‘Facebook is to the metaverse what North Korea is to democracy’
Social media is full of mixed emotions after yesterday’s news of Facebook rebranding itself to Meta and speaking of deploying millions of dollars to focus on building an alternate reality - should we celebrate or should we be scared.
Let’s dig in to find out.
Zuckerberg is gearing up his $900 billion social networks to completely refocus on the next wave of the internet—the Metaverse.
We’ve been seeing a few views on this:
The political world thinks he is just trying to divert everyone’s attention from his PR crises
Silicon Valley thinks he’s doing it to go after the younger demographic
Crypto sees this as a direct assault on the decentralized metaverse
There’s truth in each of these perspectives. But let me add my own.
In my opinion, this is great news as it draws everyone's attention to this and gives validation to crypto, but it might be sad for the overall ecosystem if Facebook succeeds.
Mark fully understands the concept of digital immersion and the social element of the metaverse, but when you watch his keynote, there is no mention of property rights.
Mark's keynote on Metaverse
History repeats itself. If Facebook succeeds in its mission, we will soon see an alternate world dominated by a single monopoly with no property rights for users and that's bearish and dystopian, to say the least.
Web2 companies thrive on stealing user data and act as dictators in the increasingly digital world we are living in. (Data is power and Facebook controls data of 3 billion users)
Chris Dixon from A16Z rightly puts this as - 'Most centralized platforms follow a predictable life cycle. At first, they do everything they can to recruit users and 3rd-party complements like creators, developers, and businesses and once they become big enough, it corrupts them, and their relationship with network participants changes from positive-sum to zero-sum'.
With users, they attract first and then extract.
With compliments, they cooperate first and then compete.
Best examples of this are Microsoft vs. Netscape, Google vs. Yelp, Facebook vs. Zynga, Twitter vs. its 3rd-party clients, etc.
Read the article below which is a great example that supports the above rationale -
https://venturebeat.com/2016/06/30/facebook-kicked-zynga-to-the-curb-publishers-are-next/
The foundation of the metaverse is digital property rights.
Property rights are the single biggest component of the Web3 world as it allows users to have ownership in the platform through tokens (fungible or non-fungible). Ownership of tokens by users in the network means ownership in the platform itself.
Tokens align network participants to work together toward a common goal — the growth of the network and appreciation of the token.
Non-fungible tokens can be anything in the form of art, photos, code, land, music, text, game objects, credentials, governance rights, access passes, and whatever else people dream up next.
All of the above components will be key pillars around which we will interact in the future world.
Digital property rights in the metaverse are as important as property rights in the real world. Just like we won't elect a government that can take away our property rights, we wouldn't want to use a platform that can take it away from us.
Ethereum protects property rights while Facebook has a history of controlling property rights.
The future of metaverse needs to be open gated, orchestrated by tokens, governed by its users, residing on a decentralized blockchain, and not living on the rails of a centralized entity, which doesn't allow composability and interoperability.
This is a great write-up on how one needs to look at building the metaverse.
The world needs an open and free metaverse.
If you like this post, feel free to share it with friends/family and share your views in the comment section. I plan to write one key article every week to create more awareness about the Web3 world.
If you missed my previous article on Super rare and the growth of the one on one art market in crypto, you can read it here -
Best,
Abhishek Anand.