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in october 2021 ceo mark zuckerberg
announced he was changing facebook's
name to meta and expanding its borders
into the metaverse
what is the metaverse a metaverse in the
metaverse
the metaverse will be the successor to
the mobile internet the company promises
a new reality full of avatars and
futuristic worlds today we're going to
talk about the metaverse
i want to share what we imagine is
possible
it comes as other billionaires are
venturing into new realms
jeff bezos and elon musk have poured
billions into space projects
i want to thank every amazon employee
and every amazon customer because you
guys paid for all this but as these
businessmen expand their territories
there are growing concerns about how
their technologies are impacting the
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on world 6th
the group of trump supporters violently
stormed the u.s capitol building i was
at risk of being stripped of and killed
with my own firearm
as i heard a chance of killing with his
own gun
documents leaked by whistleblower
francis halgen and shone a new light on
how facebook did little to stop the
attack like they basically said oh good
we made it through the election there
wasn't riots we can get rid of civic
integrity now
fast forward a couple months we got the
insurrection and revealed how the
company knew it was spread in hate and
misinformation on a global scale
from stoking ethnic violence in ethiopia
to fuel in a genocide in myanmar
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the more we're invisible the more harm
is done and we've seen this in myanmar
and we've seen it in india and we're
living it in ethiopia now
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so why does facebook now meta continue
to put profit ahead of the safety of its
users
this research is not a bombshell it's
not causal research it's in fact just
well i beg to differ with you ms davis
this research is a bombshell
and as the world follows mark zuckerberg
into the metaverse
can we trust it
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facebook's rebranded may be a cynical
attempt to shift focus from its numerous
failures it sounds like we made a
mistake there i apologize for that in
retrospect it was a mistake we have made
a lot of mistakes in running the company
it was my mistake and i'm sorry
but the metaverse at least on the
surface promises a new era
today we're seen as a social media
company but in our dna we are a company
that builds technology to connect people
and the metaverse is the next frontier
so this was an inevitable sort of next
step in the evolution of social media
allowing the virtual physical presence
of the people that you're connected to
from around the world to you
oh hey mark hey what's going on
what's up
whoa we're floating in space who made
this place it's awesome what mark
zuckerberg is doing is he's trying to
advance his pocketbook zuckerberg was
the future once
now it's vr and he's trying to get into
it
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more data makes good business sense
facebook has a very clear business model
that's driven by the need to gather as
much data about their consumers or users
as possible
but they are fears that the new data we
create in the metaverse could lead to a
privacy nightmare
facebook has made a big deal about the
fact that it's not going to be doing
facial recognition on photos that you
upload to facebook anymore but it hasn't
said it's not going to do facial
recognitions in the metaverse
and so the point is they're building an
ai driven engine that will be
manipulating even more effectively
behavior in the metaverse than
it's been able to manipulate in in real
space
and although generating more data is not
necessarily harmful it could give
companies like facebook an unprecedented
amount of control
mark zuckerberg holds
as much or more
power over
the connection and communications that
people have than anyone ever has before
so long as that business model doesn't
change meta
is a much more terrifying version of
what facebook is in the real world right
now
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just weeks before facebook's rebranding
former employee frances haugen released
thousands of internal documents
the papers show the potential harm of
its products harm that could be
amplified in the metaverse i believe
facebook's products harm children stoke
division and weaken our democracy
the leak suggests facebook knew how
damaging its products could be and
ignored employees who had concerns it is
proven that every time they denied these
things before they were not just unfair
in their denials and attacks on
independent researchers but they knew
that those people were right
and that takes it from you know just
being defensive to being
deceptive
according to facebook's own research
reported by the wall street journal
their platforms make body image issues
worse for one in three teenage girls
none of it came as a massive surprise
you know instagram harms kids i remember
telling a 13 year old about it and she
was like yeah everyone knows that
facebook may be having its big tobacco
moment
in the 90s ceos of big tobacco firms
stood up in congress and attempted to
play down the dangers of cigarettes
yes or no do you believe nicotine is not
addictive i believe nicodemus is not
addictive yet
imagine a world in which cigarettes gave
people cancer but only the tobacco
companies knew that and only the tobacco
companies had any chance of finding out
in that world i think it would be
extremely important for someone within
the companies to come forward and tell
the world what they know these companies
have played a very very clever game in
trying to protect their reputations
despite the amount of harm they produce
and that's why now facebook and google
spend more than philip morris and exxon
on lobbying in the us
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these deceptions can have dangerous
consequences
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in january trump supporters stormed the
u.s capitol building
the leak suggests facebook failed to
take steps to mitigate the spread of
misinformation and polarizing content on
its platform
extremists used many platforms but
facebook is a recurring theme for years
this platform was allowing itself to be
used to sow distrust in elections and to
build more and more anger in these
communities
some safeguards put in place for the
2020 election were rolled back in the
lead-up to the attack
they had a whole series of circuit
breakers as they would call them to kind
of slow down the craziness that was
obviously developing
but late into the afternoon of january 6
they hadn't even pulled the trigger on
more than half of them you'll never
take back our country with weakness you
have to show strength and you have to be
strong
look nobody should think that they
caused january 6 but certainly
if it weren't for facebook it would have
been harder to develop the extraordinary
organization and capacity that january 6
revealed
weeks after francis halgon's revelations
facebook and its other products
instagram and whatsapp were hit by a
major power outage
it was so bad that the only way facebook
could let the world know what was going
on and this is true was by posting a
message on twitter
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the outage showed how much the world
relies on facebook for better and for
worse
for over a year ethiopia has been locked
in a brutal civil war in august 28
bodies some with hands tied and bullet
holes
washed up on the shores of a river on
the sudanese border witnesses believe
they came from tigrai
the ethiopian government called the
discovery a fake propaganda campaign we
don't know how many have died because we
don't have a real body count so far but
it's one of the bloodiest war we've seen
so far
facebook knew it was being used to
incite ethnic violence in the country
but did little
more
we've seen state and state actors using
the platform to spread misinformation
and disinformation to an extent where
you'd have content that's you know
calling for ethnic extermination of
certain ethnic groups we know that
different militia groups were organizing
using the platform to raise money for
arms getting many other things that
would be against many international laws
a deadly conflict fueled by facebook and
not for the first time
the company is also accused of playing a
role in the brutal crackdown of rohingya
muslims in myanmar in 2017
what the papers demonstrate is that the
government in myanmar used the facebook
platform to exacerbate ethnic division
which led to genocide in myanmar
they're not to blame for
the existence of folks you know who are
pursuing a genocidal campaign
but they did deliberately become
the engine
this is a global problem
in vietnam facebook bowed to pressure
from the government to censor content
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and in india facebook's platforms have
been inundated with a torrent of
anti-muslim hate speech
part of the problem is the lack of
investment facebook places outside the
us
ninety percent of facebook's audience is
outside the united states
but ninety percent of facebook's safety
budget is inside the united states so
they are literally incapable of any
moderation at all
in many many countries around the world
and what that means is that hate and
misinformation are flowing even more
rapidly in other countries
for activists the reported lack of
consideration given to other countries
came as little surprise and we all have
to sort of live with the consequences of
a system that makes us completely
invisible and the more we're invisible
you know the more harm is done and we've
seen this in myanmar and we're living it
in ethiopia now the cost of them fixing
their platforms is actually they have to
hire people the cost of them doing
nothing is zero and so they've
calculated of course it's so much
cheaper
to let the world burn
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in the u.s politicians are growing angry
mark zuckerberg ought to be looking at
himself in the mirror today and yet
rather than taking responsibility and
showing leadership
mr zuckerberg is going sailing but have
so far been unable to reign in the once
untouchable company mark zuckerberg has
proven that he is not the one to be
trusted
with dominating the next level which
will now be the metaverse when he hasn't
even addressed any of these issues
facebook might be the winner of the next
generation too and that would be a
disaster because the truth is they've
administered this generation appallingly
badly
for many it begs broader questions our
current debates about
tech platforms like meta like facebook
are
debates about what kind of culture what
kind of society we want to live in in an
increasingly globalized world
that's a more and more challenging
question to answer
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you