is that a fucking ai generated image of the metaverse
Anyone remember when the media was sucking Meta’s dick over the metaverse like they’re doing now with AI?
Yeah but this also means they will shit on AI companies in a few years (I hope).
I want this level of self reflection when we look back at headlines like: “Did you know a child-raping terrorist that bankrupted every one of his businesses said he wants to invade Greenland!? See the 24-hour perpetual interview!!11”
No, I’m worried now. What did I forget?
We forgot to remember
I wonder if the Metaverse is still projected to be worth $1trn in 2030
zuckerborg is currently trying to download/assimilate peoples thoughts.
Disagree. The goal is money from advertising.
Manipulating peoples thoughts is much more valuable than assimilation.
IT’S NOT A BUBBLE!!!
Ummm no? I recall many news outlets shitting on the metaverse from day 1.
John Carmack had some choice words when he left Meta.
"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy.
“It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.”
Imagine getting John Carmack on your project and ignoring him. Like, what was the point? Zuck got lucky in the beginning and was cut throat enough to hold on to it, but he has no entrepreneurial talent.
Facebook would make considerably more money if he stayed out of the decision making processes and just let talented people do it. But ego is going to ego I guess.
The dictator. First they get popular (or here rich I guess) but that was luck or network or maybe genious, but now the world moves on and that luck/network/genious doesn’t work for those new problems.
So in a democracy you vote him out, in a company you use up all the money while trying to bribe your way to more money because the dictator in this new setting is dumb as shit.
Zuckerberg was paying for the Carmack name but thought he knew better.
Well obviously!
One of them is a celebrated, accomplished developer. And the other is Zuckerberg.
I do remember a youtube video on C programming language had comments arguing about whether Dennis Ritchie or Mark Zuckerberg is the better programmer.
how embarrassing to compare one of the absolute titans of computer science with some web dev lmao
I remember watching that episode in the Silicon Valley series.
I like to think of the average tech billionaire as Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man specifically in the Casino scene. He’s a savant at counting cards, and Tom Cruise’s character (the investors) see that and help him rack in a shitload of money at blackjack.
Then Hoffman’s character decides he wants to try a roulette-type game, a game for which savant-like card counting skills offer absolutely no advantage, and the investors, unable or unwilling to see how roulette is nothing like blackjack just blindly sign on and Tom Cruise quickly loses $3,000.
Why the fuck do we think the dweeb who made Facebook in college and hasn’t lived as a normal human for two decades would have any particular insight into how people would use VR?
The scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk7eA4gVDno
Zuck wasn’t marketing VR to the average consumer or even the tech enthusiast. He was marketing it to middle managers who wanted to regain control of their WFH peons. During covid, those types lost a lot of control while the workers continued without much change. Now that back to the office is being forced, the target demographic isn’t interested.
The middle managers don’t even matter in this scenario. No executive wants to buy hundreds or thousands of VR headsets just so their employees can meet in a video game instead of Teams. Actually moving any part of the workplace into VR comes with a massive upfront hardware cost and I have yet to hear anyone articulate a real benefit that justifies such an investment.
Facebook bought Oculus in 2014.
Yes and?
Facebook was marketing their virtual office space stuff during covid. In the infinite wisdom of Zuck, that’s the best use of the tech today.
My point is …what was the plan before COVID? What did VR have to do with social networking?
Second life!! /sj
I don’t think he had a plan in the beginning. These people aren’t pioneers. They got lucky once, get labeled as a trend setter and then you have to try and maintain that image. VR was going the next big thing, so Zuck bought a company without a plan. Tech companies do that all the time. They see themselves falling behind on something and just buy some random company to appease the shareholders/press.
The VR office thing was just the limits of Zuck own creativity and saw covid as an opportunity to keep their product relevant.
Zuck bought Instagram and WhatsApp and they weren’t mistakes. His purchase of Oculus is similar.
I suspect the losses on VR will eventually be offset by AR and smart glasses.
He also bought giphy, onavo, parse, ctrl-labs, eyegroove, daytum, and like a dozen other companies, maybe more. Some of these are totally a waste (onavo and parse were shuttered relatively quickly, giphy cost almost a half billion and got basically no roi, etc). It’s more that you’re bound to hit a few zingers if you can just keep trying because you basically have an infinite money glitch.
Also ctrl-labs is neural interfaces. Creepy name for that right? Especially when fucking meta owns it. Yuck.
I suspect only creeps will buy his peep glasses for rapists and pedophiles. They should be banned and if they are not they should at least be like the apple ones, which are basically a gigantic sign that says “this person desperately wants to follow you and your child into the bathroom and videotape it. They want it so bad they spent $3200 and walk around with this stupid asshole shit strapped to their face”
I suspect only creeps will buy his peep glasses for rapists and pedophiles.
I don’t understand this. Even voyeurs benefit more from the optical nature of glasses than the camera part.
Do you not understand the benefit of saving things for later when one has privacy? More nefariously for creating a collection of illegal voyeur content to use for trade on illicit networks of illegal content
Ah. OK. I’m obviously not in the right mindset.
Probably says something good about you tbh
They were at least in the same wheelhouse. Close enough to be seen as a threat to FB. Oculus was just a total shot in a new direction.
Communication would be the underlying theme.
Did zuck personally buy these or did a team of analysts doing research make proposals and he picked some?
Zuck seems quite hands on for big purchases e.g.. I’d lean more to the former than the latter, but I’m sure there’s a team of lawyers and analysts somewhere.
Still wild to me that someone like Carmack was in all this. Like, how did he think this would turn out? I guess the salary must have been enormous.
The company got bought so I guess Carmack thought he could just continue developing the headset, with loads of more cash too.
He had it. Once.
After that, he’s just another mogul with tons of money trying to impose his products by abuse of predominant position.
that whole episode was a waste of a perfectly good Carmack
Insert Karma joke here.
Can’t invent one because Carmack seems to be a decent dude.
I don’t know his political tendencies but he’s extremely smart and he does seem decent, so… yea my world would crumble if I learned he’s right leaning
$73G to make VR Miis with no legs
Meanwhile, VRChat:
This just proves any VR project without any trans people is doomed to fail
Who else could know what it’s like to walk in another’s skin and see a face you don’t recognize in the mirror?
Every software project should have three groups: furries, trans people, and Linux users. Without all three the software becomes doomed, with too much of one it becomes niche, with a balance of all three it becomes incredible :3
Do they have to be three separate people? Because the Venn diagram of those three groups is a circle
It’s best when the van diagram is a circle :3
Are furries considered trans or what am I missing? Serious question.
Nah, there’s an in-joke that there’s a lot of overlap for people in all 3 simultaneously (Heavy online presence in communities with an emphasis on allowing people to express themselves how they please).
Linux may just be a coincidence though, similar to the Furry/IT overlap.
It wasn’t for nothing! I’m sure Meta generated tons of patents they’ll use to stifle anyone else in the industry who tries to innovate.
There’s not a lot they can patent. VR existed before they started this project, inside out tracking existed before they started this project, and there are other products with similar ideas that go far further than anything metaverse ever put out (I feel like it never even released).
MetaZuc looks more human than the real thing.
He is.
hes an android, he has several spare bodies stored throughout the world.
VR isn’t a bad idea.
…Zuckerberg is just an idiot.
That’s really what it comes down to. Facebook has some neat branches and employees, but at the end of the day, its head decision maker is chronically flakey and makes catastrophically bad financial choices, repeatedly.
He’s just so freaking rich it doesn’t even matter.
I still remember the original Metaverse pitch basically being ‘We’re going to copy VRChat but without any of the bits people enjoy’
Having only seen videos of VR Chat, your avatar can be a 6 foot penis or a anime girl or a skeleton with a trumpet. And I think Metaverse was trying to provide that for businesses and the general public?
How can you create a social hub where you can’t be a 6 foot penis?
The original concept was more or less a virtual shopping mall with a character creator. Imagine VR chat but made by EA.
There will be a $12.99 monthly fee for imaging that
So WorldsAway but twenty years later?
I don’t know how to tell you but Worlds Away was 20 years old… a decade ago.
!Released September 1995!<
Delete this
Like it should be, as Neil Stephenson depicted it in Snowcrash, 1992…
And, in practice, take forever, don’t really promote it, and make it look like no one at Facebook has ever laid eyes on a video game.
Yeah and tied to your fucking meta account so next data breach your colleagues at work can learn that you chatted for hours with a 15 year old with a lewd anime avatar (or as lewd as meta would ever allow something to be) about your fursona.
He’s so stupid if he really thought companies were willing to buy a VR headset for every employee so they can go to virtual meetings (like actual meetings are not already a chore)
Oh and add to that stupidity the fact that almost every company refused to keep working from home after the pandemic
Oh and add to that stupidity the fact that almost every company refused to keep working from home after the pandemic
Including Facebook.
Zuck loves a bandwagon.
He made WoW but corporate, deanonymized, and lacking anything interesting to do in it.
I can’t imagine why it failed.
Yeah, I don’t like the idea that failed ideas are a waste, because that kind of thinking stifles technological advancement.
I do like thinking that we can have both technological advancement and healthcare.
I mean, it was doomed from the beginning. There was no vision, no problem to be solved, no benefit for the user.
Why would the world need this VR space? For meetings or chats? We have virtual meetings and this adds nothing of value. For games? The graphics are bad (to allow more people to use it) and there are better VR games. For companies to advertise? You would need something to get people to go there.
They should have created a benefit for the user first and if that is successful add more.
They could have started with a Sims clone or a WOW clone to get people interested and invested before adding the rest. Selling virtual land only makes sense if it’s worth something.
Should have led with porn
Sure, if they had created for example a ‘second life’ clone with a very lax custom content policy it would have drawn in the pervert community to build their dream harem / larp orgies AND the house builder / interior design community AND the second life larper community.
The question is, if big companies would still have wanted to advertise there. At least the virtual land would have been a bit more interesting.
One thing I would love for the Quest to be able to do would be to create a 3D model of my home’s interior and let me do things like knock down walls or place furniture.
There’s no technical reason it can’t do this except that nobody’s done it because it’s been pitched as a collaboration/NFT selling tool.
I think you can sort of do that with Hyperscape?
https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/meta-horizon-hyperscape-capture-beta/8798130056953686
So apparently facebook is funding research into that, still: https://facebookresearch.github.io/ShapeR/
Who knows what they’ll actually do with the tech.
I’m glad they’ve at least thought of it, but I’m amazed they didn’t think this was a killer app for VR. Just the real estate market alone would have been huge.
Kinda ironic that he got the enshittification order right with facebook and instagram, but completely forgot it for VR. You need the people first, then you start banning porn to be “family friendly” and nice with big companies
It is weird that nobody pointed out to him that a meeting in VR is worse than a Zoom call in every practical way. I guess he reached the “surround yourself with Yes-Men” stage too long ago.
It’s also just not an option if someone has a medical condition that makes them predisposed to dizziness, vertigo, etc. Even without a medical condition, users frequently experience motion sickness with VR. And if certain team members can’t use the meeting software, it ceases to have any value as a meeting software.
It always happens with any delusional fool.
They get lucky and so they hire smart people. Then those smart people no longer align with the fool. So they hire more people in hopes of changing the smart people’s minds. But then smart people leave.
And now. All that’s left is the people who were hired who think every time the fool farts, it’s a blessing.
I don’t even like video calls. The only value of it is to see if someone started talking while still muted.
I guess if you count screen-sharing as video calling, but that’s distinct from the camera part.
To play the devil’s advocate: this did happen during the crypto rush, when huge monetary value was assigned to nothings. If you buy into the idea that a JPEG of a monkey created by some algorithm brute-forcing KiSS can be worth a small fortune - it’s not hard to see how VR “real” estate can be valuable.
Digital nothing CAN have value. Like imagine having a central plot on a long running popular Minecraft server, or having a large housing plot in final fantasy XIV, or a sick mount in WoW or any other MMO. The thing is that those are desirable not just because they’re limited, but because the game is a desirable place to begin with. Artificial scarcity with nothing backing it is useless, like monkey jpegs and beanie babies.
So if the metaverse wasn’t dogshit and actually drew in at least tens of thousands of regular users, yeah he could’ve made some money selling digital real estate. Instead, he led with “you can buy real fake land!” with no real reason other than exclusivity.
They did worse than that imo. I was a very early consumer of VR; had the original oculus headset and absolutely loved it. Then zuck bought them out, mandated that all oculus headsets would need a meta account, and effectively dropped support for anything other than the mobile headset. I was legitimately the kind of consumer that would put 5 figures into that hobby over a few years, but I set it down and never looked back after that. Im sure I’m not the only one who fits that description
Same. I was one of the original kickstarter backer. Never touched it again after the meta account got mandatory.
I might get the Steam Frame and see how much has changed in the VR space.
Oh boy, if you haven’t played Half Life Alyx you’re in for a treat.
My conspiracy theory is that it was wildly successful, because the point wasn’t creating whatever VR space they claimed wanted to happen; it was to cover up the story of the Facebook papers. The timing lines up (both in October 2021 within a day or two). The additional patents acquired in the process are just a nice little bonus.
Investors ate up the idea from someone who has a history of wildly successful growth. And we all know, it would have been outcry from investors that caused any real change (in America at least) about Facebook’s business practices.
Can you pls elaborate on what Facebook Papers is? I am aware of the failure that is Facebooks Metaverse, but not whatever their ‘Papers’ thing is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Facebook_leak
In 2021, an internal document leak from the company then known as Facebook (now Meta Platforms, or Meta) showed it was aware of harmful societal effects from its platforms, yet persisted in prioritizing profit over addressing these harms. The leak, released by whistleblower Frances Haugen, resulted in reporting from The Wall Street Journal in September, as The Facebook Files series, as well as the Facebook Papers, by a consortium of news outlets the next month.
Primarily, the reports revealed that, based on internally-commissioned studies, the company was fully aware of negative impacts on teenage users of Instagram, and the contribution of Facebook activity to violence in developing countries. Other takeaways of the leak include the impact of the company’s platforms on spreading false information, and Facebook’s policy of promoting inflammatory posts. Furthermore, Facebook was fully aware that harmful content was being pushed through Facebook algorithms reaching young users. The types of content included posts promoting anorexia nervosa and self-harm photos.
In October 2021, Whistleblower Aid filed eight anonymous whistleblower complaints with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on behalf of Haugen alleging securities fraud by the company, after Haugen leaked the company documents the previous month.[1][2][3] After publicly revealing her identity on 60 Minutes,[4][5] Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security about the content of the leaked documents and the complaints.[6] After the company renamed itself as Meta Platforms,[7] Whistleblower Aid filed two additional securities fraud complaints with the SEC against the company on behalf of Haugen in February 2022.[8]
In response to the media fallout, Facebook executives went on press tours to express Facebook’s position amidst the frenzy.[9] Facebook also did internal damage control with employees through in person sessions and memos.[10] They went on to do a rebranding and changed their logo as well as their name to Meta.[11]
Speaking of it, there where talks about Facebook harming teenagers and young adults in terms of anorexia and selfharm. Its just that those talks quickly vanished as if they where never there - its like they where purposefully covered up by a different story.
Most reasonable explanation for this crap I heard:
- facebook is just a website that makes money through tracking and ads
- people need to use a device to access facebook, so they can get tracked and see ads
- apple and google own all your devices and started to block tracking and ads (except their own)
- Zuck saw a risky chance by investing in VR. The vision was to get everyone on their VR platform so they can continue to track you and show you ads
cuckedberg bet that VR headsets were going to take over, which even back in 2018 seemed far fetched. He’d have had a better chance to fortify his stranglehold by spending all that money making fb’s own custom android and securing deals with phone manufacturers.
These tech bros call them moonshots.
Which I can see them repurposing all the Metaverse stuff into glasses.
But not that I would touch that and feed the Zuck machine.
All this time, effort, and money spent to convince you to buy things you don’t need.
Now the vision is to get everyone on their AR platform so they can continue to track you and show you ads through your smart glasses.
I just realised what Zuck looks like in the metaverse: the evil kid from toy story!
Still looks more human than the original.
React bot
I’m sorry, the free market allocated that cash to efficient uses.
It wasn’t even obvious how to get into this thing. We got a Quest headset, the kids use the heck out of it for gaming and hanging with friends, and I poked around in it trying to find this Zuckerberg World and you have to work to find it. I mean, if he wanted this thing to be big it should be the default, but nope. Anyway, the headsets are a ton of fun for gaming with others, but as far as VR interaction with other’s avatars for the purposes of social interaction? Nope.
as far as VR interaction with other’s avatars for the purposes of social interaction? Nope.
Except vrchat is actually HUGE. Now I’m sure the metaverse could never have unseated it as #1, but it could have been a thing if zuck actually made it not look like shit and didn’t try to commodity the hell out of it.
Don’t forget that it took, what, 1 week after release for someone to “grope” a journalist avatar and have meta desperately try to patch out shitty human behavior, removing avatars’ hips and legs and forcing them to stay 1.5m away from each other at all times
I feel like Rec Room solved this issue ages ago.
Vrchat exists because of porn, mostly. If metaverse added big tiddy avatars it probably wouldn’t have failed as hard.
Vrchat exists because of porn
That’s a weird take. I’ve played VRchat for around 100 hours, of which most was spent just bullshitting around and randomly inserting yourself in conversation that can go on for hours. Never noticed any porn rooms or whatever you meant by that, but I guess we have different goals in games
They could have done this AND universal healthcare. Universal Healthcare would actually save us money allowing us to put more into useless BS like Meta VR.
Not in the slightest. According to a congress report, American healthcare expenditure was was approx. $4.6 Trillion in 2023. That $77B would barely even cover 2%.
The crazy thing is that 50% of the cost is middlemen (mainly insurance). The rich could halve their healtcare costs if they just decide to share.
I don’t doubt that insurance introduces a certain amount of overhead into the equation (after all, they have offices and wages to pay), but I’m a bit skeptical of that 50% figure. Do you have a source for that?
In 2024, the United States spent an estimated $14,885 per person on healthcare … while the average for wealthy OECD countries, excluding the United States, was $7,371 per person. https://www.pgpf.org/article/how-does-the-us-healthcare-system-compare-to-other-countries/
Thanks, appreciate the link. However, it does not corroborate the theory that health insurance companies alone are responsible for that difference. From the article:
There are many possible factors for why healthcare prices in the United States are higher than other countries, ranging from the consolidation of hospitals — leading to a lack of competition — to the inefficiencies and administrative waste that derive from the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system. In fact, the United States spends over $1,000 per person on administrative costs — approximately five times more than the average of other wealthy countries.
So while the administrative overhead definitely IS very high compared to other countries, it doesn’t even account for more than 10% of the total healthcare expenditure — meaning eliminating insurance companies wouldn’t just magically make healthcare 50% cheaper for everyone.
OK, the whole 50% additional cost paid by the patient may not all go to the insurers.
Hospitals can also be profiting, as well as numerous side industries (pharma, equipment etc.) as well as the heavy admin layer you highlighted.But the major difference between the US and other rich OECD countries is the insurance layer replacing the social funding. Health insurance is the cause of the disparity, even if it doesn’t receive all the benefit.
Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean a single payer system would solve all of the problems. First of all, that’s still a form of insurance, because it cannot be sustained if it simply pays out each and every claim — after all, the money has to come from somewhere. There HAVE to be people who pay in more than they get out, otherwise the system will simply go bankrupt.
Also, even in a single payer system, healthcare is still a limited resource (because there are only so many providers, i.e. doctors and hospitals, etc.), so rationing has to take place or people will simply abuse the system. In most cases, this means long waitlists to see specialists and/or qualify for expensive treatments. Just ask Brits or Canadians how long they have to wait for such things, and consider whether you’d be willing to risk not getting a lifesaving procedure done in time. It’s not unheard of for Canadians to simply go to the US if the wait is too long, because there they can pay out of pocket and get it done quickly instead of risking their condition getting worse (or Americans going to Mexico to get it done cheaper).
Sadly, this is a much more complicated issue than you seem to think, and I’m afraid such kneejerk approaches aren’t going to help solve it.
There’s something wrong with anyone who doesn’t find that image disturbing.
Brrr.
