Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not a Horrible Company | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not a Horrible Company

vice.com

141 pointsmandevil68 comments

Any online "metaverse" where users cannot be their fursona is doomed to fail. If I wanted to be a human, I'd just stay in the meatspace. The digital realm has infinite opportunities, so what kind of person would spend their life as a mii, but creepier?

The video showed a couple different styles of avatar, including one that was a robot. I don't see why "furry" wouldn't be an option.

I think the concept of a fursona extends to more than the style of the avatar. It can go as far as a unique personality.

I'm not a furry, but I definitely appreciate the ability to be anonymous online.

Regardless of how pseudonymous facebook allows a person to be on various 'verses, they're still linked back to a facebook-mandated real name account. If a person's persona edges too close towards stockholder's disapproval, your name suddenly disappears from a large chunk of the online world. Anonymous accounts must exist forever.

If you mean "unique personality" as in separate from your social media account, that was also announced in the video. Apparently users will be able to create Meta accounts that are not linked to a Facebook profile. They'll start with introducing work accounts and it will be generalized from there.

Fursonas date back to MUD times. It would be a silly mov.

Why is this story flagged?

It just occurred to me that Zuckerberg is always running away from reality. It's kinda weird.

Why would one of the wealthiest and most powerful humans ever to live want to run from reality? He is literally above the law. He has no consequences for anything. He seemingly has no conscience.

I can't imagine a more pleasant world for him to dream of than the one he is currently gripping by its throat.

I don't think he's an evil villain. I really do think he's constantly running away from reality. It's why he created Facebook in the first place. It was meant to replace real world social interactions.

Is he mentally ill because of a rejection?

I'm not a psychologist, I just play one on HN so I don't know but it's definitely weird that he keeps trying to use technology to replace reality.

Literally all of his bad behavior can be explained by greed. What reason do we have to believe there's anything else motivating him?

I don't think he's greedy either. He thinks connecting people over the internet is good and that just happens to be a very lucrative business.

Do you actually believe in PR prepared statements by famous people?

Like a speech by politicians was actually written by them and it reflects their believes.

Judge people by their actions and not words, that the most reliable predictor of whats in their head.

If someone says they are for X, and they do the opposite of X for Y reason, would you trust them that they actually are for X?

Remember: Facebook grew from a core product that was essentially a "better" copy of numerous existing products. Same for the Google.

Starting entirely new things is not their strength. And it is not the strength of people working in mega corps. So you get nonsense like this, or if they do only after many years by hiring from scrappy hungry startups who solve the problem first..

If you build anything remotely Metaverse related and it works you will get acquired, because now.. the Metaverse _needs to_ succeed. And they're not going to do it with the people who work there.

Facebook/Meta is a consumer company. All the worthwhile applications of remote presence are going to be in industrial spaces that combine robotics with VR. I see no way that Facebook/Meta will do anything worthwhile or useful in that space.

> Facebook/Meta is a consumer company.

There's not a single consumer that ever spent 1 dollar on Facebook. It's an advertising company, doing websites and chat apps on the side.

How is advertising not about consumption?

Facebook enables consumer activity so it's a consumer company. It does not build industrial robots or enable industrial production of any form.

Its neither. Their core product is surveillance.

On the plus side, we got a hilarious headline out of the project.

A better name would be Total Surveillance Company

That would actually be a good name for Google. Facebook has much less data on where you go, what you search, what you do in your Android phone, what you do in your Chrome browser, etc.

International Surveillance Machines.

Isn't this the backstory for the show Made for Love?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvWgNSLIULw

This company should have been broken up long ago.

Into what? All your problems with FB would be remediated if the government forced them to IPO Instagram and Whatsapp as separate companies?

Which demonstrates the error of allowing companies to exist as long as they're "competitive" with no requirement that they play nice with others.

Not all of them, but that would slow down their hypnotizing ad-feed machine. Baby steps into this direction are way better than the metaverse bullshit that we'll see in a few years down the road IMO.

Would it? How do you think a standalone Instagram would make money? It would still be run by the same management, maintained by the same developers, and still owned in part by Zuckerberg.

The only thing that would change is that Instagram devs W-2s would say Instagram inc instead of Facebook inc

I think, that the first step should have been treating social media platforms as media companies. This would be enough to hold them accountable for their impact on the society.

How so? What would this change?

Not sure if that would fix all the problems.

I think the SEC (or Congress, if legislation is required) should prohibit publicly traded companies from having dual-class shares with a 10 to 1 supervoting ratio. Some of the problems with FB are probably caused by Zuckerberg being accountable to no one.

We live in a world where all of our major journalists release fun, high-five-everybody-look-at-how-shit-this-thing-is mockery pieces for every new mistake by a tech company but where are the front page Vice pieces, Washington Post articles, or NYT exposés when Johnson and Johnson sells 33,000 bottles of baby power with asbestos in them? Why wasn't Johnson and Johnson's CEO dragged in front of congress, why don't we hear constant calls to break up Johnson and Johnson? This is just one example, but it's hilarious to see the outrage, the snide articles and nose-turned-up comments, while we conveniently ignore the worst industries that are destroying our planet, the slave labor that goes into all of our physical products, the poison that often finds its way into them, or the destruction they are wreaking on nature.

As a site dominated by tech industry employees, it's time that people working in tech stop simply nodding their heads when people shift the cultural spotlight on corporate malfeasance onto tech's bully target of the year/decade, over and over and over again. We get it, social media is fucked up. Great. Now, where are the Frances Haugen's of BigChemical or BigCPG? Why aren't they household names? Why aren't we collectively outraged they aren't at congressional hearings?

This piece by Vice absolutely embodies the snide tone, the absolute derision with which we decided it's OK to paint Facebook. That's well and good, Facebook isn't great, but doing so while turning a blind eye to far greater crimes is a crime that itself ought to be castigated. A journalists mission is in part to embody the Fourth Estate - to be a watchdog. When all journalism does is stand around the classroom and pat each other on the back and point at the dunce-hat wearing stooge of the decade making obvious mistakes in an echo chamber while ignoring the subtle crimes of the popular kid, it's worthy of the same snide comments itself.

J&J poisoning babies doesn't make Facebook less bad.

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

The term "whataboutism" is often used (like in this case) to shield against legitimate criticism. The above poster is not claiming that FB is not bad or should not be criticized - he is saying that he thinks the media treatment of contemporary moral issues is not weighted properly. Maybe you still disagree with him, but simply calling "whataboutism" muddies the water.

Here is a great episode of Citations Needed about the term "whataboutism": https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-66-whatabouti...

Thank you for the link. Kind of awesome there's an hour long podcast on this concept.

This thread went Meta and we are no longer talking about Facebook.

You just did the same thing.

We live in a world where two or more bad things can be talked about at the same time.

> but where are the front page Vice pieces, Washington Post articles, or NYT exposés when Johnson and Johnson sells 33,000 bottles of baby power with asbestos in them?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/433jdg/johnson-and-johnson-l...

I have no doubt these crimes do get written about, but they're third-rate beats, rarely front-page material. They don't lead to mass condemnation, they don't lead to boycotts, they don't result in congressional hearings.

Hmm like https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-su... or https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-talc-cong... ?

I remember reading about the talc issue in Spain, and a quick search led me to congressional action on talc: https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairman-kri... I’m afraid the bias might be elsewhere.

They do.

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-su...

edit: three people frantically googling in unison. A beautiful sight.

That article is literally by the same "beat" as the parent article.

But on your point on boycotts, yes they did[0] and on congressional hearings, also yes they did [1].

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/activists-call-bo...

[1] https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-su...

Disclaimer: I work for an Alphabet company

I think there is a difference in the tone and and style of media coverage that large tech companies attract. I very much agree that there are a lot of terrible things happening in the world but I think it is fair to question whether or not the bias that journalist bring apportions our outrage appropriately.

Increasingly, media consumers don’t know anything about chemistry, or industry, or manufacturing, or have any contacts in that world, which, to be fair, is increasingly outsourced, subcontracted, offshored, and inaccessible.

But they do spend a lot of time on Facebook, so media spends more time writing about Facebook because they know their audience will understand it (and click on it).

Can you blame journalists for hating big tech, when they are destroying their profession? Journalists are forced to bang out 20 clickables a day to keep up, because you've got to get those PAGE VIEWS.

The only injection of adrenaline into the veins of investigative journalism were the four years of shockingly incompetent, corrupt, and vile Trump administration.

Investigative journalism requires resources and talent, and this arena is bleeding both. And when they do dig into something, they suddenly become "main stream narratives" and "fake news".

Charlie Sykes actually had a devastating episode on the Bulwark podcast about this yesterday. Gutting of local news is leading to rampant corruption on the local level, because no one is watching. And the "small government" crowd, you know, the misguided libertarians on this very site, clamor for less oversight. Because that's what it's all about.

You see the Trump years as some sort of revitalization of journalism? I have a very different take away from those years.

Am I supposed to guess what your takeaway is?

The quality of journalism(both left and right) was degrading before trump, accelerated during trump, and is continuing to degrade.

They were ranting about the 4th estate...it is their job to cover stuff like this.

Honest question, did you read the article?

micdrop

What Facebook is doing to humanity is far worse than selling baby powder with possible asbestos contamination. Maybe J&J made a mistake, maybe they didn't, but it's not core to their business model like Philip Morris selling cigarettes or Facebook amplifying evil.

> where are the front page Vice pieces, Washington Post articles, or NYT exposés when Johnson and Johnson sells 33,000 bottles of baby power with asbestos in them?

No, no, no. J&J is a good American company. Family values. Takes care of it's employees like family. Good for the economy. Ma & Pa Values.

They're nothing like free-and-footloose wild Facebook.

Of course, that's the image they want everyone to believe, and old money companies work very, very hard to continue that.

This is the crux of the debate in my opinion - it's old money (finance, journalism, entertainment) vs new money (tech) that threatens to eat all their businesses alive. This is nothing more than a power struggle between the ownership classes.

How is J&J threatened by Facebook?

Will this Third Life be so addictive, people will let their children shit themselves and use no baby powder?

I mean technology in a general sense. But for J&J specifically, there's always the chance that a fast moving biotechnology startup will outcompete them.

You’re correct that there isn’t enough diversification of wrongdoing covered by the press. However, it’s not enough to just conclude the chapter on social media. This is a watershed moment that has been utterly necessary ever since Facebook was implicated in the elections and Cambridge Analytica.

The reality is most people don’t care to understand how social media is at the heart of everything, even journalism. The news sites you mentioned above are prominent sources and participants on Twitter. What does not get traction there, doesn’t make money for them, and so we are stuck in this feedback loop in which something trends and we get clickbait headlines while the world burns.

It’s actually surprising news media can step back and see who their real publishers and modern day printing presses are. Perhaps they can appreciate how tangled up they are in the feedback cycle of getting clicks because fewer and fewer people actually subscribe and passively read via social media, which nets … Meta … more money than the journal.

That is the tragedy of news media today. It’s the death of the local journal and consolidation of large media operations which are increasingly at the whim of Twitter trends and ad revenue.

So let’s keep talking about social media until we can prise control, regulate, and have healthy discussions about things other than lifestyle choices and top 10 lists.

that media coverage though ...

What a joke. The only difference between FB and Twitter is that all these virtuous jornos are on Twitter day and night, signaling to each other. FB is being singled out for destruction because it has not yet caved in to the party line and started censoring all the speech the ruling elite deems wrong.

That's so woke, weird and awkward. Zuckerberg, trying to be natural, the interview, the interviewer, the parties, the people.. I hope that isn't our future as civilization.

What do you mean by woke in this context?

the whole first introduction video, for instance. Nothing is organic.

I don’t think I understand. It’s woke because it is not organic?

OP either doesn't understand the term, or is trying to decontextualize it. Hypernormalization[0] in action.

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thLgkQBFTPw

HyperNormalisation is a great way to describe it and would fit too, however nobody knows it today, which is a shame. Regarding, woke as a term, the term meaning changed along the years. As i used here, was as the Economist described it[1]: "outlook on a host of issues as well as on race". For me sounds like whoever produced this video, had a checklist of groups that should be seem, maybe yes giving up on the complex "real world" and built a simpler "fake world" to avoid bad PR on Twitter (which is per se, a fake world).

[1] https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/07/30/...

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