By Melissa Allouche | Staff Writer
On Thursday, Facebook announced a move towards a new name, Meta, in an attempt to distance itself from the antitrust in the company’s namesake and redirect its focus on building the metaverse, an environment that brings together physical, augmented, and virtual worlds into one. While this definition is universal, what that would entail on a more concrete level remains unclear. Despite that, proponents of the metaverse agree on a few must-have properties. The metaverse should (probably) be 3D. It should have an economic system. It should support continuity across multiple spaces, a concept known as interoperability—for instance, if you buy a skin in Fortnite, you’d be able to use it in Minecraft. The goal is to interact with others through shared experiences. While you might feel like Facebook’s next step is ripped out of a sci-fi book—it is, but we’ll get to that in a bit—with this loose definition, metaverse-like elements can already be found on several platforms: Fortnite, Roblox, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Facebook’s own Horizon Workrooms. Twenty One Pilots even kicked off the Takeover Tour with a virtual concert on Roblox on the 17th of September.
While implementations of such technology will change how we interact with the world, it’s important to take a step back and see the bigger picture. Let’s take a look at the term “metaverse”. Originating from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, metaverse referred to a virtual world that people visited as a form of escapism. Note that harassment, discrimination, violence, and a truckload of other problems existed in that metaverse. That will remain true in any implementation of the metaverse. Real-life problems will seep into the metaverse, but like in the physical world, it’s how the issues are handled that matters.
Facebook’s rebrand comes during a storm of PR nightmares as whistleblowers like Sophie Zhang and Frances Haugen come forward with incriminating evidence of Facebook’s negligence and role in spreading misinformation. It seems redundant to ask, but can we really trust the likes of Facebook with such tech? Probably not. It remains true that major players in the field have established walled gardens: Facebook with Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, as well as Google, Amazon, and Apple. The only way this doesn’t turn into a dystopia, billions of dollars and years later, is with an open metaverse, one that is not controlled by a handful of corporations. That, however, seems rather unlikely as Big Tech continues to push for an ad-based model in the metaverse, whether explicitly or not.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University said, “as long as you can make technology seem fresh and new and cool, you can avoid regulation.” It seems likely that that’s Facebook’s plan. The metaverse could be the next best thing, but Facebook—or should I say Meta now—won’t be able to distract the public with something shiny for too long.