Facebook creates new unit to build a “metaverse” | Hacker News Reader

Facebook creates new unit to build a “metaverse”

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41 pointslsllc70 comments

More on the metaverse, 4 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930791 (380 comments)

What was interesting about this submission is that Facebook have now created a business unit for this so I don't think it's fair to characterize as a "dupe".

The new metaverse will be encased in a proprietary "security meta-metaverse" inside of an "analytics meta-meta-metaverse," and will include a "meta-meta-meta-meta-like button with up to six different emotions attached, including a new predatory emotion based on our founder's unique outlook on life," according to advance PR.

It sounds very ambitious and very vague. We know and I'm sure FB knows that this isn't going anywhere interesting, so what're the 700 openings for? If it weren't for the hires and the market being comically inflated I'd have written it off as PR to help the stock out.

Or is it just Zuckerberg getting jealous of Musk and wants to get on the bandwagon of hypey messianic bullshit? Might want to take some charisma classes first.

Have you been on VRChat?

The stuff is insane already, and I can't fathom what it'll look like in 10-15 years.

These companies are at war trying to capture our attention on smartphones. Imagine what they'll do to win when we're all plugged in.

AVR is coming, increasingly enabled by the ever faster processors and higher resolution sensors. It'll undo anyone in the lead that can't keep up.

People doubted the Instagram purchase back in the day. I think we'll look back on this too as being prescient.

> These companies are at war trying to capture our attention on smartphones. Imagine what they'll do to win when we're all plugged in.

I don't disagree that they're competing for attention, nor that the field is perfect for someone to come along and show us something we weren't expecting (like VRChat; made by two people). But this is Facebook, not DARPA or Skunk Works. Their core offerings are a website, a photo sharing app they acquired, and a messaging app that they also acquired. This is fundamentally an advertising company. The wildcard was a consumer hardware company that they also acquired. This is not DNA that can innovate a 'metaverse' into existence.

You can't just grab a couple of executives, a bunch of mid-level managers, and a few hundred developers and demand that they innovate and expect anything to come out of it.

I don't know, it's all a big pass for me.

Many of the naysayers are likely picturing the bulky headsets we have today and the other limitations. Good chance Zuck has seen reason to believe future generations of the tech are going to be profoundly better.

I think Zuckerberg just thinks vr is really really neat (disclaimer: it is decent, I have an oculus) but he is disconnected from the general population that can't be bothered to try it out and he is surrounded by yes men that are telling him it's an amazing idea.

I tend to think the same. To be clear, I too have an Oculus and I also think VR is really really neat. But this whole pining after "the metaverse" is really silly.

Companies may develop experiences analogous to a Second Life, or Roblox, or World of Warcraft, or any other popular MMO (made more immersive by the VR medium), but I doubt they will have any further reach than those. At least I don't know why they would, anyway. To be fair, those games are successful and make lots of money, but compared to Facebook's current business they are a niche concern. So their enthusiasm seems misplaced to me.

Plus, VRChat already exists.

Don’t forget fort-nite. It’s free, has concerts and movie screenings and runs on most platforms. It seems to be meta versing without even realizing it.

Tim Sweeny is very aware that Fortnite is turning into a metaverse. He's commented on that quite a bit and Epic is adding features to Fortnite. Carefully; they don't want to break their cash cow.

I don't have an Oculus or even Facebook, but I remember a decade ago that my older relatives were hostile toward the idea of Facebook and moving aspects of their daily lives online. That all changed very quickly and has been very profitable for FB. I don't know if it will be brought about (in part) by Facebook, or if it will even happen anytime soon, but something akin to a "metaverse" seems almost probable to me at this point

> Plus, VRChat already exists.

VRChat has so many flaws that you can't make that argument. It needs competition, and badly.

Just offhand I can think of:

* Massive performance issues

* Controversial handling of 3rd party modifications (enforcement was stepped up only to put lipstick on the pig for their Series D, and MelonLoader itself puts faux security on its software in an attempt to make it look like it cares, by curbing obfuscation)

* Poor security (players have been able to legitimately fry the hardware of other players due to GPU exploits)

* Even years after launch, still basic usability issues like status being changed unexpectedly, causing privacy issues

When you have 58% of the voting share in a $1T company it doesn't really matter if you are surrounded by yes-men. You kinda can do whatever you think is cool.

I think the irony is that a circle of yes men form an echo chamber around zuckerberg, just like facebook has done for the general population. Eventually, he will be convinced that he is the internet messiah (if he doesn't already think that).

Wow Facebook hit 1T, that's insane

Sounds like a privatized internet to me.

> what're the 700 openings for?

To starve the competitors of talent?

sidenote: hard to imagine what FB is paying at those positions. I mean top leadership's pet projects are always a bonanza, and that is a pet project of Zuck at FB where pay is already extremely high.

I wouldn't doubt Zuck at all, he's shown time and again incredible shrewdness at predicting the future and making bold moves to stake his claim on it (Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus, are a few of the large publicly-known ones).

Those acquisitions were derided by the chattering classes at the time as well, yet time has shown them to be incredibly far-sighted.

Sure, any endeavour can certainly trip over itself and fail, but Facebook is not Yahoo circa 2012. They still have the cash and vision to execute well, and while you may disagree with the implementation (closed-source open world parallel to the current internet), I don't doubt there is a strong vision and motivation to build this within the Facebook leadership.

Oculus never took off. The other two you mentioned were already vastly popular (Whatsapp was the most popular thing in the EU back then, now taken over in part by Telegram.) The purchases were made not out of a grand vision for the future, but simply to hinder and squash competition. The internal emails that have leaked from the company over time show as much.

What do you mean by Oculus never took off?

VR is still super niche. It's not "here" yet for the vast majority of people. I have an Oculus and I don't use it every day

I would - while successful(financially at least), he's not a good visionary. Let's ignore the fact that I've never been subtle about how repugnant I find him. None of the companies that Facebook acquired were early stage startups like the ones google buys in bulk - they were established products. In all fairness I uninstalled whatsapp the day the aquisition was announced. The core facebook platform is no longer targeting masses but rather niche markets. The metaverse is a niche market. Let's face it, even with the oculus - despite the hype it never really gained a whole lot of traction outside a very small community. I see this an attempt to extend the community but I have serious doubts about the outcome. Now if facebook aquires onlyfans for example...

When bad things happen in the metaverse you can pretend it doesn't matter, because everyone knows that stuff isn't really real; nothing serious happens in the metaverse.

Just like how it took 20 years for (some?) people to realise that "online" and "offline" aren't actually separate worlds.

Getting bullied or abused in the metaverse? Oh, don't sweat it, it's just the metaverse, it's not real life.

Seems like a good insurance policy for Facebook's future.

Right.

https://m.dw.com/en/hana-kimura-suicide-of-japanese-wrestler...

This reads like this classic (sardonic) Tyler the creator tweet:

https://twitter.com/tylerthecreator/status/28567082226430771...

I like to think we've learned some lessons on how the online world impacts the offline world that will cross over into the metaverse vs. real life. Especially since the metaverse will more closely resemble real life than an AOL chat ever did. Remains to be seen, I guess.

Anyone remember the Croquet Project? Built with Smalltalk. Pretty cool object model for 3d, multi-user worlds. Connected via portals, the 3d equivalent to links. Built-in IDE. P2P.

Didn't realize it but still going 20 years later!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project

https://www.croquet.io/

https://croquet.io/sdk/docs/index.html

Good luck. The positive way forward is an open source identity service that’s separate from these publishers (Facebook, TakeTwo, etc).

People will flock to whatever metaverse they want, on demand. Look at GTA V, what an incredible world.

Beyond the creative aspect of creating a compelling metaverse, the primary challenge is fraud and abuse.

Matrix home servers could provide the identity service with connectors to Facebook, TakeTwo, etc.

Despite all of the flaws we have been doing very well with email, sms, and oauth for identity. I’m unsure how a more complex identity platform will offer any more real benefit.

Feels like we’ve left the station and our climbing to the first hill: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

I imagine we’ll get a lot of V1s, especially once Apple releases their AR gear, but we’re about 15 years out from the plateau which will likely resemble the smartphone market. My guess.

We are currently in the "information superhighway" era of the metaverse. Everyone wants to have a proprietary metaverse that looks pretty much like IoT visualization or an open world mmo. What we need is a "browser" and common protocols. The biggest impediment to the metaverse at the moment is the size of 3D assets. A "website" in the metaverse looks very much like a game, but games are really big. There are solutions to these problems, but there's a lot of engineering work to do between here and there.

You know, if I were able to convince a FAANG company to actually take us a step closer to a metaverse, it wouldn't be to, metaphorically, give the masses fish.

It would be to teach the masses how to fish and start stocking the lakes and streams with fish and so on. The social network is so 2010. Give us content creator tools and let us do the rest.

Yeah, facebook's never going to be that kind of smart. Oh well.

Isn’t that kind of what Roblox is?

Give us content creator tools and let us do the rest.

What ever happened to Second Life, anyway? I never tried it, but some of the ideas seemed cool.

> Bosworth wrote, "but to achieve our full vision of the Metaverse, we also need to build the connective tissue between these spaces — so you can remove the limitations of physics and move between them with the same ease as moving from one room in your home to the next."

Ya know what makes for robust, user-friendly, highly varied, and tenacious technological connective tissue? Interoperability [1]. Remember when you could plug third party chat applications into Messenger? Seems crazy that it was ever possible.

I've no faith whatsoever that Facebook will be a good steward of this new space.

[1] https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-a...

My reaction - so what?

Facebook has been heavily investing resources into the metaverse for a while - building up various experiences, snapping up game studios, even Occulus itself!

They just haven't bothered calling it a metaverse until now, but make no mistake - they are the leaders by a mile.

This reads like some weird submarine FB ad for their Metaverse™ Experience™©.

What exactly do you mean by metaverse? I can't think of a definition that matches what you're talking about.

> Zuckerberg also said it was "not something that any one company is going to build."

Of course not; there will be many walled gardens.

This is very exciting, was considering to get Oculus quest 2 but then all of the apps in the store seems to be heavily dominated by games.

This might be a game changer where majority non gamers will finally have a reason to get a VR. As a developer I'm also intrigued to see the api and whats the possible outcome of this.

Not sure when is the launch date, but personally VR hasn't been that exciting before (for the past decades??).

lucid dreaming is the best one can get into a real-world like experience with full sensory feedback. I've been meditating for over seven years and have many a times got into a lucid dream wherein I'm aware that I'm dreaming and can create experiences, objects at will. Have traveled into space (floating beside stars), flying with raining, climbing on mountains, lifting heavy incoming vehicles like buses and throwing them away etc.

Now if a device can hook into one's lucid dream and manifest things .... that would be creating universe the way you/device wants

edit: I don't have the control on when the lucid dream comes. Usually when I desire it it comes soon (during my short day-time naps) But I've heard from an expert meditator that it's possible with a technique to get into a lucid dream at will

My two cents: metaverse towards gaming is like TikTok towards videos (esp. short form videos). It's all about user generated content.

Video -> Gaming

Blockbuster movie/TV show -> AAA Games

Youtube -> Indie Games

TikTok -> Metaverse

The idea is that anyone can create their own game (mini-game) easily, just like anyone can create a 10 seconds video easily. Instead of bet tens of millions into blockbuster movies or AAA games, it makes some sense to look at "short form" video or gaming. With enough users and creators, and more importantly a good recommendation system, it doesn't require too much imagination dream something big. Given that both gaming and digital video content are 100B+/yearly market, it is fair to guess that one of the next big things like TikTok is indeed something in that user-generated gaming content market.

Where would you put Roblox in to this?

I am so thrilled to have Facebook paint custom tailored advertisements onto my optic nerve with a laser.

We can only hope.

Sci-fi tells us that this is the next logical step in social networking and human interaction. Whether Facebook (or anyone else) can pull it off or not remains to be seen.

This is definitely the future for Facebook. Everything FB does now becomes incredibly more exciting and visceral. We know the future is super fast computing and bandwidth. Virtual experiences become almost (or totally) indistinguishable from real world.

You don’t like a post your cousin made from Costa Rica, you visit Costa rica with your cousin in stunning realism! That’s the future for internet services.

Curious how this will interact with the likes of CryptoVoxels, Decentraland, and The Sandbox.

NVIDIA Omniverse?

Now that's interesting. It's collaborative work in 3D programs. Like shared text editors, but for 3D.

Nobody goes there. They just speculate in assets. Decentraland has between 200 and 300 concurrent users. Highest I've seen is 318. CryptoVoxels had about a dozen when I just logged in. Sominium Space had 22 the last time I looked. Haven't tried The Sandbox.

In comparison, Roblox has about 1.8 million concurrent users, and Second Life runs about 30,000 to 55,000.

All the crypto worlds are duds as places to visit.

I'd wondered if the crypto people would implement a good blockchain-based asset portability system used by multiple worlds. Nah.

Did Kanye West get hired as CEO of Facebook and I just missed it or something?

So he's building a new second life??

More like roblox and Minecraft had a baby

Just when you thought that we couldn't top the profoundly useless gesture of building your own personal rocket to blast off into space, we now have "metaverse." Take heed little ones, for some day you too might spend your hard earned billions to do the important work of recreating something cool you read about in a sci-fi book once.

Billionaires spending frivolously is better than billionaires saving

And ya gotta have one or the other, right?

Let's just stick with facetiously making fun of our future billionaire pet projects

Underrated comment.

Do you remember the time when those ostentatious billionaires would indulge in expensive luxury of making a call like from a beach or while riding a limo?

Preposterous, they might have even paid international calling fees instead of getting clean water to Africa!

The only metaverse that will survive is one built around decentralization and open standards.

I'm shocked that John Carmack isn't part of this effort.

You lost me at Facebook

If you make too many inflammatory comments (even in private) about, say, China or Covid vaccines, will you be cut off from this realm as well, unable to meet with your friends and family? Pandemic or disasters be damned.

Lol, no one under 40 uses Facebook for what they intend. It's mostly for birthdates & having the last string to the people who are in between friend-acquaintance relation.

They use Instagram, which is even more profitable.

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