The more I understand about how many risks and problems are involved in running an organization as large and with as high a social profile as Meta, with all the accrued obligations and entrenched loyalties and overpromising managers that glom on over time, all while building new unproven technological infrastructure, the more sympathy I have for how blurry the line between corruption and implosion is.
I don't think anybody trusts Facebook at this point, and the idea of being forced into a pay for play virtual world controlled by a single company is understandably scary and deserving of criticism, but at the same time I've done social VR and I truly and honestly believe it's a vast improvement over any other existing kind of remote interaction. I actually get and believe in the vision, it just seems like the execution is really bloated/bad and they tried to way over abstract things/make things way too big way too early. I could see how spending that amount of money would be easy to do if you're trying to create universal abstractions for making, selling, creating, stitching services for an interactive set of 3D environments together that is easy for people to make "apps" for, building data centers, accounting for latency, building out supply chains, subsiding hardware, doing R&D on tracking, doing social research, and dealing with entrenched employees and middle managers accustomed to "the cushy tech worker lifestyle".
You really have to try social VR to understand how much better it is than video chatting or text channels. There's absolutely something to it. There's so much more information in the way people interact about what their intentions are, how they feel about what you're saying, what they're interested in, etc when you're interacting in VR with a 3D avatar.
All that being said, the virtual real estate and clear corporate "branding" angle is really gross, regardless of whether the money gets shady/you could really call that "corrupt". I prefer the wide range in quality but genuine effort and creativeness you get with a free and open ecosystem like VRChat.
I don't think anybody trusts Facebook at this point, and the idea of being forced into a pay for play virtual world controlled by a single company is understandably scary and deserving of criticism, but at the same time I've done social VR and I truly and honestly believe it's a vast improvement over any other existing kind of remote interaction. I actually get and believe in the vision, it just seems like the execution is really bloated/bad and they tried to way over abstract things/make things way too big way too early. I could see how spending that amount of money would be easy to do if you're trying to create universal abstractions for making, selling, creating, stitching services for an interactive set of 3D environments together that is easy for people to make "apps" for, building data centers, accounting for latency, building out supply chains, subsiding hardware, doing R&D on tracking, doing social research, and dealing with entrenched employees and middle managers accustomed to "the cushy tech worker lifestyle".
You really have to try social VR to understand how much better it is than video chatting or text channels. There's absolutely something to it. There's so much more information in the way people interact about what their intentions are, how they feel about what you're saying, what they're interested in, etc when you're interacting in VR with a 3D avatar.
All that being said, the virtual real estate and clear corporate "branding" angle is really gross, regardless of whether the money gets shady/you could really call that "corrupt". I prefer the wide range in quality but genuine effort and creativeness you get with a free and open ecosystem like VRChat.