An 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 ), 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.
Not 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.
They are going to need foveal rendering to achieve the latency/resolution needed. That means they are going to expensive displays and eye tracking, which you might think would add to the price... but eye tracking on that scale is more valuable than any form of advertising information has ever been. It is the gold standard of attention measurement.
You can't even control the location, sequence, or time spent looking at different image content. They will know exactly what you are interested in, how much, and when that changes. They will know what distracts you most, and optimize it (for their customers the advertisers).
In the end I expect these to be given to high value (elite college students) consumers for free so that they can be monetized. Prepare to explain to your future wife why you always have goats in silk stockings on your feed!
Oh, also... compelling Metaverse content?! It will be user created. TikTok to the rescue!
I’d like to see a UI that abstracts Wireguard behind contact management UX
If I’m connecting to someone via that app it’s over a Wireguard tunnel. On desktop, let me drag files over, append to a synced message thread (stored in SQLite or something simple)
Open source design focused on beating desktop operating systems when it’s strength was always networking.
All the attention is on building tech for corporations to satisfy political memes. It doesn’t have to be if software people built different software
I'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.
This 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.
I'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?
> 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.
I was really disappointed/anxious/upset over Zuckerberg's response to the liability question. As the CEO, how does he not immediately understand the intent behind the question? This is Facebook's most pressing current issue and he chose to stick his head in the sand and pretend that a VR vision and rebrand will whisk the problems away?
Or I guess here's the reality of it: Zuckerberg, I can only assume intentionally, has seemed to master the art of slipping his way out of tough questions non-stop. He lies to governments, he lies to users, he lies to advertisers, he lies to tech journalists; all behind the vail of a vague notion of where Facebook's perceived* value is. I have never, ever seen him get pinned down - this is not a compliment, he deserves to face real and tough criticism (regulation too), but I can only guess that every audience that's questioned him exists on a scale of ignorant to apathetic (on the apathetic side of the scale, see for instance how Ben ends this interview with a quip on touching base in 10 years; Ben's no dummy, he probably just grew exhausted from Zuckerberg's non-stop slippery, indirect answers. Zuckerberg stuck to his ,,human" script.).
* I stopped participating in social media years ago and my quality of life has skyrocketed (I'm here on HN to talk with others in my industry, so I view this as work-related). No one in their right mind can look at their 10-year vision of a metaverse and truly believe that Facebook will be the herald of this new economy.
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.
I 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.
The 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.
The metaverse is for the Roblox and Minecraft generation who are supposed to be even more doom and gloom than the one that preceded it. So the world in shambles condition may already be met for some.
Gen Z have also grown up in this reverse Truman Show dystopia where everyone has their own TV show (Youtube, Snap, Tiktok) that allows them to edit out the blemishes and embarassments of real life to produce a nicely manicured image to 'build their brand' on.
> In most fiction where a "metaverse" or equivalent is popular, the world is in shambles.
I mean, the trajectory of the world isn't great right now...
I could easily imagine a VR "game" in the near future that is just "walk around a virtual zoo that has leopards, rhinos, orangutans, gorillas and giraffes" because the real world no longer has them.
> When you think about it, of course this would be the case. Why would people reject the real world for the internet?
This is a good observation, but it's important to remember that quality of real world life is very fucking far from uniformly distributed now. There are already many people across the world whose personal life is in shambles enough that they spend every free moment escaping it in media consumption and video games.
Sure, if you have a good life, the metaverse pales in comparison. But what if you're stuck in a shithole town with no jobs and no prospects? At some point, frame rate and vertex count becomes less of an issue than "not watching yet another friend get addicted to opioids".
Maybe that's the real end-stage-capitalism opportunity for a soulless corporation: Everyone working on the metaverse is so focused on making it a primo experience that appeals to people already living well. Instead, maybe the audience to target is people whose real life already sucks. Sell virtual water in the desert, not the oasis.
Heck, it would just a one letter change for Facebook to go from Meta to Meth.
Even in a dystopia, an immersive metaverse is totally impractical without something like neural implants. I think even the guy who wrote Ready Player One understood this.
> the world is in shambles. Why would people reject the real world for the internet?
Things like a pandemic that forces people to be home. Rampant global warming that makes it hard to be outside comfortably.
Maybe small apartments in urban areas where its just too expensive to have a real home because zoning doesn't allow new apartments to be built fast enough...
And 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.
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.
From 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.
Is 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?
So 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.
He 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.
Just 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.
Meta’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.
I 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.
Please 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."
> 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.
You must not know this blog then, because ben has been a well reasoned voice for years, and his bullishness on VR/Metaverse should not be confused as a shill. He has been critical of FB the company. If you read his other works (even posted today!) about fb nee meta and their social products he's less of a kind persona.
> There were no limitations on the interview; it was my choice to focus on the company’s new vision and not the current controversies about Facebook.
[+] [-] gelert|4 years ago|reply
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 ), 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|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kurthr|4 years ago|reply
You can't even control the location, sequence, or time spent looking at different image content. They will know exactly what you are interested in, how much, and when that changes. They will know what distracts you most, and optimize it (for their customers the advertisers).
In the end I expect these to be given to high value (elite college students) consumers for free so that they can be monetized. Prepare to explain to your future wife why you always have goats in silk stockings on your feed!
Oh, also... compelling Metaverse content?! It will be user created. TikTok to the rescue!
[+] [-] ootsootsoots|4 years ago|reply
If I’m connecting to someone via that app it’s over a Wireguard tunnel. On desktop, let me drag files over, append to a synced message thread (stored in SQLite or something simple)
Open source design focused on beating desktop operating systems when it’s strength was always networking.
All the attention is on building tech for corporations to satisfy political memes. It doesn’t have to be if software people built different software
[+] [-] alisonkisk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] werber|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jonanin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rad_gruchalski|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] btmiller|4 years ago|reply
Or I guess here's the reality of it: Zuckerberg, I can only assume intentionally, has seemed to master the art of slipping his way out of tough questions non-stop. He lies to governments, he lies to users, he lies to advertisers, he lies to tech journalists; all behind the vail of a vague notion of where Facebook's perceived* value is. I have never, ever seen him get pinned down - this is not a compliment, he deserves to face real and tough criticism (regulation too), but I can only guess that every audience that's questioned him exists on a scale of ignorant to apathetic (on the apathetic side of the scale, see for instance how Ben ends this interview with a quip on touching base in 10 years; Ben's no dummy, he probably just grew exhausted from Zuckerberg's non-stop slippery, indirect answers. Zuckerberg stuck to his ,,human" script.).
* I stopped participating in social media years ago and my quality of life has skyrocketed (I'm here on HN to talk with others in my industry, so I view this as work-related). No one in their right mind can look at their 10-year vision of a metaverse and truly believe that Facebook will be the herald of this new economy.
[+] [-] spiderice|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vineyardmike|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
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|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rchaud|4 years ago|reply
Gen Z have also grown up in this reverse Truman Show dystopia where everyone has their own TV show (Youtube, Snap, Tiktok) that allows them to edit out the blemishes and embarassments of real life to produce a nicely manicured image to 'build their brand' on.
[+] [-] munificent|4 years ago|reply
I mean, the trajectory of the world isn't great right now...
I could easily imagine a VR "game" in the near future that is just "walk around a virtual zoo that has leopards, rhinos, orangutans, gorillas and giraffes" because the real world no longer has them.
> When you think about it, of course this would be the case. Why would people reject the real world for the internet?
This is a good observation, but it's important to remember that quality of real world life is very fucking far from uniformly distributed now. There are already many people across the world whose personal life is in shambles enough that they spend every free moment escaping it in media consumption and video games.
Sure, if you have a good life, the metaverse pales in comparison. But what if you're stuck in a shithole town with no jobs and no prospects? At some point, frame rate and vertex count becomes less of an issue than "not watching yet another friend get addicted to opioids".
Maybe that's the real end-stage-capitalism opportunity for a soulless corporation: Everyone working on the metaverse is so focused on making it a primo experience that appeals to people already living well. Instead, maybe the audience to target is people whose real life already sucks. Sell virtual water in the desert, not the oasis.
Heck, it would just a one letter change for Facebook to go from Meta to Meth.
[+] [-] munchler|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vineyardmike|4 years ago|reply
Things like a pandemic that forces people to be home. Rampant global warming that makes it hard to be outside comfortably.
Maybe small apartments in urban areas where its just too expensive to have a real home because zoning doesn't allow new apartments to be built fast enough...
lots of things come to mind.
[+] [-] cbtacy|4 years ago|reply
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|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theonlybutlet|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hprotagonist|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liuliu|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] djbusby|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thefourthchime|4 years ago|reply
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|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaysea|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scoofy|4 years ago|reply
Expertly executed, infotainment media ate it up, 10/10, would be distracted again...
[+] [-] lrae|4 years ago|reply
Seems to me they could've handeled it a bit better then :)
[+] [-] flyinglizard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] villasv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] pcbro141|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bogwog|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samspenc|4 years ago|reply
More if you're interested: https://stratechery.com/about/
[+] [-] dorkwood|4 years ago|reply
Goes to show you can still launch a successful blog with a name that no one can pronounce or understand.
[+] [-] pvelagal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remir|4 years ago|reply
Even tho Mark believe he's doing the right thing here, to me this metaverse thing is evil.
[+] [-] HKH2|4 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] mrlonglong|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iammisc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bob229|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] alisonkisk|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] numair|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
"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
[+] [-] vineyardmike|4 years ago|reply
You must not know this blog then, because ben has been a well reasoned voice for years, and his bullishness on VR/Metaverse should not be confused as a shill. He has been critical of FB the company. If you read his other works (even posted today!) about fb nee meta and their social products he's less of a kind persona.
> There were no limitations on the interview; it was my choice to focus on the company’s new vision and not the current controversies about Facebook.
That's how he opens the interview.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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