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Comment by pearjuice | Hacker News Reader

I still don't understand Meta's obsession with the "metaverse" and Zuckerberg going all-in. Or what exactly the plan/paradigm is. With the world largely reopening again I feel being in a virtual world becomes less and less appealing. Especially for this younger generation who lost roughly 2 years of socializing and doing actual stuff in real life. If this metaverse was ready and useful right around when the pandemic/lockdowns started it might at least see some adoption.

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It's a hail mary.

Zuckerberg knows Facebook is turning into an hollow husk of its former self and the metaverse is his last ditch attempt to keep things together.

It really felt like Facebook just had a perfect grip on the market since they had almost the whole planet signed up. But the rapid rise of tiktok, reddit, and in some ways telegram have just shown that the market has not settled and the current leader can be dethroned quite rapidly.

> and in some ways telegram have just shown that the market has not settled and the current leader can be dethroned quite rapidly.

There were a number of things that led to Telegram's (relative) success. One of them is the owner itself - Whatsapp has suffered in reputation with the sell-out to Facebook, especially when they announced to combine the data stores of both companies. From then on, it was widely seen as "yet another thing of Facebook where they want all your data" despite Whatsapp actually offering better encryption than Telegram. Telegram in contrast is seen as "independent" from any major political power - Durov's fight with the Russian government is well known, as is its opposition to Western demands.

Another issue was cross-device compatibility. Whatsapp used to be completely immovable between Android and iOS, and its web UI for a long time was tethered to the phone, meaning it would drain your battery. That has only changed recently, but (IMO) too late.

And the final thing were the mass-fanout capabilities. Telegram groups allowed quick dissemination and discussion of information, for open groups even without requiring a Telegram account. Whatsapp had neither. Then add to that the resistance of Telegram towards any kind of moderation, especially from Western governments... and suddenly a bunch of conspiracy theorists, vaccine deniers and outright Nazis had the perfect platform. No moderation from the platform side, no content requirements other than "please don't spread CSAM", and effective management tools for group admins to yeet off counterspeech attempts. These days, you have QAnon groups numbering six-digit subscribers [1], and the same for German copycats [2].

Telegram's success is mostly based on outright ignorance and defiance of the rules everyone else (including Facebook) plays by.

[1]: https://www.logically.ai/articles/new-telegram-research-show...

[2]: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/kontraste/querdenken-...

Agree to everything here. Telegram feels almost like a return to the old web where you have a ton of small groups which each have total control over the content. There is no global telegram news feed and no global admins or rules (other than removing spam and illegal stuff).

It’s almost refreshing in a way. There is certainly unsavoury content being shared around but it doesn’t affect the average telegram user in any way because they don’t see it if they don’t subscribe to it.

> Then add to that the resistance of Telegram towards any kind of moderation, especially from Western governments... and suddenly a bunch of conspiracy theorists, vaccine deniers and outright Nazis had the perfect platform. No moderation from the platform side, no content requirements other than "please don't spread CSAM", and effective management tools for group admins to yeet off counterspeech attempts. These days, you have QAnon groups numbering six-digit subscribers [1], and the same for German copycats [2].

How is that any different to WhatsApp? WhatsApp is used by neo-nazi groups[0], used to organise literal genocide[1] and is the main source of covid/vaccine conspiracy nonsense around the world (except for the U.S.)

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/germany-suspends-29-cops-over-...

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/whatsapp-de...

The thing is, the scale of Whatsapp is completely different. WA can have 256 members in a group or broadcast, Telegram 200.000 - three orders of magnitude more.

Yeah Telegram is great for hate speech and other shady stuff. Wouldn't be surprised if it gets secret support from Russia to destabilize Western societies.

Telegram's founder was forced to sell his business to Putin's cronies and leave Russia after he publicly refused to cooperate with Russian secret services during anti-Putin protests back when he was still running VK (Russia's Facebook). A few years later, Kremlin banned Telegram in Russia. I find the idea that Telegram is funded by Russia ridiculous. He is as anti-Putin as you can get.

I get the impression that it's basically that he has never known defeat in his adult life and now he is eager tho find his limits. Supported by the old midlife-crisis mechanism, is this all there is? Now or never! And VR is likely a bit of a childhood dream thing: to people who grew up in the home computer era virtual reality is just as much "how the future was supposed to be" as space rockets and flying cars are to those born twenty years earlier.

FB managed to capture successive generations with FB then Instagram. But Tik Tok got the latest and that's the problem. FB can't grow any more because the young generation isn't going to use its products.

But what "social" thing is there after short form video? Something VR related, so FB is going to try and build it in the hope they can snag the generation after tiktok one assumes.

You nailed it. Rather than competing, he's going after a new market altogether. I don't recall FB ever innovating in a new space successfully, they usually buy it. Does not bode well for the long term of FB.

I don't even understand what it is. Is it something like Second Life? And is that like an old Vernor Vinge story called "True Names" which in turn is like a bunch of old Star Trek episodes and other such things? When I see "metamates"I read it as "metamites" and then as "catamites" and it makes me wonder what is really going on.

Apparently the currently available product is indeed like Second Life (aka VRChat, a game that was released in early 2017 with superior functionality and is still the most actively played VR game) but "The Metaverse" is apparently referring to a group of interconnected products that hasn't been fully released yet.

> I don't even understand what it is

it's bullshit

Gentrified Second Life.

It's the matrix basically. The value is obvious imo just the technology is still at least 10 years too early.

To be fair, Meta started working on the components of its "metaverse" before COVID-19. It is a weird gamble though. I get that Facebook needs a new product ready before Facebook and Instagram succumb to the next social media platform, or just lose relevance, but their metaverse seems like it's not thought through.

My main concern about the traction for the metaverse is how are they going to pull people in? The good thing about both Facebook and Instagram is that you can use both product on the go. You don't have to set aside time for it. Celebreties and influencers aren't going to move from Instagram, where they can do few posts during the day from where ever they happen to be, to a platform where they need to put on special equipment and allocate hours where they can't do anything else. I question whether or not you're actually able to be an influencer, if you spend hours a day in a virtual world. That's not inspiring or even that interesting.

VR makes sense for gaming, not but social media.

The issue is that a company like Facebook no longer thinks in terms of "what would be a good product?". They think about revenue, margins, cash flow, business relations.

If anything Facebook should fix existing known problems with social media, work on the trust relationship between the company and the users (e.g. by retiring Zuckerberg) and then maybe think about how to integrate a social platform with augmented reality and VR on a big scale.

But as of now Facebook/Meta is not in the position to create a new userbase around some mediocre new app. Either it is so undeniably good that everybody understands it without a second thought, or they need to find a way to move their old userbase over to the new thing slowly.

But having a mediocre thing from an company that most people actively distrust is not enough.

VR does work for social media in a way because VR chat is the most popular VR app. I just don’t see how facebook can compete by building essentially the NFT version of VR chat where instead of limitless ability you get a locked down version of VR spaces.

It's easy to understand, put yourself in the shoes of someone who's life has been engrossed in facebook and social networks since the early 2000s -- warped vision of reality

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