Meta Is Building The Dystopia of the Matrix

Isn’t it ironic that the next Matrix movie is coming out just as Facebook’s Meta play powerplay for the future platform is occurring? The problem is, of course, the attention economy Facebook and Google have created is already dystopian.

If China’s new version of the internet wins the future of the internet, even that kind of AI surveillance capitalism would be probably better than the Ad-based internet Google and Facebook have implemented. At least there would be rules, at least there would be regulation.

Mark Zuckerberg is a bit delusional. He’s not a product guy. He doesn’t understand scale outside of his limited vision of timing and shutting out the competition and squashing competition through antitrust moves and acquisitions. So watching him talk about the Metaverse is a bit comical.

Facebook has never launched a good hardware product or done anything. It’s acquired a couple of trending apps, that’s it. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is reportedly planning physical stores to showcase virtual reality headsets as it pushes into the metaverse. Unity, not Facebook, is the leader in VR platforms.

I don’t know anyone who owns a Facebook Portal device, do you? Companies like Apple have long found success in retail stores, although Microsoft recently ditched its retail locations to focus on its online store. Facebook cannot compete with Apple. Facebook’s smart watch looks like a toy, not unlike Snap AR glasses. Meta is running Ads about privacy. If that’s not a dystopian joke about the Matrix, I don’t know what is.

The problem is Silicon Valley knows China’s quantum internet and own Metaverse will be bigger than anything it can build, but it still pretends it can win. Facebook will spend over $10 billion each year until 2026 on the Metaverse because it assumes the TAM is worth it. It will ruin Facebook’s future and simply be a cash burning exercise.

If it succeeds, it will create a Matrix that’s even more toxic than the unregulated American internet is today. A Facebook that has destroyed democracy, trust online and demoralized us in our isolated silos of apps and thumbs on screens. That empty feeling x infinity. maybe that’s what the Meta logo really means? Hmm.

Mark Zuckerberg wants to the founding Tycoon of the Metaverse. I get it. Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox told attendees at the Web Summit in Lisbon that the idea would make “the internet less flat”. How did they convince Cox to come back to Facebook? These cheerleader executives must be unable to pass up on the big money. What kind of software developer with any sense of ethics would want to work for Meta?

The term metaverse was coined in the 1990s in a science fiction novel Snow Crash, where it served as a virtual reality successor to the internet. Facebook thinks it’s a good idea to clone the Matrix into the future of VR and on-board “young people” as young as six years old into lifetime customers to increase its future ARPU. American Capitalism is dying due to the Alphabet Meta duopoly. It’s not a hard situation to figure out.

The Matrix will make facial recognition and human surveillance permanent at the next level of prediction and advertising. The attention economy and internet is already broken due to Google and Facebook’s moral impact on information, communication and social network maintenance. That we would want to wear their products or enter their platforms even more is just so perverse.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to build more consumer devices that circumvent Apple and Google, the two dominant mobile phone platform creators that largely control Facebook’s ability to reach people. Meta is trapped without a platform and cannot even dominate the future of apps or VR in spite of incredibly expensive acquisitions that created an antitrust wasteland for Silicon Valley innovation.

The dystopia is here already, Meta or not. Facebook has failed in hardware before. I remember Building 8, I remember writing about it a lot. Facebook is not even on the level of Google in devices, which is very much inferior to Amazon, which is inferior to Apple. Meta’s Matrix won’t be able to compete with ByteDance.It cannot even create a new app that we want to have. So why are we even having this conversation about the future internet?

Why must Facebook try to be king of the future? Because it’s losing the present. Meta is a gigantic act of desperation from a company that knows it’s being disrupted. TikTok has already implemented E-commerce with Douyin, many levels beyond what Instagram or WhatsApp were able to do in many years, in just two years.

That’s the reality. Facebook’s advertising future is also coming under threat from better ecosystems like Amazon. Real marketplaces with the young consumers that matter. Ok, Boomer.

Mark Zuckerberg feels old to even see the Matrix. Facebook’s AI capabilities aren’t even in the same league as China’s. The corporate islands of America can claim any amount of monthly users they want, but it won’t be enough. Meta building stores, smart glasses or hardware products are just disasters waiting to happen.

The stores, which have no slated opening date, will (theoretically) allow the company to showcase devices like virtual reality headsets and teleconferencing gadgets that allow people to video chat through Facebook, the Times reported. It would be the social media company’s first physical store.

“The Facebook Files,” the Wall Street Journal began running a series of blockbuster articles based on thousands of internal Facebook documents that a whistle-blower had leaked to the Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission and members of Congress. They show just how deluded (and perverse) Silicon Valley executives and board members can become.

Wealth really does corrupt totally, it appears, for Facebook. How the FTC and congress allowed such monopolies to occur is beyond all reason and national security. American values have degraded to such an extent as Facebook itself became a powerful misinformation machine.

Meta is reportedly planning a flagship store for Burlingame, California, where it has an office for Reality Labs. Before the name change, the company reportedly settled on calling its retail locations the “Facebook Store.” Would you want to go into the Facebook Store? Perhaps we could find some dopamine cigarettes or something.

Perhaps some new friends for the lonely world Facebook has created for us. Facebook claims to have a plan to get us to the Matrix, without even being anywhere in gaming? It’s just so ridiculous.

Regina Dugan joined Facebook from Google to make the company relevant in hardware. I guess Mark wasn’t so easy to get along with, eh, Regina? Ultimately Building 8 became Portal, a video-chat product that has failed to gain market traction.

Portal has been a spectacular failure. Building 8, the laboratory she started, turned into a costly failure for Facebook, and Dugan was gone in less than two years. Facebook’s perverse culture just isn’t a good incubator for innovation. It’s not difficult to figure out, group think is real. In a mediocre company even the smartest people become mediocre.

So why are we debating this anyway? Because a real Matrix is coming and it will be dystopian. This is because AI and the internet aren’t regulated properly and don’t have global rule of law. At least China is concerned about the impact of gaming on youth or things like ‘common prosperity’. America’s free market approach to the internet has meant it’s spawned really dangerous companies that don’t take our well-being seriously.

The problem at Google or Facebook is power is centralized in too few individuals at the top and behind. This means if Facebook wins the race to the metaverse, we’ll be trapped in a Matrix of extreme exploitation.

This isn’t a joke. The war for the future of the internet is real. Mark Zuckerberg is not a prophet. He’s not even a particularly intelligent CEO. He has not not diversified his filthy rich company beyond advertising. It’s entirely moronic. Facebook has been so damaging to democracy, the pandemic and trust in Government and Capitalism that Silicon Valley will probably have a hard time leading much of anything in the future of the internet.

The reputation of Google or Facebook will be inherited by not just Alphabet and Meta but other similar companies. The world will come to understand American colonialism 2.0 in technology.

Engineers at Facebook want to build the Matrix so Facebook can live on and reincarnate into Meta. But do people actually want such a VR Matrix? Building 8 was leading Facebook’s effort to get into the hardware game, but Regina left Mark, likely for very serious reasons. Maybe Mark is not the most reasonable person to lead much of anything that could impact humanity as a whole. Maybe Meta isn’t just poor vision but dangerous to humanity.

Facebook’s dystopia has already been dangerous. Why would this change now that we call it Meta? Who is going to save us from Mark Zuckerberg and the billionaire caste now that American capitalism belongs to a winner-takes-all future? Do we want VR and brain computer interfaces to make our world great again? Now that society has devolved into silos of app users? What is the point of living long enough to witness such a Matrix? It’s just another centralized system of human exploitation and an invasion of the human spirit.