This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Zuckerberg’s metaverse is a natural extension of capitalist extraction of our data

By:   []

Date: 2022-01 

On 28 October, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook was rebranding as Meta. The timing was likely a public relations strategy to end the tech giant’s downward trend.

Over the past year the $1trn company has faced congressional antitrust hearings, and damning whistleblower testimonies from ex-employee Frances Haugen revealing (amongst other disclosures) how the company knew but failed to act on the platforms role in advancing teenagers’ self esteem issues and the amplification of hate speech and misinformation in the Global South.

With the Meta launch and the announcement of a virtual reality online space called the metaverse, Zuckerberg is now attempting to redirect attention away from this public scrutiny and into a world that does not exist and where nobody has been harmed – yet.

According to Zuckerberg, the metaverse will be “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it”. It will be a totalizing claim over all aspects, spaces and possibilities of social life. Ultimately, the metaverse is about exercising an even more pervasive form of power – it is an obvious next step for capitalist logic and a distinct challenge to our future collective imagination.

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So what exactly is the metaverse?

What makes the metaverse particularly terrifying is the explicit fragmentation and loss of experience which we are supposed to be excited about and willing to inhabit. During the October 2021 annual Facebook Connect conference , Zuckerberg, in an hour and 17 minute speech, described all the ways his company’s vision of the future could make us “feel like” something – but not quite experience it.

Zuckerberg explained how the metaverse could make us “feel like” we are “right there in the moment”, “right there together”, “right there with other people” all without the “there”. This metaverse future is predicated on incompleteness and imitation. It promises connectivity in exchange for the possibilities of the human sensorium. In this virtual reality, we do not get to make our own experience, but will live in one ruled by its singularity.

The extractive logic of this metaverse future is simple. It implies that more data is being produced and collected through a pervasive system of surveillance. The products in the whole Meta suite are designed as massive experimental rooms for company researchers seeking to increase the number of ads people click through. After all, more than 95% of the company’s revenues come from ads.

Meta and other tech companies carry out the experiments in the same settings the products are deployed. They have managed to make us comfortable with spending time within their lab – as they perfect increasing data collection through heightened engagement.
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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/zuckerbergs-metaverse-is-a-natural-extension-of-capitalist-extraction-of-our-data/
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