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'Metaverse Will Be Our Slow Death': Meta Employees Hit Out At Zuckerberg (businessinsider.com) 121

Posted by msmash from the growing-concern dept.
Meta employees are taking aim at Mark Zuckerberg in employee reviews on Blind, the anonymous forum. From a report: Some reviews, posted on Wednesday -- the day Meta laid off 13% of its workforce -- are negative, although others are more positive. One user likened the layoffs to the "hunger games" and another said the Facebook owner had an "uncertain future." Insider surveyed the workplace community app, where staff can air their grievances in posts and reviews, to see what was being said about Meta and its CEO. Some 44 employee reviews of Meta were posted on Blind on Wednesday and Thursday this week.

"The Metaverse will be our slow death," one user, who called themselves a senior software developer, posted on Wednesday. They added: "Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill a company with the meta-verse." Zuckerberg apologized to staff for the need to cut 11,000 jobs, admitting that he "got this wrong". Blind users must provide their work email email address, job title and employer when joining the platform so the company can "gauge the professional status" of posters, according to its website. A user's employment is not officially verified, however. Blind said it occasionally sent prompts to users to "re-verify" their accounts. Rick Chen, head of public relations at Blind, told Insider: "Nearly all of the reviews posted have been written by current employees of the respective companies at the time of writing, as people generally cannot access Blind after they are laid off or resign."
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'Metaverse Will Be Our Slow Death': Meta Employees Hit Out At Zuckerberg More

'Metaverse Will Be Our Slow Death': Meta Employees Hit Out At Zuckerberg

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  • Nonsense (Score:5, Funny)

    by NateFromMich ( 6359610 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:07PM (#63053111)
    I'm not sure what these people are talking about. Meta needs to keep spending all the money that they possible can on the Metaverse. Spend every last dime.

    • Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Funny)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:41PM (#63053225)

      I'm not sure what these people are talking about. Meta needs to keep spending all the money that they possible can on the Metaverse. Spend every last dime.

      You aren't thinking big enough. If they do that they might get overtaken by a competitor. Meta needs to borrow huge huge amounts of money from their key shareholders and then spend every last dime of that as fast as possible. I've heard on blind that Microsoft is doing that already and might win the race. In fact this is so crucial that I'd even propose all the Meta shareholders go out and get as many loans as they can and give that to the company to spend.

      • Found the person who shorted Metastasis stock.

        • Interesting FP thread, though I still dislike vacuous titles?

          My new one? Funny story there.

          I was mostly inactive on Facebook, but had been considering dropping off for a while. Hadn't done it, but then Facebook sped things along with an announcement of my death for unspecified heinous crimes. No warning, shots or otherwise, and since I can remember most of my final actions there, I'm pert' shure I got bushwhacked. (But I've mentioned the event a couple of times and haven't heard any "Me, too" responses, so

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tsqr ( 808554 )

          Found the person who shorted Metastasis stock.

          Looks pretty smart, given META's stock price has dropped by nearly 70% in the past year. But it'l probably rebound any day now. Right?

      • Well, if Microsoft gets involved I am imagining a VR world in which everyone has legs. But no upper body.

      • Spending can't be fast enough. They need to draw that borrowed money out in cash and set fire to it. It's the only way to stay ahead.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      I'll use Metaverse if and only if Hiro Protagonist or Da5id recommend that I do so.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by memnock ( 466995 )

      Even if Meta or Facebook or whatever the company is supposed to be called goes bankrupt or folds, Zuck will still be around. Someone somewhere will be willing to give him the means to run another company which will probably do creepy shit in a different way, while turning people into products and making it sound like the company is enlightened and all that.

  • Don't say that! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:07PM (#63053113)

    I still hope for a quick death.

  • Zuckerberg has created nothing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FeltLion ( 1289024 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:07PM (#63053115) Journal
    Here is a linear thinking guy who lucked into a company at the right place and the right time but now mistakenly assumes he is an idea guy too. Unfortunately he doesn't have a shred of inspiration or creativity, nor does he have a sense of what people actually want.

    • Re:Zuckerberg has created nothing (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:20PM (#63053159) Journal

      It behooves why they don't first perfect a "flat" VR similar to Second Life (or buy it). Your audience would be bigger and you don't have to fart around with manufacturing. Once you have that going, you gradually bring in the headset thing.

      3D is cool for the first hour or so, but won't carry the whole thing. Don't forget "social" in social network. Maybe Zuck just wants to stare at 3D titties really badly?

      • Maybe Zuck just wants to stare at 3D titties really badly?

        That would literally be an improvement.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          Well, there are plenty of horny lonely males, but living off mom's paycheck, they can't afford 3D headsets.

      • I understand that you are advocating that Meta should focus first on software and later do the hardware.

        Meta / Facebook has been very ... abused? ... by Apple and Google. They keep threatening to pull their app unless Facebook does things the way those companies want it done. Facebook sees developing the hardware platform their software runs on, and being the leader in that space, as necessary to free themselves from their competitors forcing business models on them that hurt Meta / Facebook.

        And anybod

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          What's an example of how Google has "abused" Meta/FB? It seems it's the other way around: FB has been trying to snoop user metadata (no pun intended) from Android phones.

      • 3D is cool for the first hour or so, but won't carry the whole thing.

        Yeah, 3D movies and TV were pretty much a bust, and they didn't require anything as expensive or inconvenient as current VR headsets. Sure, VR allows social interactions, but only for a pretty limited definition of "social". I'm not sure that difference is enough to make VR successful as a popular medium, even when the price comes down and the convenience goes up.

        • VR seems like it would be neat for certain exercise activities. If you were walking on a treadmill but had a VR headset on that showed you walking in the mountains or at the ocean. Even better if the VR headset can communicate with the treadmill and let it control the difficult as you go up or down hill in VR.

          This sort of exist with cycling with indoor trainers and some pricey subscription models online that look interesting but I've not taken the plunge. Maybe if I lived somewhere I couldn't go outside all

      • Because the hardware platform is a top priority. Its applications important but secondary priority.

        Facebook does not currently control any of the means for the eyeballs to see their services - Apple, Google and Microsoft do (PC, phone, browser).
        The eyeballs can be cut off from Facebook at the whim of a competitor - not a good situation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Briareos ( 21163 )

        Maybe Zuck just wants to stare at 3D titties really badly?

        Then he should have bought Titter before Musk could...

    • ...now mistakenly assumes he is an idea guy too

      That's neither here nor there; he jumped the gun on VR/AR and now he's paying the price.

      It was entirely a matter of timing, not "lack of ideas."

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      Watching Zuck and Musk bumble from blunder to blunder, you can't help but realize that knowing something or having some idea means jack shit in terms of success, at that matters is pure and undiluted luck. Nothing else.

      In other words, it's playing the lottery for suckers that also want to waste time and energy on working. The success rate is about the same.

      • We are told our entire lives that luck is the only real thing that matters, we differ in how long it takes each of us to believe it.

      • Watching Zuck and Musk bumble from blunder to blunder, you can't help but realize that knowing something or having some idea means jack shit in terms of success, at that matters is pure and undiluted luck. Nothing else.

        In other words, it's playing the lottery for suckers that also want to waste time and energy on working. The success rate is about the same.

        I wouldn't say pure and undiluted luck.

        Musk has enough other successes (Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX) to have proven he has some serious talent, and Zuckerberg has some serious technical skills that he demonstrated by actually writing Facebook.

        That doesn't mean they're uniquely talented, the lion's share of their success still comes from good fortune, but it's also a big mistake to think they're basically just normal folks who won the lottery.

        I think the problem is that when you have that much success it's really

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 )

      Looking at the "dumb fucks" origins of Facebook, I'd say it was never about what people want, but what they were willing to give him, for free.

      The Catch-22 of social media. Rather hard for consumers to blame the product when they are The Product.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tsqr ( 808554 )

      Well, you kinda have to admit that stealing the idea from those Winklevoss twins paid off pretty well for him.

    • You are absolutely correct, and this is the heart of the matter. Even FB is not a legitimate business. It doesn't sell anything to the user. It sells the user to advertisers. It's a surveillance machine that lies to its users about the surveillance.

    • I won't disagree, but I do wish I had his luck.

      But my idea would have been to cash out at peak and then go fuck off for the rest of my life, rather than make more billions.

    • VR is the only thing Meta has ever made that I actually want. Good thing they're not the only game in town.

  • Proof (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:08PM (#63053117) Journal

    Mark Zuckerberg, proving once and for all that ceo quality does matter. It doesn't matter a lot, but you do need to have a certain minimal level of ability.

    • Not really. Unless the ability to sit on your hands while you let your subordinates do the actual decision making counts as a minimal level of ability.

      I've known some CEOs that were trench-warfare types, and would go out and sling shit on the line with the rest of the crew in the early days of a company. But I've also known some that did little else than sit in their office and make proclamations while fiddling with financial worksheets. Companies CAN run with either. What they can't do is stop the damages

      • The CEO has to be good enough at what he's doing to not run the company into the ground.

        It makes one wonder who was holding him back all those years they continued to grow.

        Sharyl Sandberg.

  • Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:12PM (#63053131)

    Blind users must provide their work email email address, job title and employer when joining the platform

    Apparently "Blind" is a company or a website or something. Maybe a well known one, maybe less well known where I live than where you do and maybe not. Regardless, it's obviously a fucking stupid name so how about writing it with quote marks around it or putting "inc" or whatever after it to renove the impression that you're talking about actual blind users, you know people who lack eyesight.

    • Likely blind refers to a "hunting blind."

      • But this means there are verification emails to trace. It wouldn't exactly be difficult for an email admin to figure out who has which Blind account and posted what about the company. Presumably it's trivial for a data vacuum and miner like Facebook.

        Which means it's a pretty shitty blind.

    • Apparently "Blind" is a company or a website or something.

      You'd think there would be a link or something then, but nobody seems to have one. Blind.com is some crappy marketing company, and blind.org gave me a certificate error.
      Oh, look. Here it is. [teamblind.com] I had to search for "Blind, the anonymous forum" but it wasn't really worth it.

  • Merge with Twitter (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:14PM (#63053135) Journal

    ...virtual 3D trollin', it's what the Gods of the Webtubes ultimately wanted. You can't go out of business if you are your own competition, even if you suck.

  • Metaverse is smart for Facebook...kinda (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:28PM (#63053191)

    Zuckerberg is right to try to push the company away from Facebook. Social media platforms have very short live spans. 30 years ago, we were seeing the astronomical rise of a little company called "American Online". They were really the first "social media platform" service. By 2000 it looked like they were going to completely monopolize the entire internet. Today, most people would be surprised to learn that the company still exists at all.

    So it will be with Facebook. Even a titan seemingly as unstoppable as Facebook will begin to decline rapidly, in fact it has already peaked and is declining. It's decline will accelerate. Zuckerberg is right to take Facebook's current warchest and invest it into something else.

    Is the Metaverse going to save them? Well, I'm not sure about that, but Zuckerberg was right that they needed to place their chips somewhere.

    • Zuckerberg is right to try to push the company away from Facebook. Social media platforms have very short live spans. 30 years ago, we were seeing the astronomical rise of a little company called "American Online". They were really the first "social media platform" service. By 2000 it looked like they were going to completely monopolize the entire internet. Today, most people would be surprised to learn that the company still exists at all.

      So it will be with Facebook. Even a titan seemingly as unstoppable as Facebook will begin to decline rapidly, in fact it has already peaked and is declining. It's decline will accelerate. Zuckerberg is right to take Facebook's current warchest and invest it into something else.

      Is the Metaverse going to save them? Well, I'm not sure about that, but Zuckerberg was right that they needed to place their chips somewhere.

      I agree that they need to find a new horse. Facebook's major advantage right now is it's the default way to contact people on the internet (they've also leveraged this a bit into online IDs). But sooner or later someone will supplant that, it's risky building a massive business empire on the back of a single website.

      I also think it's smart using that war chest to invest in new tech, such as VR.

      I think the big screw up is trying to switch to that new horse way before it's ready, remotely proven, or even exis

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • So what do they have to show for the $13 billion or $15 billion or whatever the crazy amount of money du jour is? On the right path presumes you're on a path at all. Metaverse is just a wild goose chase by people who think "Ready Player One" is realistic.

        • Metaverse doesn't translate to "VR" exclusively. It's probably even a plural concept once it becomes the next iteration of the Internet.

          Ok... so what is the Metaverse then?

          The Google to Alphabet transition made some sense since even though search dominated the revenue Google had other substantial offerings so Alphabet could be a catchall and those other products wouldn't be explicit second fiddle.

          But Metaverse is saying the core of the company is a slightly fuzzy concept that isn't even implemented yet. It would be like if Musk renamed Tesla after his state-of-the-last-decade robot.

      • There have been some smart and insightful comments on this story, but for my money what you wrote above is the best so far. Good on you mate - I wish I had mod points!

    • Zuckerberg is right to try to push the company away from Facebook. Social media platforms have very short live spans. 30 years ago, we were seeing the astronomical rise of a little company called "American Online". They were really the first "social media platform" service. By 2000 it looked like they were going to completely monopolize the entire internet.

      I don't think AOL is an apt comparison to Facebook, though. AOL was killed off specifically by a huge, particular technology migration: the move of Internet users from dial-up to broadband via cable or DSL. Dial-Up was perfect for companies like AOL because it encouraged walled gardens. Recall that back then, most people got their access through these walled gardens, like AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy. General access Internet companies tended to be small regional units that advertised to users who were more

      • I don't think AOL is an apt comparison to Facebook, though. AOL was killed off specifically by a huge, particular technology migration: the move of Internet users from dial-up to broadband via cable or DSL.

        Broadband gave users incentive to change providers, but the seeds of AOL's doom were planted before that: the Web killed AOL's walled garden.

        At the outset, AOL provided access and content. But as the Web exploded, more and more people began treating AOL as just a convenient ISP. They didn't want to become just a dumb pipe, but that's what happened. The content that AOL was paying to create couldn't keep up with what was available on the broader web. Even when AOL bought TimeWarner (including their broadband

        • At the moment, people sharing content are forced into sharing only with members of a particular silo. But what they want to do is to share content with all of their friends. The Next Big Thing that does that will kill Facebook.

          I'm reminded of that scene in The Incredibles where Syndrome says "Everyone can be super. And when everyone's super... no one will be". When everyone has a voice that reaches everyone else, maybe that Next Big Thing will look more like a utility than like a splashy tech fashion brand.

          Not that there's a lack of money to be made from utilities; but I don't think the ego of someone who is used to being hailed as a 'tech innovator' will be satisfied by the press given to a 'utility manager'. So much of what we'

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tsqr ( 808554 )

        Once everyone got broadband, everyone became more savvy

        Widely available broadband Internet access didn't make everyone more savvy; it just made them a lot faster at being stupid.

        • Once everyone got broadband, everyone became more savvy

          Widely available broadband Internet access didn't make everyone more savvy; it just made them a lot faster at being stupid.

          I was just thinking earlier that most people didn't use anti-virus in the mid-90's because malware just really wasn't that widespread at the time. But as more and more people got faster Internet, and moved away from the AOL's, and started using IE and MS mail clients, that's when malware really started to flourish, and you HAD to have Norton or McAfee or a competitor. So I guess it was a bit both... people learned to use the "regular" Internet, but they were also naive enough to open zip files from Nigerian

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Scoth ( 879800 )

            The stakes were also different. In the mid 90s most computers were only barely connected, if at all. Most people used computers for games, maybe some letters or budgets, a handful of other things. Businesses might use them for more but would also tend to be more protected anyway. Most viruses/malware at the time were intended to be either relatively harmless pranks that popped up messages or were annoying, or destructive on certain dates or triggers.

            Nowadays people have their whole lives on their computers.

      • I don't see any such technology-change meteors coming for current social media companies.

        That change has already arrived, it was cheap high speed mobile data. Facebook dominated in the text and image era but has lost out to competitors now that everything is about video. Now Facebook is playing catchup to TikTok in that space and is currently losing. The idea to target VR/AR isn't a bad idea but the tech isn't good enough so any VR/AR experience is going to be worse than a pure video experience when that changes facebook might be in a position to take advantage but I wouldn't be betting on it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 )

      They were really the first "social media platform" service

      Prodigy and Compuserve might take exception to that statement. Or Minitel for that matter.

    • Facebook definitely needs to diversify, they're just not any good at it. Remember when Facebook was going to be a big deal in the crypto-currency & banking market with Libre? Remember when they were going to be an internet service provider? Remember when they were going to be a smartphone maker? Remember Facebook Deals (a copy of Groupon)? Facebook Messages (email)? Facebook Gifts? Facebook Places?

      Facebook is like that one-hit-wonder that keeps putting out new records that no one buys.

  • The one thing that I'd be interested in seeing (Score:3)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:33PM (#63053201)
    Is Meta's market research on VR. Because I'll bet Zuck didn't do very much of it and relied on his gut. Meanwhile I could have told facebook that VR wouldn't be the next big thing and to stop wasting money on it. But the VR was simply investor candy, but the problem with candy is it doesn't last especially when money is tight and no one likes risk

    • Henry Ford is often invoked here: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." While Ford didn't actually say this [quoteinvestigator.com], it's very apt for new technologies when neither the public nor the designers really understand the possibilities (and the device is still crude/ridiculous and has a poor supporting ecosystem, etc). Predicting that Metaverse will fail is an easy bet: creating a new market requires a leap of (speculative) faith, and that leap usually falls flat.

      Maybe you have to

    • Is Meta's market research on VR. Because I'll bet Zuck didn't do very much of it and relied on his gut.

      Exponential increase in sales of their (and other company's) VR gear is good research. VR is definitely the next big thing. Horizons and the Metaverse isn't, those are both incredible turds, like food poisoning from a burrito night kind of turds, the kind of turds that cause bathrooms to be labelled out of order turds. But VR is absolutely on the rise.

      For a real laugh here's a good youtube video: I Played Facebook's VR Metaverse so you never have to - RTGame [youtube.com]

      • Yeah, but meta needs (and has geared their spending and development) for VR to be on a cellphone level of public adoption. I just don't see that happening. I don't see businesses forking out 1k for everyone to have a VR headset. I don't see it replacing all of our communication, and I don't see everyone living out a few hours of their day in a VR world. I see uses in gaming, and not completely replacing the whole gaming market. I see some niche uses in communication and some people with play with VR headset

        • Not really. There's few (if any) devices out there with cellphone level adoption, and yet there's tech giants out there making billions without it. Maybe you were being facetious but if you were serious it's completely off base.

          Consider this: 1.7billion mobile phones were sold in 2021. Only 300million computers. Intel on the other hand has *always* spent far more on just R&D alone every year than all of Facebooks investments in the Metaverse, and they aren't the biggest R&D investor.

          I don't see businesses forking out 1k for everyone to have a VR headset.

          For every employ

          • Well FB needs to retain users, they used to do this by acquiring competitors, FB was a generational thing, so is Instagram. If FB wants to retain users they need some reason to retain and grow their userbase. Zuck decided that VR was his savior, big mistake.

  • The slow death of Facebook (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:37PM (#63053207)
    Is an inevitably aging user base. Because everyone is on Facebook your parents are on facebook. Your grandparents are on Facebook. That means while you're going to be on Facebook to chat with your parents and grandparents you're still going to want your own social media Network where your parents don't show up.

    The result is a slow erosion of Facebook's valuable consumer user base. Remember you are the product. Older people or less valuable is consumers over time.

    Every time this has happened Facebook has bought out that competitor. They bought over 100 companies to prevent this from happening. But now there's too much antitrust scrutiny for them to get away with it which is why Zuckerberg keeps trying to diversify.

    The problem is he's not innovative or clever he just stumbled into something and his parents have enough money to fund him while he build it out.

    • Re:The slow death of Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @01:36PM (#63053399)

      Pretty much this.

      I'm old, ok? But I do know young people who would be the target audience for this. And to them, the whole thing is a joke. It's something they make internet memes about. That whole Metastasis bull is about as cool and trendy with that crowd as gramma's surgical stockings.

      And most of them don't give a fuck about VR. VR is something they may have tried at some friend's house who happens to have an Occulus or a Vive (and we'll soon get to why they will avoid talking about it or admitting they were there...), that was cool for about 15 minutes or 2 VR games (which is about the same amount of time), after that they're bored because you can't read worth shit in this medium, it is very slow and clumsy to use compared with what they're used to from their phones and, and that's the weird bit, they feel like they are missing something because they sit in that VR world and don't notice when someone around them is doing something.

      Yes. The "glued to the phone without giving a fuck about their surroundings" generation feels like that. Go figure.

      So who uses VR? I have identified two potential users groups that are actually using this: Furries and Cosplayers. Yes, really. And it makes sense if you think about it. Both groups consist of people who want to escape to a fantasy world where they can be someone (or ... something) they can't possibly be in reality. It's as close as you can get to something like that. And these are also the two groups that are the most willing to dump a LOT of money on something that gets them closer to their fantasy, no matter the cost.

      The big question though is whether you really want either of these groups as your poster children... yeah...

      Besides, they already found their virtual playground and already spent their money there, convincing them to switch will not be easy at all.

  • Great comments about Meta and Facebook! I am thinking of migrating off to Mastadon. Keep up the good comments!

  • Sad (Score:5, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:43PM (#63053227)

    Zuckerberg couldn't have launched rockets like a normal megalomaniac?

    • No Zuckerberg is ahead of the game. Losing money on space is yesterday's news. Even the one lunatic who actually made money launching rockets admitted his mistake and decided to get into the social media game for some wealth reduction.

  • Meh... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @12:58PM (#63053281)

    The metaverse is clearly a passion/vanity project for Zuckerberg, but I don't think that's really the meat of Meta's troubles. It's the most conspicuous thing to blame since they renamed the whole company after it, but they maintain the Facebook brand and it's not Metaverse spend that is their key problem, their key business problem is their ad revenue dropped. This is a Facebook particular problem, not a 'too much spent on VR' problem.

    They are faced with the reality they aren't the 'cool' platform anymore, that their advertising features were reduced by Apple's privacy restrictions, combined with a general macroeconomic downturn where advertising spend is typically at the front of cost reductions of various companies.

    In fact, their position is particularly at risk because all their business eggs are in the Facebook basket. Attempting to grow into new segments would help, though VR may not provide the business opportunity that Facebook investors would hope for, it is almost certainly possible to make it at least a break-even business, if managed effectively.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • The metaverse is clearly a passion/vanity project for Zuckerberg

      Oh, it's definitely a passion for him, but it's not vanity. It's his attempt to change the very nature of how we use the Internet. I'd mentioned in another thread that AOL died, not because of any misstep internally, but because the very platform it depended on... dial-up Internet... was killed off by Broadband Internet. It was like horseback travel being killed off by automobiles. Broadband was the meteor that killed the Dial-Up-dependent dinosaurs.

      And that's why Meta is going to fail; because it's an atte

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by alcmena ( 312085 )
        I agree with what you said but add a quote I heard back during the "3D TV" craze a few years ago: "People are willing to spend a lot to avoid putting things on their face."

    • The metaverse is clearly a passion/vanity project for Zuckerberg

      He should have gotten a Furry avatar in VR chat like all the other weirdos.

  • The "metaverse" is not something that most people are interested in. It is mostly geeks like Zuckerberg who find it compelling. Facebook went mainstream: the metaverse will not - at least not until we have brain implants.

  • Nobody wants a face crab. They never will. (Score:3, Funny)

    by MIPSPro ( 10156657 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @01:27PM (#63053371)
    FFS folks, it's been tried. From Sega VR, to Game Boy VR, to Playstation VR and the Occulus Rift. If John Carmack cannot make these things things work well enough to be popular, give it up: nobody wants some weird thing hanging off their head while they root around like a cat under a blanket, hoping not to run into walls.

    • Re:Nobody wants a face crab. They never will. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @01:51PM (#63053447) Homepage Journal

      If John Carmack cannot make these things things work well enough to be popular, give it up

      Carmack wants them to cost $250. I agree with him. In order to sell $1600 headsets, you need enough plebes with $250 headsets (J.C.'s number) that the buyers of the more expensive units have someone to look down on.

    • FFS folks, it's been tried.

      Good examples, let's dig into them: Sega VR, Game Boy VR (did you mean Virtual Boy) were tried at a time when the hardware was woefully incapable.

      Playstation VR: A concept so successful Sony decided to invest in a successor.
      Oculus Rift: A product that has shown an exponential upwards adoption trend, not unlike the first 3D accelerators in the 90s.

      John Carmack cannot make these things things work well enough to be popular

      You're the person who rode your horse to Maddison Square Garden in November 1900 to witness the first ever automobile show, declared that no one owns a car and the

  • I hated facebook before it was cool... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @01:31PM (#63053383)

    When I think about it, the number of companies that I actively wish complete failure upon is very small. The last time I disliked an organization that fiercely was when the whole SCO thing was playing out.

    I have extended family that have embraced Facebook. I have aunts and uncles who live far enough away from us that facebook is their window into the family world. There's no immediate replacement should that communication avenue fails - certainly not one with common acceptance.

    Frankly, my distaste verges on the unreasonable. I don't feel that way towards fossil fuel companies, manufacturers with sweat shops in bangladesh, or diamond mines using children for labour... I don't want pharmaceutical companies to fail. The world is awash in grey morality, and I'm not uncomfortable with that.

    But with Meta, I still really, truly hope they fail.

    • You listed probably the only single slightly redeeming quality facebook EVER had. I have basically the same feeling as you (mine extends to the likes of twitter and a few others as well). I think it evokes that reaction in some of us because we can see that is has replaced true social interaction with something shallow, ugly, and stripped of much of what makes social interactions what they are. To me it's kind of like ultraprocessed foods vs whole foods. Sometimes they taste delicious, but their nutritional
  • I don't quite understand why this employee would be trying to 'save' Meta. To save their job? They already worked at FB whose days were inevitably numbered by how immorally unscrupulous they were. It would have caught up with them eventually. Metaverse or no.

    If FB had actually been an honest company that truly cared about connecting users they might have sat in a beloved and treasured position rather than the poisonous rat they are. In contra I've never really heard of anybody hating Steam on moral object

  • One user likened the layoffs to the "hunger games" and another said the Facebook owner had an "uncertain future."

    It was "so horrible!" he cried. "Nobody cares about us!"

    He then got into his Japanese car and drove away, sobbing at the injustice of mass layoffs in this new, scary world.

  • Facebook has hundred of millions of gullible, tech illiterate, middle age / old people as its userbase. Where are they going to go? They can milk those to keep it 'alive' as a zombie for decades. Did you know AOL is still around more than two decades after the dot com implosion and still has plenty of even older active users who think it's the internet? My Mom is still @aol.com and has no interest in leaving. This will be FB.

    I'll just be happy enough to see it slide into irrelevance like AOL even if it

  • You have to send your messages and comments through the plain old Postoffice. Meaning there will be several days between comments etc.

  • We got Zuck all wrong. Clearly he has come to see the monster that his innocent site has become. How could he have known that an idea based on objectifying and humiliating people could have turned so wrong in what has become Facebook ( I refuse to call FB Meta and I refuse to call petrochemicals 'energy')

    He has had his come to Jeezus moment, but what to do? You can't just turn out the lights on the entire company all at once? The knock-on effects would be like...basically like these crypto dominos that

  • It's almost as if there were already a company that does what the Metaverse was trying to do. One that could have been bought for a song and slowly integrated into facebook for those who wanted it.

  • He only eats things he kills himself.

  • To die presumes that the subject was living at some point. FB was never alive. It was never a legitimate business proposition.

  • They didn't have a functioning product before they changed their entire company's direction, including it's name, with no warning. They *still* don't have a real product, they barely have a proof-of-concept demo. I've seen Unity tutorials on YouTube with more advanced features than Meta's entire metaverse. There should be no question whatsoever that Meta is a sinking ship.

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