Meta Urges Washington To Take Hands-Off Approach To Regulating the Metaverse (bloomberg.com) 54
Meta is urging policymakers to hold off on creating new rules governing the metaverse. From a report: In a policy paper released Friday, Meta argues that many of the world's existing laws and regulations will also apply to activity in the metaverse -- a catch-all term that refers to an immersive virtual world that doesn't yet exist in which users could someday work, play games, shop and interact. Edward Bowles, Meta's head of fintech policy, told reporters that regulators could "stymie innovation" if they create an entirely new regulatory scheme for the metaverse. It's common for corporations, particularly Silicon Valley titans, to discourage politicians from creating new regulations. But in recent years, lawmakers have become interested in reining in the biggest tech companies -- including their investments in virtual reality. The paper is an effort by Meta to shape future legislation impacting the metaverse, a technology so central to the company's mission that it rebranded to "Meta" from "Facebook" last year.
Of course they did. (Score:5, Insightful)
Meta: "Hey congress people: Please hold off on making rules for regulations. We don't even know what parts of society we want to destroy with it yet!"
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If they manage to actually spin something up that people are interested in, and some competitors start showing up some years down the line. "Yo, congress! Can I get some fuckin' regs here!? These newbs are stymieing our innovation and shit."
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I don't know why this is modded funny, as it is goddamned insightful. The one thing the last couple of years has demonstrated is that the tech billionaires have pretty much gone full Bond Villain. After the fuckery that has gone on in countries all over the world, why would any sane government not put a very intense microscope on the likes of Zuckerberg and formulate policies to mitigate what he and his ilk have facilitated.
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Did you hear about the Cambridge Analytica scandal? [nytimes.com]
Maybe you also need to watch The social dilemma [wikipedia.org] for a review of how Facebook not only monitors, but manipulates people into doing things that are not in their best interests.
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I do ac
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I do actually agree with these being problems.
TFTFY
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I would argue that you're looking in the wrong places. Zuckerberg's attempt to create a global digital currency tied to Facebook is a clear Bond-villain move. As are his anti-competitive moves to simply buy out any competition in the social media space in an attempt to make Facebook = internet. Note that in both these cases he was only stymied because he came under the microscope of the U.S. government.
His entire company is very Bond-villainesque. He collects massive amounts of data on everyone, often surre
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Sadly you are absolutely right and so are they.
The same laws as real life? (Score:2)
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In the metaverse I have multiple golf courses, a massive estate with a pool, a giant harem, jet planes, dozens of roller coasters, a few hedge mazes, endless zombies to battle, fighter jets, cessnas, etc. Do you have that in your back yard?
Oh wait... you do? On an unrelated note we should hang out. In the spirit of friendship, I'll bring the beer.
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Well then there is truly no point in going to the Metaverse
Sure there is. If you're a lawyer.
In the real world, we need laws to try and form a civilized society and control human behavior to minimize harm. Because well...humans. 'Nuff said.
In a virtual world, one would think that's a hell of a lot easier to control. Don't allow it to exist.
Putting all those we're-living-in-a-simulation Matrix jokes aside for a minute, the Metaverse is literally a world we can control. Every aspect of it. Not sure why we would even try and replicate all the bad harm we curre
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The best way to "win" this type of game is never play at all.
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The best way to "win" this type of game is never play at all.
Eventually though (or next month at the rate the tech bubble is popping), new companies will start up running ultra-lean. All virtualspace work, and minimal physical need. If the product you sell is digital (and there's plenty of that to make and sell), then the transition is that much easier. Eventually the competition selling digital services and still running in brick-and-mortar meatspace will be undercut by everyone who's made the transition to lean-and-mean virtual-space.
Best example of that at sca
Already, everyone is taking a handsoff approach... (Score:5, Insightful)
Zing!
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Why? Meta has plenty of competition in VR and only has the option for account integration with its old facebook platform.
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Why? Meta has plenty of competition in VR and only has the option for account integration with its old facebook platform.
Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Giphy, Mapillary, Presize (getting sizes right to lower the returns rate), Lofelt (haptics), Kustomer (customer service platform and chatbot). There's plenty of ways to puch integration in an anti-competitive fashion.
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Yes but antitrust violations don't happen until AFTER they leverage a monopoly position in an anti-competitive fashion. Collectively Meta may well have a monopoly position in social media but the FB alone isn't it and essentially the only thing the integration enables is finding other users from your friends list.
I'm not a fan of facebook or zuckerberg (Score:1)
But I don't remember anyone asking government to regulate Multi User Dungeons (google them kids) or talk servers. Or even more recently Second Life et al. So why would washington need to stick its oar in with this?
Re:I'm not a fan of facebook or zuckerberg (Score:5, Insightful)
But I don't remember anyone asking government to regulate Multi User Dungeons (google them kids) or talk servers. Or even more recently Second Life et al. So why would washington need to stick its oar in with this?
The clue is in the line, "...Meta's head of fintech policy..."
I don't recall either Multi User Dungeons or Second Life having heads of fintech policy.
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I think you are confusing the metaverse with those sketchy platforms trying to sell virtual real estate. The metaverse is just the collective internet of VR spaces. There is no particular reason those destinations shouldn't be allowed to have whatever content they like and charge however they like.
If there would be regulation it should be along the lines of data collection but sadly, meta is right. Let them do the data collection long enough to build out all the cool technology then regulate away the intrus
Re: I'm not a fan of facebook or zuckerberg (Score:1)
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Meaningless because there is no meeting of minds between Bob and Alice, nor is there an exchange of value because Alice is not being compensated for the data collection, it is incidental to the service not compensation for it. No meaning of minds and no value exchanged means no contract.
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Additionally, unless Alice is an information security expert Alice is not qualified to understand the consequences of the agreement and neither can her attorney; therefore there cannot be a meeting of minds.
However, it is quite a spin to try to claim that outlawing the digital stalking and recording of users is somehow violating their free speech. Such a law does not prevent Alice from sharing her phone number, it prevents bob from keeping it or using it in a direct or indirect effort to garner a profit. Al
Re: I'm not a fan of facebook or zuckerberg (Score:1)
Yes well done (Score:2)
However I was asking why the government *would* regulate it, not who is trying to pre-empt them.
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But I don't remember anyone asking government to regulate Multi User Dungeons (google them kids) or talk servers. Or even more recently Second Life et al. So why would washington need to stick its oar in with this?
Governments got very involved in Second Life, in the areas of: Gambling, Money Transmitting, Money Laundering, Child Porn, and Terrorism (terrorists using SL for simulating attacks and as a comm channel).
Mostly this was them figuring out how to apply and enforce existing laws in the metaverse. But it was all new to them, and it did result in huge changes in the way that Second Life operated. They also tried to figure out if they could tax the in-game Linden Dollars.
This might sound trivial or fairly obvious
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I think that is sort of the point... existing laws already cover all this nonsense.
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MUDs, MUCKs etc. were rather limited in scope compared to Second Life or the Metaverse. They were no different from an RL gathering spot in size, most of the time.
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MUDs, MUCKs etc. were rather limited in scope compared to Second Life or the Metaverse. They were no different from an RL gathering spot in size, most of the time.
There are two main differences. First and foremost, Second Life involved exchanging real money. You could earn Linden Dollars (by trading virtual items that you created, performing services, or brokering virtual real estate). And you could freely convert Linden Dollars to US Dollars back and forth. Some users made millions of $US doing this.
With money being transmitted over the platform, comes all the bad (or undesirable) things one can do with money, and hence the intense interest of the government.
Second
Comment removed (Score:3)
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I'd say there are definitely privacy laws etc that need to be introduced from the get-go
Yep. This.
heh (Score:2)
Like anyone is going to be in the metaverse.
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But all 7 users need to be protected :-P
Meta, you have no credibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Meta: Can you hold off on regulating the metaverse?
Government: Why?
Meta: Trust us.
Government: You mean like you handled Cambridge Analytica? Given how small your online gambling [facebook.com] page is maybe we should look deeper.
Regulation is like a condom (Score:5, Insightful)
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Regulation is like a condom: the greater the resistance to it, the more likely you really need it.
There is doubt that the Metaverse (from Facebook, anyway) will have much penetration. Regardless of how much Zuckerberg wants to service everyone.
I am SHOCKED. SHOCKED. (Score:4, Insightful)
A business asking the government not to regulate themself? Wow, how unusual. They absolutely must have a pressing need for unregulated business.
It certainly cannot be a self serving statement made so they can continue to do whatever they want without regard at all for honesty, ethics, customer right, whoops I mean product's rights. They are certainly not a deceptive business that tricks people into giving away valuable private information then sells it to anyone, regardless if their customers are deceptive lying scum breaking the laws left and right.
They certainly would never sell ads designed to exclude black people from real estate. They would certainly never set up a system to slowly radicalize people by restricting what they show to he most extreme things they currently believe. They would certainly NEVER accept ads from foreign countries to affect elections.
With all of the multiple unethical and possibly illegal things they would never do, why would Congress even think of regulating them?
DIY (Score:2)
Moderation of some kind is going to be required. Why not, while you don't have much skin in the game, PUBLISH a set of rules and see what happens. Keep making them more and more strict until the complaining starts.
If businesses complain, then you've reached a good amount of "can't access user data" for starters.
Try all sorts of permutations and note what gets special interests to freak out. When everyone is upset, just implement the rules that freak out less than 50 percent of the population (measure how
How cute... (Score:2)
The VR googles have improved year-over-year; but for regulatory purposes there's nothing here that wouldn't have come up in the context of Second Life circa 2003; and there wasn't much there that wasn't covered by either by prior video games or prior chat rooms and forums of vari
Oh, yes, let us get richer first (Score:2)
While defrauding tons of people. After we get richer, then you can put the rules in....
Supremely obvious (Score:4)
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Dear Glob, NO! (Score:1)
Meta has already demonstrated that they can't be trusted with people's personal information or political leanings or, in fact, much of any sort of moral stance beyond code-talking white supremacy, racism, and/or bigotry in their content moderation and "Community Standards" with overt bouts of political preferences. I trust that whole organization less than a three-day-old egg salad sandwich from a vending machine in a men's room in a truck stop on the edge of Detroit. Regulate the industry before lots of
Say it isn't so... (Score:2)
Breaking news: exploitive company comes out against regulations preventing exploitation. In other news, water is among wettest substances known to mankind.
Keep that Big Money on the table (Score:2)
Gotta have unregulated gambling and virtual real estate money laundering.
Else, why would they bother?
Well, duh (Score:2)
If you protect the people from us raping their privacy, how do you think we could sell their information for a profit in this ludicrously overhyped, overengineered and overly expensive toy?
Meta is Dead in the Water Already (Score:2)
Meta just has the sads we ignore them (Score:2)
Have fun just having really old people, Meta!