@altrag

1 year ago

The problem with the "metaverse" is that its completely and utterly pointless as long as its sole purpose is to make money - interesting things are almost always labors of love, not of profit. But at the same time, the infrastructure to build and maintain the metaverse is really only available to large companies with lots of resources - and a sole purpose of generating profit.

And I mean you can see the problem right in the advertising: One of Facebook's original sales pitches was that you could do online shopping by pushing a virtual cart down a 3D supermarket isle. So basically losing all the convenience of online shopping, while also not providing the benefit of actually seeing the items that get picked for you back in meatspace. The absolute worst of both worlds. That's the best they could come up with for a reason to use this thing.

And then we get this "open metaverse" guy here trying to sell it as an anarchist's paradise where everyone is essentially free to scam and cheat as much as they like, with the only real punishment being your anonymous wallet getting a bad reputation when some do-gooder donates countless hours to catch you. But don't worry - "most people" are good, honest folk!

Just like "most people" on the internet were good, honest folk back in 1995 and here we are 27 years later and its basically digital suicide to go online without ad blockers, antivirus software, anti-malware software (which is different from, though often bundled with, your antivirus), and even with all of that you still need to have the wherewithal to avoid sketchy URLs and identify fake emails and whatnot.

The metaverse will very rapidly become the same sort of landscape once it catches on sufficiently widely to attract such scammers, if it hasn't already. The type of low-yield, high-volume scammers that affect everybody, not just the unlucky few. And we can't even get rid of the scourge in the real world. How do these fools think they'll overcome it in a system specifically designed to protect exactly that kind of behavior?

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