The Metaverse: When ideas outpace hardware

5

October

2024

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Recently, the news that Meta, the company behind the Metaverse and many VR devices is about to launch a new version of their flagship VR headset first leaked through FCC filings and then later got announced at Meta Connect 2024. As this announcement comes before the first birthday of their previous flagship device, the Quest 3, this left many puzzled on how this fits into the firm’s strategy.

Does the past predict the future?

“Study the past if you want to divine the future” – Confucious

When Mark Zuckerberg famously invented the predecessor to Facebook in 2003 out of his dorm room at Harvard, he came up with an idea that would really only find the level of success that it did after years of technological advancements and progress. The initial way users could interact with the website was through large and practically immovable desktops and thick, heavy laptops (the era-appropriate ThinkPad was 2.22kg, equipped with exactly 1 CPU core).

The way that users could even take a photo of their face to make a post, would involve first buying a digital camera, that took blurry, low-resolution photos and navigating the process to upload the photo first to capable machine. After all that, the user would have to find an opportune moment when nobody is taking a call on their landline phone, so that they could use their dial-up modem to connect to the internet and finally post the picture at a blazing 56 kbps (the chance of Windows XP not displaying the infamous blue screen of death notwithstanding).

So why did Facebook become such a massive success? In part, because in the late 2000s smartphones and surrounding technologies such as DSL internet connections and WiFi became prolific. Posting would no longer involve jumping through numerous hoops and silently hoping that nothing breaks that can’t be fixed by the user. It was a simple matter of opening the camera roll, being connected to the home WiFi network and pressing “post”.

Ahead of schedule

“In firing, at an object in motion, the instructor should explain that the best way is to aim in the usual
way, and then, without dwelling an instant on the aim, move the rifle laterally in the direction and to
the extent required […]” – Manual for Rifle Practice by General George Wingate, 1874

Facebook found success not by just being one of the most capable social media platforms on the early internet. A core factor in Facebook’s success was that it rode a wave of technology that came after its inception. If you wanted to develop a competing website in 2010, when the enabling technologies were well-established, you were going up against a giant made up of 1700 employees with 500 million active users.

This is a common theme with many internet companies, Google began as a research project in 1996, when only 18% of U.S. households had access to the internet to even have the problem of not knowing what website to go to (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). This figure would jump to 26% in the next 2 years, and by 2001 over half the households surveyed had access to the internet within the comfort of their own homes.

What did these companies do? They observed fast-moving frontier developments in technology, and decided to base their firms around a service that enables that technology to do new and valuable things for the customer. By the time any competitors could arise, they were well-established and in customers’ minds, which enabled them to dominate the market for the coming decades. They anticipated where a technology would be in a few years and built their products for that level of advancement, not what was currently the norm.

Betting the house on it

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

When in 2014 Facebook acquired Oculus, the company behind the trailblazing VR headsets “Oculus Rift” and “Oculus Rift S”, Mark Zuckerberg must have had a sense of déjà vu; He saw a fresh technology that is currently clunky, burdensome to use and developing fast. Anticipating the same momentum he saw with smartphones, he had an ambitious vision; What if he could replicate the success of Facebook, not by connecting people through screens and keyboards, but through the natural medium of speech, movement and body language?

After acquiring the firm, VR technology went through important transformations from a usability perspective. With the release of Oculus Go in 2018, if you wanted to jump into VR, you no longer needed to drill holes in your wall to set up base stations to track your controllers, there was no need to buy a gaming PC that would process the frames sent to the display, and you wouldn’t entangle yourself if the display cable as you whipped around observing your digital surroundings.

The company went through a quick transformation, now rebranded to “Meta”, 1 Hacker Way became the physical home to the prospective Metaverse, a VR accessible way of connecting with friends, colleagues and strangers on the internet.

Foreclosure

“3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible.” – Chernobyl (HBO)

However, Mark Zuckerberg’s vision was not to follow the timeline he might have imagined. The transformation of Facebook to Meta was a financially brutal affair. The Reality Labs division (mostly made up of former Oculus employees) posted a whopping $13.7 billion loss after a year of the company’s rebranding (Meta, 2023).

In order to “pursue greater efficiency and to realign [Meta’s] business and strategic priorities”, the company underwent a major restructuring effort that resulted in ballooning R&D budgets and a layoff of around 20,000 employees (Kerr, 2023).

In the face of these increasing costs, there was little promise of income from this change. The news cycle quickly filled with stories around how empty the current Metaverse is. In 2022 it was reported that only 9% of worlds created by users were visited by at least 50 people (TND Newsdesk, 2022). Additionally, news kept cropping up around the percieved absurdity of investing into projects in the metaverse, such as the infamous EU sponsored party that cost €387,000 and drew an attendance of 5 people (Fiedler, 2022).

Present day

“If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again” – Zen Cho

However, Meta adamantly refuses to give up pursuing its vision of the Metaverse. The company actively engages in a strategy of trying to advance the hardware customers can use to access the digital space. Even though the VR headset market advances very quickly, and therefore traditionally cornering it through a high marketshare is less feasible, Meta currently services 75% of the market (Armstrong, 2023). This suggests that the firm is pouring more money into the research and development of this technology than it would make sense if it only engaged in the market for short-term monetary gain.

The news of the Quest 3S, announced on September 25th, seems to be the latest bid from the firm to get more users online. From a hardware standpoint, the Quest 3S makes no business sense. It is overall on par with the recently released Quest 3, for three quarters of the price of the previous device, with what seems to be a full-feature (~€30) game thrown in with every purchase.

Ignoring the context, this would be a textbook case of competing with your own product, however, I view it as a perfect step to see through the vision of the Metaverse by lowering the barrier to entry for prospective users.

References:

Armstrong, M. (2023, February 28). Meta leads the way in VR headsets. Statista Daily Data. https://www.statista.com/chart/29398/vr-headset-kpis/

Fiedler, T. (2022, November 30). EU throws party in €387K metaverse — and hardly anyone turns up. POLITICO. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-threw-e387k-meta-gala-nobody-came-big-tech/

Kerr, C. (2023, October 8). Meta plans for another 10,000 layoffs just months after cutting 11,000 jobs. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/meta-plans-for-another-10-000-layoffs-just-months-after-cutting-11-000-jobs

Meta. (2023, February 1). Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results. https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2023/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2022-Results/default.aspx

TND Newsdesk. (2022, October 17). https://www.technewsday.com/2022/10/17/metaverse-faces-low-usage-as-users-complaints-mount/

U.S. Census Bureau. (2005). P23-208 Computer and Internet Use. In U.S. Census Bureau Library (No. P23-208). https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2005/demo/p23-208.pdf

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Filter bubbles

13

October

2022

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I first heard of the term filter bubble a few years ago during one of my lectures during my bachelor. I found it an interesting topic as filter bubbles are everywhere, and I believe even more widespread during the pandemic. For those of you who don’t exactly know yet what a filter bubble is: you find yourself in a filter bubble, every time that you are surrounded by news and opinions that are in line with your opinion (Farnam Street, n.d.). This probably does ring a bell now, as for our generation we can easily link it to the algorithms that our favorite social media apps use. One well-known example of filter bubbles is when Trump (suddenly) won the presidential elections in 2016. A lot of people didn’t see it coming that Trump actually had won the elections as they were almost sure that Hillary Clinton would win (Baer, 2016). This happened because many people actually ‘lived’ in a filter bubble. This happened because the algorithms that are used by social media platforms like Facebook, generate a personalized timeline that is more adjusted to your preferences every time you open or like an article. The algorithm personalizes the content, which results in only content that is in line with your opinion showing up on your timeline at some point. The fact that it is so easy to surround yourself with other people who share the same opinions also reinforces the creation of filter bubbles. A lot of people tend to believe they are well-educated on certain topics because they read content all day. But the problem is that this content is so tailored to their beliefs, that it often only tells one side of the story (Baer, 2016).

Another example of when filter bubbles were a hot topic was during the peak of the pandemic when polarization occurred in society due to the different beliefs of people. Two groups were created, and more people started believing that vaccines were only causing harm and that the pandemic was a hoax. In the United States, 42% of Americans have seen a lot or some news about the coronavirus outbreak that seemed completely made up (Mitchell & Oliphant, 2020). This number is alarming, as this can be caused by people living in filter bubbles. People who questions the pandemic started clicking on some articles that agreed with their doubts, causing the algorithm to show them more and more similar articles that are in line with their opinions. This causes people to believe that what they think is true because that’s the only news they see at some point. However, the problem is that they only see a very small fraction of the actual news on the pandemic and thus barely have an idea that there are other facts that can be true.

Personally, I think this is a serious problem and one of the downsides of social media. People can start believing in their own reality and not listen to others anymore, because all they see is news that is in line with their believes. What do you guys think of it? And do you believe that there is a clear solution for the problem of filter bubbles?

References

Baer, D. (2016, November 9). The ‘Filter bubble’ explains why Trump won and you didn’t see it coming. The Cut. Available at: https://www.thecut.com/2016/11/how-facebook-and-the-filter-bubble-pushed-trump-to-victory.html (Accessed: October 13 2022)

Farnam Street (2019, November 14). How filter bubbles distort reality: Everything you need to know. Farnam Street. Available at: https://fs.blog/filter-bubbles/ (Accessed: October 13 2022)

Mitchell, A. & Oliphan, J. (2020, March 18). Americans Immersed in COVID-19 News; Most
Think Media Are Doing Fairly Well Covering It. Pew Research Center [Blog Post]. Available at:
https://www.journalism.org/2020/03/18/americans-immersed-in-covid-19-news-mostthink-media-are-doing-fairly-well-covering-it/ (Accessed: October 13 2022)

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Somebody is watching me

11

October

2022

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Rockwell said it first, “I always feel that somebody is watching me and I have no privacy.” How many times has it occurred to you to discuss that you are interested in buying a product or paying for a service, and right after you unlock your smartphone and…what a coincidence! Your feed on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other social media and search engines is full of ads related to the desired item. Maybe the universe is listening and displaying all the relevant ads. Maybe not. 

Let’s use an example to make it more clear. Take, for instance, the use case that you are living in Rotterdam and you are visiting a friend of yours in Amsterdam. That friend of yours is really excited about the iPhone 14 that she ordered online, and she is trying to convince you to buy it. You say that you will think about it and the conversation ends there. You return home, unlock your smartphone, and…surprise! It is literally everywhere in your online presence. How is that possible? You call your mom and start discussing conspiracy theories and how Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri are eavesdropping. They are not. But if they are not, how do our thoughts and discussions about products magically convert into ads? 
They have master’s degrees in tracking and watching our actions in the online and offline worlds as well. If you are not naive or more politically correct, if you have ever read the terms and conditions on Facebook, you would have realized by now that you have consented to surveillance in your online behavior. Every digital step that you make (aka every click) leaves a digital footprint behind, which is turned into data that is saved to your unique online customer profile. Tracking is not restricted to the online world. Back to the I-phone 14 example Facebook tracked your location and found out that you and your friend were together. And, respectively, they track her purchasing history and focus on the last purchase, the iPhone 14. To be honest, anyone who would have paid that amount of money would talk about it. Facebook takes advantage of the probability that your friend discussed that purchase with you and decided to give it a shot with you.

Besides location tracking, Facebook’s algorithm detects similarities and differences in your and your friend’s interests, demographics, places you have been, groups you are a part of, hashtags you follow, and so on (Selman, 2021). If you are influenced by the conversation, you will be tempted by the ads and click on them to find further info. Then the footprint is yours and more ads will be displayed. If you ignore the ads, eventually, after a while, they will be replaced with ads that you are more likely to engage with. 

To conclude, there are no conspiracy theories and nobody is listening to your private conversations through your smartphone. That is what Edward Snowden should have probably said in order to not live freely, but he lived many years under asylum because the NSA and CIA wanted to…make him quiet.

Sources:

Selman, H. (2021). Why We See Digital Ads After Talking About Something. [online] McNutt & Partners. Available at: https://www.mcnuttpartners.com/why-we-see-digital-ads-after-talking-about-something/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2022].

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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Disruption

11

October

2022

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“Privacy. That’s Apple. Privacy is a fundamental human right. It’s also one of our core values. Which is why we design our products and services to protect it. That’s the kind of innovation we believe in.” (Apple Inc., 2022). Every Apple user has probably heard something in line with this before and it is not necessarily a lie: with the release of iOS 14.5 in April 2021, Apple launched a new privacy feature called “App Tracking Transparency”. With this feature, Apple forces app developers to ask users for permission to “track” them, that is share your data with third parties for ad-targeting purposes. Since the release of this feature, it has proven to be a major disruptor on the global ad market – in May 2022 only 25% of users agreed with apps tracking them (Lukovitz, 2022). This disruption is causing a major impact on revenue for big players: it is estimated that in 2022 Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature will cost Facebook $16 billion, YouTube $2.2 billion, Snap $546 million, and Twitter $323 million (O’Flaherty, 2022). In addition, the disruption is also impacting smaller businesses and start-ups that rely on personalized marketing to acquire new customers. Because of ATT, they have seen the cost of acquiring new customers rise and have had to cut back on marketing spending (McGee, 2022). This disruption caused by Apple has required big organizations like Google (owner of YouTube) and Meta (owner of Facebook) to reevaluate their business model and find a way to get the lost revenue back and keep their shareholders happy. 

Disruptive innovations are known to displace current market leaders, Google and Meta, and to see one or more new market-leading firms arise. Apple will say that the one benefitting from its anti-tracking crusade is you, the user, and, as we mentioned something similar before: this is not necessarily a lie. However, one with a business mindset and a critical view has probably seen it coming from miles away: the major benefiter is Apple itself. Appsumer reports that between the second quarter of 2021 (after the release of ATT) and the second quarter of 2022, Apple Search Ads (ASA) – Apple’s platform for selling advertisement space to advertisers – has experienced a major boost. Advertisers’ adoption of ASA grew by 4% to 94.8%, while that of Meta and Google decreased by respectively 3% and 1.7% to 82.8% and 94.8% (McCartney, 2022). Perhaps more interesting, are the changes that occurred in advertisers’ share-of-wallet (SOW). ASA’s SOW increased by 5% to 15%, while Meta’s SOW dropped by 4% to 28% and Google’s stayed the same at 34% (McCartney, 2022).

Apple has used the ATT feature very cleverly as a first hit in challenging the duopoly Google and Meta in the advertising market. While Apple is expected to make an almost negligible $5 billion in ad revenue in 2022 compared to Google ($209 billion) and Meta ($115 billion) (Kachalova, 2022), this difference is most definitely to slink in the coming years. Google and Meta are slowly adjusting to the reality because they know: Apple wants a share and will go to extreme measures to get it and with Apple’s strong ecosystem and large userbase, there is very little they can do about it.

Apple Inc. (2022). Privacy. Accessed on October 2022, van Apple.com: https://www.apple.com/privacy/

Kachalova, E. (2022, October 3). Big Tech owes you money. Find out how much. Accessed on October 2022, van AdGuard: https://adguard.com/en/blog/personal-data-cost-money.html

Lukovitz, K. (2022, May 5). Privacy Update: ATT IDFA Opt-In Rate At 25% Overall, But Varies By Vertical. Accessed on October 11, 2022, van Mediapost: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/373613/privacy-update-att-idfa-opt-in-rate-at-25-overal.html

McCartney, J. (2022, September 6). Appsumer Report: Apple Privacy Measures Provides a Boost for Apple Search Ads and Favors Large Advertisers. Accessed on October 2022, van Business Wire: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220906005427/en/Appsumer-Report-Apple-Privacy-Measures-Provides-a-Boost-for-Apple-Search-Ads-and-Favors-Large-Advertisers

McGee, P. (2022, August 9). Small businesses count cost of Apple’s privacy changes. Accessed on October 2022, van Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/small-businesses-count-cost-of-apples-privacy-changes/

O’Flaherty, K. (2022, April 23). Apple’s Privacy Features Will Cost Facebook $12 Billion. Accessed on October 2022, van Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2022/04/23/apple-just-issued-stunning-12-billion-blow-to-facebook/?sh=58eb37031907

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More than Killing Your Time? The Trend, Future, and Growth of Consumer Internet

2

October

2022

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Undoubtedly, Meta cannot ignore the competition from TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance nowadays. The temptation of content ranking based on social graphs for users is increasingly inferior to the taste and convenience of recommended content. However, three trends are emerging in the consumer Internet, from media to algorithms to interaction. Meta, or Facebook and Instagram together, is on the way to differentiating itself meanwhile building the safeguard with resources on user and technology.

  1. Immersive Medium

It has been witnessed that Facebook gained explosive growth after it added photo sharing from the text mode, and Instagram expanded rapidly after adding the video function to photo media. The progression of the medium, from text to images, then videos, 3D afterward, and till then VR, is the most signification advancement that all the consumer internet companies above are devoting into.

  1. Involvement of AI

Computers are becoming smarter and more convenient. As time passed, Facebook changed from a collection of personal information to time stamp posts, then to ranking feed with weight and signal. The recommendation is another stop with a huge step: the content pool is more than your interests and following but from the whole internet. Afterward, AI generation and creation will be the next focus.

  1. Dynamic User Interaction

The third trend for consumer internet would be the transformation of user-orientated towards computer-controlling. While “click”, “scroll,” and “tap” were used in the initial versions of Facebook and Instagram, TikTok applied “swipe” to simplify the process in a more user-friendly way. Other companies, such as Youtube, are using “autoplay”, which is a more interchangeable and less-interaction method.

No matter what technology or direction those consumer internet companies are heading to, the attractive part is that they’re combining those trends and making them boundless. In the long run, the diverse content creation environment and lower cost of AI could realize a vision far more than user engagement, but what users choose to interact with. 

Reference

Rebecaa F. (2019). The Strategy Behind TikTok’s Global Rise. Harvard Business Review, September, 19.

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Metaverse: a distorted dystopian future?

13

September

2022

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Imagine being immersed in an interactive virtual simulated reality where you will be working, building relationships, and playing games. A science-fiction dream not far from turning into a reality. Fascinating you’d say, though, is it a step further to disconnect us from reality? This phenomenon is called the Metaverse, a virtual universe, in which we will be represented through avatars or holograms, and we can interact with each other as if we are absorbed in a futuristic game. 

The new paradigm will seamlessly blur out the lines between our physical reality and digital virtuality, combining various different platforms ranging from gaming, retail, and education, to perhaps entirely new experiences (Mystakidis, 2022). Technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence deem such an interconnected web of information and communication feasible (Lee et al., 2021). While the concept of the metaverse, now at its earlier stages, continues to be advanced and developed, it will certainly be the next disruption of the internet. In particular, as already more than 120 billion dollars, this year alone, is invested to further refine the infrastructure and technology (McKinsey & Company, 2022). 

So, how, for instance, can we imagine such a world? To illustrate, you have designed your own dream home in the virtual world, where you can invite your metaverse friends over to have a chat. They will appear virtually, in avatars or holograms made available through augmented, mixed, and virtual reality, at your home. You can thus socialize, but also do some business, shop, game, and many other things like in real life. To put it easy, it is essentially the same as living your life in reality, but without physical boundaries. Accordingly, it is living in a parallel world where you can create a life you have always dreamed of. 

But, isn’t it another way of keeping people detached from the actual reality of touching, feeling, and real presence in the world? I certainly do think so. It may have sounded quite fascinating, though if we look at the world today and where it is headed, I am worried that the metaverse will be creating a very distorted dystopian future. The new generation will not fully experience real freedom any more, when living in such a virtual world. 

What do you think, is the metaverse going to be a hope or doom for the future generation? 

References

Lee, L. H., Braud, T., Zhou, P., Wang, L., Xu, D., Lin, Z., … & Hui, P. (2021). All one needs to know about metaverse: A complete survey on technological singularity, virtual ecosystem, and research agenda. arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05352.

McKinsey & Company. Meet the metaverse: Creating real value in a virtual world. (2022). McKinsey & Company. Retrieved 12 September 2022, from https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/new-at-mckinsey-blog/meet-the-metaverse-creating-real-value-in-a-virtual-world 

Mystakidis, S. (2022). Metaverse. Encyclopedia, 2(1), 486–497. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia2010031

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The power of Big Tech companies

9

October

2021

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How does social media impact our world? The use of social media has highly increased over the years, and you would almost forget how it was without it. But on the 4th of October 2021 people around the world had a glimpse of how a world without social media would look like. A global outage took place and Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram and Whatsapp were down for more than six hours. More than 3.5 billion people around the world rely on these platforms for communication with friends and families or for running their businesses.

Additionally, Frances Haugen, a former employee of Facebook, revealed that same week how the company is causing harm by providing evidence to lawmakers, regulators and the news media.

The abovementioned outage and the revelations brought to light from whistleblower Frances Huagen not only showed how dependent the world has become on social media but also added fuel to the fire; the ever-growing power of big tech companies and the way those companies deal with harm caused by their platforms.

Companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple all provide digital services and those have ingrained in our lives that it is almost impossible to avoid them. Some argue that this succes comes with responsibility and increasingly people are questioning if those companies are living up to this responsibility. Two critical points are: How do Big Tech companies protect the privacy of their users? and to what extent can they be held liable for what is happening on their platform?

According to Haugen companies like Facebook and Instagram use amplification algorithms and engagement-based raking that is leading children and teenagers to harmful online content without trying to solve this issue because of the profit it’s earning. Haugen recommends reforming Section 230 that protects companies from liability for third-party content on their platform. She argues that the government has to step in and companies should be held responsible for the consequences of their algorithms. Even though something has to change, one my ask oneself if government oversight is the right solution. The government regulating algorithms of tech companies could influence journalism and free speech and what consequences would that have?

References

Alter, C. (2021, October 6). How Fixing Facebook’s Algorithm Could Help Teens—and Democracy. Time. https://time.com/6104157/facebook-testimony-teens-algorithm/?utm_source=roundup&utm_campaign=20210929

Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com). (2021). Why Big Tech is under fire around the world | DW | 16.04.2021. DW.COM. https://www.dw.com/en/why-big-tech-is-under-fire-around-the-world/av-57230952

Isaac, M., & Frenkel, S. (2021, October 8). Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Were Down: Here’s What to Know. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-down.html

Mac, R., & Kang, C. (2021, October 6). Whistle-Blower Says Facebook ‘Chooses Profits Over Safety.’ The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-frances-haugen.html#:%7E:text=Frances%20Haugen%2C%20a%20Facebook%20product,documents%20to%20journalists%20and%20others.&text=%5BWatch%20the%20Facebook%20hearing%20live.%5D

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Has Facebook’s Outage Taught Us Anything on our Social Media Dependency ?

6

October

2021

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As I am sure you are all aware, Facebook had one of the longest outages it has ever recorded on Monday evening here in Europe, lasting about 6 hours ((Barry, 2021). The outage was worldwide, and affected the normal flow of information as a whole. Despite an estimated $50 billion decrease in market value (Sweney, 2021), the negative impact it had on users worldwide was significantly more important. This has led many people to question whether we as a society are over-dependant on social media applications such as the Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp of the Facebook group.


Different regions in the world attach different importances to “western social medias” such as Facebook. In developing countries, notably in Latin America, where the emergence of internet and smartphones has been close to twofold in the last two years (TechCrunch Is Now a Part of Verizon Media, 2021), social medias are borderline a necessity for the daily functions of locals. Indeed, the free nature of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp means that more people rely on these social networks than on regular sim contracts or sim based communications. In Latin America, 85% of all internet users have a social media account. This only highlights what kind of devastating impact the failure of Facebook can have on local inhabitants.

It has been seen that more developed regions of the world, namely Europe, are less influenced by free social media. As opposed to the aforementioned 85%, only 50% of europeans actively depend on Facebook and its applications for communications (Sweney, 2021).

But as we move further east, there is a trend for a smaller usage of Facebook’s social media platforms. Unexpectedly, Russia reports a mere 8.8% of people using Facebook, as many Russians prefer local alternatives such as OdnoKlassniki (OK.ru). Further East, we can see that the usage pattern of Western social medias is smaller than elsewhere. The biggest economies in Asia, namely China, Japan and South Korea, all have comparatively low usage rates for Facebook despite such a prominent GDP per capita. In China, the Facebook company is totally banned. Nevertheless, less economically developed countries in Asia, such as India, follow the same trend as Latin America as they have abnormally large usage rates for free social medias.

Some have pinned the timing of Facebook’s outage as mitigating, as it occurred during the Indian Night time. For a country with over 500 million Whatsapp users (Sweney, 2021), the impact of this outage could have been significantly more pronounced if it had happened a couple of hours later.

This highlights the fragility that lies on relying solely on social medias for communications. It also underlines how the perspective on over dependency on social medias depends strongly on geographic placement.
Furthermore, this outage has pushed many people to express further concerns on security, as the source of the issue has not been explained in a clear and detailed manner.

REFERENCES

  • Barry, E. (2021, October 5). Messenger Apps Signal and Telegram Benefit After Facebook Outage. Time. https://time.com/6104151/signal-downloads-facebook-outage/
  • Sweney, M. (2021, October 5). Facebook outage highlights global over-reliance on its services. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/05/facebook-outage-highlights-global-over-reliance-on-its-services
  • TechCrunch is now a part of Verizon Media. (2021, September 22). TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/latin-americas-second-wave-of-digital-transformation/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADqC0VgYnPsGg02YWG2uVJZRj6w1KfmshCPtU8Mo7upu0qonam70DxE93UhNwfKAUpHDSaR4RoZ77p3A4v24BqvdYPk_W79haMBOZDJjmO6fRUPtJ6sUcjUAuPu5xoK_BmPm5qjJJ8SKQKR1sMOSEsHvWIOJHz-mjHy2bJQoPif0

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The Dark Pages Of Facebook

6

October

2021

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Facebook has received a lot of bad publicity in the last week. Almost everybody is aware of the huge outage that affected Facebook and its subsidiaries, which made it impossible for consumers to use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This is ofcourse a big problem and shows how reliable we are on a few companies to communicate with each other. However, this outage took the spotlight from much bigger problems with the platform that were revealed a couple of days earlier.

On Sunday, the identity of a whistleblower was revealed on the TV show “60 Minutes”. Frances Haugen started her job at Facebook in the civic integrity team. However, as time went on and this team got dissolved, Haugen became more and more disenchanted by the company. At some point during this year, she realized that the company prioritized its profits over the wellbeing of its users. She gathered thousands of documents and left the company (Duffy, 2021).

But what where the issues that made Haugen leave Facebook?

It has been shown that the use of social media can have negative effects on its users, like increased stress or anxiety (Brown, 2018). Haugen, however, revealed that Facebook knew of some of these negative effects and chose growth instead of fixing these issues. Two instances can be identified from the leaked documents. According to Haugen, Facebook knew from research that using Instagram could have a negative effect on the mental health of teenage girls and that it helps to create a divide in society (Eijsvoogel, 2021). The company chooses to ignore these problems and by doing so creating a worse society for us to live in.

Luckily, this problem is getting more attention in recent times. Haugen even appeared in front of the United States congress and lawmakers all over the world want to control (the seemingly endless) power of social media companies like Facebook. I would love to hear what you think about this issue! Should the government set stricter laws to try and limit the harm of social media or is this the responsibility of the users and not the company that provides the platform?

References:

Brown, J. (2018, January 4). Is social media bad for you? The evidence and the unknowns. Bbc.com; BBC Future. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-the-evidence-and-the-unknowns

Duffy, C. (2021, October 4). Facebook whistleblower revealed on ’60 Minutes,’ says the company prioritized profit over public good. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/03/tech/facebook-whistleblower-60-minutes/index.html

Eijsvoogel, J. (2021, October 5). Deze vrouw wil aan het licht brengen hoe gevaarlijk Facebook is. NRC. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/10/05/de-vrouw-die-facebook-in-t-nauw-bracht-a4060808

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Finally action against social media platforms?

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October

2021

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Over the last couple of years, scandal after scandal regarding the blatant disregard for mental health issues by social media platforms like Facebook have been brought to the public’s attention. The 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, where several industry experts give insights into how social media platforms are exploiting users by manipulating their mental health for their own profits, brought great attention to these issues, but over time these effects subsided. This week, again, Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen came out and stirred the pot by testifying before Congress the dangers of Facebook for children, and how the company put profits before the safety of users. Finally, it seems that governments are listening to society’s cries for help, but will it be enough to enforce stricter regulations?

It is not “news” that social media heavily manipulates its users to try and keep them on the app as long as possible, improving their own profits. For years it has been publicly known that platforms like Facebook hire people who’s main aim is to make the website as addictive as possible, without regard for the implications these might have on the mental health of users. As a result, increased anxiety, depression, and isolation are associated with excessive social media usage. Multiple employees have gone public to try and gain attention for this issue; some successfully, some to no avail. Recently, it was discovered that Facebook tried to cover up an internal report which researched how their products affects users. The report finds that 32% of young girls who felt bad about their body felt worse when they went to Instagram. Furthermore, the report concludes that Instagram negatively affects mental health in both young boys and young girls. With an app so commonly used among children, and (young) adults it is staggering how legislators are not cracking down on this extremely damaging industry. After all, (mental) health should be a main priority for governments.

This latest scandal has again put the power of social media in the media’s eye. Finally, legislators in the U.S. have put forward new, and expanding regulations that could have a bit of an impact on the negative effects of social media, such an expansion of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act which makes it illegal for platforms to collect data from under 13-year olds without consent of their parents. However, I am not very optimistic as other initiatives have often failed to become accepted into regulation, or fail to really serve the purpose of the legislation. Furthermore, the power of the platforms is enormous, and these are heavily involved in the funding of political parties, which poses another interesting question: should these gigantic (tech) corporations be allowed to be this involved in politics? However, that is a topic for a different blog.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/e9e25ff3-639a-4cc1-bb81-dedf24d956e3 https://www.ft.com/content/febd8adc-8729-4e50-889d-f22a109fd44e

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