Facebook just announced plans to spend $50 million to 'responsibly' create its fabled metaverse, but for a lot of people, it's probably too little too late for the company. Facebook first detailed its plans to create a metaverse back in August — essentially a concept that will see people merging their online world with the physical one. Whether someone's shopping, playing a game, or communicating with friends, the idea of the metaverse is to take these interactions and make them more personable than they are today.
The first example of Facebook's metaverse was demonstrated on August 19 with the announcement of Horizon Workrooms. Instead of hosting a work meeting via Zoom or Google Meet, Horizon Workrooms is a VR application that allows up to 16 people to join a virtual office for remote work. They can see other people's avatars in the Horizon Workroom, use a real-world Mac or PC while in VR, and have full gesture-tracking for arm and head movement. It's just one example of how the metaverse idea can be implemented, and there are bound to be more metaverse applications from Facebook in the years ahead.
In preparation for its metaverse's expansion, Facebook is attempting to back the technology with a focus on privacy and responsibility. In a blog post published on September 27, 2021, Facebook announced the XR Programs and Research Fund. Over the next two years, Facebook will spend a cool $50 million to "responsibly" develop the metaverse. As the blog post explains, "Through this fund, we’ll collaborate with industry partners, civil rights groups, governments, nonprofits and academic institutions to determine how to build these technologies responsibly." Facebook then highlights things like equity, inclusion, and privacy as key points for this responsible development — all with the goal of trying to show people it's spending the time and money to build the metaverse the 'right' way.
Facebook Wants You To Trust The Metaverse — But Can You Really?
It's not surprising Facebook's spending this kind of money to build trust in the metaverse. It's even less surprising the company's publicizing the announcement with a blog post loaded to the gills with PR talk. Facebook knows it has a building amount of distrust with tons of people. If the company's mishandled so much user data and contributed to the rampant spread of endless misinformation already, what's to say that won't exist in the metaverse?
One could also argue that these things will be potentially worse in the metaverse than they are today. Facebook's already built enormous criticism around itself with a social media website in the real world. If the metaverse is essentially Facebook's way of further integrating itself into people's day-to-day lives, there's reason to believe there's an even greater chance for things to go wrong on a larger scale than ever before.
None of this is to say Facebook's creating the metaverse with evil intentions, but the company's unsavory history certainly puts a dark shadow over the entire project. A $50 million fund to try and avoid past mistakes is an objectively good move, but whether or not that's enough to gain people's trust remains to be seen. Considering how many bridges Facebook's already burned over the years, it's safe to assume $50 million isn't going to cut it.
Source: Facebook