Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#281

Post by baby » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

after_care wrote: post #229

grawprog wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the 'Internet' becoming more and more 'real life' in general >Facebook is absolutely one of the best-positioned companies to be able to become a long-term market leader in these areas I think the reason for the negativity is possibly because maybe a company that's managed to create a massive platform where reality is massively distorted and manipulated algorithmically to maximize ad revenue and engangement, whatever…

It’s simple natural selection that the most engaging social media platforms became the most profitable, influential, and popular. There’s no guarantee that VR/AR will have the same selection pressure, and if the tech does have the same selection pressure than whoever wins will be engaging as well. IMO Facebook creating the metaverse is like Xerox creating the GUI. Most likely the things that made Facebook successfull…

That’s my worry as well, that they’re not capable of capturing the market due to being a software company. But… they have hired like crazy and at this point I’m assuming most people working there have no link whatsoever with fb, so if they own all the experts there’s a good chance they’ll capture the market. As long as they keep iterating they’ll be fine.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#282

Post by moogly » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

_gohp wrote: post #185

You have to give one thing to the guy, he keeps pushing, he could retire 1000times over. What is driving him? Anyone knows him from younger years? Most similar people(on a smaller scale) i know are money driven even though they have enough. But at this level? Makes you wonder what his final goal is?

> What is driving him?

Megalomania. His 2017 "manifesto" made that rather clear to me. In it, he came off as trying to sound like the president of the world.

I think that was also the year he spent time traveling the US states "to meet real folk".

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#283

Post by baby » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

paconbork wrote: post #191

Apocryphon wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every community needs a villain, but ask yourself this: whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that it abandoned in 2018? M? Facebook Home? Parse? Wirehog? As seen with Google, just having excellent engineers and revenue are insufficient to building lasting products, much less fulfilling an aggressive long-term mission.

Libra became Novi and is still in active development for what it's worth

Libra became Diem*

Novi is the team at facebook that works on Diem and the novi wallet.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#284

Post by tablespoon » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #175

Facebook has so far tried, and failed, to do this. Twice. First was Facebook Spaces. Opened 2017, closed 2019. This was a VR world. Not a very good one. It was mostly a 3D approach to a desktop.[1] You could hand other people flat pictures. Sharing! Total flop. Second was Facebook Horizon. Opened 2020, still running, but not getting much attention. It's a 3D cartoon level VR world. Works OK, not very interesting or p…

> Plus there's a panic button which puts you in a "personal safe zone", where you're in a bubble until Security gets there to rescue you from whomever is annoying you. While it's still running, Facebook doesn't mention Horizon any more.

> [2] https://youtu.be/Uf_9J_EdzZw

That video is kind of amazing. It's all people of color, until one white guy shows up and immediately gets blocked.

Also, all their safety team can do is make a recording and submit a report for further review? That seems stupid and pointless.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#285

Post by baby » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #177

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zuckerberg are favorite villains in the tech discourse in 2021. I don't agree with everything Facebook has done, but the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality that it's getting hard to take it seriously. > this still does seem like a ve…

Every community needs a villain, but ask yourself this: whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that it abandoned in 2018? M? Facebook Home? Parse? Wirehog? As seen with Google, just having excellent engineers and revenue are insufficient to building lasting products, much less fulfilling an aggressive long-term mission.

Libra and Portal are still things. Not sure I hard about the others.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#286

Post by h2odragon » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #274

giobox wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR/AR is such a new paradigm for interacting with computers I think that its inevitable companies will make many failures before finding the apps and hardware that clicks with customers. In 2017, we had only had mainstream non-beta VR headset hardware in the marketplace since 2016 (original consumer Rift, HTC Vive), lets not forget the 20 years of PDA hardware/software attempts we lived through before the mainstream…

VR/AR is such a new paradigm for interacting with computers. Not really. I tried Jaron Lainer's original VR rig back in the 1980s. The Autodesk system from the 1980s. The W Industries system ... the HTC Vibe. The Microsoft HoloLens. There's been progress, but usability really hasn't improved all that much. You can shoot at people. That works fine. You can sort of use swords. Everything else, not so much. That's why B…

The Autodesk system ran on what, a pair of RS/6000? I got to chat with some of their guys showing that off at a trade show in off moments over a few days; they were great at running the demo but were umm... unenthused about the prospects of anyone keeping the system running for any time without high grade help.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#287

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

yann2 wrote: post #233

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zuckerberg are favorite villains in the tech discourse in 2021. I don't agree with everything Facebook has done, but the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality that it's getting hard to take it seriously. > this still does seem like a ve…

Excellent engineers and revenues that massively dwarf FBs can be found at AT&T too but tell us how much attention you pay to whatever bullshit comes out of their CEOs 6 inch chimp brain.

Though I haven't been a customer of AT&T since the 1990s, I can see they run a large physical infrastructure operation that delivers communications services. I understand where their revenue comes from and what they mostly spend it on (ie I understand that as well as I do FB's business despite having no contact with AT&T).

Also, AT&T isn't constantly spamming me with disinformation and bad memes, nor do I have the impression that they're tracking my every move across the internet.

While knowing nothing about AT&T's CEO, I'm pretty sure that s/he doesn't sit atop a weird corporate governance structure where the CEO holds a majority of the voting shares and is thus a dictator-for-life.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#288

Post by baby » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #241

vineyardmike wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that was abandoned in 2018? M? Parse? Wirehog? Agree with your point - to a limit. Some of facebook experiements flopped but not all. Also, unlike Google, fb mostly marketed them as experiements. Replying mostly for sharing purposes since not all of these products' histories are common knowledge. N…

> Also, unlike Google, fb mostly marketed them as experiements. Fair enough. Though I'd argue that with these big internet companies, the line between actual product and perpetually in beta experiment is blurred, more often by Google than others. > IMO it was good tech no one trusted (understandably). And as a consequence, the adoption of Portal seems pretty negligible. > I think it was a huge missed opportunity for…

I’m wondering about numbers for portal actually. It’s hard to believe that it didn’t turn a profit during covid. I had one to talk to my parents (who had one too) and it was too small but it was still great to have. If the big version wasn’t so expensive I would have bought it in a heartbeat for me and my oldies.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#289

Post by baby » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

mustacheemperor wrote: post #227

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zuckerberg are favorite villains in the tech discourse in 2021. I don't agree with everything Facebook has done, but the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality that it's getting hard to take it seriously. > this still does seem like a ve…

>the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality It has completely poisoned discussion on a number of virtual reality communities, since Facebook owns Oculus and the Quest 2 is very commercially successful. The /r/virtualreality community has become incredible negative, tribal, and toxic over the last couple years, mostly revolving around conspiratorial speculation about the future of the ocu…

I find that very sad. Talked to a friend today who really want a Quest but didn’t buy one because facebook. I told him to just create a fake account, but heh. People are scared of cookies nowadays.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’

#290

Post by baby » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

Niglodonicus wrote: post #130

artfulhippo wrote: post #55

The Verge podcast[0] where Zuck made this comment was quite revealing. Without naming Apple specifically, Zuck managed to communicate an intense fear that Facebook would be locked out of Apple's upcoming AR platform. Is the 'metaverse' inevitable? Or is it merely sci-fi wishful thinking? If 'interoperability' and 'decentralization' means that you can't avoid targeted advertising, I'll pass. [0]: https://www.theverge.…

I seriously hope enough people are still grounded enough in this reality to reject AR/VR bullshit besides as a fun playground like VRchat or what have you. Integrating either or both into daily life would be fucking godawful.

VR is awesome.