So what's the deal with this Metaverse thing?

[onesteptwostep]

It's just basically a real life MMORPG?

 

[dr froyd]

it might be worthwhile to think about what it actually is:

first of all, contrary to what most people think, facebook is not primarily a social-media company, but rather a data-mining company. Its business model is - and has always been - to sell user data to advertisers. The social-media aspect of it is merely a vehicle for mining such data and simultaneously expose users to the resulting advertisement. The more precise and comprehensive the user data is, the better for facebook, because that means more effective advertisement. If it were up to Zuck, you would be monitored 24/7 and mined for behavioral data continuously.

the VR stuff might sound wacky, but if you think about it's a completely natural step in the direction of acquiring more comprehensive user data. If you live a life inside VR, it means facebook can collect your behavioral data not just based on what you do on their webpage, but what you do in general.

 

[onesteptwostep]

I heard from an acquatince that there would be currency circulating in it and that you would earn currency through doing tasks within the metaverse?

And yeah it seems like what you are describing is going to be a literal pandoras box.

Anyway the whole things reminds me of Diablo 2, how people would trade items in the games with currency on a forum, which then could be traded for real money. IDK what to make of it.

 

[Black Rose]

If you live a life inside VR, it means facebook can collect your behavioral data

why just facebook? if the metaverse becomes open either there will be private hubs or other companies will provide worlds to visit.

 

[dr froyd]

If you live a life inside VR, it means facebook can collect your behavioral data

why just facebook? if the metaverse becomes open either there will be private hubs or other companies will provide worlds to visit.

keep in mind facebook is a for-profit company whose purpose is to maximize earnings. And once again the way it generates such earnings is by mining and selling user data. I don't know if other companies will mine data out of this too, but facebook will definitely use this for its intended purpose.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Yeah the whole thing is good or bad depending on how you view the realm of social media. If you're a business owner you'll be greatful that your ads work and that they penetrate the market well. If you're the everyday Joe you'd probably be fed up with the commercialization. To me the whole thing seems inevitable, but I'm generally apprehensive given that the current internet landscape is a foul cesspool.......... the whole digitiaztion of sociality is, I dunno, unhuman? I feel like it would take off and then crash once the 'metaverse' is too saturated by commercialization, as how facebook is falling off these days.

 

[Black Rose]

Facebook Google NSA CERN

They all run simulations of everyone on the planet.

Problem is that commercialization requires accurate simulations or its junk mail.

Once the simulation becomes accurate they will lose less money.

I only get $200 a month to spend and I buy junk food with it. Rarely do I buy products unless I can afford them because I am poor. I waste advertisers' money.

A.I. supposedly will fix this problem.

 

[dr froyd]

using facebook is essentially just deleting time from your life, converting it into cash and sending it to Zuck's bank account. And now he can have all your time

 

[ZenRaiden]

using facebook is essentially just deleting time from your life, converting it into cash and sending it to Zuck's bank account. And now he can have all your time

Generally speaking yes, but as I have used facebook for sometime and at the start when it was new it was kind of fun, but essentially over the years it only got worse.

That site is good for keeping in touch with people who don't care to use email and phone which to me seems like a pretty bad deal.

Its also pretty bad at getting to know people, because it essentially very easy to just about end up knowing people you might not others want to know.

On the whole is cheap click entertainment, but that is offered all over the internet anyway. So not really sure what facebook brings to the table.

I would seriously let all data collection slide if it weren't for the terrible design of the website.

Not only its crappy layout, but crappy format, and crappy way of sharing information.

The whole messenger thing was confusing to use as well.

For sometime I just thought I am too uptight with my own standard for what constitutes good website, knowing that I suck with some of the new software. But I seriously think they changed so many things that changing the site for better would not hurt.

Not to mention customizing the website for my own needs and my taste is absolutely horrific. I just could not figure out how to set things up to like the website.

The time one has to put in into the website to find proper setting for anything is horrible, and factually the search thing is crap, and whole thing is just playground for scammers as well.

I can see the benefit for facebook in some minor ways, but even advertising for companies seems pretty lame on site.

Its so much content and a jungle of bullshit, that even if I wanted to find something of use to my taste it would probably take for ever.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Add to it there were some good things like selling and buying and sharing about events and perhaps some benefit of having interest groups, but truth be told, I never really thought its worth being on the site for this, since most of that exists outside of facebook too.

 

[Cognisant]

Virtual goods, services and “real estate” having value isn’t a new concept, platforms like Second Life have been around for years, likewise virtual social platforms like VRchat have been around long before VR systems, ever since 3D models could be rendered in a browser there’s been chatrooms with 3D avatars. Heck even the term metaverse comes from the book Snowcrash published in 1992, if you haven’t already go check it out it’s a really cool book.

My point is this isn’t something new so Zuckerberg’s success in this sphere is far from guaranteed, indeed most VR enthusiast are tech savvy and of them most hate Facebook with a passion. So unless Zuck can lock down the technology with patents and other bullshit (unlikely) he’s going to have to compete with rivals who have the advantage of not being one of the most infamous people on the internet. Indeed even if he managed to lock it down that still won’t stop people going off to do their own thing in an open source peer-to-peer way that’s practically impossible to stop.

Personally I think the player to watch is Valve, they’re already a leader in VR and network code, they’ve already got just about every PC gamer on the planet as loyal customers and they’ve demonstrated a shrewd understanding of the internet’s culture. They’d be smart enough to setup their virtual space as a free to access platform where people can buy/sell content through Steam and purchase RAM, storage and runtime (i.e. hosting) if they want to add their own subspaces.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

FB as a platform is the final mainstream channel for long-winded blog-like posts, and no one uses it for that.

It's unique (perhaps not) because it's trying to be EVERYTHING, when it clearly lacks the resources. They make up for this lack of resources by just copying (stealing) other companies ideas and layouts and putting it on their own platform. Of course, there is this lack of resources, so in the end the feature is neglected and might as well be a vestigial appendage. Maybe this is why older internet users don't like it. FB is playing the long game, and Zoomers are going to be alive longer, so might as well throw your investments behind those features that maximize dopamine and minimize attention-span required.

The Metaverse is the most Apple move Facebook has done. Zuck obviously admires Jobs. Make a big announcement, appear to be the pioneers of the next big thing and don't mention any context about the technology. Just make sure Facebook, Meta, is associated with it in the culture. Wack.

In all though, the REAL Metaverse won't be that different from the Internet, except that its infrastructure will be more advanced when initiated (already has), because we know we can monetize the fuck out of it now. What will change is what you can do. You can make MMORPGs on the internet, so I mean, you're not wrong, but also, there is obviously a real person on the otherside. So not much changes imo

There needs to be millions in research dumped into the tech, to maximize the marketing (persuasion, positions, ect) and efficiency the system. We won't see the Metaverse at its Apex until that happens. 20-30 years?

 

[Black Rose]

There needs to be millions in research dumped into the tech, to maximize the marketing (persuasion, positions, ect) and efficiency the system. We won't see the Metaverse at its Apex until that happens. 20-30 years?

computers will be 1000x more powerful in 15 years.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

There needs to be millions in research dumped into the tech, to maximize the marketing (persuasion, positions, ect) and efficiency the system. We won't see the Metaverse at its Apex until that happens. 20-30 years?

computers will be 1000x more powerful in 15 years.

I mean with respect that companies will be able to do things like place promotional ads in 4 dimensional space. Will operating systems be the same? Xbox and PlayStation OS already inundate you ads trying to sell shit, imagine when you have goggles attached to your head moving through space and interacting in physical space.

These sorts of things are needed before big companies feel comfortable and incentivized to pour millions and millions into actually making the product itself good. Right now its mostly nerds, passion, and hardcore technologist, and trend setters keeping the ecosystem vibrant. There are corporate investments, like FB, but remember Facebook as itself is only an organ in the economic cog that needs investors money.

 

[Puffy]

I have similar reservations as Dr Froyd around who will eventually own the technologies and how it will be controlled. I'm definitely more in favour of it as an open source and decentralised technology. Already, the internet is a form of augmented (or hyper)reality and having significant influence over it has a lot of influence on the behaviours of people who use it. Imagine if, now, every aspect of what you are (virtually) experiencing is privately owned? That's quite a lot of power to have to influence and manipulate someone, and the boundaries of that needs to be very well understood by the users of the technologies to mitigate that.

Virtual reality feels like a logical progression of where things have been going so it's basically inevitable. People have been becoming more and more digitised, more and more removed from the natural world, more and more apart of a media-saturated hyperreality. People treat their mobile phones like artificial limbs. It's all movement in the same direction.

I suspect that the big leap virtual reality represents into total immersion in a digitised world will cause a shock and push-back from a large segment of the population though. We see the beginnings of this already in anti-vax culture, where people perceive virtual reality as a part of the grand narrative to control and subjugate people and will inevitably revolt against it. If you browse a lot of youtube videos on the Metaverse you see a lot of comments from others who have other unrelated complaints and say they wouldn't ever want to be a part of it.

It feels like quite a large part of the population are resistant to it, and I wonder what effect that will have and how that will unfold. Is this resistance something that will die out as new generations take to it or will there always be people who are "outside the matrix" so to speak? In a similar sense that there still exist indigenous societies alive today? If mainstream society increasingly moves into the virtual, as it has done for the digital, what would their relationship to that society look like? Will more people feel pushed by the tension of this to form alternate off-grid communities?

I don't honestly know on what side of this I place myself, it will be an interesting thing to observe in our life-times anyway.

 

[birdsnestfern]

Still learning about it, but if they have a VR Casino, I'd like to try it!

 

[Black Rose]

"They" are simulating all reality on Earth.

And all human history.

They can predict every move you make.

I assume this every time I leave the house.

I have experienced several anomalies that have led me to conclude I have a digital double.

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