8 ms·
An interview with Mark Zuckerberg about the Metaverse
- mrlonglong 5y agoIt's funny that they've renamed it meta as that's the Hebrew word for death. Lots of Hebrew speakers having a good laugh today
- theonlybutlet 5y agoAnd I have a flagged& downvoted into oblivion comment on another article in the past on how the tech world has embraced this silly term "meta" for everything. People don't like when theres shade thrown on their buzz. Reminds me of things like "synergy".lol.
- hprotagonist 5y agolook man there’s only so much runway on your valprop when you’re going upstream disrupting the prevailing synergetic paradigm. #befierce
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoParadigms are last century. We've shifted to something new.
- hprotagonist 5y agopivoted. please.
- endisneigh 5y agoI know science fiction has really hyped up the idea of a metaverse, but I just don't see it happening culturally. In most fiction where a "metaverse" or equivalent is popular, the world is in shambles. When you think about it, of course this would be the case. Why would people reject the real world for the internet? The reason why social-media is so popular is because it's basically a way to highlight reality and engage with it. I honestly don't see the metaverse taking off. Facebook should've went in the other direction IMHO. The pandemic has shown very clearly that people want to engage with one another in reality, not on the internet.
- nonameiguess 5y agoThe Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica depicted this somewhat believably, as being a kind of place where people could do really extreme things you could never possibly get away with in real life, i.e. gladiator battles, just getting murdered over and over, extreme sex and partying with no consequences. I don't think that's what Zuckerberg wants to sell as a vision, but that seemingly has to be what something like this would become. Ironically, the creator of the technology in that show was a lot like Zuckerberg. He naively believed he was creating some transformative device to make people better but then they only wanted to use it for sex, violence, and escapism. And his daughter ends up becoming a terrorist radicalized by religious extremists after being appalled by the no ethics nihilism of her dad's world, whose digital avatar gains its own sentience and goes on to become the first Cylon, whose followers and descendents eventually end human civilization. I wonder what will eventually become of Zuckerberg's daughters, what they'll think of him when they grow up.
- neartheplain 5y ago>a kind of place where people could do really extreme things you could never possibly get away with in real life, i.e. gladiator battles, just getting murdered over and over, extreme sex and partying with no consequences The future is now. Welcome to VRChat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrUqFFj5ePE&t=180s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrUqFFj5ePE&t=180s VRChat is full of escapism, alchohol abuse, underage users, and explicit erotic roleplay. The latter typically involves nude avatars with full-body tracking using HTC Vive trackers. By the way, this game is free without age restrictions on Oculus Quest, a product which itself has no parental controls. VRChat has no system for filtering or proactively tagging NSFW content, so even users who opt-out of the private adult worlds will probably still see nudity and more in public worlds. Also, vulnerabilities in the official client (mostly in the Unity rendering pipeline and Photon RPC stack) means users of modded clients can crash others' PC or Quest from inside the game. "Crashers", as they're known to all longtime users, have been a problem for years with no solution in sight. In earlier versions of VRChat, users could attach arbitrary C# scripts to their custom uploaded worlds or avatars. At least one arbitrary remote execution vulnerability has been discovered and responsibly disclosed to VRChat: https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xz33p/hackers-hijacked-vr-chatrooms-to-manipulate-users-reality https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xz33p/hackers-hijacked-vr-c... The VRChat staff ostensibly review moderation requests for issues like hate speech or nudity in public lobbies, but each video clip I've included (as the report guidelines strongly recommend) in requests I've filed has 0 views per my video upload dashboard. I keep seeing many of the same perpetrators again and again in public worlds. Again, there are no age checks, even good-faith "enter your birthdate" dialogs, and this platform is full of suggestive and explicit NSFW content. Communication is mainly via voice chat, so children are highly visible to adult users who would abuse them, who sadly are also present on the platform. Unsupervised kids are all over the place in this game. VRChat moderation staff do not have any in-game presence. Despite these issues, VRChat continues to grow due to the total creative freedom it offers for user-uploaded content, its popularity among content creators on YouTube e.g. Jameskii, HeyImBee, SwaggerSouls, and the fact that it's a free game on Quest. It recently topped 50,000 concurrent active users. Advanced VRChat users have modded support for teledildonics, as one streamer describes in this safe-for-work YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekUZoSiZV_I&t=19s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekUZoSiZV_I&t=19s
- gelert 5y agoAn interesting interview, it's nice to see a little more substance behind the decision.I also appreciate that the interviewer did ask some of the sterner questions e.g. Facebook throwing money away from it's business Maybe it's just the years of science fiction talking but I can't help but see this in a dystopian light. I don't want my social world to be created by"Meta". I want to use social media, and the internet more generally, as tools which enrich my life but don't dominate it. Directly opposite to how Zuckerberg pitches "Meta" in this interview. My experience of the pandemic has taught me the primacy of physical, human, interaction. A VR headset isn't going to bridge that digital void. What's more, the internet is already addictive enough, already threatening those interactions I value. I recently read the short story "The machine stops" by E.M. Forster (available at http://www.visbox.com/prajlich/forster.html http://www.visbox.com/prajlich/forster.html ), and I can't help but feel Facebook is building towards the dystopia it presents. I'm deeply uncomfortable with the vast scope of these ambitions. I'm lucky enough to be informed and privileged enough I can choose to ditch these companies but I worry for the many who can't.
- billiam 5y agoNot to worry. Like every other attempt to replace the Internet with a privately owned space for communication, self-expression, and above all content consumption, this one will fail. If it weren't for the inattention to history of today's attention monopolists, we'd really be in trouble.
- munificent 5y ago> every other attempt to replace the Internet with a privately owned space for communication, self-expression, and above all content consumption, this one will fail. I wish you were right, but looking at Internet traffic on mobile devices [1]: * 24% is YouTube. * 10% is Facebook. * 8% is TikTok. * 8% is Instragram. * 7% is Facebook video. * 6% is Instagram. * 5% is Google. * 2% is Netflix. That leaves about 30% for all other Internet traffic, including other large walled gardens like Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc. So something like three quarters of all Internet traffic is in walled gardens now. Privately owned communication spaces are some of the biggest businesses in the world today. Note that this is mobile data, because it was the first dataset I was able to find easily. [1]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-most-used-apps-by-downstream-traffic/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-most-used-apps-b...
- bogwog 5y agoHow the heck do you pronounce that website's name?
- samspenc 5y agoJust FYI if you haven't visited the site before: several of their articles have made it to the HN front page before. I actually find Stratechery articles to be well thought through, deep and comprehensive, I like how the author (Ben Thompson) tries to give a balanced perspective of business and tech without being too one-sided, alarmist or opting for clickbait headlines. More if you're interested: https://stratechery.com/about/ https://stratechery.com/about/
- systemvoltage 5y agoI generally want people to have an opinion, often a strong opinion; but here Ben is trying to amass a vast amount of information, history and context, filtering down to the essense and presenting all sides. So, in a way, Ben is a moderator of tech information. Ben if you're reading this, thank you; and I highly recommend the Stratechery subscription if you haven't gotten one yet.
- dorkwood 5y agoI believe it's stra-teck-uh-ree. As in, strategy and tech. Goes to show you can still launch a successful blog with a name that no one can pronounce or understand.
- robbedpeter 5y agoStrategery (from a Bushism I think?) + tech . Anyone know the word for a deliberately mispronounced word like strategery? Trying to think of others but they're escaping me at the moment.
- killerdhmo 5y ago"Strategy and Tech" https://stratechery.com/2013/strategery/ https://stratechery.com/2013/strategery/
- cbtacy 5y ago> I actually think in retrospect, those friendships were probably more important than the homework That might be the saddest thing I've ever read, and perhaps the first time I've ever felt sympathy towards Mark Zuckerberg.
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoWhy? Because his parents wanted him to take care of his responsibilities before having fun? It’s not like he was forbidden from having friends.
- splatzone 5y agoBecause it seems to be a recent revelation for Zuck that childhood friendships could be more important than work - it's poignant and it makes me suspect he was lonely as a kid
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoSo as in “he’s lonely now and noticed that he didn’t learn how to build those relationships”?
- flyinglizard 5y agoSo it appears Zuck decided he lost the mobile game and moved on to the next battle which is post-mobile, “the next big thing”, but now he’s taking you to the cleaners with an entire digital economy stack. You’re getting the ads and paying your virtual landlord.
- villasv 5y agoHe won mobile. He didn’t have to build phones to dominate mobile advertising. Facebook was a great beneficiary of mobile adoption and that’s why we’ve been seeing Apple attack their business model.
- pcbro141 5y agoExplain how Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook lost mobile?
- flyinglizard 5y agoWith Apple recent moves of blocking tracking he can’t properly monetize his assets anymore. He’s subject to the whims of the platforms. He wants to be that platform.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- scoofy 5y agoCongrats to Zuck & Co for successfully changing the subject. Expertly executed, infotainment media ate it up, 10/10, would be distracted again...
- lrae 5y agoAre you implying that he knew about the controversy happening months ago when all this was planned & announced? Seems to me they could've handeled it a bit better then :)
- scoofy 5y agoIf you know of any "months ago" timeline for this that isn't from a facebook marketing person, then I'd like to know about it. The Facebook Files were published in September, and the WSJ was likely working on the story for months before then. Are you implying that Facebook wasn't informed, asked to verify, or asked to comment on the publication of it's internal documents months ago?
- lrae 5y agoFunny that I have to proof things when you're the one with the initial claim without any proof. * But sure, let's start with to things. Right here in the thread, people who have acquaintances working for the original meta ulc under the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and them claiming they knew something is happening for months. * The meta trademark transfer months ago Also not sure why you think WSJ would contact them months before about/with a whistleblower. But I'm sure WSJ stated that somewhere then, right? It was also pretty likely that this would be announced during Facebook Connect (former Oculus Connect), which always was around this time the last couple of years. Was it still a welcome coincidence and convenient? Sure. And did they use it for that? Of course, too. Who wouldn't. So for example, a BS narrative that worked was Zuckerberg claiming a week? before that he wasn't sure about the new name yet and that it wasn't set in stone yet. That was indeed eaten up by some media.
- numair 5y agoAs someone who has worked on strategy in this industry, let me just say that Stratechery should be taken as entertainment, not education. The fact that this guy was willing to be a shill for Zuckerberg should show you that his ultimate wet-dream is to be close to these sorts of people, rather than coldly analyze whether the things they do make any sense whatsoever. There’s a reason FB’s people called up this guy, rather than someone who would be willing to say, “this makes no sense and has no bearing on success for several quarters, if not years. I don’t care about your deflection strategy. Talk to me about the anorexic girls on Instagram and a culture that turns a blind eye to it, because if you lose the young female market the entire game is up.” (Which is the secret of our industry — young females will make or break you.) It’s easy to look like a super-smart strategy dude when you’re making predictions as an already-big market is getting bigger. For some reason, none of these guys can ever “predict the future.”
- dang 5y agoPlease make your substantive points without crossing into personal attack. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the site guidelines and sticking to them, we'd appreciate it. Note these: "Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nabakin 5y agoHey dang, why did you downweight the "Facebook renames to Meta" post so hard off the front page? I remember seeing it on the second page with something like 600 votes and now I can't find it no matter how many pages I look through. Thanks for your work!
- dang 5y agoIt set off the flamewar detector. I've turned that off now.
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago> I think that’s one of the reasons why we talk about why do entrepreneurial innovative people want to work in tech? Well, because you can actually work in the virtual world. You don’t have to deal with all the real world regulations and gunk and political problems and all those sorts of things, and it’s very attractive because you can just build. That does not reflect any reality. If there was no need to care for regulation, guess what - facebook would not be under fire. Google wouldn’t be regulated left and right. There would be no GDPR, there would be no cookie consent. I have nearly stopped paying attention after that sentence. Frankly, maybe that point is placed strategically in the overall writing because the most interesting question comes later: > Is there a worry that Facebook is a liability for this future you want to build? > MZ: Are you talking about the app Facebook? > You can interpret that any way you want to. Well, that’s a disappointing frame to the original question.
- spiderice 5y ago> facebook would not be under fire And how long has it taken for them to come under any sort of real fire? 15 years? Compare that to any company that creates a physical product. They’re highly regulated from day 1.
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoSure. But let’s not gloss over the point that companies like Facebook prompted regulators to actually regulate this space. Once the process started, it goes fast. It is like aerospace or automotive. There were barely any regulations in 1950s…
- vineyardmike 5y ago> Google wouldn’t be regulated left and right. There would be no GDPR, there would be no cookie consent. Google is barely regulated. Especially in america. > There would be no GDPR, there would be no cookie consent. I wish! those cookie consent prompts are annoying.
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
- werber 5y agoThis might be the first time I’m posting before finishing the article but the audacity of Zuckerberg in this interview is so beyond my ability to comprehend that I’m leaving my cell phone in my apartment and going for a walk. I very recently finally quit what I guess is now “Meta”, And this makes me wish I had earlier.
- Jonanin 5y agoI'm half surprised that this is one of the most upvoted comments, but also not really because the comments for any FB-related article here are typically a race to the fastest dunk. But there is zero substance to this comment. What specifically did you find audacious? Why did it make you want to take a walk?
- hacksnewer 5y agoZuck doesn't seem very self-aware. If you are in the middle of a massive scandals (multiple massive scandals) about major issues like privacy, enabling genocide in certain countries, etc, if you really, really cared, your first step would be to stop what you are doing and fix things. Instead of taking accountability, Zuck like always has some dumbass excuse about being "humbled". But humble people show they are humble. If HN gets confused about why there is so much rage at people like Zuck, it's because we can actively see our lives getting worse because at 19 brolord here figured out how to get college kids to sign up for website. I mean, great idea, but I feel like that might, just might affect how you see the rest of the world and nobody in society agreed to this. He needs to show that he's responsible, that he's grown up. Instead he's doing the next big thing and the next big thing is what any teenager that watched a recent Spielberg money would come up with. If Zuck and some of these tech savants want to impress people maybe they need to finish college so they don't still sound like high schoolers in their 30s. We should demand more. We're tired of people like Sam and Graham and Zuck complaining about how hard it is when people criticize their work. They want to have insane wealth and have people kiss their ass.
- DantesKite 5y agoIn what way did your life get worse because of Facebook?
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoI'm old enough to realize most of my prognostications about where tech are headed are wrong, but I can't emphasize how much I hate this entire fucking idea. It makes me viscerally angry. I mean, it's like someone sat around and said "Gee, you know what the world needs more of? Replacing real, physical human connection with 3D cartoon avatars with no legs." It's like someone watched Wall-E and thought it looked like a utopia. I've been in tech for over 20 years and, at least in my mind, it really "peaked" in the late mid-late 2000s, before everyone became a phone addict. At that point most of the tech giants still believed in their own benevolence, instead of today where it's hard to even convince their own workers of their benevolence despite dumping boatloads of cash on them. Maybe I'm just getting old, but every year I have a stronger desire to just chuck my phone and laptop out the window and go full Walden Pond.
- iammisc 5y agoCan't wait for the butlerian jihad.
- alisonkisk 5y agoThis is native advertising.
- thefourthchime 5y agoFrom my vantage point, Facebook hasn't had a next move for a decade. Zuckerberg years ago decided VR was the future and has stuck to it. Now he's decided to make it even more of a bet. To me, it seems painfully clear that until the tech gets to a point where people don't need low res and heavy VR googles it will stay a niche. Maybe it happens, eventually, I guess it will. But the future is rarely laid by the first movers. It's cemented by the first correct to market.
- toisanji 5y agothat will happen when apple steps in.
- liuliu 5y agoFacebook is truly the heir of the 90s' Microsoft. It is hard for me to take what Zuck said on its face value any more. Every F8, Facebook announced new things that was going to work for the next ten years, and mostly nothing happened. Every year since 1990s, Microsoft was talking about new paradigms of computing, in the living room, smart devices, voice controls. Things shipped, and fell on the side ways. Products are built one after another. They are not willed into existence through a vision announced to the world beforehand. We may as well just hold a World's Fair and let these mega-corps to host "Metaverses of Tomorrow". At least it is going to be fun to visit.
- throwawaysea 5y agoIs no one concerned about the Black Mirror possibilities of the meta verse? Zuck is talking about how the experience will be centered around you rather than an app, and that it will carry who you are and things like your virtual goods seamlessly between different experiences. I worry that other things will also follow users around everywhere. For example things like ratings or social credit scores, even if they’re user driven instead of state driven. Or perhaps people who committed some crime can be ostracized and blocked on everyone’s VR set, as if they didn’t exist. Maybe I am worrying about nothing, but various episodes of Black Mirror have played out the horrifying possibilities of pervasive connected augmented reality devices, and if the metaverse is going to be as amazing and powerful as Zuck thinks it will be, I anticipate there will be many such issues. Ultimately I am still left wondering why we need any of this. Can humans not simply exist and enjoy their real life analog experiences?
- bob229 5y agoFuck zuck and delete all his apps
- pvelagal 5y agoMeta’s goal seems to become a “3D-Internet” browser/platform. But unless the concept of a “3D-Internet” is widely adopted and the related standards/technologies are built/adopted by the major players it might be gargantuan task for one company to pull this off. IMHO the Vision is great and inevitable.. but needs Industry support.
- remir 5y agoI cannot think of a scenario in which the metaverse is a tangible benefit for society and humanity. To me this is highly sofisticated escapism and may seems benign today, but in 10-15 years, if it catches on, will be very scary. Even tho Mark believe he's doing the right thing here, to me this metaverse thing is evil.
- HKH2 5y agoNow people can get the immersion they crave, what they probably wanted most from fiction in the first place. You say the metaverse is evil but where do you draw the line? If you fill your waking hours pursuing other forms of fiction, is that any better?
- remir 5y agoI draw the line at Facebook/Meta, a company that is known to maximize user engagement despite knowing the negative consequence it can have.