Facebook Is Spending $50 Million to Build Metaverse—'Responsibly'

Facebook has been leading the way in Metaverse innovation, announcing this week that over the next two years the company has declared 50 million to bring their dream to life. The “XR Programs & Research Fund” will be the starting point for this new look into the evolution of social interaction, the two programs will support the initiative by way of both funding, as well as the hiring of external researchers.

Now some of you may be asking “What is the Metaverse”?, it’s a term you often hear brought up in conversations about virtual reality, or Steven Spielberg's film “Ready Player One” is being discussed. In short, it refers to a virtual world inhabited by people dawning 3d avatars, a concept already being developed within crypto projects “Decentraland” and “Crypto Voxels”.

The world of video games is not the only industry being revolutionized with this technology, some believe this will change how we work, hang out, as well as open the door for new economic opportunities never allotted by another industry. Kinda like how NFT’s have been shaking up the collectibles by way of cutting out dynasties that have ruled over that industry for years and allowing for the collector to collector transactions.

Now I know this is all highly speculative, I’m by no means cheerleading Facebook as if they were some altruistic company. Privacy and the spreading of “fake news” have landed the social media giant in some scandalous headlines over the past couple of years. This is why accompanying the announcement was the statement “We’ll work with experts in government, industry, and academia to think through issues and opportunities in the metaverse”, “For instance, its success depends on building robust interoperability across services, so different companies’ experiences can work together. We also need to involve the human rights and civil rights communities from the start to ensure these technologies are built in a way that’s inclusive and empowering.”

It’s noble of the company to say this, but something tells me the public won’t be so quick to accept Mr.Zukerburgs fantasy land into there home so quickly, even with the aforementioned benefits this could build. Only time will time.