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Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’
- metalliqaz 5y agoSo "Ready Player One" with Zuck in charge? No thank you.
- anoncow 5y agoWith Oculus, IG and FB, they seem pretty close to being the ones to pull it off.
- dingosity 5y agoit always seemed weird to me that fb, that sort of defined "casual interaction", was doubling down on such an immersive technology. the "metaverse" described by Rosedale & Ondrejka was nothing if not immersive.
- ralertomo 5y agoI think having IG and FB is a liability for them. Imo Epic Games is making better choices right now with their acquisitions and marketing strats. Seems more appealing to me.
- ipaddr 5y agoThose liabilities will bring in millions of people. Epic wished they had those platforms to onramp users.
- chaostheory 5y agoEpic doesn’t even have a software platform for VR yet. It’ll be awhile before they even catch up to Valve.
- astlouis44 5y agoFacebook will likely try to acquire Epic in the near future.
- Apocryphon 5y agoWhy Epic as opposed to any other forward-thinking gaming company like Valve? Sort of random.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoBy the time the film came out it was already a dated future.
- account-5 5y agoFacebook is IOI. There are no Gregarious Games in reality.
- metalliqaz 5y agoyes that was my point. "zuck in charge" would be like if IOI won the contest
- earthplus 5y agoI think that's their goal, they issued a copy of the book to each Oculus employee. Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/oculus-gives-all-its-employees-ready-player-one-2016-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/oculus-gives-all-its-employe...
- salt-thrower 5y agoWasn't that book supposed to be a bit of a dystopian/cautionary tale against VR? I thought the resolution of the character arc was that the guy decides to take the headset off and engage in the real world more.
- JohnFen 5y agoIt's amazing how many different cautionary tales were eventually adopted as how-to manuals.
- jakesnakelou 5y agoit's equal parts vision, equal parts philanthropy.
- 52-6F-62 5y agoThere's no question that there's some kind of vision involved, but what part of this is conceivably philanthropic? FB and Zuckerberg have an immediate vested interest in capturing the maximum of attention spans of these people.
- Choc13 5y ago>> “A good vision for the metaverse is not one that a specific company builds, but it has to have the sense of interoperability and portability”, Mr Zuckerberg said, adding that there should be protocols like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) internet standards for defining how experiences will be built. Except defined by Facebook, so not really anything like W3C.
- dingosity 5y agooh man. there have been at least three efforts i'm aware of to standardize the metaverse in the last 30 years. none of them really went anywhere. fb was invited to participate in the last one i paid attention to (VWRAP), but they politely declined.
- cratermoon 5y agoAnd now they'll take all the ideas from the previous efforts, pick the ones that will make them the most profit (revenue - development costs) and tada a new propriety, privately controlled ecosystem that slowly replaces whatever is out there. See, for example, Open Graph replacing Dublin Core.
- selfhoster11 5y agoHow is Open Graph replacing Dublin Core? I'm not familiar with the space.
- cratermoon 5y agoThey're both specifications for adding structured metadata to the web. https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/da-dublincore,da-opengraph https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/da-dublincore,da...
- cwkoss 5y agoAre there any facebook products that have "the sense of interoperability and portability"? Seems like most of their properties strive for the opposite...
- cityzen 5y agoNever knew Revenge of the Nerds would get so dark...
- al2o3cr 5y agoMarketing droid: "We're not a social media company, we're a metaverse company" Normal person: What does that mean? Marketing droid: "The metaverse does not have a specific definition"
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BitwiseFool 5y agoWith the power of imagination, the metaverse can be anything!
- dharmab 5y agoWhen is FB buying Zombo.com?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- maxwell 5y agoIt's "a place where all IP can live together, where all kinds of experiences can happen." https://twitter.com/juliey4/status/1205393085145874433 https://twitter.com/juliey4/status/1205393085145874433
- xxxtentachyon 5y agoReally wish they launched last year. Imagine all the Second Life proms
- CyanBird 5y agoAhh yes, Facebook has finally ascended and become Zombo.com, their final form
- zeruch 5y ago...to be fair, even Zombocom has more actual focus.
- klyrs 5y agoI don't feel like clicking on this... are they getting into the quantum hype game?
- Choc13 5y ago>>> "“I think [it] is probably going to resemble some kind of a hybrid between the social platforms that we see today, but an environment where you’re embodied in it”, Mr Zuckerberg also said. One of the benefits of this ecosystem would be that, “if you go back 20 or 30 years, a lot of people’s individual opportunities and experience was dictated by their physical proximity”, and that easy movement through a virtual space could avoid such barriers." He seems to be saying they're getting (more) into the Black Mirror game.
- Choc13 5y agoOh and "The metaverse does not have a specific definition"
- klyrs 5y agoOh, good, the real problem with social media has always been relegated to electronic devices. What we really need is enragement metrics for meatspace
- ssklash 5y agoAnd by Black Mirror game I assume you mean creating a dystopian hellscape and not some interactive TV thing.
- Choc13 5y agoCorrect. This episode in particular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoNo, the VR / Augmented reality goggles hype. They bought Oculus, remember. Dystopian metaverse. https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/22/11087890/mark-zuckerberg-mwc-picture-future-samsung https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/22/11087890/mark-zuckerberg-...
- DethNinja 5y agoMetaverse seems like the new buzzword for the VC companies. Nowadays everyone is building metaverse type games just because of Roblox but reality is it is a limited market with high competition and only few players are interested about such games.
- thom 5y agoYet again it’s the old jwz point of people focusing on the irrelevant tech details of why something’s successful. Roblox isn’t successful because it’s a ‘metaverse’, it’s successful because it’s got a crapload of games that shut my kids up.
- thom 5y agoOkay maybe I’m getting my software think pieces backwards and it’s this that is more relevant: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect... And not: https://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html
- meepmorp 5y ago> it’s successful because it’s got a crapload of games that shut my kids up. Still cheaper than daycare!
- Apocryphon 5y agoMakes me wonder if Microsoft is missing the boat with not doing more with Minecraft. Metacraft?
- CodeGlitch 5y agoSeems there could be a business for corporate style services within a meta verse now that more people are working remotely. Think meetings, conferences, etc. I know second Life did this before all the degenerates moved in...
- astlouis44 5y ago
- SavantIdiot 5y agoDoes he really believe his own bullshit? I mean, I realize FB is literally the internet in some countries, but that's because they are essentially the only water in the desert so to speak. FB needs competition, badly.
- arodyginc 5y agoIn which countries FB is the only Internet?
- SavantIdiot 5y agohttps://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet/ https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-free-basics-internet-africa-mark-zuckerberg https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-free-... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-free-basics-developing-markets https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-...
- djoo 5y agoIn some African countries, Facebook is free via Mobile Data (also Wikipedia). Therefore, it becomes the "only" Internet. They even have cases of piracy movies being shared/available within theses sites.
- zekrioca 5y agoThis is so prevalent that there are many study groups on facebook just because of that: it is the only place they can "freely" exchange ideas, and voluntaries from other countries (without these limitations) help by copying and pasting info and documents so others can 'freely' download it.
- axaxs 5y agoThere are a ton. It's weird, because they use FB differently than a lot of people. It really is the 'internet'. Pirated movies and all.
- ssklash 5y agoAnother way of saying this is "Ad Company wants to be present during every part of your life (and all those pesky non-Ad Company users they can't currently reach), so they can surveil and monetize your entire existence, finally completing the panopticon."
- hprotagonist 5y agoMark "Da5id" Zuckerberg. Mind the cheesy bitmapped scrolls, please!
- arminiusreturns 5y agoI think and have thought for along time we are indeed headed for a few competing "metaverses", but having ruminated on the topic for a long time, I could tell you all kinds of reasons a metaverse created by someone like facebook will inherently not be the one metaverse aka the one that actually makes a paradigm shift. Ive pitched metaverse style training systems to the department of education for example. There is a lot of really good progress to be had in the space. If done right, a good metaverse will be the next WoW. Thats billions of dollars. Im not surprised facebook is doing this, Im surprised they all didnt start their own metaverse programs much sooner... The race is on, may the best win.
- 3GuardLineups 5y agoyall need to read Snow Crash
- madeofpalk 5y agoMaybe the original interview is a better link https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-metaverse-interview https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-c... ?
- CraftingLinks 5y agoWithin a decade FB will be the next dying messenger and the world will have moved on.
- haaserd 5y agoOne can only hope.
- jhbadger 5y agoFacebook the company or Facebook the platform? The thing with Facebook owning Instagram is even as Facebook itself becomes less and less relevant to younger generations, the company still owns the platform those younger generations favor. And as Instagram inevitably becomes itself irrelevant, I'm sure Facebook will just buy the next social media platform.
- RegW 5y agoEven FB will make a wrong turn one day. Every time it buys a new name it gets bigger. Eventually it will be a fat man standing behind a lamp post
- nebula8804 5y agoIt takes a long time for the fat man to die. In the meantime it will drag us all along kicking and screaming until its eventual demise.
- cameronh90 5y agoInstagram has already peaked and is on the down-trend. TikTok is what the kids are using now - and they're valued at about half of what FB is valued at, so unlikely that FB will be able to buy them. Maybe FB will buy whatever replaces TikTok.
- spideymans 5y ago>Maybe FB will buy whatever replaces TikTok. It's unlikely that the government would permit such a sale.
- rektide 5y agoITS NOT META IF IT'S CLOSED. It's only a constellation of services. Facebook is welcome to become whatever Zuckerverse it can be. But they do not seem to have the play-well-with-others ability to encompass multiple different universes of possibility. They will remain distinctly within their own singular sphere, best I can tell.
- ezconnect 5y agoMy fake FB account just shows TikTok videos and left wing propaganda and its even paid post promotion. I don't know how the advertisers make money off of that.
- ipaddr 5y agoPropaganda ads don't need to make a sale. Slowly changing your opinion on something is the payoff.
- account-5 5y agoI can't think of anything I'd want to use less.
- kumarvvr 5y agoMan whatever that means, I am sure nothing good will come of it. Society is not ready for all access, all communication, mass, thought influencing media controlled by an ethically ambiguous mega corporation.
- tengbretson 5y agoI don't think this college drop-out guy knows what he's talking about.
- munk-a 5y agoI loathe Facebook - but trying to say Mark Zuckerberg is an idiot at this point is pretty hilarious. A bachelor's level of academic training is essentially irrelevant by the time you're thirty - a master's by the time you're thirty five. Academic credentials are a very silly thing to get out the rulers over.
- tengbretson 5y agoIf he's so clever then why hasn't he figured out how to have neighbors that don't hate him?
- recursive 5y agoBecause he was clever enough to realize that it didn't matter.
- frazbin 5y agoAlternate title: "Mark Zuckerberk says Facebook will own the 'metaverse'."
- tomjen3 5y agoLet us see about the rumors that Apple will launch Apple glasses this fall. If I wanted AR I much rather have it from Tim Cook than Zuckerberg, and Apple knows how to build hardware. Zuckerberg does not.
- chaostheory 5y agoLike you, I will probably buy Apple’s new AR headset. Both of us are privileged enough to be able to easily afford it, but can most people do the same? Before you dismiss Facebook’s hardware effort, you should actually try the Oculus Quest 2. At $299 for a full, standalone VR system; imo it even beats some PCVR VR headsets on more than just price.
- mepian 5y agoThe Oculus Quest 2 is really solid hardware, especially considering its low price.
- goatlover 5y agoIt really is for the price and mobility.
- tomjen3 5y agoI can't edit the above comment, so I am adding this as a reply. I had completely forgot that Facebook had a VR headset. When I said they didn't know how the built hardware I was thinking of their attempt to build an Android phone.
- marcodiego 5y agoMetastasis.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- artfulhippo 5y agoThe Verge podcast[0] where Zuck made this comment was quite revealing. Without naming Apple specifically, Zuck managed to communicate an intense fear that Facebook would be locked out of Apple's upcoming AR platform. Is the 'metaverse' inevitable? Or is it merely sci-fi wishful thinking? If 'interoperability' and 'decentralization' means that you can't avoid targeted advertising, I'll pass. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-metaverse-interview https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-c...
- at_a_remove 5y agoI hate to be the one to bang on about standards, but the cyberpunk vision of the Metaverse -- and I am aiming at kind of a bog-standard middle ground of it -- will depend on some very open standards that are decentralized at the core, starting at Snow Crash and ending in the John C. Wright "The Golden Oecumene" sense of things. Anything but an open and radically-decentralized interoperable set of standards and you're Running On Someone's Specific Hardware. That means that they and the country (or other municipal structures) might have opinions on what you can run on their hardware, and thus the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse will be invoked at the start. As you slide toward less interoperability and more corporate/government control, you're going toward the Johnny Mnemonic territory (maybe without the cyberdolphin). You'll have to hack your way around the place, and that means that the ordinary folks are left out. They might not have the smarts, the hardware, the wetware, and so on. Further levels of control and you're into Second Life -- one platform, one company, but perhaps some local rules/anarchy. And if you're still thinking of the children, the Metaverse eventually looks like Club Penguin. You can finally rest assured that the concept is functionally dead when we are all sending each other only various emojis of unrealistic skin tones. So, the question then becomes, does anything in the Facebook/Zuckerberg history suggest where on that spectrum we will land? As a side note, I believe that pretty much any version of this Metaverse means targeted ads. On the controlled side, the people running the hardware will want money, and that means ads. On the uncontrolled ads, randos will want money, and that means that they'll do whatever they can to sniff your activity and monitor you, and then send you ads.
- 5y ago
- peanut_worm 5y agoWho is this announcement supposed to appeal to other than shareholders
- nly 5y agoTo be fair, given that FB are the 4th biggest company in the S&P 500, almost everyone on this site is probably a shareholder through their retirement plan.
- mint2 5y agoThis is true. It’s also unpleasant. At Every paycheck nearly everyone with a 401k is helping zuck.
- tablespoon 5y ago> Who is this announcement supposed to appeal to other than shareholders Who matters besides the shareholders? /s
- cwkoss 5y agoLooking forward to logging in once and drawing as many dicks as possible in zucks metaverse before I'm banned.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoThis sort of disruption will probably be considered virtual terrorism one day... Imagine the CIA torturing some poor soul over dicks in the zuckerverse.
- rglover 5y ago"Alright folks, the Dickburglar is at it again. Battle stations."
- RandallBrown 5y agoDoes the CIA torture people that draw dicks in the real world?
- CyanBird 5y agoGiven that Israel already called a "new type of terrorism" when an ice cream company didn't feel comfortable working on the country anymore, then I'd say that we are not far from that at all
- 5y ago
- p_l 5y agoYou know, so many comments, and nobody had mentioned Snow Crash yet? I am disappoint, HN ;)
- JohnFen 5y agoPersonally, I didn't want to soil Snow Crash by associating it in any way with Facebook.
- chaostheory 5y agoWhy? Isn’t Snow Crash is a dystopian cyberpunk novel where corporations have superseded governments?
- JohnFen 5y agoThat's a good point. I suppose that Snow Crash is only a fun story as long as it's fictional. If reality comes too close to it, it would stop being fun and start being depressing.
- asah 5y agoSounds more like the corporate dystopia of Ready Player One...
- CodeGlitch 5y agoWe done mention that movie around here...
- IgorPartola 5y agoImagine being able to say random stuff like this and getting rich off it as the stock market reacts. Must be nice.
- titzer 5y agoIn the "post-scarcity" world of 2021, tweets by influencers are Porsches and offhand comments by Zucks are a few lifetimes of earnings of the average underling.
- mint2 5y agoIndex funds are so convenient but Facebook is in the top 10 holdings of Fidelity’s 500. It makes me very uneasy. Is there an index fund that one can opt out of certain companies. And reading through the companies on several of the main fidelity index funds, there’s too many fissile fuel and tobacco companies for my taste.
- dwighttk 5y agoI mean. It’d be a little work but you could just DIY an index fund. Call it yourname499
- IgorPartola 5y agoSure, there are lots of industry and region specific funds. You can go for a small cap fund, a foreign fund, a developing markets fund, a real estate fund, a heavy industries fund, retail, food, whatever.
- buttholesurfer 5y agoSo glad I deleted my account years ago. That place is garbage.
- ve55 5y agoI'm surprised how negative the comments here are, even if it is true that 'metaverse' is turning into a pretty silly buzzword. I think there's still coherent concepts defined by it (interfaces becoming much more inline with what humans find natural, integration of VR+AR capabilities, and the 'Internet' becoming more and more 'real life' in general). Facebook is absolutely one of the best-positioned companies to be able to become a long-term market leader in these areas and has been investing heavily into R&D in all related categories. Although some of us dislike many ways the company operates, this still does seem like a very well thought-out and aggressive long-term mission that is worthy of being pursued, and I'm pretty excited to continue to see innovation in the more difficult areas like AI and VR here.
- CyanBird 5y ago"Meta verse" to me, includes some type of discussion, a "verse", but these days Facebook as a website does not have much "worthy" discussion going on at all, if anything to me this rebrand reads as "metaspying" (we can spy on you from a meta multitude of gadgets, scripts and bots)
- JohnFen 5y ago> long-term mission that is worthy of being pursued Sure, it's worthy of being pursued, but Facebook doing it means that the end result is likely to be dystopian, not something that leads to a better future.
- viscanti 5y agoZuck pitches it as being like current social media but that you're embodied in it. That sounds pretty dystopian to me.
- smoldesu 5y agoI get the feeling that it's all going to look immensely stupid until Apple releases a VR headset, and Facebook is the first company with a native client on it. From there, this "metaverse" concept introduces a virtually limitless amount of content. They could start porting over original VR titles, creating first-class video sharing tools and more. I despise Facebook, but I wholeheartedly agree here: this is an incredibly well-thought-out move from a company that has money to burn.
- verytrivial 5y agoLOL. No. A week or so ago I unfriended every one of my 'friends' on Facebook, many there since 2007. I'm now just squatting my own identity for the handful of community and sports clubs that use Facebook as a bulletin board. These people are 'acquaintances', I know most of them by sight, but don't see what they're having for breakfast or when their baby does something amazing. So, basically neighbours in a village. I realised I did not want to be the reason people were using Facebook, posting their curated/fictional 'best self'. Basically, friends don't encourage friends to use Facebook[1]. Write that email if you expect someone to read it, write a blog post if you don't. But I'm over being party to mining other people's attention spans and identity for personal gratification and someone else's profit. [1] Or any other parasocial medium in my opinion.
- JohnFen 5y ago> I realised I did not want to be the reason people were using Facebook I gave up my Facebook account about a decade ago. Not for this reasons (although I very much agree with it), but because I realized that I wasn't using it. Friends and family would try to communicate with me over it, and they wouldn't get a response because I wasn't looking. A lot of them thought I was ignoring them, so I figured it was better to not have a presence there at all, to eliminate any possible misunderstanding.
- elliekelly 5y ago> A lot of them thought I was ignoring them, so I figured it was better to not have a presence there at all, to eliminate any possible misunderstanding. This is how I feel about email. I’m not sure it’s possible to function in modern society without an email address though.
- jamal-kumar 5y agoI was recently forwarded a big comment thread from a while ago on that site where a bunch of people I haven't talked to for like 5-8 years were figuring I blocked them when really I just deleted my account a long while back¸ which was pretty funny. I didn't bother reaching out to correct this at all. I think I value the ability to keep people who think their time is best spent staring into nightmare rectangles and pretty much just gossiping their way into hell experience out of my life, and the people who aren't into that as much in.
- rglover 5y agoFacebook is IOI in Ready Player One and Zuckerberg is Nolan Sorrento.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoCan't say enough how much I despise the term 'metaverse', mainly because it can mean pretty much whatever the speaker wants it to mean, and it's usually used to hype with obscurity (i.e. it sounds cool but nobody really knows what it means), as opposed to clarifying with specifics of what something actually does.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- marban 5y agoCan I ride my hoverboard while waving a flag in the Metaverse?
- Animats 5y agoYes, in Second Life. [1][2] [1] https://marketplace.secondlife.com/products/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search%5Bcategory_id%5D=&search%5Bmaturity_level%5D=G&search%5Bkeywords%5D=hoverboard https://marketplace.secondlife.com/products/search?utf8=%E2%... [2] https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GD-Flag-Pole-280-in-1-Wearable-All-Countries-US-States-Organisations-and-More/582315 https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GD-Flag-Pole-280-in-1-W...
- jazzyjackson 5y agoThis is like calling a blockchain “decentralized” How is it a metaverse if there’s only one canonical environment hosted at Facebook.com?
- chaostheory 5y agoBecause it’s really on oculus.com
- walrus01 5y agometaverse? does this mean in the real world we can get some nuclear powered robotic guard dogs, and portable beta-test linear accelerator miniguns?
- salt-thrower 5y agoI for one can't wait for people to start having AR-enabled QAnon propaganda beamed directly into their homes! Every time Facebook has a press conference to the tune of "what if we were even more immersive" it strikes me as incredibly tone deaf given how many problems they engender already just with a regular web app.
- dschu 5y agoDeleted my Facebook account along with Instagram early this year because of obvious reasons. Won’t be a part of this metaverse and I’m very happy about that.
- markus_zhang 5y agoI feel "metaverse" is turning into a buzzword like "AI" or "Big Data". To me the "metaverse" is always there at least since the introduction of affordable personal computer in the late 70s. In the 80s you already got a "metaverse" with the computer at center surrounded by BBS/FTP/etc.
- cblconfederate 5y ago> probably going to resemble some kind of a hybrid between the social platforms that we see today, but an environment where you’re embodied in it Opensimulator (the open source version of second life server) already exists, it is decentralized, self-hosted, and a few thousands of people re already living in it : https://opensimworld.com/ https://opensimworld.com/
- dwighttk 5y agoMr. Zuckerberg doesn’t understand the word “embodied”
- Finnucane 5y agoThey don’t have that on his planet.
- Niglodonicus 5y agoSecond life is a truly sad consequence of late-stage capitalism.
- Niglodonicus 5y agoSerious question regarding my flagged comment in this thread since I'm new here: What's wrong with it? Is it not ok to express that I feel a phenomenon is sad? Did I need to go into more detail about how the phenomenon arose? Is criticism of capitalism or our societal systems unacceptable?
- tantalor 5y agoReferring to "late-stage capitalism" sounds like sarcasm or shallow dismissal. What does "sad" mean in this context?
- vineyardmike 5y agoIts just dismissive and rude sounding. Why is it sad? Surely the people who built it and use it think its cool. As others said "late stage capitalism" is a very opinionated and loaded phrase. Your comment is very negative, without inviting room for critique or feedback. It does not open a discussion, just judgement and derision.
- lazyeye 5y agoA new section needs to be added to ant-trust laws outright banning "metaverses".
- marto1 5y agoand we all cheer him on, right !?
- poidos 5y agoWell, not one I'll be in.
- heavyset_go 5y agoSounds like Zuckerberg is getting high off of his own fumes. This is the 2021 version of "Facebook is changing the world!" Also, Second Life did it first in 2006.
- tharne 5y ago> "Facebook is changing the world!" Zuck wasn't wrong when he said this, I just don't think the change he had in mind was giving a platform to anti-vax conspiracy theorists and helping Russian troll farms influence U.S. elections. That is one way to change the world though.
- zh3 5y agoLet's not forget Myanmar.
- heavyset_go 5y agoA reference for those who don't know about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
- seanalexander 5y agoSecond Life was awesome, but it owes a ton of intellectual debt to The Palace from the 1990s, which had a robust and functional version of FORTH built into it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- TeeMassive 5y agoThat's one hell of a way to brand "extending the tentacles of our monopoly into your daily life". > Mr Zuckerberg has made such comments before, hypothesizing that humans should “be teleporting, not transporting ourselves” into various environments through virtual and mixed reality environments. "You will live in a pod and you will be happy with VR"
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoOh I'd love to live in a VR pod, just not a Facebook brand one.
- mnd999 5y agoThis is just AOL or Compuserve again. Zuck wants you to use Facebook for everything without the need for any other site.
- seanalexander 5y agoJust came here to say Snow Crash deserves way better than this.
- Vrondi 5y agoI was thinking of buying an Occulus Rift, and Facebook buying Occulus is the thing that guaranteed I'd never buy one. People said it wouldn't be a problem, and now you must log in with a Facebook account in order to use your Occulus hardware. No way.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoIt made me sad too especially when John Carmack was also dragged* into it. * Not sure how he feels about it, but I get the impression he's there for the pay cheque to work on more interesting side projects like AI.
- JohnFen 5y agoI'm sure that John Carmack is crying on top of his money mountain.
- baby 5y agoI advise creating a dummy account and buying the oculus quest 2 instead. Worth it :)
- mkl 5y agoThere are quite a few reports of people's oculus-only dummy accounts being banned: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=oculus+facebook+banned+dummy+account&atb=v279-1__&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=oculus+facebook+banned+dummy+accou... It's pretty expensive for something you could be thrown out of at any moment, and it's a lot of money to give to Facebook.
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y agoI agree because I believe the future is likely to be some shape of a socialist dystopia.
- makecheck 5y agoThe main value Facebook ever had to me was a way to reach people that were otherwise hard to reach. Over the years, literally every other possible benefit eroded away as the platform changed. Therefore, I make sure people I care about know how to reach me outside Facebook so that it really does not matter if I log in to Facebook. In other words, I no longer need it even to reach people.
- dang 5y agoUrl changed from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-augmented-vitual-mixed-reality-b1889284.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fa..., which points to this. There was also: Zuckerberg on why the social network is becoming ‘a metaverse company’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27921327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27921327 - July 2021 (15 comments)
- shmerl 5y agoOn the way to Virtuaverse's¹ idea of permanent reality? __________ 1. https://www.gog.com/game/virtuaverse https://www.gog.com/game/virtuaverse
- egypturnash 5y agoyeah, sure, Mark, I'll believe in this "unprecedented interoperability" when I can follow someone on Facebook using an open standard like RSS without having an account, and when I can have my personal Wordpress site auto-post to my personal Facebook account. I'll believe in this "unprecedented interoperability" when you're not constantly trying to get me to pay a ransom to have my posts shown to people who have said they wanna follow me, either.
- Apocryphon 5y agoIt was particularly galling when they silently disabled the Twitter integration a few years ago and removed years' worth of my cross-platform posts.
- baby 5y ago> when I can follow someone on Facebook using an open standard like RSS without having an account Ahhh, being out of touch
- flenserboy 5y agoGlad for my trusty HOSTS file.
- badkitty99 5y agoWhatever they need to do to keep things cha chinging, it will never end
- Animats 5y agoFacebook has so far tried, and failed, to do this. Twice. First was Facebook Spaces. Opened 2017, closed 2019. This was a VR world. Not a very good one. It was mostly a 3D approach to a desktop.[1] You could hand other people flat pictures. Sharing! Total flop. Second was Facebook Horizon. Opened 2020, still running, but not getting much attention. It's a 3D cartoon level VR world. Works OK, not very interesting or pretty. Big emphasis on "safety", which means no sex. Avatars have no legs; nothing below the waistline. Plus there's a panic button which puts you in a "personal safe zone", where you're in a bubble until Security gets there to rescue you from whomever is annoying you. While it's still running, Facebook doesn't mention Horizon any more. Zuckerberg's vision is probably more like that video I've linked before, "Hypereality". The real world, with overlays from augmented reality. Overlays of more ads. [1] https://youtu.be/_kGRpSd4vnc https://youtu.be/_kGRpSd4vnc [2] https://youtu.be/Uf_9J_EdzZw https://youtu.be/Uf_9J_EdzZw [3] https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs
- giobox 5y agoVR/AR is such a new paradigm for interacting with computers I think that its inevitable companies will make many failures before finding the apps and hardware that clicks with customers. In 2017, we had only had mainstream non-beta VR headset hardware in the marketplace since 2016 (original consumer Rift, HTC Vive), lets not forget the 20 years of PDA hardware/software attempts we lived through before the mainstream smartphone designs we all use appeared in 2007. I expect a very similar arc will be followed for VR/AR, especially as the interaction model is so different from screen based. I'm happy to see some development out "in the open", and wouldn't be so quick to criticize small project flops; VR/AR needs to begin somewhere. Zuck isn't trying to pretend VR/AR is ready for primetime either yet, he's made it clear he wants to be in a very strong position when/if the market does heavily move to VR/AR hardware, which he obviously believes strongly it will over time.
- erikpukinskis 5y agoNotably, I think eye contact is a killer app for VR and none of the headsets can do it yet. Facebook is smart to be in there doing experiments and failing though. That's table stakes for having a shot at winning the competition.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoYou have to give one thing to the guy, he keeps pushing, he could retire 1000times over. What is driving him? Anyone knows him from younger years? Most similar people(on a smaller scale) i know are money driven even though they have enough. But at this level? Makes you wonder what his final goal is?
- gilmore606 5y agoMost people have to constantly remind themselves they can't change the world, and adjust their expectations and priorities accordingly. Some tiny fraction of people find themselves in the position where they actually can change the world. I'm not surprised they try to; I'm more surprised that more of them don't.
- baby 5y agoThe kind of pressure (and hate) you get at that level is not for everyone…
- moogly 5y ago> What is driving him? Megalomania. His 2017 "manifesto" made that rather clear to me. In it, he came off as trying to sound like the president of the world. I think that was also the year he spent time traveling the US states "to meet real folk".
- baby 5y ago
- mrweasel 5y agoIf Facebook is to build this sort thing, sure why not, we can choose not to use it. Where Zuckerberg goes of the rails for me is: " I think it’s about being engaged more naturally." If he truly believe that, he should start by fixing Facebooks algorithms. There is nothing natural about the way people interact with Facebook anymore. Initially it was keeping up with friends, family old work buddies and so on. As Facebook tweaked the snot out out of their algorithms to keep people "engaged", everything natural went right out the window. Facebook should built whatever they believe will keep them relevant, just to lie about the motives or use deceptive language to make it sound like something it's ostensibly not.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoIs it a metaverse he'd like to live in?
- digitcatphd 5y agoA rudimentary version of this already exists within Oculus.
- Ataraxy 5y agoWe're back to AOL again are we?
- hk1337 5y agoZuckerberg and the Metaverse of Madness
- IceHegel 5y agoThe "metaverse" is scam. Talking about it is just a way signal that you're a lord not a serf, i.e. "I can get a girlfriend, but most can't and they'll use the metaverse to drown their sorrows." Facebook should make something they themselves want. I want an iPod not a VR concert.
- Apocryphon 5y ago"We lived on farms and then we lived in cities and now we're going to live on the internet!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiIGwmTocdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiIGwmTocdU
- ChuckMcM 5y agoI'm thinking that chances of Facebook turning into a 'metaverse' are less than the chances that Facebook will turn into the next MySpace. But perhaps I'm overly cynical. It was pretty clear to me that had Blizzard a bit more vision they might have been able to pull this trick off with World of Warcraft but at this point I think that too is off the table. One of the more interesting things I've learned over the course of my career is that the ability of an organization to "change" is tightly governed by the ability of its leadership to "see". Truly the most fascinating part of my time at IBM after it had acquired Blekko was seeing a company from the inside that actively at war with itself between the folks who wanted to modernize it and the "old guard" who wanted to keep the status quo. As an executive it is important to understand that in order for change to happen, all of your leadership has to see their own role in the new vision and how they will be successful, otherwise they will treat it as a threat and work against it, both actively and passively. Given how Zuckerberg has handled the disinformation problems at Facebook (essentially by throwing other executives under the bus rather than take ownership) it seems unlikely they would be able to pull of such a transformation. Mostly because the other executives would be sabotaging efforts for fear they would be thrown out.
- jacobr1 5y agoBoth scenarios can be true. FB could be at the forefront of AR/VR with Oculus and maybe related things like Identity. And on the social network side, they could be a in a slow decline. My bet is something more akin to AOL/Yahoo rather myspace, where the remain relevant in certain niches (older people more focused on the legacy experience, mom & pop stores that currently use facebook pages as their webfront, etc ...). That said, it seems entirely likely that they would make an acquisition like instagram once one gains traction and stay relevant that way.
- baby 5y agoI doubt it will end like this for two reason: it’s a money printing machine AND there’s a strong engineering culture. I think fb has more chance to turn like wechat, especially with their move towards payment.
- bttrfl 5y agoIt's an excellent opportunity to remind everyone about a truly great book by Lem: "The Futurological Congress" [0] and its interesting movie adaptation "The Congress" [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)
- uniqueid 5y agoToo bad Dante's not around to add a tenth ring of hell to the Inferno.
- astlouis44 5y agoCheck out https://vrland.io https://vrland.io It's my startup's take on what the metaverse should look like - entirely web-based, so it works everywhere. It's a 3D/VR social platform where you can upload photos, videos, and even 3D models into rooms. Complete customizability plus easily configurable avatars. Link to our Discord: https://discord.gg/cNfG834 https://discord.gg/cNfG834
- bsenftner 5y agoOur species needs to be more mature for a Metaverse not to be a wholesale rape of all one's data and everything one does. Facebook, Google, E.A., Apple or NASA... it don't matter, the problem is us humans and how we treat one another at scale.
- novok 5y agoMore like “The surveillanceverse” IMO
- eplanit 5y agoFacebook is becoming "Buy-n-Large" from "Wall-e". The prescience of that movie is more evident every year since it was made.
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoFacebook is becoming AOL.
- iammisc 5y agoIn two days, my facebook account will be gone for good. I plan on throwing a party!
- kgin 5y agoGreat, send me the link after you make an event page on…
- greg7mdp 5y agoThat would be an amazing transformation from a dumpster.
- SN76477 5y agoFacebook want to be the curated internet. I work with their ads and manage facebook pages all day. I have little faith in them to do what is right.
- machinehermiter 5y agoThe killer app of VR has always been virtual sex. We have made no progress towards this. You can't do reality with just sight and sound. I suspect a 100 years from now people will look at us talking about the metaverse and virtual reality with any kind of headset as ridiculous as the old videos of people flapping wings attempting to fly. It just doesn't work.
- mudlus 5y agoEthereum’s vs. FB The enemy of your enemy is your friend. (Bitcoiner, here)
- 3gg 5y agoThis guy truly lives in his own universe. To enter the Facebook metaverse, you need to abandon whatever preconceptions you had about humanity, ignore all social and political problems around you, and trascend all previously established limits of ignorance, arrogance and technological naivete past the gates of cyberhell. Oh, and you need love ads because, oh boy, are you getting some.
- beezischillin 5y agoAfter having tried out PSVR, which I found kind of awful, so much so that the smartphone VR seemed like a step forward compared to it, I was highly skeptical of the whole ordeal. Then my friend showed me Microsoft’s Mixed reality headsets and I was on board with some slight misgivings about the feasibility of using it for longer than 20 minutes at a time, plus it still came with a bit of a hassle. This year I purchased a Quest2 after reading through the feature list and I was honestly really impressed. Oculus managed to create a truly viable mass market capable rendition of a VR headset. Unfortunately Facebook itself is kind of the biggest enemy when it comes to their own product. From what I’ve seen as a general response and my personal experience also is that people would like a VR headset to experience VR stuff; games, videos, the likes. Facebook would like you to strap a Facebook machine to your face and watch ads, hyper-targeted to you with as much highly personal information used to target as possible. And that’s where the disconnect seems to be. Because Oculus is clearly capable of making VR happen as a viable platform - the question really is: will Facebook let them?
- robertwt7 5y agoAlmost got me buying oculus quest 2. But then after looking at the available applications I didn’t pull the trigger
- dancronin 5y agoFuck off Mark.
- gerdesj 5y ago"Facebook would strive to build a maximalist, interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi — a world known as the metaverse." lol, rofl. Delete account ... oh I can't. rofl etc
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoBehold, the Facebook Metaverse: https://youtu.be/YlGklt4BSQ8 https://youtu.be/YlGklt4BSQ8 “WE WILL EFFECTIVELY TRANSITION FROM PEOPLE SEEING US AS PRIMARILY BEING A SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANY TO BEING A METAVERSE COMPANY” But, Facebook already transitioned to being an advertising company. The social media aspect became a funnel to direct members towards advertising, changes to Facebook are not about the social aspect, they're about eyeballs on ads and more page views, which are actually distractions away from the social network roots of Facebook. Mark goes on about building an economy within this metaverse: "And this is something that I hope eventually millions of people will be working in and creating content for — whether it’s experiences, or spaces, or virtual goods, or virtual clothing, or doing work helping to curate and introduce people to spaces and keep it safe. I just think this is going to be a huge economy and frankly, I think that that needs to exist. This needs to be a rising tide that lifts a lot of boats. We can’t just think about this as a product that we’re building." I'm obviously very cynical, but this feels like Facebook's app store play: 30% please creators. In addition to the advertising dollars. What I hope comes out of this is an advancement of the technology for building a "metaverse" and that open source alternatives can keep up, or at least nip at the heels constantly.
- reducesuffering 5y agoFuturama was great and seemed to comment on this several times https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g
- weare138 5y agoWhy doesn't anyone have legs!?! It's so creepy.
- stevespang 5y agoDream on Zuck. Stick to vids of you throwing spears and shooting arrows
- crawsome 5y agoFacebook has twisted people against their own in exchange for dark money. Their products are sad, narcissistic, and vain. I hope everything Zuck touches crumbles after the political manipulation he let happen.
- cloudking 5y agoSo much hate on the comments, sure their business model may be questionable but this guy has half the world's population using his social products. They are well positioned to pull something off in this space, however their walled garden model is going to limit their aspirations unless they change it. I also feel like there is some confusion between the "metaverse" concept and spatial computing in general. In the article he describes working and collaborating in the metaverse, but you have other companies also claiming they are building a metaverse around gaming (Fortnite, Roblox). I think just like we have a clear separation between work and entertainment applications, there should be a clear distinction here too. I could imagine there being a spatial computing layer (like the web) that facilitates both, but I think calling it the "metaverse" is confusing given the mixed usage of the concept. I'm not sure Facebook is the company that would build something as an open protocol layer, given their track record with building walled gardens. I do agree with him that these possibilities are entirely dependent on better smaller hardware, that isn't a cumbersome headset. Entertainment seems like a no-brainer, given some success in the VR space with early hardware. The experience would have to be more efficient and productive than desktop and mobile computing to be adopted in the workplace.
- throwuxiytayq 5y agoZuck. We don't care.
- sunstone 5y agoI think he meant to say a 'metastisis'.
- TheRealNGenius 5y agoReady Player One would probably be the goto example of what we envision as metaverse. But I wasn't particularly wowed by its presentation in the film. I personally found this a more cohesive vision of what the metaverse could be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPTfdO5hQUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPTfdO5hQUw. Of course, this could just be a difference in cinematic/storytelling approach. The director's upcoming feature also deals with these themes. Interestingly, in neither case is a VR/AR headset seemingly the preferred means of access... The advantage is that you don't look like a complete doofus like in RP1 when you maneuver in real life using VR headsets/haptic accessories.