Sunday 7 November 2021
Another metaverse is possible
Like its voracious Internet twin, Amazon, the house of Facebook, recently renamed Meta by founder Mark Zuckerberg, to the chagrin of Yanis Varoufakis of Greece, the home of meta the word and Meta the Centre for Postcapitalist Civilization Varoufakis Claims Zuckerberg Stole "Meta" Name for Facebook (greekreporter.com) has come to define an age of previously unimaginably reachable population scale. If Facebook “friends” are not real friends and their likes as transient as a screenshot these phenomena have come to define this cultural moment. There is huge power here but, as recent revelations by Facebook insiders have shown about the predatory, unaccountable and hitherto largely untaxed corporate wealth has highlighted little or no public accountability is taken for the manipulation of cyber bullies and others that the metaverse enables, its victims often the most isolated and weak. More than one young person teenager has been driven to near, and actual, suicide, automated trollers are infiltrating democratic processes as high profile as U.S. elections and the publication of false news is available to anyone with an Internet connection and a keyboard. What to do about the adolescent dorm room fancy that became a monster fueled, it seems by a passion for nothing more than growth?
Splitting a corporate beast like Facebook, aka Meta, into
separate entities like news and networking technology might reduce the threat
of collusion but ultimately such powers will integrate. Regulation, like that of alcohol or gambling,
is possible but who could or should do it is far from easy to determine. Self-regulation
runs counter to the self-interest of the corporate interests that prosper from
its absence while external regulation by objective third parties is as yet wildly
unequal to scale of the virtual wild west it must confront globally. As for
public ownership of virtual media the culture of civil withdrawal created by
neoliberalism, added to the sheer scale of the target phenomena, has made this
option unrealistic.
If then, private or public
regulation are unlikely to rein in the beast – the ills of alcohol still occur
after its regulation, and public ownership is not going to happen, we are left
with a third alterative, a non-profit metaverse which operates according to
principles of public responsibility, its practical role to shame and blame
rather than to outmuscle. But the power of ideas and ideals can never be
discounted. Hands off our “meta” says Yanis … of Greece, to which we must add a
meta of our own dedicated to more than power for power’s sake. Facebook is just
here to bring people together, Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have believed
about the adolescent impulse that inspired the application, but few of us would
be content to ignore what people do together once met. For TorontotheBetter a
truly social benefit motivated platform will produce better outcomes than
accidental/incidental human collision. It must be as open and inclusive as
possible if a genuine “meta” is to have an impact of the netherworld meta-verse
with which it shares a name rather than a nature. The TorontotheBetter
directory is a diverse, inclusive model for the wider/better meta-world we
envision as possible, a non-profit, multi-sector, and inclusive universe. Such a
sphere has been modelled by Trebor Scholtz of New York University in the form
of “platform co-operatives” but as TorontotheBetter, itself a co-op based
initiative, realized from its inception even eco-ops are, to some extent
exclusive. Consequently, the alternative meta-verse we envision here must be broad and inclusive of various operational
forms. The tool we propose for achieving this is a charter, from which more
robust instruments can emerge with social media themselves occupying a key
enabling role. That social media has become virtually synonymous with the
for-profit Facebook need not be the endpoint of the journey that began with
Web2.0. A movement begins with an idea and the time for a better metaverse
movement is now.
