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I'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 co

by ve55 5y ago

I'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 ago
  Zuck pitches it as being like current social media but that you're embodied in it. That sounds pretty dystopian to me.
smoldesu 5y ago
I 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.
- r00fus 5y ago
  I have a strong feeling that this situation will never occur. Tim and Mark aren't exactly on partnership terms.
  - stuart78 5y ago
    There is no need for a partnership beyond the one that allows Facebook to be hosted in the App Store. I think the point is being ready on day one to take advantage of whatever Apple delivers in this space. Facebook switched from web-first to mobile-first/native relatively slowly when the first mobile App Stores, and I think the point is they don't want to be second movers in the future.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Now that Facebook has announced their intentions, it seems like Apple would be motivated to construct precautionary measures against intrusive data collection and user tracking into their hypothetical imminent AR platform.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  The Google Graveyard gets all the attention but Facebook has built and retired more clones of existing products and attempts to break into other people's moats than anyone can remember. Investing in "metaverse" is just ticking a sub-category box after they've already ticked off "VR" with their Oculus acquisition. It's doubtful that all the money they have to burn on this boondoggle will actually go anywhere.
dasil003 5y ago
By this logic, FAANG is best positioned to every tech innovation because they have the resources and know-how to pursue it. I think it's a dangerous line of thinking as the power these company wields absolutely corrupts their governance. Sure they give us cool toys, and they have the marketing budget to make sure know it, but real talk: we need restrictions on their ability to dominate every area instead of cheerleading the horizontal economies of scale that erode our privacy, kneecap the next generation of startups, and consolidate power in ever smaller group of global corporate oligarchs.
- nomel 5y ago
  > FAANG is best positioned to every tech innovation because they have the resources and know-how to pursue it. This isn't what I've seen. FAANG, and all large corporations, have many layers of bureaucracy that are required for approval of projects. "New" and "innovative" are "different" and "not well understood" by definition. As the bureaucracy get crusty, and more risk adverse, the ability to get these "unknowns" approves becomes harder and harder. Instead, you see buyouts of small companies, who didn't have that layer of bureaucracy to dig through, as the larger source of innovation. Going forward in time, like Intel, these small and innovative acquisitions get integrated and destroyed by that overwhelming bureaucracy, before they can even be fruitful.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    This, it is much cheaper to sit on hands and wait for the 1/20 startups to succeed and then just buy them. Unfortunately this will work indefinitely until governments realize that it is not good for the health of the economy.
    - mycall 5y ago
      Governments do the same thing. They can't do much by themselves, so they issue RFPs, vendors bid then do for them. Many of these vendors don't make it (1/20? no idea). Is that also bad for the economy?
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zuckerberg are favorite villains in the tech discourse in 2021. I don't agree with everything Facebook has done, but the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality that it's getting hard to take it seriously. > this still does seem like a very well thought-out and aggressive long-term mission that is worthy of being pursued, I agree. Once you get past the anti-Facebook hyperbole, it's interesting to read about where they're headed next. They have a lot of excellent engineers and a lot of revenue, so I'll be keeping an eye on where they invest their R&D spend.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Every community needs a villain, but ask yourself this: whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that it abandoned in 2018? M? Facebook Home? Parse? Wirehog? As seen with Google, just having excellent engineers and revenue are insufficient to building lasting products, much less fulfilling an aggressive long-term mission.
  - paconbork 5y ago
    Libra became Novi and is still in active development for what it's worth
    - baby 5y ago
      Libra became Diem* Novi is the team at facebook that works on Diem and the novi wallet.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    >whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that was abandoned in 2018? M? Parse? Wirehog? Agree with your point - to a limit. Some of facebook experiements flopped but not all. Also, unlike Google, fb mostly marketed them as experiements. Replying mostly for sharing purposes since not all of these products' histories are common knowledge. Not to one-up anyone... > Libra Government Blocking. Seemed interesting, especially in a crypto world. Unclear if world needs more crypto projects. Some economists suggested the "basket of currency" approach at scale would just be an arbitrage opportunity for someone to drain the bank-of-facebook. I'm guessing this project existed partially as a vanity project or honeypot for hiring. > Portal? Still sold, still developed (uses alexa and amzn develops alexa-for-portal work still), still used. IMO it was good tech no one trusted (understandably). > Or Building 8 in general IIRC they have build a few internal products for fb and probably a lot of learning that goes into oculus/portal/etc. > M I think this was never GA and only a test trial? Would've been cool but again, because fb it couldn't be trusted. > Parse? Open sourced and available, but obviously mostly unused. FB doesn't really have a b2b sales team for this sort of product so it wasn't sustainable since it was not really invest-more-effort quality. I think it was a huge missed opportunity for fb to enter the data center race against aws/gcs/azure. If fb built a benign cash cow, maybe they'd taper down their scummy social network ambitions. Or at least the value extraction. AWS cash seems to fund cool amzn loss leaders (alexa, etc). I think the same thing applies to wit.ai and other AI products they buy - if they could commercialize them into an "AWS for AI" product suite maybe they'd find a new profit center. They have world class ML work already, so seems a good place to do this. > Wirehog I never heard of this one so i googled it [1]. Apparently it was a legal risk to continue at the time (ha!). Very similar to napster. Makes sense that a startup business (< 2 yo) would kill a controversial product. Ironic now that they seem to be above caring about legal risks. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/
croes 5y ago
The problem is what is the premise of this metaverse. I will be data collection for FBs core business. Imagine something like Horizon for Oculus in big, a virtual world observed and controlled by FB. Before Sky Net we will get the Matrix. https://pic.clubic.com/v1/images/1236090/raw https://pic.clubic.com/v1/images/1236090/raw
radmuzom 5y ago
I'd rather have JC Denton usher in the new dark age than allow this raving lunatic control more of our lives.
echlebek 5y ago
The comments are negative because people hate facebook, and they hate Mark Zuckerberg, and they have good reason for that.
meowface 5y ago
>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. I agree, and I'm sure it may even end up as a great/fun experience, but I'm just concerned about what's likely to come along with it. There was a recent article linked on HN titled "even if you're paying, you're still the product", and that's pretty much how I see this going. Facebook lost all good will years ago. It's not about the product quality, but the monetization strategies and what those entail.
grawprog 5y ago
>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 I think the reason for the negativity is possibly because maybe a company that's managed to create a massive platform where reality is massively distorted and manipulated algorithmically to maximize ad revenue and engangement, whatever the quality or lack thereof, should not be a leader in trying to make the internet 'real life' or whatever you want to call having ar/vr avatars that will allow you to participate in the new virtual corporate consumer world.
- after_care 5y ago
  It’s simple natural selection that the most engaging social media platforms became the most profitable, influential, and popular. There’s no guarantee that VR/AR will have the same selection pressure, and if the tech does have the same selection pressure than whoever wins will be engaging as well. IMO Facebook creating the metaverse is like Xerox creating the GUI. Most likely the things that made Facebook successfully in social media will not make them as successful in VR/AR and they’ll either pivot hard or (more likely) lose their market leader position. (I’m holding FB stock until their AR offering is announced, and possibly for a few years afterwards but I’m doubtful I’ll have their stock in 15 years.)
  - baby 5y ago
    That’s my worry as well, that they’re not capable of capturing the market due to being a software company. But… they have hired like crazy and at this point I’m assuming most people working there have no link whatsoever with fb, so if they own all the experts there’s a good chance they’ll capture the market. As long as they keep iterating they’ll be fine.
    - astlouis44 5y ago
      Check out our social 3D/VR web metaverse platform here: https://vrland.io/lobby https://vrland.io/lobby
bostonsre 5y ago
I'm not sure the negative comments are due to some tribal rationalization. The social network-ization of society hasn't had great effects in a lot of cases like increased depression and affecting the course of democracy. I think facebook has proven that the only thing that they care about is the all mighty dollar and their leadership seems to have machiavellian like reasoning of the ends (connecting the world) justifying the means (monopolistic like market dominance by assimilation, duplication and/or crushing of competition). The guy at the helm literally models himself after caesar and has absolute control over the company. They are proposing to further mold and control society. To me, that sounds a lot like some kind of dystopian future and not something I would enjoy being part of. It may sound nice and all butterflies and flowers, but I don't think it would be prudent to just ignore their track record and say "o, it will probably be fine".
athrowaway3z 5y ago
> Facebook is absolutely one of the best-positioned companies to be able to become a long-term market leader No its not, and Mark knows it: "Critically, no one company will run the metaverse" Its not in Facebook interest to have competitors and they will act accordingly. My guess is Facebook will first try to buyout the 'metaverse', then it will try to 'emulate but different', and then they will switch to being an over-engineered data hosting provider.
bborud 5y ago
Why are you surprised? Whenever some form of immersive "universe" under corporate control is described in fiction, it tends to be a fairly dystopian tale. Every so many years VR is going to "finally be here" ... and then it never materializes. Add to that the head of the corporation in question is a hop, skip and a jump away from near Bond-villain status. It would be remarkable if the gut reaction of most people were not negative. Which makes your surprise at the negative remarks remarkable.
gentleman11 5y ago
The Metaverse is just a mmo, except some of the characters are real, the world is a parallel of ours, the bad guys are whoever is trending as a villain (good for engagement), and the quests are ads. The end goal would be primarily to have this digital world leak over to the real one as much as possible, having untold profound influences on human life The negativity is because it will be awful if they succeed. Imagine logging in to your job via this metaverse or some small country using it for voting in 50-100 years, or not being able to take part in conversations because you are not logged in to your ar. Imagine the data collection and potential for manipulation and censorship in the distant future
motioncuty 5y ago
A metaverse is just the republic of facebook. Its really uncomforting for such an entity devoid of humanistic incentives(and rather a asocial ceo with a fiducial obligation to his share holders) will be able to create a plane of virtual reality that much of the world will have no better option but to leverage. Its one thing to provide advertising subsidized internet. But a metaverse Is where our future children will be spending alot of their time, and if not our children, our childrens friends.

by ve55 5y ago

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 ago
Zuck pitches it as being like current social media but that you're embodied in it. That sounds pretty dystopian to me.

smoldesu 5y ago

I 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.

r00fus 5y ago
I have a strong feeling that this situation will never occur. Tim and Mark aren't exactly on partnership terms.
- stuart78 5y ago
  There is no need for a partnership beyond the one that allows Facebook to be hosted in the App Store. I think the point is being ready on day one to take advantage of whatever Apple delivers in this space. Facebook switched from web-first to mobile-first/native relatively slowly when the first mobile App Stores, and I think the point is they don't want to be second movers in the future.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Now that Facebook has announced their intentions, it seems like Apple would be motivated to construct precautionary measures against intrusive data collection and user tracking into their hypothetical imminent AR platform.
Apocryphon 5y ago
The Google Graveyard gets all the attention but Facebook has built and retired more clones of existing products and attempts to break into other people's moats than anyone can remember. Investing in "metaverse" is just ticking a sub-category box after they've already ticked off "VR" with their Oculus acquisition. It's doubtful that all the money they have to burn on this boondoggle will actually go anywhere.

dasil003 5y ago

By this logic, FAANG is best positioned to every tech innovation because they have the resources and know-how to pursue it. I think it's a dangerous line of thinking as the power these company wields absolutely corrupts their governance. Sure they give us cool toys, and they have the marketing budget to make sure know it, but real talk: we need restrictions on their ability to dominate every area instead of cheerleading the horizontal economies of scale that erode our privacy, kneecap the next generation of startups, and consolidate power in ever smaller group of global corporate oligarchs.

nomel 5y ago
> FAANG is best positioned to every tech innovation because they have the resources and know-how to pursue it. This isn't what I've seen. FAANG, and all large corporations, have many layers of bureaucracy that are required for approval of projects. "New" and "innovative" are "different" and "not well understood" by definition. As the bureaucracy get crusty, and more risk adverse, the ability to get these "unknowns" approves becomes harder and harder. Instead, you see buyouts of small companies, who didn't have that layer of bureaucracy to dig through, as the larger source of innovation. Going forward in time, like Intel, these small and innovative acquisitions get integrated and destroyed by that overwhelming bureaucracy, before they can even be fruitful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  This, it is much cheaper to sit on hands and wait for the 1/20 startups to succeed and then just buy them. Unfortunately this will work indefinitely until governments realize that it is not good for the health of the economy.
  - mycall 5y ago
    Governments do the same thing. They can't do much by themselves, so they issue RFPs, vendors bid then do for them. Many of these vendors don't make it (1/20? no idea). Is that also bad for the economy?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zuckerberg are favorite villains in the tech discourse in 2021. I don't agree with everything Facebook has done, but the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality that it's getting hard to take it seriously. > this still does seem like a very well thought-out and aggressive long-term mission that is worthy of being pursued, I agree. Once you get past the anti-Facebook hyperbole, it's interesting to read about where they're headed next. They have a lot of excellent engineers and a lot of revenue, so I'll be keeping an eye on where they invest their R&D spend.

Apocryphon 5y ago
Every community needs a villain, but ask yourself this: whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that it abandoned in 2018? M? Facebook Home? Parse? Wirehog? As seen with Google, just having excellent engineers and revenue are insufficient to building lasting products, much less fulfilling an aggressive long-term mission.
- paconbork 5y ago
  Libra became Novi and is still in active development for what it's worth
  - baby 5y ago
    Libra became Diem* Novi is the team at facebook that works on Diem and the novi wallet.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  >whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that was abandoned in 2018? M? Parse? Wirehog? Agree with your point - to a limit. Some of facebook experiements flopped but not all. Also, unlike Google, fb mostly marketed them as experiements. Replying mostly for sharing purposes since not all of these products' histories are common knowledge. Not to one-up anyone... > Libra Government Blocking. Seemed interesting, especially in a crypto world. Unclear if world needs more crypto projects. Some economists suggested the "basket of currency" approach at scale would just be an arbitrage opportunity for someone to drain the bank-of-facebook. I'm guessing this project existed partially as a vanity project or honeypot for hiring. > Portal? Still sold, still developed (uses alexa and amzn develops alexa-for-portal work still), still used. IMO it was good tech no one trusted (understandably). > Or Building 8 in general IIRC they have build a few internal products for fb and probably a lot of learning that goes into oculus/portal/etc. > M I think this was never GA and only a test trial? Would've been cool but again, because fb it couldn't be trusted. > Parse? Open sourced and available, but obviously mostly unused. FB doesn't really have a b2b sales team for this sort of product so it wasn't sustainable since it was not really invest-more-effort quality. I think it was a huge missed opportunity for fb to enter the data center race against aws/gcs/azure. If fb built a benign cash cow, maybe they'd taper down their scummy social network ambitions. Or at least the value extraction. AWS cash seems to fund cool amzn loss leaders (alexa, etc). I think the same thing applies to wit.ai and other AI products they buy - if they could commercialize them into an "AWS for AI" product suite maybe they'd find a new profit center. They have world class ML work already, so seems a good place to do this. > Wirehog I never heard of this one so i googled it [1]. Apparently it was a legal risk to continue at the time (ha!). Very similar to napster. Makes sense that a startup business (< 2 yo) would kill a controversial product. Ironic now that they seem to be above caring about legal risks. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/

croes 5y ago

The problem is what is the premise of this metaverse. I will be data collection for FBs core business. Imagine something like Horizon for Oculus in big, a virtual world observed and controlled by FB. Before Sky Net we will get the Matrix. https://pic.clubic.com/v1/images/1236090/raw https://pic.clubic.com/v1/images/1236090/raw

radmuzom 5y ago

I'd rather have JC Denton usher in the new dark age than allow this raving lunatic control more of our lives.

echlebek 5y ago

The comments are negative because people hate facebook, and they hate Mark Zuckerberg, and they have good reason for that.

meowface 5y ago

>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. I agree, and I'm sure it may even end up as a great/fun experience, but I'm just concerned about what's likely to come along with it. There was a recent article linked on HN titled "even if you're paying, you're still the product", and that's pretty much how I see this going. Facebook lost all good will years ago. It's not about the product quality, but the monetization strategies and what those entail.

grawprog 5y ago

>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 I think the reason for the negativity is possibly because maybe a company that's managed to create a massive platform where reality is massively distorted and manipulated algorithmically to maximize ad revenue and engangement, whatever the quality or lack thereof, should not be a leader in trying to make the internet 'real life' or whatever you want to call having ar/vr avatars that will allow you to participate in the new virtual corporate consumer world.

after_care 5y ago
It’s simple natural selection that the most engaging social media platforms became the most profitable, influential, and popular. There’s no guarantee that VR/AR will have the same selection pressure, and if the tech does have the same selection pressure than whoever wins will be engaging as well. IMO Facebook creating the metaverse is like Xerox creating the GUI. Most likely the things that made Facebook successfully in social media will not make them as successful in VR/AR and they’ll either pivot hard or (more likely) lose their market leader position. (I’m holding FB stock until their AR offering is announced, and possibly for a few years afterwards but I’m doubtful I’ll have their stock in 15 years.)
- baby 5y ago
  That’s my worry as well, that they’re not capable of capturing the market due to being a software company. But… they have hired like crazy and at this point I’m assuming most people working there have no link whatsoever with fb, so if they own all the experts there’s a good chance they’ll capture the market. As long as they keep iterating they’ll be fine.
  - astlouis44 5y ago
    Check out our social 3D/VR web metaverse platform here: https://vrland.io/lobby https://vrland.io/lobby

bostonsre 5y ago

I'm not sure the negative comments are due to some tribal rationalization. The social network-ization of society hasn't had great effects in a lot of cases like increased depression and affecting the course of democracy. I think facebook has proven that the only thing that they care about is the all mighty dollar and their leadership seems to have machiavellian like reasoning of the ends (connecting the world) justifying the means (monopolistic like market dominance by assimilation, duplication and/or crushing of competition). The guy at the helm literally models himself after caesar and has absolute control over the company. They are proposing to further mold and control society. To me, that sounds a lot like some kind of dystopian future and not something I would enjoy being part of. It may sound nice and all butterflies and flowers, but I don't think it would be prudent to just ignore their track record and say "o, it will probably be fine".

athrowaway3z 5y ago

> Facebook is absolutely one of the best-positioned companies to be able to become a long-term market leader No its not, and Mark knows it: "Critically, no one company will run the metaverse" Its not in Facebook interest to have competitors and they will act accordingly. My guess is Facebook will first try to buyout the 'metaverse', then it will try to 'emulate but different', and then they will switch to being an over-engineered data hosting provider.

bborud 5y ago

Why are you surprised? Whenever some form of immersive "universe" under corporate control is described in fiction, it tends to be a fairly dystopian tale. Every so many years VR is going to "finally be here" ... and then it never materializes. Add to that the head of the corporation in question is a hop, skip and a jump away from near Bond-villain status. It would be remarkable if the gut reaction of most people were not negative. Which makes your surprise at the negative remarks remarkable.

gentleman11 5y ago

The Metaverse is just a mmo, except some of the characters are real, the world is a parallel of ours, the bad guys are whoever is trending as a villain (good for engagement), and the quests are ads. The end goal would be primarily to have this digital world leak over to the real one as much as possible, having untold profound influences on human life The negativity is because it will be awful if they succeed. Imagine logging in to your job via this metaverse or some small country using it for voting in 50-100 years, or not being able to take part in conversations because you are not logged in to your ar. Imagine the data collection and potential for manipulation and censorship in the distant future

motioncuty 5y ago

A metaverse is just the republic of facebook. Its really uncomforting for such an entity devoid of humanistic incentives(and rather a asocial ceo with a fiducial obligation to his share holders) will be able to create a plane of virtual reality that much of the world will have no better option but to leverage. Its one thing to provide advertising subsidized internet. But a metaverse Is where our future children will be spending alot of their time, and if not our children, our childrens friends.