Why is Facebook Going “Meta”?
The key to good journalism is maintaining a balanced perspective, like a trained gymnast skillfully walking over…just kidding, this is a blog, not journalism. According to Slate (and pretty much every other news site that has covered the story), Mark Zuckerberg has rebranded the Facebook company as “Meta” and is shifting his focus to creating something called the “Metaverse.” This is somewhat analogous to how Alphabet is Google’s parent company, but Zuckerberg has a different vision in mind:
[It will be] a persistent, synchronous environment [that is] going to be accessible across all of our different computing platforms; VR and AR, but also PC, and also mobile devices and game consoles.
— Zuckerberg
Slate likened it to The Matrix and Minority Report; The Verge interviewed Zuckerberg himself and made a reference to Ready Player One, which Zuckerberg said he appreciated. The most obvious allusion is to Snow Crash, a science fiction cyberpunk novel that took some influence from Neuromancer and depicted its own dystopian virtual reality.
Arguments in favor of this move:
- It represents the next phase in the evolution of social media
- It would allow for a better, more immersive experience
Arguments against this move:
- It does not solve any obvious problems
- It could be exploited for mass surveillance
Opening Thoughts
Facebook is…controversial. I have an entire post about it here. Anyone following tech news would know that Zuckerberg and his company have been facing government scrutiny, and it is becoming increasingly popular to see top comments arguing that we should just delete Facebook once and for all. It seems obvious, then, that a cynical person might view this entire move as an attempt to shift attention away from recent events.
A more optimistic person would say that this is the direction Zuckerberg had always wanted to take. His platform was not meant to be used on a laptop, like MySpace — he wanted an entire universe that users could enter at will.
From a technical standpoint, Facebook has made some innovations. Their user experience drowned out MySpace, which seems clunky and outdated today. They invented and open sourced React.js, which is important to the frontend community in a variety of software companies. It goes without saying that they built a ubiquitous platform, one that was also integrated into a variety of other products.
Now Facebook users can communicate on Facebook Messenger, with extra bells and whistles that they may not have otherwise in a group text. They can join Facebook groups. They can embed YouTube videos, share news stories, and let everyone and their grandma know how they feel about vaccine mandates.
The notion of a “metaverse” adds a layer of complexity to this.
Harshest Critic: Wes Fenlon of PCGamer
In an hour-and-a-half keynote, the only real ideas Facebook presented for living in the metaverse were having a virtual version of your house (made up of crappy 3D rendered objects), attending virtual meetings (so you can’t even turn off your camera if you’re feeling Zoom fatigue) and having a virtual workspace instead of a physical one (never mind how clunky and awkward a virtual desktop is compared to a real one). So much development on the metaverse is focusing on recreating worse versions of things we already have in the real world. This metaverse pitch, seemingly, is just another avenue for selling people the same crap.
— Fenlon
Even the biggest advocates at Facebook might find Wes Fenlon’s article entertaining. In it, he argues that Zuckerberg falsely equates the advantages of the Metaverse with the Internet, which obviously already exists, mistakenly states that the Metaverse would be cross-compatible when this is a very difficult technical issue to solve, adds unnecessary complexity to a problem that does not exist, and fails to comprehend that Snow Crash was a dystopian novel about the dangers of large corporations controlling everything.
The Guardian, in an opinion piece, argues that Facebook is inventing a new reality because it has already ruined our own. It compares Facebook to a tobacco giant that renamed itself to avoid negative press, then points to some negative dystopian visions it has.
A tamer criticism of Facebook’s Metaverse, on HackerNoon, simply breaks down the feasibility of what the company has proposed in its advertisements. It goes scene by scene, commenting on little advertised details like holographic displays, implied hardware requirements, and consequences regarding privacy. It concludes that information on how this will actually work in seriously lacking — how will walking work? What user movements will be tracked? If we will, indeed, have the ability to truly see a realistic representation of the body, then what will this mean regarding privacy?
Overall, the criticism can be summarized a little bit like this: Some people think the changes to Facebook will be worthless, some people think Zuckerberg does not have the best intentions, and some people are voicing tongue-in-cheek arguments that this a slippery slope to some sort of nightmarish “Black Mirror” scenario.
The Advocates
If you are searching for an advocate of Facebook’s new Metaverse, you do not have to look far. TheVerge, in their article “Mark in the Metaverse,” includes quotes and answers by Zuckerberg himself.
Video games like Animal Crossing and Fortnite already incorporate elements of a supposed metaverse. Zuckerberg’s vision would have Meta’s vast resources behind it, and he believes it will bring “unprecedented interoperability” (ability to transfer “game resources” between platforms) and a decentralized structure.
This is a big topic. The metaverse is a vision that spans many companies — the whole industry. You can think about it as the successor to the mobile internet. And it’s certainly not something that any one company is going to build, but I think a big part of our next chapter is going to hopefully be contributing to building that, in partnership with a lot of other companies and creators and developers. But you can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness.
— Zuckerberg, emphasis mine
This is not the promise to completely disrupt the healthcare industry by taking a small drop of blood. This is not a small startup making bold claims without any sort of funding. This is one of the most powerful people in the world, the leader of a FAANG (sorry, MAANG) company, who already has the resources to incorporate technology like VR into his technology.
And today, I think about the computing platforms that we have. We have these phones. They’re relatively small. A lot of the time that we’re spending, we’re basically mediating our lives and our communication through these small, glowing rectangles. I think that that’s not really how people are made to interact. A lot of the meetings that we have today, you’re looking at a grid of faces on a screen. That’s not how we process things either. We’re used to being in a room with people and having a sense of space where if you’re sitting to my right, then that means I’m also sitting to your left, so we have some shared sense of space in common. When you speak, it’s coming from my right. It’s not just all coming from the same place in front of me.
— Zuckerberg, emphasis mine
In videos and interviews, Zuckerberg comes across, or attempts to come across, as a starry-eyed visionary who imagined a better future since the time he was a young child coding, got unexpectedly successful launching a website in his dorm room, and is now finally making an effort to pursue his original dream. In spite of what everyone else may say, this is the future, and he is very excited he has the privilege to shape it.
The entire concept, admittedly, is a little bit vague. What will this actually look and feel like, when the vision finally comes to fruition?
Only time will tell.
Closing Thoughts
When the iPhone first came out, I thought it was not revolutionary at all. The technology already existed, it was just consolidating it. Today, the iPhone is ubiquitous.
Maybe this is just like that again. Everyone might be laughing right now, but maybe within a few years we will warm up to the idea. Blog posts like this will age terribly because we will be accessing the Facebook metaverse at work, at parties, and for online dating.
Until we reach that point, there are some serious concerns to address. Is Zuckerberg really the one who should be leading the way? Is the next step in technology something like this, or would it be better for us to move away entirely, in favor of going outside more often or migrating to some sort of open source social network that does not have the reputation of Facebook?
Facebook engineers are master of UX, or user experience. They have refined and perfected an enormous collection of algorithms that maximize user attention. They work with the world’s best designers. They built an empire on an idea that was not radically different from other social networks of its time, but they figured out how to dominate the market.
If this new umbrella company wants their metaverse to be successful, they will probably find a way. Perhaps it is more radical to claim that they will completely fail. But when virtually every news site I find is either skeptical or completely disgusted, I have to ask: Will there be strong resistance? Is there a silent majority of people who are actually on board with this idea, and will be heard when they simply try this out?
Facebook, for better or worse, has gone “meta.”
