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Comment by watercooler_guy | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg did state, for this interview back in July (https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-c...), that

> ...just like you have the W3C that helps set standards around a bunch of the important internet protocols and how people build the web, I think there will need to be some of that here, too, for defining how developers and creators can build experiences that allow someone to take their avatar and their digital goods and their friends, and be able to teleport seamlessly between all these different experiences.

I'm sure Facebook is looking to have a big and profitable presence in the metaverse, but the point is that it's not one big walled garden like Facebook, but more like the Web as a whole.

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Everything we have learnt about companies in the past decade or century makes me doubt this. One recent standard is Google's AMP, which was marketed as a standard to improve the web. It was shown in the recent court filings to be used as a way to impede header bidding and they added 1 second delays to non-AMP ads to give AMP a boost. Like we have clearly defined and enshrined in law the #1 law of all companies - maximize shareholder value. The second shareholder value conflicts with public good, there can only be one winner. Why is anyone surprised?

Comparing themselves to W3C is a nice trick but they are not at all alike. W3C is a non-profit funded by its members. Facebook is a shareholder-controlled corporation.

sure he says that but what they’re doing is the opposite. They’re not releasing standards, they’re not making the equivalent of a cgi-bin server that lets me run my own simulation that someone can transit to from someone else’s simulation, they’re not releasing a high quality client that can target simulations owned by other companies, etc. They say people can make spaces but it’s very Geocities. Sure, people can make stuff inside their playground, but nothing they’re doing makes it easier to set up my own playground on my own infra. Everything they’re doing suggests they think the way to “win” the metaverse is to own all of the spaces. Idiotic. That’s like trying to win the web by having all of the web pages.

but isn't it good that the standards aren't coming from Facebook, but rather will have to come from a more neutral source? I also wouldn't expect a big corp to be the one to create open standards for the rest of the community.

The way I see it, Facebook kicking off the push towards a metaverse is kind of like Bell Labs creating Unix. Sure it took a big corp with a lot of money, but that gives the rest of the community something to emulate and build off of, or decide what parts they do and don't like, and so eventually we'll have the metaverse equivalent of Linux. (edited for clarity of the first paragraph)

> but isn't it good that the standards aren't coming from Facebook, but rather will have to come from a more neutral source?

What's to say that's how it's going to go here?

> I also wouldn't expect a big corp to be the one to create open standards for the rest of the community.

Exactly. So root for a W3C metaverse, not Facebook's walled garden.

Apple also praised the virtues of the open web and web apps when they introduced the iPhone, but that didn't last too long.

They announced support for PWAs using web vr tech. You can guess the kicker: it has to go through the store paying 30% to Meta. That's the new web experience.

Here's what happened the last time this was tried:

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/vwrap/

That's pretty vague and can also describe the Roblox model. Roblox gets a cut of all revenue from other companies' games and spaces.

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