Concern around Facebook’s ambition to dominate the metaverse

Mark Zuckerburg has announced Facebook’s ambition to dominate the metaverse — this is why it’s not a good idea.

Facebook’s announcement that it will rename its parent company Meta has been greeted with ridicule and scepticism, but some experts have hinted at a more concerning motive behind its move to dominate the metaverse.

While announcing the change during a one-hour streamed message, chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg was shown exploring virtual reality worlds that could one day be a normal part of people’s lives.

He said the name showed the company’s focus on developing a new digital spaced dubbed the “metaverse”, where technology such as virtual reality headsets could be used to blur the real and digital worlds together.

“Within the next decade, Metaverse will reach a billion people, post hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers,” Mr Zuckerberg said.

Mr Zuckerberg said social media sites Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp would keep their names but it was time to build the next chapter. He believes the metaverse will eventually replace smartphone apps as the primary form of online interaction.

“I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta. Our mission remains the same, still about bringing people together, our apps and their brands, they’re not changing,” he added.

The move to dominate the metaverse has some experts worried as they point to a concerning reason why Facebook is so interested in the technology, and say it should not be allowed the dominate the virtual world in the same way that it has shaped social media.

Mark Zuckerberg announces Facebook will be rebranded Meta, to reflect the company’s ambition to develop the metaverse, a new digital space. Picture: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

What is the metaverse?

The term metaverse actually comes from a book published in 1992 called Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It depicts a world where people wear virtual reality headsets to interact inside a game-like digital world.

In the real world, it’s one of the terms being used to describe the concept of bringing together the real and digital worlds using technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

What is Facebook doing?

Facebook has actually been buying up a lot of VR and AR technology for years including purchasing the VR headset company Oculus for US$2 billion in 2014.

Facebook Reality Labs, which brings together researchers, developers, and engineers to create the future of AR and VR, has been developing projects like Ray-Ban Stories (Facebook-connected sunglasses with a camera and voice control), and Project Aria, aimed at creating 3D maps of public spaces.

Nearly 10,000 people — almost 20 per cent of Facebook’s workforce — work for Facebook Reality Labs, and last week Facebook announced it wanted to hire another 10,000 developers in the European Union to work on its metaverse computing platform.

Facebook owns Oculus, which develops virtual headsets that could one day be the dominant way people interact online.

Is it just a distraction?

There has been a lot of speculation about why Facebook is making this move now, with some pointing out it could just be a distraction from the bad PR it has been copping lately.

The social media giant has been battling one of its most serious crises since former employee Frances Haugen leaked reams of internal studies showing executives knew of Facebook’s potential for harm, prompting a renewed US push for regulation.

A Washington Post report last month suggested that Facebook’s interest in a metaverse virtual world was “part of a broader push to rehabilitate the company’s reputation with policymakers and reposition Facebook to shape the regulation of next-wave internet technologies”.

Why would Facebook be interested in the metaverse?

Some experts have, however, pointed to other more concerning reasons why Facebook could be interested in developing the metaverse.

In a piece for The Conversation, University of Sydney digital cultures senior lecturer Marcus Carter and Queensland University of Technology digital media research fellow Ben Egliston, note that the metaverse may eventually come to define how we work, learn and socialise.

Headsets that allow people to access these virtual worlds could become everyday technologies that we depend on.

But VR and AR headsets collect enormous amounts of data about the user and their environment.

“What makes this particularly concerning is that the way you move your body is so unique that VR data can be used to identify you, rather like a fingerprint,” the academics write.

“That means everything you do in VR could potentially be traced back to your individual identity.

“For Facebook – a digital advertising empire built on tracking our data – it’s a tantalising prospect.”

Facebook’s interest in the metaverse could have significant implications for how future online spaces are developed. Picture: Chris Delmas/AFP

The experts say that Facebook’s vision for the metaverse could perhaps be guessed at by looking at how it had moulded people’s online lives into a “gigantic revenue stream based on power, control and surveillance, fuelled by our data”.

They believe another vision is possible that embodies “an open, collaborative and consensus-driven way to develop technologies and tools” rather than an the exploitative, corporatised, hierarchical virtual space such as that depicted in the book Snow Crash.

“Facebook’s rebrand, its dominance in the VR market, its seeming desire to hire every VR and AR developer in Europe, and its dozens of corporate acquisitions – all this sounds less like true collaboration and consensus, and more like an attempt to control the next frontier of computing,” the academics write.

“We let Facebook rule the world of social media. We shouldn’t let it rule the metaverse.”

— with AFP