One of Facebook’s earliest investors has labelled the social media giant’s plans for a metaverse as “dystopian”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta, as Facebook is now known, is investing billions in the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Roger McNamee told the BBC: “It’s a bad idea and the fact we are all sitting and looking at this like it’s normal should be alarming everyone.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox told attendees at the Web Summit in Lisbon that the idea would make “the internet less flat”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said it would be considerably better than video conferencing as a space for meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, speaking at the same event, Mr McNamee was highly sceptical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Facebook should not be allowed to create a dystopian metaverse,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The term metaverse was coined in the 1990s in a science fiction novel Snow Crash, where it served as a virtual reality successor to the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently, it’s the next big thing. What is the metaverse?
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\nMr McNamee became a critic of Facebook as he began to see more misinformation on the platform. He said he was not convinced the metaverse would be safe in chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There’s no way that a regulator or policymaker should be allowing Facebook to operate there [in the metaverse] or get into cryptocurrencies,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Facebook should have lost the right to make its own choices. A regulator should be there giving pre-approval for everything they do. The amount of harm they’ve done is incalculable.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Real life
\nMr Cox, speaking for Meta, put forward a different view – that the metaverse idea is the next step for the internet as a whole, not just for his company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Technology often starts in lower resolutions versions of what it becomes,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback from Meta’s Oculus virtual reality headset users was that the technology, which was improving all the time, could be “incredibly fun”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Cox told Nicholas Carlson, editor-in-chief of news publication Insider, that his own dabbling in the metaverse included hosting meetings and entertainment for staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said he and his wife had watched a comedy show with Facebook employees in which everyone appeared as avatars: “Twenty of us in the room, co-workers, all laughing together.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That same technology was a good alternative to video calls, he argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Everyone is exhausted by video conferencing. You don’t know who is looking at who, everyone is constantly interrupting each other.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meetings in the metaverse would be far better, he said, with Meta working on how to improve “spatial audio and body language” in virtual reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When asked why anyone would want to meet in virtual reality, he said: “It will not replace real life – nothing should – and I don’t want to design something that does.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting Meta
\nHe acknowledged that no one company, such as Meta, would own the metaverse, pointing to Roblox as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roblox, a user-generated gaming platform valued at $30bn (\u00a322bn) and with 37 million users around the globe, has its own plans for the metaverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chief executive David Baszucki has for several years been outlining his vision of it as a digital place where people play, work or learn with millions of 3D experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why Roblox is a $30bn bet on the gaming Metaverse
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\nAt Web Summit, Roblox’s head of music Jon Vlassopulos told the BBC: “I think our view of the metaverse is that we’ve been at it for about 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“So we’re ushering in the metaverse, and we feel it needs to be a place that everyone can access, a place where people can express themselves and connect together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’ve been building around this vision for a long time. We’re excited that more people are coming it to validate that notion.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Cox was asked whether the metaverse – which Mr Carlson described as a “cartoon world” – was something that the tech giant should control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said that there would need to be “a set of standards and a set of protocols” along with “public discourse” about how to keep the space safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that Mr Zuckerberg was committed to safety, something he said the “company had been working on for over a decade”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of Facebook’s earliest investors has labelled the social media giant’s plans for a metaverse as “dystopian”. Meta, as Facebook is now known, is investing billions in the project. But Roger McNamee told the BBC: “It’s a bad idea and the fact we are all sitting and looking at this like it’s normal should be … Continue reading “Facebook’s metaverse plans labelled as ‘dystopian’ and ‘a bad idea’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3566,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3565\/revisions\/3566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}