In the midst of the scandals of theFacebook papers, Facebookrebranded the company as Meta.
We should all be concerned about how Facebook could and will use the data collected within the metaverse.
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There was a failure inmanaging and regulating the underlying business model of social web connection sites.
We are poised to repeat the same mistakes with virtual reality.
The industry and its consumers can at times seem like aplayground for dilettantes.
Future interactions
The futurepromised by industry leaderscan at times seem like little more than snake oil.
Virtual reality represents a way to interact and communicate across geographic locations, in a more embodied manner.
The hardware and software problems of virtual reality are continually being met with sophisticated engineered solutions.
Virtual reality could be the next big advancement in social interaction.
Facebook certainly thinks so.
Gyms become fitness applications, entertainment is provided by games and there is immersive educational content.
All of this can be accessed by users through the Oculus headset.
I have ethical concerns about the loss of data control when using VR in research.
The metaverse provides an infrastructure for content to collect user data and provide tailored audiences for marketers.
Policy-makers and regulatory bodies stood by as Facebook emerged as a major platform of societal interaction and political speech.
They did not enact anti-trust protections as Facebook acquired additional streams of social data through buyingInstagram and WhatsApp.
Now the platform isdeeply entwinedin many peoples social lives, and it will be difficult tountangle society from Facebook.
With virtual reality, we still have these opportunities.
Industry associationscould work on standards for programming to be headset-agnostic.
Anti-trust regulators can consider the implications of one company controlling so many data streams across so many contexts.
