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Apple iPod Creator Warns the Metaverse Will Encourage Trolls, Damage Human Interaction (bbc.com) 65

Posted by BeauHD from the current-reality-isn't-much-better-though dept.
Tony Fadell, Apple's iPod creator and Nest co-founder, warns the metaverse risks creating more trolls and damaging human interaction. The BBC reports: The virtual reality-based metaverse removes the ability "to look into the other person's face," Tony Fadell said. "If you put technology between that human connection that's when the toxicity happens," he said. [...] While Mr Fadell said the technology behind the metaverse has merit: "When you're trying to make social interaction and social connection, when you can't look into the other person's face, you can't see their eyes you don't have real humanistic ways of connecting. It become disintermediated and you have the ability at that point to create more trolls, people who hide behind things and then use that to their advantage to get attention." He added: "We need to regain control of that human connection, we don't need more technology between us."

He said told The Verge that people should not be living through "small, glowing rectangles" such as their phones. "A lot of the meetings that we have today, you're looking at a grid of faces on a screen. That's not how we process things either." However, the metaverse has also prompted criticism and concerns over safety due to the ability of people to create and hide behind avatars. Mr Fadell said: "We had the same problem with text-based commenting and with blogs, we've had it with videos now we're going to have it in metaverse."
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Apple iPod Creator Warns the Metaverse Will Encourage Trolls, Damage Human Interaction More

Apple iPod Creator Warns the Metaverse Will Encourage Trolls, Damage Human Interaction

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  • So social media..... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ogar572 ( 531320 ) on Thursday May 12, 2022 @04:31PM (#62527418)
    hasn't done that already???

    • I can't imagine human interaction could get any worse without living in mud homes and being raided by vikings.

      • Once you pay the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane.

      • At least when that Vikings killing you, you can look him in the eyes so he knows the person he's killings gonna be cursing his dreams for the rest of his life.

        Thats kinda what social media is missing. Humans only do half our communication with words. The other halfs facial expressions and body language. I've lost account of the amount of time I've had an argument with some antivaxer gasbag online and realised later on I had no idea if he was sincerely being an anti-science asshole, some teenage edgelord tro

      • You know that the idea of raping & pillaging Vikings was invented by the Victorians, don't you? At least in the history lessons I can remember, we learnt about trade & assimilation, with conflict being rather minimal. Those populations around East Anglia weren't exactly defenceless.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by whitroth ( 9367 )

          To go a-viking meant going out on a raid-or-trade expedition, whichever looked to have better ROI. "“From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us!” is from 793 CE.

    • Yes, lol. This isn't even worthy of a showerthoughts post, it's an absolute "durr" moment.
      • Humans are on the cusp of finally escaping the Earth by inventing reusable spacecraft.
        And we coincidentally get a new tower of Babel to confound us at just about the same time.

        Whoever is scripting this reality is a lazy hack and most likely a drunkard to boot.
    • It has done that, and continues to do that. It doesn't 'bring people together', it gives them an excuse to 'stay apart and avoid each other'.

      • Maybe that's what people really want.

        when you can't look into the other person's face, you can't see their eyes you don't have real humanistic ways of connecting. It become disintermediated and you have the ability at that point to create more trolls, people who hide behind things and then use that to their advantage to get attention." He added: "We need to regain control of that human connection, we don't need more technology between us."

        Maybe he's talking about himself, maybe the curmudgeons here are talking about themselves, maybe the next generation will be perfectly happy living in the world they grew up in.

        IIRC there was plenty of bullying and shaming and lying going on back when kids didn't have smartphones. Which is worse?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by whitroth ( 9367 )

          Back then, it was mostly in person. Now, trolls,16 yr old assholes, and paid performers can do it anonymously.

          And then there's all the assholes who MUST ANSWER TEXT IMMEDIATELY, including while your fucking DRIVING.

        • Revealing myself as someone who was bullied extensively as a kid, and remembering what that was like, I can tell you that there was, even in-person, layers of intentional separation between myself and those doing the bullying: did they ever make an effort to actually know me or understand me? Or did they just go off of appearances, assumptions, and stereotypes? Clearly, the latter. It's easy for humans to treat other humans poorly when you won't even acknowledge that they're human beings like you to begin w

  • I've watched numerous young people on VRChat go from awkward and mostly mute to comfortable speaking their minds and being more outgoing, outspoken, and confident.

    Of course there are trolls. Put on your big boy pants and deal with it. The net benefit is worth it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      "put your big boy pants on..." classic troll retort.

      No, that's not how it works.

      IRC and all the chat services inspired by it (eg Skype, Discord, Slack, Twitch, VRChat, etc) actually causes two things:
      a) People curating their friends (which is what causes cliques in school)
      b) People lowering their standards (which is how trust becomes a problem)

      If you have a reasonable curated friend list (by which I mean under 200) then you see enough of what's going on, as long as those friends are geographically diverse.

      • Which is to go back the OP. The Metaverse is basically a gross fusion of VRChat into a highly monetized hellscape that nobody asked for. Nobody should want to be in the Metaverse.

        Yep. The thing that worries me most about the metaverse is that it's closed and run buy people trying to sell young people expensive virtual status symbols.

        I guess it's no different than real life in that respect though. IRL kids have always been shamed for not having branded sneakers, etc., while the rich kids had everything.

    • Density and the ability to live in walk/bikeable communities where we can see other humans IN PERSON without emitting CO2 is far better than having a cumpuker mediating our interactions. Remember, in the Metaverse you have no privacy.

      • Density and the ability to live in walk/bikeable communities where we can see other humans IN PERSON without emitting CO2 is far better than having a cumpuker mediating our interactions. Remember, in the Metaverse you have no privacy.

        You frequently promote sustainable people-centric cities foster human interaction. I understand and agree with the points you're making, but the stridency of your posts isn't winning any converts. A friendlier, less superior tone might actually engage some of the people who currently dismiss your posts.

        Also, it's a little bit ironic that you're arguing in favour of 'friendly cities' while you're busy pissing people off.

        • That's how I feel, and I'm probably toning it down. If I really let my feelings about the US, car (stinkbox) unculture, and about technology out, I wouldn't be typing this since I would have raged out and smashed my laptop in a fit of frustration.

  • No shit? (Score:3)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Thursday May 12, 2022 @04:38PM (#62527452)
    Wow, that's some insightful commentary there. You mean the same shit literally everyone already knows about will happen..in the metaverse? Wow! I'm gobsmacked right now! This is like when I learned Santa wasn't real last year, just gobsmacked!

  • We've become detached, literally from social interaction. Social media is really anti-social media and studies have shown that it drives people towards higher levels of anxiety and depression.

    This is an evolutionary path we need to stop, admit our mistakes and not try and introduce something else that will make it even more difficult for us to live our lives and be productive.

  • isn't this why it was created, to have all human interaction, including face to face, be mediated through technology?

    • isn't this why it was created, to have all human interaction, including face to face, be mediated through technology?

      It seems that the defintion of metaverse [wikipedia.org] according to Wikipedia:

      In colloquial use, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.

      So stripped of the marketing hype, it's basically the Internet layered with a bunch of 3D avatars.

  • The "metaverse" nonsense (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday May 12, 2022 @04:47PM (#62527486)
    is just a trick to try and get us all used to the idea of paying real money for pretend property. It's a bunch of digital landlords hoping to tell us literally nothing. It's primarily driven by Facebook, who's one and only product is rapidly becoming associated with bitter, angry old men (and women to be fair), which isn't exactly the best advertising demographic.

    What I hate the most about it all is the fact that they think I'm so dumb I'll give them money for literal nothing. Also the fact that for a certain number of people who aren't me, they're right.

    Why do I care if other people get ripped off? Because no man is an island. Money fools lose on digital land leaves the economy proper and gets sucked up into the coffers of the digital landlords. It becomes a drag on the economy as a whole, and the knock on effects hurt me.

    Like it our not, none of us is above the economy.

    • How many accounts do you have to make because your opinions are so ill thought-out and poorly received that they're moderated to oblivion?

      In this thread alone you're rsilvergun, tsilvergun, and rsliivergun.

      Do you moderate your own comments to try and make them more visible? That's against the rules. Why do you focus your trolling on articles that talk about VR? And you already pay for intangible services, like the money you give to your ISP to troll this site.

      • How many accounts do you have to make because your opinions are so ill thought-out and poorly received that they're moderated to oblivion?

        In this thread alone you're rsilvergun, tsilvergun, and rsliivergun.

        Either you haven't been paying attention here or you're even more of a rookie than your UID might indicate. The user named "rsilvergun" is the real one; the variations on that name belong to one or more squatters / trolls who continue to be fed by users who don't notice things like writing style, UID's, etc.

        • I don't pay attention to usernames and I've been on and off this site since the early 2000s. Just forgot my username and password a few years ago.

          • I don't pay attention to usernames and I've been on and off this site since the early 2000s.

            You just accused someone of having four usernames, now you're saying you don't pay attention to usernames. You're going to have to make up your mind if you want to be taken seriously.

  • Wrong argument.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Thursday May 12, 2022 @04:47PM (#62527488) Journal

    I agree with Tony that the Metaverse will just be one more place where people can act toxic/rude/nasty. But beyond that, his argument is pretty weak.

    I mean, the real reason the Metaverse is a dumb idea comes down to trying to create a solution for a non-existent problem. Nobody, ever, was saying "This whole thing of interacting with people socially in real life is ok and all. But what we REALLY need is a way to spend a lot of money for a high speed broadband connection and computer hardware so we can sit someplace, alone, and PRETEND we're doing that same social interaction!"

    Everything else he gives examples of are creations that DO serve useful core purposes. Text-based commenting and blogs? Lots and lots of great knowledge-sharing going on with those. (Yeah, even Slashdot, sometimes! Heh!) The "small glowing rectangles" are tablets and touch-screen phones that are essentially "Swiss Army knives" of tech-tools. Sure, someone might get addicted to staring at one all day long and only communicating through it. But it wasn't created for that specific purpose! As many people have pointed out before, a modern smartphone replaces carrying around a separate camera, video camcorder, flashlight, portable music player and possibly even a tape measure or ruler, plus a notepad, a calendar/scheduler, alarm clock/timer, maps, and a plethora of other things depending on what apps you installed.

    And video meetings like Zoom were always traditionally intended as a cheaper alternative to having in-person meetings when it was costly and time-consuming to get all the participants into one room. The COVID pandemic is really what twisted it into a replacement way to communicate with each other more casually. (And that gets into the endless debate of whether our government handled that right with the restrictions it placed on people "for their own good"... Suicides went up dramatically during COVID, for example.)

    But I'm still not sure what the Metaverse is supposed to do for any of us that we can't already do with other existing tools and software? It really seems like an exercise in seeing how well a company can simulate people moving about in daily life.

    • The Internet defeats physical distance.

      If I talk with my neighbors, the likelihood that any of them at all are interested in Star Citizen, or Tcl/Tk, or Python, or whatever -- is incredibly low. But on the Internet, I can find the people who are passionate about such subjects.

      Physical distance is very specifically the meaningful problem that the Internet solves.

      The Metaverse defeats the distance between human interaction, and typing on a keyboard.

      And now with the Metaverse, I fully expect that within 10 ye

      • And here, students, we have an actual Tcl/Tk reference in the wild. Granted, it's not referring to any real works done with it, but still. Fascinating, isn't it?

        Less tongue-in-cheek, sometimes I feel like I'm the last person who's ever heard of it.

    • ...Nobody, ever, was saying "This whole thing of interacting with people socially in real life is ok and all. But what we REALLY need is a way to spend a lot of money for a high speed broadband connection and computer hardware so we can sit someplace, alone, and PRETEND we're doing that same social interaction!"...

      People love to play-act, peacock, pose, one-up each other, etc. They do it all the time in clubs and other large social gatherings. How attractive must it be to some people, to be able to 'get dressed up' and 'go somewhere' and 'be whoever / whatever they want to be' and 'party' with no more effort or preparation than donning a VR headset?

      Most of us in the first world are so insulated from the details of things like where our food comes from and what it's really like to be at the mercy of the elements, that

    • The reason the Metaverse is dumb is because it can't be built (with current technology).

      Facebook's "Metaverse" is like one of those "hoverboards" that has wheels and doesn't actually hover.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kmoser ( 1469707 )
      Person who invented small, glowing rectangle says we shouldn't be using small, glowing rectangles.

  • What encourages trolls... (Score:3)

    by Ichijo ( 607641 ) on Thursday May 12, 2022 @04:48PM (#62527490) Journal

    ...is letting them spread misinformation freely while punishing those who call them liars because that's just disrespectful. We've taken political correctness too far.

  • From some of the comments here and experience with social media I do feel it is similar to road rage. Some of the nicest people turn into very angry people and do and say things they would never do if the person was standing in front of them. Social media only enables more of this anti social behavior where there is zero comeback for your actions.

  • It'll be fine (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lohrno ( 670867 ) on Thursday May 12, 2022 @05:18PM (#62527612)

    No one will use the Metaverse.

    • I already don't use Twitter and feel no sense of missing out. Now, if I could just pitch FB, and maybe /..

  • So maybe a metaverse will never take off, until all users have headsets that are also relaying high resolution images of the wearers eyes on the avatar they have in the virtual world. That would go a long way I think to everyone seeming way more human, and to be able to understand nuance of expression.

  • Or evolve? Unless we self-destruct, we are going forward on this and many other things one way or another. Our debate should focus on how to create new social structures that will work in the new environment, not on resisting the inevitable. I feel very similarly to evolving our bodies. We need to stop fighting it and let people do what they will - with minimal regulation. Some will no matter what. Better that everyone enter the competition than that a few decide for everyone else.

  • Internet F*wad theory (Score:3)

    by martinX ( 672498 ) on Thursday May 12, 2022 @07:56PM (#62528002)

    Gabe from Penny Arcade said it better nearly 20 years ago, and it was an old concept even then.
    https://i.pinimg.com/originals... [pinimg.com]

  • iPods damage human interaction in regards to live concerts. It's cool when Apple does it, but not when it hurts their margin.

  • Facebook's metaverse version will never be able to damage human interaction, since the platform would need to be successful and popular first.

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