Facebook and the future
The beginning of the end - or the end of the beginning?
A few days before Facebook announced its rebrand I ran a Twitter poll asking if I should write about the metaverse or Keir Starmer this week. The metaverse was a narrow winner just 24 hours before it became the most talked about topic on the internet. As such the article below is not as fresh as it might have been but I promised myself I would write something this week so I’ve stuck it up here anyway….
It’s easy to mock Facebook’s rebrand. Scoffing and guffawing are an understandable response to a cynical and at times cringe worthy effort to divert our attention away from undesirable coverage.
The time honoured distraction technique was deployed to drown out excoriating analysis of a corporate moral bankcruptcy which we now know included a failure to effectively address ways the platform has been used to propagate civil war, human trafficking and genocide.
Set against such a charge sheet, it doesn’t really matter what Facebook is called. What matters is that beneath the froth is a statement of ambition to colonise the next frontier of the internet.
We must not allow the same people, the same license, to make the same mistakes twice.
This begins by resisting their efforts to frame the terms of the debate over regulation of digital platforms.
The shiny baubles of the metaverse are a rational temptation for Facebook. Let me explain why.
The Metaverse is an attempt to use breathtakingly powerful computing - including artificial intelligence - to create an ‘always on’ parallel universe. Made up of connected virtual spaces, it will mostly be accessed through wearable technology and play host to virtual people, virtual property, virtual currencies and virtually anything else you can think of.
For a child of the early 90’s like me this sounds a bit like how I imagined computer games to be if they were really, really good. For the child of today engaging with immersive virtual spaces is a reality. A slow fusion between gaming, social media and popular culture has been taking place in recent years. In 2019 the online game Fortnite hosted a concert by Marshmello at it’s virtual ‘Pleasant Park’ venue which is estimated to have been attended by 10 million people. The online gaming platform Roblox has almost 200 million users and recently partnered with Warner Bros to promote Hamilton writer Lin Manuel Miranda’s new film In the Heights.
Whilst this has been happening Facebook has been losing teenage users, finding itself trailing behind Tik Tok and YouTube for use amongst 13-17 year olds.
With future generations set to grow up as ‘virtual natives’ there is an opportunity for Facebook to develop new products or even platforms which can engage consumers before they start school and address dwindling popularity with younger people (likely through new brands). The people who design these services will have the chance to set the frameworks by which they are accessed, regulated and governed. Which is precisely why we should be alarmed by Facebook’s ambitions in the metaverse.
Facebook is far from the first giant global corporation to put profit before people. Yet the speed at which it has grown from a trivial website ranking the perceived attractiveness of Harvard University students, to a company with an estimated 2.9 billion users has seen it outpace any meaningful regulation.
It has cornered a huge share of the ‘attention economy’ in which the time we spend online is harvested for data in order to sell us adverts. They have done so with a ruthless growth focused mindset and the purchase of competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp under the noses of regulators charged with avoiding monopolistic practices. By biding their time before cashing in on the value of their social network Facebook managed to grow and corner the market before reaping the rewards.
If you think about the internet in terms of territory, Facebook has already colonised vast swathes of land and is extracting resources (in this case mind-boggling amounts of data) with scant regard for the consequences.
The prospect of the metaverse opens up new frontiers with vastly more potential value. In 2020 the average internet user spent just over 30 minutes a day on Facebook but the average gamer spent over an hour a day playing their favourite game. In addition, in the metaverse we will require new technology to engage with the metaverse which will need to be purchased by consumers and will offer new sources of data. Virtual avatars, spaces and currencies will offer new opportunities for advertising novel revenue streams as well as creating the potential to corner new markets in digital identity or cryptocurrency.
This is a major growth opportunity for a ruthlessly growth focused company. The metaverse is yet to be built but once it is, it will generate familiar commercial opportunities and social challenges. Facebook’s success in the metaverse is by no means guaranteed but it’s not hard to see why they - and seemingly their shareholders - think a similar playbook can serve them well in the years ahead.
So can we trust them to do things differently this time when it comes to considering the unanticipated social consequences of the metaverse? However well meaning Nick Clegg might be this is hard to do.
The papers released by whistleblower Frances Haugen represent a tipping point for me from a perspective where Facebook could retain some benefit of the doubt to an informed opinion that they are morally bankrupt. A new set of values have appeared which are almost diametrically opposed to the infamous ‘move fast and break things’ but so far there’s no sign from Mark Zuckerberg of a meaningful mea culpa.
Alongside new corporate values Facebook has also begun to talk about values within future digital infrastructure. One example of this is a focus on interoperability, which is the idea that internet users should be able to transfer their identity or possessions between different platforms. Yet at the end of the day somebody will still need to own and develop the platforms through which we interact. Be in no doubt that Meta intends to be that somebody.
With legislation like the Online Safety Bill in the UK and the EU’s Digital Services Act currently coming to life and ongoing conversations about the future of Section 230 in the US a conversation is underway in earnest about the future of the internet.
That conversation is urgent and we should demand the attention from political leaders that it deserves.
If the revelations of the past week generate the impact they warrant then this week will have been the beginning of the end for the company formerly known as Facebook. Unless something changes - thanks to expensive PR and massive corporate power - it’s much more likely to be the end of the beginning.
Earlier this year I published a paper about Digital Information Ecosystems in which I argued that organisations who want to change the world for the better will need to develop the skills and tools they need to effectively navigate a complex fragmented internet. The metaverse will provide yet another way to reach and influence audiences online - getting on top of how to do that remains a critical challenge for the future of communications. Read more here.