Facebook Renames to Meta • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#611

Post by dnautics » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

uuddlrlr wrote: post #344

carbonguy wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story. I'm confident I don't want them to own it - or for it to be owned by a single party of any kind, for that matter. > Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up (even if contradictory to short-term gains in ad revenue) so it has a chance to grow? I mean, that would be nice f…

>I don't think Facebook is constitutionally able to give up ad revenue gains This "fiduciary duty" meme really needs to die. Seriously the idea of fiduciary duty [to maximixe profit] is dystopian, corporations don't fuck us over because they have to they do it because they can. Edit: clarify

The "fiduciary duty meme" is exactly what GP did not mean as per their disclaimer. Constitutionally in this sense means "as a result of it's constitutive makeup", i.e., it's culture, hierarchy, incentive structures, employees, managers etc.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#612

Post by carbonguy » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #362

carbonguy wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story. I'm confident I don't want them to own it - or for it to be owned by a single party of any kind, for that matter. > Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up (even if contradictory to short-term gains in ad revenue) so it has a chance to grow? I mean, that would be nice f…

> How much would it cost to just send every one of them an Oculus headset for free? $200+ billion. They can't afford it. They couldn't get the manufacturing for it, either.

> They couldn't get the manufacturing for it, either.

A very good point. I think the financing would be less of an issue, honestly; $200 billion a lot of cash up front, but spread out over five or ten years it's well within their FCF if they wanted to allocate it that way.

EDIT: As another comment pointed out, FB might also be able to convince advertisers to subsidize some (or all) of the costs of "free" headsets for the masses, if they wanted to try this scheme.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#613

Post by Oddskar » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

coolspot wrote: post #264

czottmann wrote: post #29

Still a terrible, terrible organisation that's detrimental to societies and humankind as such.

Twitter is 100 times more toxic than FB, but somehow everyone is focused on FB. I guess someone powerful is annoyed.

Maybe you missed the part where FB undermined the US election?

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#614

Post by Ancapistani » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #269

rhcom2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kneejerk reaction is this will probably waste a lot of their money without much traction. But I'm also happy about Facebook wasting a bunch of their money...

All depends if they can deliver on AR before anyone else. Gotta remember outside of Oculus, their entire product portfolio exists on top of the platforms of their competitors. This is their play to own the entire thing from the foundation up and the resources they'll be willing to use to accomplish that will be huge and really their only competition is Apple because Google gave up.

> All depends if they can deliver on AR before anyone else.

Nope. It matters only if the gain wide adoption before anyone else. If they do, they become the de facto owner of that space.

They definitely have the resources to do that.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#615

Post by xtat » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

brap wrote: post #125

The video they put out is extremely cringe. The whole “metaverse” thing is cringe. It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men who never challenge him and only tell him what he likes to hear. He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience.

So much this.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#616

Post by InitialLastName » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

coolspot wrote: post #264

czottmann wrote: post #29

Still a terrible, terrible organisation that's detrimental to societies and humankind as such.

Twitter is 100 times more toxic than FB, but somehow everyone is focused on FB. I guess someone powerful is annoyed.

FB is 10 times larger than Twitter, and is diversified across a fairly large number of different platforms.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#617

Post by hmate9 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

Metadata would have been a better name

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#618

Post by threatofrain » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #462

uuddlrlr wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think Facebook is constitutionally able to give up ad revenue gains This "fiduciary duty" meme really needs to die. Seriously the idea of fiduciary duty [to maximixe profit] is dystopian, corporations don't fuck us over because they have to they do it because they can. Edit: clarify

It's especially dubious in Facebook's case because Mark Zuckerberg controls the majority of voting shares. If he wanted to run the company straight into the ground I doubt anyone could stop him.

I don't think you can sell shares to the public and then deliberately screw over your shareholders. If Zuckerberg acted terribly then he may be exposed to liability.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#619

Post by noncoml » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #352

brap wrote: post #125

The video they put out is extremely cringe. The whole “metaverse” thing is cringe. It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men who never challenge him and only tell him what he likes to hear. He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience.

To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whats…

> the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened

Don't want to downplay it, but having access to all the info users give to FB is like insider-trading. They know very well what is trending, what is growing and what is going nowhere.

The main difference is that Metaverse is something the want to build from scratch, not something that already exists like Insta and WhatsApp, so they don't have that insider-trading info.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#620

Post by brap » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #576

brap wrote: post #125

The video they put out is extremely cringe. The whole “metaverse” thing is cringe. It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men who never challenge him and only tell him what he likes to hear. He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience.

That "cringe" your feeling could be how people felt about the Internet in the 80s. Just keep that in mind.

Maybe. But the internet grew organically, over decades. It was not shoved down our throats by a corporation telling us “this is cool, this is what everyone wants now, and this is the future”. I’m sure VR/AR will be big too, but it’s going to take a while, many technological breakthroughs, and it’s not going to look like that.