(JustPatriots.com)- Mark Zuckerberg’s grand scheme to create a creepy “metaverse” – that virtual reality construct intended to completely transform the Internet – may not be the best idea after all. At least, that’s what two tech writers from the Associated Press believe.
The AP writers, Matt O’Brien and Barbara Ortutayap think there are plenty of pitfalls to Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” plan.
They argue that this transformation of the internet into something vastly larger is bound to bring with it both the good and the bad. Who’s to say that online harassment and targeted hate that runs rampant on Facebook won’t still be around in Zuckerberg’s “metaverse?”
O’Brien and Ortutayap argue that Zuckerberg has been slow to address the dark side of Facebook, so why should anyone think he’d do anything about it in his metaverse? Likewise, the same problems that exist with Big Tech today – censorship, monitoring users, targeted advertising – will no doubt continue in Zuckerberg’s metaverse.
Scammers, human traffickers, and cybergangs who exist on the old Internet will probably branch out into the new metaverse as well.
The AP writers quote Amie Stepanovich, the executive director of Silicon Flatirons at the University of Colorado, who points out that the online troll campaigns of today will continue on the metaverse. Only, instead of getting hit with a barrage of angry words, you’ll get to see an army of angry digital avatars yelling at you.
What fun!
Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life, the virtual escape craze from the early 2000s, suggested that Mark Zuckerberg’s newly named Meta company probably isn’t the best corporation to lead the world into a new “metaverse.” Rosedale explained that when you create a public online space that only appeals to a “polarized, homogenous group of people,” there will be danger there.
Rosedale believes the better way to go is to create systems that are both welcoming and flexible enough that strangers can interact with one another the same way they would in a real-life public space like Central Park.
That definitely doesn’t seem like something Mark Zuckerberg could accomplish.
Evan Greer, an activist with a group called Fight for the Future believes that Zuckerberg transforming Facebook into Meta is just a cynical attempt to distance the company from its growing list of scandals. What’s more, she believes Zuckerberg’s goal here isn’t just to dominate the Internet as it is today but to “control and define” what the Internet will be to future generations.
Read their entire column HERE.
