Trolls will thrive in the metaverse.
The so-called metaverse, according to Apple’s iPod designer, risks spawning more trolls and harming human contact.
According to Tony Fadell, the virtual reality-based metaverse takes away the ability to “see into the other person’s face.”
“When you place technology between that human connection, poison occurs,” he explained.
The metaverse is a virtual reality domain in which people are expected to construct avatars of themselves in order to connect with others in online realms.
It will be used for gaming, as well as for work and music events, and will be accessed via a virtual reality headset.
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, is investing billions of dollars and employing thousands of people to build a metaverse.
Last year, Facebook’s parent company, which also owns Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus, changed its name to Meta.
While Mr. Fadell believes the metaverse’s technology has merit, he also believes that “when you can’t look into the other person’s face, you can’t see their eyes, you don’t have real humanistic ways of interacting.”
It becomes disintermediated, and you have the capacity to generate more trolls, people who hide behind things and then exploit this to gain attention.”
“We need to reclaim that human connection; we don’t need any more technology between us,” he added.
Microsoft and Epic Games, the creators of the video game Fornite, are both highly invested in the metaverse.
Microsoft’s Teams chat system will be enhanced with 3D virtual avatars and locations later this year.
The metaverse, according to Mr. Zuckerberg, is “an embodied internet where you are in it rather than just seeing content.”
People should not live through “tiny, luminous rectangles” such as mobile phones, he told The Verge.
“In many of today’s meetings, you’re looking at a grid of faces on a screen. That’s also not how we think about things.”
However, because anyone may create and hide behind avatars, the metaverse has drawn criticism and raised safety concerns.
Sony’s PlayStation game console was created by Ken Kutaragi, who said: “You’d rather be a polished avatar than your authentic self? This is practically the same as anonymous message boards.”
“We had the same problem with text-based commenting and blogs, we’ve had it with videos, and now we’re going to have it in metaverse,” Mr Fadell explained.
Mr. Fadell was speaking after Apple announced that the iPod Touch would be discontinued.
The portable music player, which debuted 21 years ago, changed the way people listen to and store music. Mr. Fadell was also a co-creator of the iPhone.
“I’ve been in the technology business long enough to know the drum beat of technology and the march of technology never stops,” Mr Fadell said of the iPod’s demise. “That was an amazing period of time for the iPod, but unfortunately that’s the business we’re in, so I’ve gotten used to that situation.”
