Join 
These fictitious virtual worlds branded by Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.) as the Metaverse could allow the social network to collect even more data on our personalities.
A new word has taken hold in conversations between friends, enemies, and the general press: metaverse. And for a good reason, Facebook has announced that it is developing a technology that will make it possible to materialize the passage to this data-ized and algorithmized virtual world where the flesh and blood creatures that we are, will navigate.
Opinion: Why Facebook must stay out of Metaverse – Yusuf Odukoya
The metaverse, which is a contraction of a meta-universe, describes a parallel and virtual world historically imagined and designed by video game players. By this intellectually exciting technological realization, one can only hope that Facebook do not control our behaviour even more by imposing itself on the market of life and digital reports.
While the metaverse is worth exploring for a variety of reasons, perhaps it shouldn’t be in the hands of a company like Facebook.
For a long time, the construction of virtual worlds has been explored in the field of entertainment through video games, but not only that; Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality were also used in the following ways;
- Training of airplane pilots using flight simulators
- Education
- Treatment of certain traumas
- Company for people undergoing isolation
All the above-mentioned applications illustrate some of the benefits of the digital virtualization of the world.
Subscribe for updates
The scientific and technical success also have some exciting effect on other fields. Computer Vision – a discipline that involves building algorithmic models that can analyze photos and videos, and give feedback in near real-time. In this idea, Facebook is investing billions of dollars on hiring thousands of talents all over the world to explore this intellectually stimulating scientific and technological breakthrough even deeper.
The Reinforced virtualization of social life
This project is in reality only the tree that hides the forest, or the visible face of the iceberg of the strategy – in this case – of Facebook.
By taking technological control of this universe and its uses by individuals, the company can collect a gigantic amount of information concerning our personalities, our interactions with others, our desires, even our fears.
Once structured, this information can become a formidable lever to fuel even more – not to say strengthen – the economic model of the company already widely criticized.
We collect demographic data on individuals through their static characteristics – such as gender, age, place of residence etc., and dynamic – such as behaviour. On social networks, these behaviours are materialized by the content we like and share, or the type and frequency of our comments.
That being said, we understand the importance of the metaverse to collect even more information by moving to a higher level in the simulation of our behaviours. This includes our interactions with others, but also vis-à-vis a given situation or scenario.
Through this enhanced virtualization of social life, we could then analyze more precisely our character, our attitudes, and our tastes in order to anticipate our reactions or to offer us more targeted commercial content.
Conclusion
I think the motivation of a company like Facebook is questionable, especially considering its historical cases of privacy abuses and scandals in the world of social networks.
