Simblified Gets Meta, Part 1

I, V, M. I'm definitely all for me. All for meta was like, so that's exactly the thing. So all these people on Twitter, they're like, oh, no, meta was this bad.

And we should not be spending so much time in the virtual world. And I'm just, we might think to myself as a geeky, like 16 year old engineering college student, like all this sounds great. Please, where do I sign up? Take my data.

It's completely OK. Yeah. So the key there is people are complaining on the Internet about and needless to say that is meta in a very different sort of way. First of all, I have to say that, so firstly, for our listeners, so we have made the mistake of just parsing right into the topic without even considering that there are people who might be listening to us.

Welcome to Simplified. This is a show where we try to, well, simplify things around us using a little bit of Wikipedia research and a lot of bad jokes. There are usually four of us over here, but it's just two of us for this particular episode. I am Chuck and I'm Tony.

Yes, well done. And you dear listener, welcome to join us. We keep rotating a cast of, it's like a board with a company's board with a seat that is open for employees so that any of our listeners can come and join on the panel at any point of the board games. It's terrible.

Anyway, so we are going to discuss in this particular episode, Facebook's rebranding to meta and Facebook's ambitions for something called the meta was what that means, what that's trying to distract from because it seems like Facebook is neatly trying to make us forget some of the things that it's been doing. And also what the larger implications of this could be for technology and there I say humanity itself. But before that, before we get into all that, we usually start off with some segments that are beloved to simplify listeners. So Tony, a couple of weeks back, no, I was in punch, honey is a lovely little hill station close to who me and I just went there for a bit of a break.

And after the thing, I just put out a nice tweet with a few pictures of the place and me a picture of me making notes and everything. And I said, what a nice place was in the break and all that. And there were about 10 replies to this, most of which were like, hey, that looks really nice or hey, we can do this. And one person replied, what about your shitty podcast?

Yeah, so now, yeah, so there's a problem. Okay, so there was a part of me that wanted to say which one of the three might be referring to. But then I realized that might just be opening the doors for even more videos. So I just left it at that.

So I was like, okay, so there are people who are who are pissed off with a show enough to write in like that. But what I also got during the same amount of time, I'm not kidding, it's not the universe is trying to balance itself out. I got five profundities that week and listeners are simplified. So for all of you people, please keep sending them into those profundities are the only things that keep us sane.

I once went to an open mic show, which was hosted by Puneeth Panya and it was like a typical open mic. There were six comedians and there were three people in the audience, like a typical open mic show in Bombay. And when Puneeth was addressing the crowd, he looked at the three people and said, please love because you're the only people standing between these guys and the rope. And I feel that I have the same thing about simplified listeners.

So please keep sending us your profundities because then I mean, that's only way that we know that is actually a show where people actually listen, I'm not an excuse for the four of us to get together. I'd like to read out one of those profundities. This was sent in by Karana Soris on Instagram. Thank you so much for this current.

This is fantastic. There's nothing to do with the topic that we're going to discuss, but this is great. Why do the bride and group go around the fire seven times in marriage rituals answered given by a max teacher? Each circle consists of 360 degrees.

Only number from one to nine, which cannot divide 360 is seven. So the bride and group go around the fire seven times, ensuring that nothing can divide their relationship. And then you have the word match with the folded hand emoji twice on both sides. This is the profundity.

This is the kind of stuff that our fans send us. You know, when New York Times reporters and all put their email IDs out there and say, send us tips and send us anonymous quotes and things like that. This is what we expect from our listeners. We don't need anything else.

We should start like profundities have simplified, handled like depth of degree depth. Wow, profundities have simplified. That's actually a great idea. That is actually an astonishingly good idea.

So if anyone over here would, since it's very clear that we are not launching our microwave repair service from Polynesia, if anyone would like to see the standard profundities of, I would not be surprised if somebody actually plays it. Remember, one of our listeners actually went and made that page first. The secret life was free. So thank you, current for sending that in.

And for everyone else, yes, please keep sending us the best of your WhatsApp forwards from your family WhatsApp group. So Tony, let's get to the topic today on Thursday, which was 28 of October. Facebook announced its intention to become a metaverse company and rebranded itself meta. And I quote Zuckerberg, I've been thinking a lot about our identity.

Over time, I hope you're seen as a metaverse company. I don't think this is an entirely bad thing because anything that moves the reputation of Facebook away from what it's known for right now. You didn't do this top code thing. This is a nice bad practice.

Zuckerberg is a good movement of reality. Yeah, yeah, who knows what is real and what is inside codes anyway, metaverse company stop code. So Tony, I don't think this is a bad thing because anything that describes from what Facebook is actually, I think any sort of rebranding right now will work. Like they can rebrand themselves as a company that costs just kids by actively asking them to do deforestation by recreationally burning coal in the face of endangered animals while making them listening to episodes simplified on the side.

And that would be an improvement over what they are right now. So we did cover the metaverse. Yeah, they did put in their ambitions early on. I mean, apart from the cynicism, I don't, I think it's a very, very bold move for someone like Facebook to say, listen, I mean, this is not just the thing that we're going to be doing.

There is something beyond it. Then I don't think it'll be any less intrusive or damaging to the next generation as Facebook has been, but at least they are open about it. Yeah. And I totally agree with that.

And it's basically for the next half and hour or so, we are completely going to bash Facebook. So let's just get this out of the way. I actually think this is one of the boldest moves by a technology company. It is one of the most ambitious moves by the technology company or by a technology company.

Can I say, since Apple dropped the iPhone in 2007, they dropped it? I mean, you know, the kids call it a bit. This is actually very, very far, I mean, in some senses, visionary, they are willing to back up everything that they've been doing and tying it all together with a very, very ambitious plan. And they are also upfront with saying that it won't be built by one company.

Yeah. Basically saying that, you know, go and build your own parts and we'll acquire you along the way. But yeah, it's, I think it's very, very good. But let's get into it.

Yeah. So, I mean, we're just discussing what really is out there and whatever thoughts about this could be. So let's see what else could, so just to quote New York Times who reported this, I mean, everybody else, the move punctuates how Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive plans to refocus the Silicon Valley company on what he sees as a next digital frontier, which is the unification of disparate digital worlds into something called the metaverse. At the same time, renaming Facebook might help business company from the social networking controversies.

It's facing including how he's used to spread hate speech and misinformation, a noble goal, but we will leave, we will not focus on that at least for now. So what does this mean? So one way of thinking about it is, I think a lot of people are like confused about what a in between version of the metaverse could be. So I say, forget that and just close your eyes and think about what the fully realized version of a metaverse could be.

Like I am thinking we are plugged into some sort of a chair like this, like matrix like your plug with something into your head and then you are sitting and you're very conscious about activities that you're doing, but you are for our practical purposes, living inside another, another world you are operating in virtual reality. We are doing this recording. We will be sitting maybe limp on our respective chairs, but our avatars will be meeting at the virtual IBM studio, which we can customize and I might see a different studio than you will and unfortunately for our producer, we are still the same brains and the same people. But apart from that, I think that's what we could do cooler.

Yeah, sound cooler. And so the embodied internet. I think that's an interesting phase that's about you somewhere. This is basically the embodied internet where you are now, I think it's kind of self-explanatory.

Avatar goes to office hands out with friends virtually at end concerts and while the physical you is probably on a comfortable recliner or something. So yeah, that's I guess. Yeah, I mean another definition that I liked, I know you didn't particularly take to it was something I saw yesterday by this person called Shan, VP on Twitter, who basically said you know, don't expect it. Yeah, don't think of the metaverse as a space, but think of it as time based, right?

So if humans in the past used to spend 100% of the time in the real world, when TVs came in and started mindlessly watching it, it was probably like 85% in the real world and 15% in the TV, in the computer game and probably a third of your time was spent on the computer. And now we are in our phones more than 50% of the time, which means your sort of virtual existence in some senses matters more than your real world takes, because that's where you're spending more of your time. And take this to its logical conclusion where about 90% of your time is spent in the virtual world and therefore everything that happens in the virtual world matters more to you than what happens in the real world in terms of how you appear, what you show off, etc. And therefore, I thought that's a much simpler version of the metaverse to understand because otherwise there are too many movie parts.

So basically if you're going to spend a lot of your time virtually, then what are the possible things that can move around it and what are the new economies that can spring up, the challenges that can come. By the way, I completely agree with all that Sean said and I think this is a brilliant way of looking at it. I love that percentage part that he mentioned as well and I think it's very obvious that we're getting there. I just thought he packaged with a whole bunch of fluff saying that it's a moment in time and things like that.

I mean, that you can say about pretty much anything, simplified as a moment in time. As a past advertise. But I completely agree, we are doing more things virtually, but I think more than the doing more things virtually, it's a signaling part of things, right? Which is we are in some sense, the digital goods that we have to show off have become kind of more important in some ways.

If you're seeing this right now, of course, the whole NFT crisis happening, which we will talk about a little later. But I think more than that, like, look at how we're leading our lives. I know for example, a photographer once told me that he is desperate to accumulate Instagram followers, not necessarily for engagement or for they'll buy his prints or something, but because potential gallery owners look at Instagram numbers as a sign of popularity. So he doesn't matter if it's bots and things like that.

He just wants a number to show. Similarly, people don't ask for CDs anymore. It's all about how you look on LinkedIn, the type of things that you say on Twitter, etc. And from there, yes, it's very easy to draw a very logical conclusion to what the meta was.

Yeah, yeah. Hopefully not for CDs and LinkedIn profundities. But yeah, I mean, definitely for even like when you cast in smaller roles in films or whatever, you need to have a certain Instagram following because otherwise you're not really adding value. So that's already sort of been monetized in some sense.

Yeah, it's a it's an interesting future that we are headed towards. Did you ever put your Twitter follower count down your CV? Twitter follower count down my goal. Okay, so here's the thing.

So here's the thing. I would do that if the things I spoke about on Twitter were relevant to whatever's applying for. The point is I can say what I have what classic mistake. No, but here's the thing if I'm applying for your role in marketing or something.

And if I put a I have what 12K followers on Twitter or whatever it is, people say, oh, he must be some marketing influencer. They go there. They see what they are most likely to see bad jokes, rock music recommendations and be dizzying on advertising. So it's probably my in my best interest to draw attention away from that.

Anyway, there are lots of areas there are lots of like like you Tony, like he said, this is not something that was sprung on us out of the blue head out of the blue. See what I did there. But it's something that Facebook has been hinting at for a while arguably starting with the acquisition of Oculus a few years ago. There are some more details on this, but let us take a break right now, Tony.

I think that is our meta listeners to check out some meta advertisers and then we will be back with meta part two. I have no idea what any of that meant, but hey, that's the meta was. See you guys on the other side of this. Namaste, sashryakal.

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Welcome back to part two of our book at the Metaphos. So before we go further, can we discuss the logo? The logo, yes, please. Is that a rubber band or is it meant to be a movie strip?

I saw it, I didn't read up about it. So I hate that my mind has gone over here, but Casey Newton, who used to write for the version of Ransa Great, who said it called the platformer, he had one look at the logo and said, guess what? Everybody from every high school student from a Menlo Park high school is going to be doing with a marker to this logo. And I will now leave it to the listeners imagination.

There's just a couple of additional dots, good news that look a little more colorful. The Silicon Valley, what is it name? Gavin. Gavin.

Gavin. Gavin of Hooli. In fact, somebody actually did read out yesterday on Wednesday that spoiler alert Facebook is going to be renaming a schooly. It would have been incredible.

The logo, actually, I kind of like it to be honest. I think logos in general get a lot of flack just because there's something new and different. But I actually like the logo. It's simple.

It's easily drawable. I, as a brand marketer, I think that is something that can very easily be extended to various physical and digital products. And I also think it will look very cool in the metaverse. Just imagine Tony.

Just imagine just like how you have this. I love Mumbai. I love Lok and Voila in your case. I love Voila.

All those kinds of things. Just imagine in the metaverse there will be I love that metaverse thing and that would be pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah. So we are for you, Zaki. Okay. So as Mark Zuckerberg has laid out several areas where the metaverse would be applicable, including video gaming, fitness and work.

Lots of questions there by itself, but we'll address those. So here are a few things that's already happening. So I think there are some six or seven points. So one is Verizon home, which Facebook is making the home screen on its Oculus Quest.

Oculus by the way is for those who don't know, it's a virtual reality headset that Facebook acquired a few years ago and widely known to be the best virtual reality headset out there computing with a GC5 and of course, cheap combo things that you can get from Amazon for 500 rupees. By the way, they didn't know Oculus is almost a unicorn by itself, just by itself. It's revenue was close to $800 million for Facebook. That's just from devices.

Yeah, that's just from devices apparently. I'm guessing device plus software. I'm not quite sure of what the split was, but that is again, just a drop in the ocean for Facebook, whose other, whose other $33 point, whatever billion came from advertising. So that being said, Oculus, the hardware division is growing at almost 200%.

Those of you who have observed the early days of Amazon Web Services might want to keep an eye out on this particular thing. It's almost big enough now for a buy juice to acquire. Oh gosh. The question is, is buy juice big enough for Facebook to acquire?

Okay. That pause was just us thinking of how dystopian this future could get. I mean, education is probably also a frontier for it. Oh yeah, 100%.

Not to mention, you thought it first and education becomes the proverbial lipstick on the pink, right? It's the nice thing for a company that's so mired in scandal. I'm not going to say look, we are at least educating young minds and all the same guys who insight genocide, they will also be teaching you that A plus B whole square is A square plus two A B plus. Sorry, I forgot.

I need to take a bite juice. But let's go back to what Facebook is doing right now. So there's something called horizon home, which is Facebook is making the home screen of Oculus Quest more social, allowing friends to gather watching videos together and dive into games and apps. That seems kind of logical.

So creating sort of like a news feed within Oculus itself, then there is messenger calling in virtual reality that will start soon. Then they will be bringing more two-dimensional apps to virtual reality. This includes things like Slack and Dropbox. I'm not quite sure what virtual reality Slack would be, but that's yet another dystopian future.

And okay, Slack, I can still imagine people might want to huddle around office and go, but Dropbox, like what virtual reality can you do in Dropbox? You really want to see like a, I don't know, a game if I or a three-dimensional version of your file coming in. I guess it's like collaborating on things. Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting to see what's going to end up happening. Facebook actually, so have you ever used any of those augmented reality filters on Instagram? Those effects, they're called effects. The kids call them effects.

Not intentionally. Not intentionally. Exactly. That's how you know you're over 30.

Oh gosh. Okay. So the thing is those things are actually reasonably simple to create. So Facebook has, if you go to the Facebook development site, there is something called Spark.

It's a AR studio where it's actually fairly easy to make these things. They have some presets and even without coding knowledge, it's actually fairly easy to make something, those stickers that stick onto your head and keep rotating various lines of text. So there's a technical term for it, but I know what it is. And other things like identify the face and you can do this, identify a background and then you can do this a little bit of basic non-coding programming and you can actually make it.

I mean, but even just imagine something like Geo Guesser. Yeah, that would be amazing. A virtual Geo Guesser. I am also.

I'm not sure if you would. Highly addictive game. Yeah. Basically, you're dropped in a random location based on Google Street View photos you're supposed to.

Yes. Yeah. And it's actually the techno actually I've seen various versions of that game before, but where Geo Guesser does it right is the packaging, right? It's like you have two minutes or you can just battle royale where you are pitted against random people from around the world.

There are themes like by McDonald's restaurants, by cricket stadiums, by roads, by concert venues. So it's kind of nice actually. Like Harry Potter. So it's kind of nice.

So I can, yeah, I can fully imagine something like that getting a shot in the arm. Okay, what is this? The Verizon marketplace on the augmented reality front Facebook is adding hand and body packing with Spark AR tools exactly what I said right now, as well as polar, which is a new app that allows people to create augmented reality filters without needing to code to spur usage of its new tools and features. Facebook is creating a $150 million fund, which seems impressive, but also seems extremely low given the numbers that you're used to.

I blame it all on Biceps and quarterly earnings like a Facebook made a revenues of $33 billion. You feel that they should be spending a little more than $150 million. That drops $150 million should be like bent down to pick it up. And then lastly, there is something called Project Cambria.

During the event, Facebook reviewed a new high end heads consumer headset that it says will be released next year along with a high end price like higher ender than the Oculus. That's interesting. That's a really, you know, difficult name that they've chosen Cambria. It's a project.

It's a project. So they will probably change the same. Remind me of Cambria, Jan, Littaker. Oh, yeah, it's like a maybe it's sort of like a middle finger to them like Cambridge Analytica.

You tried, but we are still going strong and making more revenues than ever before. So Cambridge Analytica is put together. I've seen a dated reference like Cambridge Analytica was so far back in Facebook. Slips, candles, they did.

Yeah, I know right. And it actually wasn't all that long back. In some ways the BP oil still feels more essential than Cambridge Analytica. Anyway, so we improved color optics and all that.

This was taken from an article that Axios did on all the things that Facebook is doing. So this is going to take time, right? It's not something that's going to manifest immediately. It's like a 20, 30 year horizon is going to take a lot of hardware to get there.

That is really where Facebook is actually super good at. It's not in the legality, not in the space. Oh, yeah, that's not really bad about it. Yeah, but building things in a manner that will revolutionize that industry.

Like before Facebook, social networks existed, digital advertising existed. But and for all that we say that, you know, Zuckerberg's told from the Winklevi or whatever, none of them could have built it into the kind of machine that Zuckerberg has done or Facebook team has done. And that's where they are really, really good. It's about taking things that already exist, but putting them together and building it into a manner that you can't get out of it.

You can't escape it. So yeah, absolutely. It's very much sooner than 30 years. Yeah.

And how big they're betting on it. But also how they've come up front and said that this is going to define us. Yeah, absolutely. And to add to your point, absolutely the biggest tech companies today weren't the first in their space.

Like Google wasn't the first option. And Apple did, I mean, the iPod was far from the first MP3 player. And even the iPhone was far from the first. And maybe, I think only Amazon was the first in its space in the sense in terms of what it did.

But your point absolutely taken. OK, so just on this point about hardware and all that. So I'm going to go to a reply that Zuckerberg gave in an interview with Ben Thompson, who writes this fantastic news that it was about strategy. And Tony, I want you to see if you can spot the part over here where things escalate a little bit.

OK, so this is the answer. And the question was basically around hardware, what do you think you need to physically build to get this thing out and Zuckerberg says. And again, spot the part you can see where the SDSLX. We are trying to help build a bunch of the fundamental technology and platforms that will go towards enabling this.

This is the networks. There's a bunch of the hardware sizes of the AR goggles, the CAR glasses, the input EMG systems. Like, excuse me. So EMG stands for electromography.

And when I googled up what it actually was, I was desperately hoping that this was not it. But yes, it is those little circular patches that doctors will put on to use to see when they're on the treadmill to see what your heart rate is and things like that. So I love how he's gone from the AR goggles, AR goggles and EMG systems. So the second thing would be for the arm movements and everything.

I hope it's just that. I hope it sticks with just the arm because it goes into the brain. We have already done a fairly freakish episode on Elon Musk's plans of getting all our brains wired up to the internet. So I have a feeling NewerLink and Meta are going to have a bit of a future together because a lot of it seems to be in towards same things.

So that being said, there are a few things that are happening right now. Facebook's parent company that is Meta has been reportedly working on a smartwatch with a camera. Well, I guess that's one thing. A majority of their new hires are for virtual reality.

There's something that's been happening for a while. So it's not like this has been sprung on a completely out of the blue. In fact, just recently they announced plans to hire 10,000 people specifically working on the Metavos in the European Union. Nice way to curry favor with that.

Nicely done. And now, and this is when you know the company is really serious about the shit. They have changed their stock ticket. Do you know this?

Yeah, they have changed from FD to MVRS, which stands for Metavos. So that is a little bit. So let's take another break right now and let's come back and buy some MVRS. Oh yeah, absolutely.

I mean, see, let's face it. You can either keep sitting and complaining about stuff like this or profit of it. Or you can profit of it. I don't think there is any.

The Twitter and the Metavos is there for signaling, but let's face it. We all need to eat. And this seems to be a fairly decent way to put food on the table, virtual or otherwise. We'll take a break and we'll come back.

And I have, there are several questions to still answer about the Metavos and let us try to find some answers on the other side of the break. It feels like everyone's talking about two things right now. Pickleball and podcast. So what happens when someone who's lived her whole life on the court decides to bring those two worlds together?

I'm Sanya Mism and I'm bringing you a brand new podcast, serving it up with Sanya. I've had some incredible conversations with friends, fellow athletes, artists and entrepreneurs. Each episode starts with the game of Pickleball and once the rallies are done, the real topic is serving it up with Sanya, watch and listen on YouTube and wherever you get your favorite podcast. Welcome back to our discussion on the Metavos.

Previously we spoke about Facebook plans to build a Metavos. The things that they are doing, the things that they're planning from the virtual reality goggles to all sorts of medical devices that they want us to wear on ourselves. So there are several questions that this leaves as with most big such announcements, especially from controversial companies, it ends up leaving more questions than answers. The first thing, and this is going to be very important from a technology point of view, is interoperability.

Which is the ability for, I'm guessing different parts of the so called Metavos is going to be built out by different tech companies, some of which probably don't even exist right now, some of which will be built out by existing companies and things that they are doing. For example, Microsoft has something called Team Streams has a feature where it's not a very great feature right now, but your avatars are in a boardroom or a classroom or something like that. It's very easy to imagine what the Metavos version of that would be. So it's more like the Metavos is going to be sort of like what the internet is today, where in the sense that nobody owns it is actually sort of like a concept, and then you have different companies that are building on top of that.

Facebook might build the social part of that, Microsoft might build something else, and EA's sports might build the gaming part of it, who knows what could end up happening. On that note, it might be interesting to see in the Metavos, the esports will be the actual Olympics, and there in that Olympics they'll be saying, oh, should we make actual football a sport? So interoperability is one thing. And so here's where I'm saying Facebook is sending out slightly mixed signals during that call or during the announcement where in Facebook Connect, where they spoke about the Metavos and basically launched it.

Facebook said no one company, they tried to be very egalitarian. They said no one company will build the Metavos, but in other parts of the speech, they took jibes at Google and Apple. So that would be like me saying simplified to source it by the four of us, but I just want to make it clear that nothing is a mode culture, who just uses the show as an exclusive show of his knowledge of yes, minister quotes, and Tony is frequently known to reduce the quality of the show by needless, bringing an actual fact and reason to the discussion. So it feels like something like that to me.

If you're going to get out of a project together, it's probably a nice idea to have everyone on board and not exactly take things at their business model. So in the current scenario, the frontrunners are, you know, Metavos, Facebook and Microsoft, right? They have already a consortium going called the XR consortium or something like that. I mean, it's in everyone's interest right now to make sure that Metavos comes into be and then probably like the competition heats up once.

Oh, so this is a problem for us to worry about in 20 or 25 or something like that. Fair enough. Let's look forward to the anti-trustee. That's what we are.

When you actually have like Metavos physical battles between two CEOs to see. Oh, yeah. Who speaks game over there? There's a lot of such fantasies that we can see playing out.

That's something that's very interesting. Okay, the second, so one is interoperability. Obviously going to be very important. I mean, if I have a specific avatar in Facebook's part of Metavos that can also apply, let's say, Microsoft's.

Yeah. And I don't have to create it twice. You don't have to create it twice. I think it goes beyond Avatas.

I think it will also have to do with currencies. It will also have to do with ownership of items. Like if I buy something in the Facebook Metavos, I should be able to do use out of the Google's part of the Metavos. And that's the other thing.

I think we are thinking that Facebook is going to build a VR version of Facebook, which is going to be like, I think we are thinking of it like different kind of video games. Like my player in Fortnite will not be equal to my player on Animal Crossing or FIFA or something like that. I don't think the Metavos is headed that way. It's somewhere between that and what the internet will grow up to be.

So if that sort of makes sense, you probably have the same avatar with the same. I think there are going to be a lot of standards over this, like this, what an avatar is. And that's going to be operating everywhere. At the same time, it's also then easily mentioned that there's going to be a dark web version of this, right?

Where you have a darker version of the internet, where you have a dark avatar or something of that sort. And what if people want to remain anonymous? So yeah, there are lots of questions on that. But yeah, interoperability essentially means that I think the easiest way of picturing this is that you don't need to create different avatars or different profiles on various platforms.

Yeah, so if the room where I'm sitting is sort of like the Metavos. I can have an Xbox from Microsoft. I can have a laptop from Lenovo. I can, I don't know, phone from Android.

And I can, I'm the same person using all of them at the same time. Yeah. And the room is basically the Metavos. Yeah.

There are so many possible analogies to do. The second question, and this is a particularly relevant one for this day. And it's just who governs this entire thing? Is Facebook going to set the rules?

Is it going to be sort of like a wild wild? Is it going to be like a web right now where, okay, nobody owns the rules, but depending on which site or which part of the Metavos you are in, you are your subject to certain rules. And what happens to governments? Like if I am, my physical body is in India and I am breaking a rule of the United States, where I happen to be in the Metavos.

I mean, who governs, who governs that? So if I'm, for example, having a blast, then it depends on, you know, if I'm having a blast in the Canadian version of the Metavos, which seems completely fine. But I'm a subject to rules. So that's where things get a little dodgy.

And what happens when we know that jurisdiction and regulation eventually catches up, right? What was once a wild for the internet is now at the, is being controlled by governments and regulators around the world. So what's, so what would the better was equivalent of that be? Is something that's a little unclear as of now.

Yeah, but I mean, I think the analogy would be similar to the internet that the Metavos is decentralized in no one really has gone. There'll be standards. I think there was one which was IEEE, which was called the virtual world standard for something. So I mean, there'll be some practically, you know, in, in, by position a governing body, but everything will, will become decentralized.

And the key idea with interoperability is that while companies are building things, these shouldn't be silos that you can't access. So yeah, it's, it's a, I mean, at least to me, it's very complicated. Yeah, it is complicated. And one thing's for sure, certain VPNs are not going away anytime soon.

So VPN for, for the Metavos looks like it's going to be like, all right. Third question then that I have is how exactly is Facebook's, what is Facebook business model behind this? Like it's all well and would to say that, oh, we are building this Metavos and all that. So, so to me, there are several things.

Like the most obvious answer seems to be that they're just going to extrapolate what they're doing right now on our news feeds to the Metavos. You're going to see targeted advertising basis, your, basically your interest and all that, probably through virtual billboards or whatever the case may be on the homepage, where you have different experiences that you can have, you may have some promoted experiences by brands and things. So I guess that is the most natural way of going about this. And other way of thinking about this is that the whole Metavos is just an excuse to build to for them to sell more Oculus devices.

So they're so hard to get their actual game. And I know this is how it's very weird, but the Metavos is actually just content marketing for Oculus. It's an excuse for them to buy the Oculus devices itself, like PlayStation and video games in some sense. That's the theme of that.

I mean, again, just going back to another thing Facebook is really good at is waiting for the time to monetize things. They didn't have like a proper ad when they started out, but eventually they built it. So I think it's too early to say what that thing will look like. But one new thing that will definitely come up is the creator economy within the Metavos.

So if you want to hang out in the Metavos, then people need to create cool things, which means there's a scope for creators to do it for them to be paid by people who are using it and Facebook to take a cut. So yeah, absolutely. And that's something I actually want to discuss a little later because that whole part about what the creator economy means the Metavos is very interesting. And finally, and this is something that's relevant for right now is how different this is going to be for Facebook reputationally.

So as much as Zuckerberg wants to insist that this has nothing to do with all the shit that's happening otherwise, how different is this going to be, is this going to distract everyone or are people still going to say, hey, this is at the end of the race, still run by Zuckerberg, the guy who is responsible for everything. It's just because the name has changed. Nothing's going to happen. Like some people have drawn comparisons with the time Philip Morris, the makers of the world leaders and secrets.

We need themselves to be Altria in 2001. I don't know. Short for alternate reality. Oh, wow.

And you can't spell Altria without AI from two different ways. So it's not going to make too much of a change for Facebook, I guess. But yeah, I mean, see, again, the basic point is for as opposed to popular media or like the media that you've got from the US for Facebook. And I would imagine for Zuckerberg, it is very clear that they are in complete denial of the bad effects of Facebook.

Right? So they do not take ownership of that. Yeah. The analogy in some sense, because you mentioned, you know, they teach A plus B the whole square is that the same person who teaches you A plus B the whole square in school can also be a fundamentalist fanatic who is, you know, harassing someone in the local neighborhood.

And you will never get to know about it. So is it the fault of that person or is it the fault of Facebook for enabling that? So very clearly they have divorced it to say that the problems are not exclusively cosplay Facebook. In fact, we are doing the noble thing of putting restrictions in places.

So it's a different reality that they live in. So the reputation does not matter as long as people continue to use Facebook or meta or their services. And very clearly, whether it's advertisers or consumers, we are all using meta products, whether it's WhatsApp, Instagram or not enough of other not using it. It's interesting.

I mean, like one thing that you said, just painted a picture of my head, I'm imagining, like Zuckerberg in front of a bunch of reporters or congressional in the US Congress or something. And all of them are like, say, like, you can all the shit that you've been doing. It's almost like you people are living in an alternate reality and Zuckerberg, like, that sounds interesting. And two days later, the meta was so it's not like just to be clear, it's not like Facebook is in financial trouble at all, even with the recent controversies on Monday, three days before the before the meta was announced, Facebook said that revenue rose 35% to 29 billion in the first three months ending in September, compared with the same time last year, profits rose 17% to 9.2 billion, a sign of the social network financial strength, etc, despite all the controversies.

And advertising revenue rose 33% to 28.3 billion. So 28.3 billion of the 29 billion and the rest comes from other revenue, which is mostly Facebook's Oculus are blessed with. So that's comes to around 734 million, but that rose by 195%. So keep an eye out for that particular thing.

And that's the fundamental problem, right? Since now, I'll do the ranking. Yeah, basically, is that for all of this posturing and everything that we write about morality, ethics, that this and the other ultimately the same papers and journalists equate success to monetary wealth. So structurally capitalism is the problem, not Facebook.

So if you are in one article sort of saying that Facebook is killing or inciting genocide and causing so much distress in the world, you can't in the next column then say they're making shit tons of money. Why don't you invest in it? So there's a structural fundamental problem, which is not Facebook's making. Yeah.

It's a conflict that I'm sure many people have. Like many advertisers will not be very fond of Facebook as a company and what they're doing. But the fact of the matter is it's the most efficient medium to do a lot of advertising in 2021. They like it or not.

And if they decide to take a model, I'm going to say, no, we are not going to use Facebook. Unfortunately, they will be put out of business because the competitors are going to use it. So not sure how this is going to end. Ideally, we all need more bill water since but we can't see.

So to sum up, right? I mean, there are some things Facebook's really good at and which excites me is actually building new things and bringing possibilities to the world. The bad obviously is that they're terrible at regulation and handling their own beast. So let's see what the matter was.

Before we end, that actually makes me sort of hopeful, like even cynics like you and me, that we will actually hold a sucker work in a positive light in about 10 years time. I know it seems extremely far-fetched, but I'm sure there were a lot of people who in 2000 wouldn't have looked at Bill Gates and said there is no way this guy is going to enter the new millennium as a hero. So let's see, we never know. Maybe this is the price that the world had to pay for the Utopia that is actually going to be the metaverse.

I think our ads lots are up. So on that note, and also thank you for not making a reference to getting that up. I got congratulated by about 10 people asking me whether I'm going to be rich now now that now. Anyway, so since starting St Tony, I believe it to you to sign off.

Yeah, so stay safe, stay well what isn't. And next week we are going to continue the sort of discussion, but we are going to talk about what the future might look like, what the potential future of the future could be. So see you guys then. Bye.