Metaverse – Will the hype die down even before it picks up pace?

[Haamsaaveni (Hamsi) Kumar]

Today’s daily mentions a story from the Times regarding dwindling interest in Meta Platform’s metaverse as it faces difficulties via (1) increased competition for users on social media, (2) data privacy changes and regulatory oversight with the new Digital Markets Act, and (3) the amount of money being invested in it.

Should Facebook/Meta be regulated and simply take it or should it fight against deeper regulation given that there are no harms caused to anyone from the metaverse (as of now)?

[Andrew Spencer]

Interesting question, Hamsi!

I think the issue is that if Meta becomes the preeminent force in the metaverse that is used to access all online services, the idea of little regulation is an alarming proposal.

If I was involved in policy, I would first and foremost focus on discouraging user privacy violations and the potential abuse of data which we have seen is troubling in the current form of the internet. As technology advances, I think that we will risk sharing far greater amounts of data which could potentially be exploited and processed. The issue is that given Meta and Alphabet seem to be quite advanced in their development of a metaverse, it may take policy some time to catch up.

I’d be very interested to hear other thoughts on this!

[Ann Lee]

I have a question relating to the Metaverse and NFTs – How do you think the FTX collapse will impact the Metaverse and NFTs?

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