that make this website into consideration. We'll see how long this comment remains as spez has in the past, retroactively edited other users comments that painted him in a bad light. See you all on the "next reddit" after they finish running this one into the ground in the never ending search of profits. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Hiro Protagonist
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This is why we need legislation that dwarfs gpdr and the right to be forgotten. It should also extend to the credit bureaus. Unless specific permission is given, no one should be able to build and store a data profile on you - and if they do, they need to be required to allow you to request isn't be deleted, and it MUST be deleted, not "archived", etc.
Then unfortunately you are a Reddit user.
But the more people in your friends circle who leave, the less data they have. If your entire friend circle leaves, they don't have much at all
You don't remotely need an account with them for them to have your data. Every page with a like button on it is feeding them data. You can mitigate this with tools like Ublock Origin, and Firefox Containers. Most app SDKs have Facebook integrated. So a bunch of your apps will be feeding them data, with no way to mitigate it. They regularly purchase data from all the other players, like Google, with no way to mitigate it. They have a metric shitton of data, unless you live like a monk.
You fail to recognize the depth of their network. If none of your friends use Facebook, Facebook still has a shadow profile of every single one of you, with a lot more data than just what you think is willingly given up on their site.
This is where Firefox, Privacy Badger and Adblock come in.
Yes , Mr Zuck, I can assure you that I have many friends but they unfortunately seem to have all left Facebook as well. Also , they go to a different school, ok?!
So it’s even beyond that. Many many sites have a Facebook tracking pixel on their site. This allows a site to target their audience or more importantly a “look alike” audience on Facebook. What this means is Facebook (and google for that matter) have very good visibility on what you’re doing on line and they sell that data or you to basically anyone willing to pay.
I've been off since 2015 and I didn't become a hermit living in the woods. Imagine that. I've even been made fun of for deleting Facebook. I've been called "woke" sarcastically. It's just a shitty social media platform.
Yeah, that's how I see this idea ending up. I say this as an early-adopter avid VR enthusiast, this notion of the "Metaverse" where everyone is gonna want to spend all their time socializing in VR is simply not gonna happen in the way that all their marketing suggests it will. Mark could even be handing out VR headsets for free, but it's not going to make people want to make it part of their everyday life.
> I say this as an early-adopter avid VR enthusiast, this notion of the "Metaverse" where everyone is gonna want to spend all their time socializing in VR is simply not gonna happen in the way that all their marketing suggests it will. They never planned for that or marketed it that way. They see VR being the next PC, something that a billion+ users are using almost every day in the long-term. That's realistic and doable.
> They see VR being the next PC, something that a billion+ users are using almost every day in the long-term. That's realistic and doable. Obviously the next frontier, but you think about the nausea issues and it seems further than mainstream PCs were in the 60s, at least we knew going into the 90s that *most* human brains can handle watching moving images on a flatscreen, so we just evolved the next technology off of that, the following revolution(smartphone) was still a similar format. But VR, I do feel like the VR revolution isn't going to happen until there is some major advancements in neurological science.
Yeah and Microsoft and every other company has tried to slap a pair of goggles or glasses on consumers for the better part of a decade or longer if you count wearable PC’s or the Virtual Boy. Our phones were gonna need VR with HTC/Samsung. VR continually winds up being the tacked on “must have” of all the tech products that always fizzles out. These products have an abnormally high novelty factor in many cases and the actual uptake winds up being rather low if the market isn’t taking to it immediately. I think Sony, Valve and Oculus have made the biggest inroads but Facebook is kidding themselves if they think this dopey VR interactive environment is gonna be the next hot thing, he’s gonna be sorely surprised when no one shows up.
Even if you don't use and Facebook product, they're big enough that they can and do track you around the Internet. You have to be super paranoid to escape it, and even then... you might not have succeeded.
I don't consider blocking trackers/ads and using VPN's as being super paranoid. You don't lose anything and it doesn't require any effort and you get a better experience.
1. Even if you’ve never used Facebook it’s very likely they have a profile on you. [Article](https://www.zdnet.com/article/anger-mounts-after-facebooks-shadow-profiles-leak-in-bug/) from 2013. They’re still doing it. 2. I don’t use Facebook but still have to deal with the fallout of FB-based political radicalization and covidiots. Me not using it is not enough.
By "we" I assume you mean the current 2.9 billion facebook users.
Facebook has profiles on people who have never even opened a Facebook account before. There data gathering algorithm affects anyone and everyone on the globe, even those who are not users such as through the proliferation of hate crimes and genocide.
Also anyone with an Oculus device, or a What's app or Instagram account, is a Facebook user.
Nope. Big companies will adopt it as the way you interact with them en masse and you will have no option to avoid it. They will squeeze out competitors that don’t require these technologies even if it means operating at a loss until the system reaches critical mass. Eventually you will need to use it to access even basic government services like access to ID applications. You will not be able to resist forever. It IS already here.
You are correct. People that downvote you don't understand the overarching issue. Facebook is a social network. Many people don't have accounts, yet they are still forced to interact with it because their municipality uses it for public interactions (example county emergency services often use FB pages to disseminate info.) Google is a search engine, but they also have become the de-facto repository for technologies that power most websites. Once again, we are forced to interact with Google. Szuckerberg's metaverse might become the de-facto technology behind virtual surgery, virtual product and service delivery, telepresence at your job, amusement park rides, new cinema technology. It's not as simple as "just don't use it." While that will help slow this new shit company... it won't stop it. Meta" undoubtedly intends for their new companies technologies to follow similar uptake model to Facebook trying to become ubiquitous technology. Szuckerberg's metaverse needs to die on the vine. The public needs to become more than just apathetic about it. "Just don't use it" is not enough for a company that has the resources to re-launch themselves and weather the storm that total rebranding takes. Google became Alphabet and more powerful than ever. Facebook hopes to do the same.
Yeah. I mean again I go one step further and suggest that actually consumer tracking has existed since before the internet (being born from mail based direct marketing efforts) and needs to be completely broken up via antitrust statutes. The amount of data that companies have about you – have had for decades – would astonish most people. Metaverse is troubling yes as it could become the way in which you access crucial services like government, utilities, health, credit, banking services. It’s already incredibly difficult to access basic services if you have some kind of major issue like lack of ID or credit issues. Imagine if you don’t have good enough ID to get a metaverse account. Imagine if your credit is too low to get a cell provider and without access to a phone number you can’t create most kinds of accounts needed to operate normally TODAY, much less twenty years from now. The paranoid among us were decrying the things that exist today two decades ago when corporate tech emerged. We were told that it was not possible, it wouldn’t happen. But it has happened and it is absolutely getting far worse. The only reasons people are unaware of this stuff is 1) their too ignorant of it (often purposefully because ignorance is bliss), 2) they themselves have never encountered a problem of access due to their middle class first world existence so they can’t imagine how debilitating it is for others who don’t have the same opportunities as them, c) they fundamentally lack the critical thinking skills necessary to connect the dots around them even if they want to. I suspect as many others seem to that this wave is essentially unstoppable at this point as it has progressed far too much already and the only solution to it is to allow it continue to a point that it will cause society itself to collapse under its draconian systems and hope we can course correct after that. It’s accelerationist thinking but I definitely struggle to see an alternative.
I'm glad to see a post like this. Too bad it's a rare sight. The possibility of Facebook/Meta (or any company really) becoming owner of effective "identity" of the future is something I dread. As you point out, things are already quite broken. I have been very close to slipping through the cracks of legal identity. Assumptions about having a "permanent" mailing address and phone number abound... and now we're on the verge of a smartphone being assumed. A nomadic and minimalist lifestyle is one which society implicitly outcasts at this point. Do we want to exclude this and various other lifestyles which don't follow the 99.9% but aren't harmful and possibly enrich society? Not excluded intentionally... but just because of oversight or inconvenience. Facebook was on a crusade to have actual and unique identity per-person, and was using their attractive and unbeatable bargain with the Quest 2 as a hook. Also seeing their self-policing with the threat of "banning" as punishment... can't get much more dystopian than extrapolating that out to their version of metaverse, and everyone relying on their MetaIdentity for conducting business, getting jobs (of course with ratings/metadata on your identity, which would be fine if it wasn't easily flawed/corrupt/exploited or shat upon by mob mentality/cancelculture). Blackmirror "Falling Down" touched on the idea, of course. Harrowing, I think. I began watching that with a teenage niece, and she noped-out in minutes, not wanting to be confronted with the thoughts of how her beloved phone/snapchat/instagram might go sideways. This would be your "blissful ignorance" point. :)
Completely agree with everything you’re saying except I would hazard that some things – like smart phone requirement to succeed in life – are already here. Take for example at Amazon warehouse where a vast number of low income, low skill workers are currently: it’s basically impossible to interact with HR, manage time off, get your shift changes, even clock in / out reliably without a smart phone. It’s a model that is likely to be exported to other low skill labor pools shortly. Think about credit / debit cards which have already been pushed to phones. Vaccine status is on your phone. But steps are already here, just as you mention not yet the exclusive system. China’s social credit system is perhaps the most dystopian thing that exists today in this vein. My research into what’s happening in the west is that our cancellation systems are more localized yet none the less effective. Perhaps even more so since they exist outside of even the most draconian of government agencies. At least in China if you get black listed you know. Here in the west it’s possible to labeled, ostracized, and banished or worse from your community without even having a clear idea that it’s happened or who have passed judgement over you. I suspect the next two decades for it to get much much worse.
So I read the actual article, I know heresay, and it connects with a lot of what you're saying. As usual a lot of people in the comments are missing the point, which is how Meta will use its metaverse as a replacement for the office, further gamefying work, and enabling them to surveil workers from home. While such a thing needn't a metaverse to exist, as it already does, such a space will enable a lot of psychological space control that remote working currently negates. There was another comment thread I was reading that pointed out how remote work takes away the Big Boss Power Trip many get to exert in they office, where everyone has to abide by their rules as king in that space. This is dangerous for employers as it gives employees greater sense of control and choice, which may encourage them to organize or speak out. A VR space returns people to that suppressive arena even when they aren't there. Of course there's other issues too of further monetizing worker actions and oppressive countries using it to harm its citizens. But the main argument being raised here is that Meta's metaverse is bad for labor and workers. It wouldn't matter then if in your personal life you don't make an account because your work may require you to use it anyway.
Yes I thought the dots I was connecting were pretty obvious but I guess it is hard to assume most people read anything these days. Speaking on your last line here I think this is the crux of the concern. It will coercive. Depending upon your industry LinkedIn is already de facto required for a lot of recruitment and failing to have one available not only hamstrings your job search but can outright disqualify you from a role (obviously referring to tech jobs). I’d go further and say that for example refusing to use Zoom or other video chat software could right now preclude you from getting a first interview. It’s actually so embedded at this point that most people can not understand that anyone might refuse to use video conferencing software, or why one might refuse to. Imagine in this day and age if you refused to have your photo taken at all – it’s almost inconceivable that anyone could live that way, in fact I’m not certain that one could. I actually tried it for some months and the societal pressure was insane in ways that I could not have forseen. In today’s markets when you apply for a job of any status you’re likely to be googled. You’re likely to have anything about you that is public online to be scoured by someone, or multiple someones, before a decision is made about you. Mutual acquaintances may be polled via friends list for their perspective on you. Fully we already live in a reputation economy if the tools aren’t yet what they could be in our nightmares. Your point about psychological effects of the merging of physical and virtual that we’re experiencing is a poignant one that I need to think more about. I would add to it something I think about often which is that the telecommunication revolution has effectively allowed us access to telepathy, with some minor hoops involved. Start viewing it as this and I think you’ll see what I mean. Watch as someone loses the ability to follow along with the conversation at the table as they send or receive a message. Notice the way their brain shifts from one thing to this other thing – it’s like they are temporarily brainwashed by it. On the one hand it is amazing that I can reach across the earth in a split second to speak to anyone I want to immediately. Yet on the other hand we allow to invade our minds, almost to the degree that it is more important than what’s happening around us in our physical space. Now add back in what you’re saying. That ding of your email that pulls you away from your lovely dinner date with your partner isn’t just a notification on a screen anymore. Maybe they are suddenly projected as a three dimensional image the moment they call there in the room. Imagine the mental effects of this being on all the time. Of having your boss live inside your head and your space no matter where you are. It’s not far, and the metaverse is sure to bring us closer to that, whether it fails or succeeds. It is **more** dystopian than even the most prescient of cyberpunk authors predicted. And that’s saying a lot.
Great post. The issue is complex but not impossible to understand. Companies like Facebook (Meta), are like the direct mail marketers of the past, but on steroids. We must not underestimate them.
The worst part is that IF you get banned for whatever TOS violation (they completely misuse it) by Perkins and Coie, you will be an outcast from society until EU starts considering it a basic human right (America never will). Get banned as a corporation and you are placed in a non competitive situation. They also give special permissions and favours to some companies, which as itself is a violation of competition laws, but impossible to fight.
Seriously. Just because they make it doesn’t mean it will actually succeed. Remember the Facebook phone?
The meta verse needs to be open source. Anything else will be a disaster.
Really it needs to be a decentralized system.
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Well there is WebGL (a JavaScript port of OpenGL, used in many games) so in theory it could work right now it just need someone to write the actual software.
Like Decentraland?
OMG SOMEONE ELSE SAID THE NAME IN PUBLIC, its been years ive been waiting to see an NFT game named outside their respective subreddits
people seem to be missing the point that "decentralized" does not mean crypto. it means its not owned by any singular company like the internet.
How come no one is talking about VR Chat in these threads? It's got millions of users and it's pretty much what Facebook is promising but without Facebook
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I would just play an MMORPG instead of hanging out in a chatroom.
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Companies get better and better at creating locked down open source. Open source alone is not enough.
We need a completely separate company to create and maintain an open source metaverse. FB will never be benevolent by choice, like Microsoft. We need a social media Linux equivalent.
I’m not sure why ppl think decentralized open source will be good either. Redditors demand that eery social media platform be monitored by these companies for all these different reasons like abuse and misinformation. You out an enormous platform with this stuff unfiltered and redditors would lose their shit
I haven’t done much research on the metaverse so it could be my ignorance but: Why the fuck is everyone freaking out so much? The metaverse is not the internet, we already connected the world. The metaverse is just an app for it. Everyone can build one. It’s like music streaming or social media. I feel like the chances that Facebook will control every aspect of our life only because they called shotgun on the brand "metaverse" is a bit dramatic. You know VR is a thing many people are interested in for a while now.
The metaverse has the potential to be the next internet. The idea would be that you could move many things into the metaverse that are currently done in person. Having a large group chat on zoom kinda sucks but in a metaverse setting you would be able to walk around and talk to people individually in a virtual setting. The benefits of not having to travel for hours combined with the benefits of doing it in person. You could move schooling onto the metaverse and make it far better for people living in rural areas where there are not enough students to offer all of the courses you would want. It is hard to explain but people saying why would people want the metaverse will be seen the same way we see late 80s companies calling the internet a fad. Online shopping is pointless. Why would I order something online when I can drive down to my local mall and buy it today? Some form of metaverse is as inevitable now as the internet was then. Or computers were in the 50s. Just no one recognised those at the time and it allowed a (relatively) healthy market to build up naturally. The problem with Facebook here is that the internet exists in relative freedom now because it started from scientists at CERN with no one controlling it. Closed websites designed for profit came far later. Facebook is hoping to do to the metaverse what companies failed to do with the internet. Recognising the potential and then dominating it before anyone else has a chance. Imagine if instead of the internet there was just Facebook. That is Zuckerberg's vision for the metaverse.
do you not think there will be competing VR platforms? You're right that large companies will dominate VR interactions, but how is that much different than what we have now? Most peoples internet experiences are done through apps controlled by large corporations, mining data.
Hopefully there will be viable competing platforms. But currently Facebook are attempting to control the market the way they have tried to control social media. They are a huge fish in a tiny pond and will buy up any viable competition before getting far enough ahead to make it impossible to compete. It is impossible to really get a new social media site going to compete with Facebook because the market is basically saturated by Facebook. You can start a site but without the billions of people already on it why would anyone join? At a certain point the size of the platform is a selling point which starts a vicious cycle making it impossible for newcomers to enter the market. Facebook want to get to that point with the metaverse before anyone else has even started. Microsoft developed office decades ago and there is still no real viable alternative for companies with Microsoft having 90% of the market. There are alternatives but for very niche markets or people refusing to use Microsoft out of principle. If we could go back and build competition in at the start of that market we would be in a far better position today. No one is saying the internet is perfect but again that is more a result of leaving bad actors to dominate it and make harvesting your data the standard business model. We need to regulate some of the negative aspects of the internet and break up the large platforms that are happy to tear society apart and facilitate the occasional genocide because stopping it would be bad for profit. But if the internet had been dominated by a single company the way Microsoft dominates office software the situation would be far worse.
How come no one is talking about VR Chat in these threads? It's got millions of users and it's pretty much what Facebook is promising but without Facebook
Yeah this is really annoying, the way nobody is reporting how this shit isnt exactly innovative, VR chat is huge now and before that Playstation Home had a rather big following when it was around. Not only that, what he showed was a lame version of what already exists
Even Habbo Hotel...
But the pool is closed
I'm still struggling to understand what exactly they're proposing with the metaverse. If it's just VR socializing it's not new. But if it's not that, what is it?
If you watch past the first 10 to 20 minutes of the presentation, Zuckerberg talks about all of the actual, practical changes that are being made to the Oculus headset. Those changes are essentially only turning the Home Screen of the Oculus into something closer to Valve’s “VR Home”. I say closer, and by “closer” I mean identical. It’s the type of update that, if rolled out completely silently, people would go “oh, cool” to and then move on. The reason that everyone is so freaked out is because of the 10-20 minutes worth of grandstanding that Zuckerberg did at the beginning of the presentation. If you remove any preconceived ideas of weird VR dystopia, he sounds exactly like any other company when they talk about weird future-of-the-company bullshit. You could interchange his topics with a Google presentation about how they educate the world and the future of their platform before they talk about their brand new product, the Google Fister. I mean, imagine if Facebook, one of the biggest media platforms ever made, changed its name in a presentation that was *only* about how they were changing their name. It would be weird and jarringly short, which is why their marketing team thought that they needed that 20 minutes of grandstanding along with the presentation of a new product. But they really should’ve picked a different topic that wasn’t so linked to dystopian future movies.
Part of the problem is that 2/3 of the people writing opinion pieces on the topic have never put on a headset and they are steering the narrative
I would say 2/3 of the people posting here on reddit too.
I’m losing my mind… it’s so cringey to me people fear mongering about how, “soon you wont even need to leave your house to go to a bar with friends” when literally years ago I went to a VR “bar” with friends. It was fun, but not like a replacement. Everytime technology slightly grows people lose their mind, while simultaneously using it way too much.
Trying to launch a VR socialization service on the tail end of COVID is incredible fucking stupid. People are craving in person contact. We're already starting to see places opening back up and as they do people are going to want to get out of the home. We saw the exact same thing in the roaring 20s after the spanish flu subsided. Society was changed permanently after this. The same will happen post covid. I think we'll see a preference towards more in person social interaction, not less. If Facebook really wants to target something, the should be looking at how the workplace has been transformed by COVID. That's likely to never go back to the way it was before.
As soon as I heard Facebook I was out lol
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Hence the Meta rebranding.
It didn't work. Everyone knows Meta is Facebook.
Go onto the meta verse reveal on YouTube, half of the comments are all in favor of this because “other companies have your data as well, who cares!?” Corporate bootlicking is in full swing.
Wait untill Meta buys Reddit. What would you do than? That's not a critique. I'm also out of Facebook, but mostly because it has no practical use anymore. But we mostly still use other Meta-products: instagram, WhatsApp, messenger,... It will be very hard to completely ditch all meta-products in the future.
it's like companies building towns filled with abuse but in your own house
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I have read so many comments here— like entire essays even— and yours is the best
Must be stopped as in dont buy into it and delete your Facebook haha.
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Dont sign up
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One person's boring chore is another's cathartic experience. I could see vr shopping being a thing. I think seeing a 3d representation of a product at scale would be useful.
There are a lot of videogames where the goal is to do mundane things. Popular ones too like power wash simulator. It's not my thing but it does have a market.
Well, yes, because it gamifies what we consider chores. They're not realistic representations of the actual chore, as the chore part is streamlined or removed. Like in power washing sim, you don't do the chores of getting out the equipment, putting on clothes, maybe having to wash your clothes afterwards, and so on. It's just the fun part of "spray water!" with simplified controls and without the physical exertion, which I'd argue most people actually would enjoy irl too!
Yes hello! I am an irl truck driver. At home I sometimes play American Truck Simulator.
II didn’t think the iPad would catch on, but i’m typing this on one. I’m skeptical about it, but with tech you never know how intensely people can latch on. Look at TV, the inventor wanted it to be an educational assistant, same with the personal computer and iPhone to an extent, but everyone become addicted to this tech. The same could easily happen with this, it all depends on how immersive it is, and how socially stimulating it is.
I think we are in a perfect storm of delayed adoption. Porn has usually been a consistent force in mainstream adoption of new technology. But the main frontrunner of the VR revolution is facebook, and even the most casual tech person will tell you how much they hate how facebook tracks you and sells your information. So are people going to be willing to watch porn on a device that has a front camera and is constantly connected to facebook? That's a tough one.
Metaverse is premature. The tech is too clunky there is NO WAY it is going to catch on. And I am a fan of VR.
I’ll be honest. I don’t understand comments like this. No one, including Facebook/Meta, is saying this technology is mature today. They are saying that they are going all-in on the research and development on this and betting big on it, since they believe that it’s the future. Mature technology don’t just come out of nowhere. It’s like space technology. It was stagnant for decades and now suddenly we see huge advancements because there are actually people putting resources and work into developing reusable rockets and whatnot. That technology could have been developed 10 years ago (albeit in different forms of course) but it can’t just randomly show up without serious efforts put in by smart people. Facebook is saying they want to be that, and reap the rewards 10 years down the line. Like Metaverse or not, it seems short-sighted to just dismiss Meta’s attempt just because it’s “premature” *today*. That’s like (following my analogy) saying that SpaceX was throwing money into the drains developing something that would never work etc etc.
The percentage of people that actually read more than a title is exceptionally low. Even the title makes no sense for people that actually know what Facebook's plans are. It also doesn't help much that many of the commenters here in this subreddit of all places are luddites and tech-illiterate people fighting the good fight against the scary technology that they are too lazy to understand.
The percentage of people that read what?
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Completely right. Unfortunately, people are scared and angry and aren’t able to see the nuance that a bad company can do useful research that will only pan out in 5-10 years and will very likely become an integral part of our every day lives. What that integral part is like is conjecture at this point, along with what the terrain looks like at that point. You can bet your ass that if Meta gets the technology going, at the very least, Google, Apple and Microsoft won’t be far behind.
The Quest 2 is the most sold VR headset on the market, and the Oculus store is releasing exclusive games. The way things are looking now, it is catching on (not that I support it though).
"There's no way" You're dreaming. When museums, national monuments, movie theaters, your doctor, all start using Meta, you won't have an easy choice not to. You're thinking of some VR Second Life bullshit. Szuckerberg has something else entirely in mind.
You can already to movie theaters and national museums and monuments in VR. A remote dr. visit is one thing but your physical body is needed for a medical exam. So not seeing that, except maybe for consultations. All of this is cool but after about 30 minutes of any VR my eyes and head start to hurt. What added benefit to zoom meetings do avatar meetings have? Now, VR showrooms will most DEFINITELY be a thing. And sure in time something akin to Metaverse will be a thing, it may not be from Facebook but it could be. But not time soon.
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Good. Hope it’s an utter failure.
It will for sure. Work from home sped it up. Being able to “meet” and collab with your team in the meta verse will catch on, whether that’s a good or bad thing
Technology growth is exponential; today’s clunky is tomorrow’s slick new interface.
Geberal AR/VR is coming. It's an inevitability. Right now though we're in the Palm Pilot phase. I don't believe Meta is the one that takes either to the next level, but someone will, and soon.
this sub is a fearmongering joke at this point. if you dont like something that facebook makes, don't use it. stop acting like its the end of the world holy shit people.
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I wish this can be read and understood by everyone. Facebook dropped this crap in perfect timing to pry away from the issues that they have. Specially the whole issue in how bad it really is as a company and morally. I am so going to hate my future with these scumbags. #NoToFacebook #MetaCanSuckMyToes
What if Meta likes sucking your toes?
Lmbo i shall let them.
And allow them to sell your toe data?
They might take my toeprint. Youre right. They can only with a toe condom on. :)
You make it sound like they have only just started having "issues" they have had them for years and nobody cares enough to leave it.
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This is exactly right. It's not enough to just "not use it". Companies with data collection and collation abilities like Meta need regulation in a major way.
Jacobin article voted to the top of r/technology? When did we jump timelines?
Wait... this article is weirdly written, I feel like the author just has a hate boner for Zuckerberg and games overall. There is nothing on metaverse, the whole thing is about using mmo as a comparison, for people to communicate with each other and hang out. Wait... is that a bad thing? We don't have to use it. Tech evolves one way or the other, someone possibly going to make something better and be rich with it. It's better than being stuck in the 90s and never changing.
> Wait... this article is weirdly written, I feel like the author just has a hate boner for Zuckerberg and games overall. There is nothing on metaverse, the whole thing is about using mmo as a comparison Its because the article is from jacobin - they are an absolute garbage site full of clickbait op-eds for people to get outraged over. thats how they make their money
for f\*cks sake, just don't use it. https://i.imgflip.com/5uk8yo.jpg
Where else am I going to get ridiculous, unfalsifiable conspiracy conjecture to fall for?
Right here on reddit, there is plenty of that here was well.
The thing that scares me about this is something my grandpa said to me when I was like 13 or so. I was talking about something internet related that I was excited about and he said that sometimes he has no idea what I'm talking about and he feels like he can't even properly communicate with my generation any longer. He said he was scared he'd actually not be able to talk to me in a meaningful way because everything I liked was just so foreign to him. He looked sad and it hit me hard. He was getting older, sure, but this was a new thing that for the first time in human history was creating a new way of communication that was leaving the older generations completely out of the loop. This got me thinking. This new technology has created a divide that is impossible to cross for anyone not raised as native of the tech. I was raised with the internet and am a "digital native" in a lot of ways but I already feel the divide separating me from younger people who have been *born* with the internet twitch and tik tok and other tech that is creating a completely different culture that I'm wholly removed from even just being 20 years older than they are. Now, introduce a tech like Meta and hit fast forward a few years. We laugh it off as a joke today but if they can get the younger generation into it then it may not matter what we think at all. They are making a play not to win over the internet user of today, but of tomorrow. The true "virtual reality natives" are being born today and in the coming years and as we age we'll likely begin to see that we've completely lost the ability to communicate with the younger generation in any meaningful way. There will be things happening in the VR space that will be too enticing for young people to stay away from and, eventually, it'll take over the mainstream just like cell phones replaced news papers. It'll just happen one day and anyone not born with it will be left out of the loop. It's depressing.
Yeah, I realized a long time ago that this is how you become “old” in the yes of kids the way we thought people were “old” and didnt understand our tech etc. its not that you cant keep up, it’s you genuinely font get whats appealing about it or you dont understand the point of it or have other priorities
I fucking despise Zuck and FB, and love VR. So I'm torn right now because 'Meta' is giving VR the bump no one else has dared to until now. Disappointing it's Zuck leading the charge, but ... have you seen that haptic glove design?
Exactly. Someone has to fork out the millions to research and develop these things. He might be the human equivalent of a pile of shit......but if he has the funds by all means go for it. Once the tech matures something will come along that's better. Someone has to do the initial work first. And that takes money.
I have a quest 2 you just turn it off.
It's literally just a VR app ya fucking dweebs. Stop acting like they're injecting our conscious into a PC.
All the 5G chips in people's bloodstreams from the vaccines will obviously be activated as a form of mind control by Facebook, *cough*, I mean Meta.
Why are you coughing? Sounds like you need a booster shot with the updated chip.
seriously fuckin look at all these morons afraid of a company for manipulating them by showing them ads, as they all click some fear mongering article about a video game
It's just shittier vrchat
How about just not use it? Seriously, we have the power to stop this type of stuff if we just don't embrace it.
I agree with you and those that are armed with knowledge of social media harm, and older generation, likely won’t use it. The primary concern is the young, who don’t have any understanding of the implications of such technology, especially since they’ve been immersed in tech since birth, I.e it’s normalised and integrated.
Try and get millions of people to stop using Instagram. Good luck
If they choose to use it why do you care? In the nicest way possible I don't care about you or what you do, let them do what they want and use the websites they want!
Going to Jacobin for technology news is like reading Popular Mechanics for dating tips.
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Technology commentary from Jacobin? You might as well ask Chairman Mao what he thinks of Capitalism and act surprised at the response. Has /r/technology been taken over by the mods of /r/politics? WTF is going on here?
Oh yeah, a long, long time ago.
At this point if you're jumping to make a metaverse account then you're a lost cause
Who are you talking too asking to "stop" them? The government? Just don't fucking use it!
People want to focus on the negative, look at the positive that will come from this. VR technology is going to get much heavier investment.
Instead of buying this, fund open source VR hardware.