London, Oct 19 (BUS) – Facebook said it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform that promises to physically connect people, but may raise concerns about privacy and the social platform’s acquisition. More control over people’s lives online.
The company said in a blog Sunday that these highly skilled workers will help build a “metaverse,” a futuristic idea for online communication that uses augmented and virtual reality.
Facebook executives have been touting metaverses as the next big thing after the mobile internet, even though their track record is spotty in predicting future trends. The predictions CEO Mark Zuckerberg made four years ago for virtual vacations with distant loved ones via a headset or using a smartphone camera to improve an apartment have yet to actually come true.
The company is also struggling with strict antitrust measures, whistle-blowing testimony of former employees and concerns about how it handles political and vaccine-related misinformation, The Associated Press reports.
“As we begin our journey to bring this life back to life, the need for highly specialized engineers is one of Facebook’s most pressing priorities,” according to the blog post of Nick Clegg, Vice President of Global Affairs, and Javier Oliván, Vice President of Central Products.
Facebook’s recruiters are targeting Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands and Ireland for their recruitment drive. The company announced as of June that it had more than 63,000 employees worldwide, a 21% increase over the same period last year.
The metaverse is basically a huge virtual world that can be accessed in real time by millions of people using avatars, who can use it to hold virtual meetings or buy virtual land and clothes or other digital assets, often paying with cryptocurrency.
The social network isn’t the only one working on the metaverse, and Facebook has acknowledged that no single company will ever own and operate it. Other players include Fortnite maker Epic Games, which has raised $1 billion from investors to help with its long-term plans to build the metaverse.
“There will be no specific databases for specific companies. There will only be one metaverse,” said Tong Nguyen, an analyst who tracks immersive technologies for research firm Gartner.
But there are concerns that Facebook and a handful of other Silicon Valley giants may end up monopolizing the metaverse and using it to collect and profit from personal data, which now mirrors the situation with the internet.
Last month, Facebook announced a $50 million investment to fund global research and partnerships with civil rights groups, nonprofits, governments and universities to develop products responsible for the metaverse. But the company added that it will likely take 10 to 15 years to “fully realize” many of these products.
Writer Neil Stephenson coined the term metaverse in his 1992 sci-fi novel “Snow Crash,” but has recently found new life in the tech business world as startups and tech giants attempt to pitch their claims in an emerging direction.
Nguyen said some of that includes “a little bit of slant washing,” or applying the term to existing initiatives in augmented reality and other technologies to take advantage of the hype around it.
“It will help elevate their profile, at least for now, as one of the leaders in the metaverse initiatives,” he said of Facebook’s latest batch. “But like any big tech trend, there will be competing ideas and competing standards.”
In a separate blog post on Sunday, Facebook defended its approach to combating hate speech, responding to a Wall Street Journal article examining the company’s inability to detect and remove hateful posts and excessive violence.
A British parliamentary committee working on online safety legislation has been set to hear two Facebook whistleblowers. The bill proposes significant fines or other penalties for Internet companies that do not remove and limit the spread of harmful material such as child sexual abuse or terrorist content.
Sophie Chang, a data scientist who sounded the alarm after finding evidence of political manipulation online in countries such as Honduras and Azerbaijan before being expelled, appeared before the commission on Monday. She said social media companies should be required to consistently enforce policies, adding that this is not what happened at Facebook.
It was easier to remove fake accounts that were not directly related to a political figureShe said n those who were not.
This has “a perverse effect as it creates an incentive for key political figures to openly commit a crime,” Chang said. She likened it to taking the police a year to catch a thief who was a member of parliament and was not wearing a mask.
“It’s an analogy to what’s happening on Facebook,” Zhang said.
Next week, the panel will hear from Frances Hogan, who published internal research on Facebook that she copied before leaving her job earlier this year. Haugen testified before a US Senate committee this month on her accusations that Facebook platforms harm children and incite political violence, and her British appearance will be the start of a tour to meet European lawmakers and regulators.
RAE