Wagner James Au / New World Notes

I've been wondering what Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen thought about Meta's plans to make the Metaverse, and she finally aired her concerns with Time magazine:

When I asked her about the metaverse, Haugen’s answer focused on the extra forms of surveillance that would be necessary for any meaningful kind of metaverse experience. “I am worried that if companies become metaverse companies, individuals won’t get to consent anymore on whether or not to have Facebook’s sensors—their microphones in their homes,” Haugen told me. “This company—which has already shown it lies to us whenever it’s in its own interests—we’re supposed to put cameras and microphones for them in our homes?” she said.

This is all very valid and reflects what VR pioneers like Avi Bar-Zeev and Jaron Lanier have been saying (screaming into the void?) for the last few years.

Haugen raises another concern beyond privacy that needs a bit of unpacking:

“So, just imagine this with me. When you go into the metaverse, your avatar is a little more handsome or pretty than yourself. You have better clothes than we have in reality. The apartment is more stylish, more calm. And you take your headset off and you go to brush your teeth at the end of the night. And maybe you just don’t like yourself in the mirror as much. That cycle… I’m super worried that people are going to look at their apartment, which isn’t as nice, and look at their face or their body, which isn’t as nice, and say: ‘I would rather have my headset on.’ And I haven’t heard Facebook articulate any plan on what to do about that.”

I'm less concerned about this hypothetical. For one thing, it's difficult for most consumers to engage with VR for long stretches of time. For another, it misses the much-documented Proteus effect of avatars:

[P]eople using physically attractive avatars tend to exhibit more self-confidence, both in-world… and in the real world.  The study was noted in a recent Newsweek column, "Our Imaginary, Hotter Selves", and having somehow missed the report when it came out in 2007, I just contacted Nick for more info, and a couple screenshots from the experiment.

"[T]hese are avatars we use in our Vizard-based system," Nick tells me. "The faces are made from a frontal and profile photograph of actual students (via 3DMeNow). We conducted the study using an immersive VR system (using goggles)."  A link to his report is here, describing a phenomenon he calls "the Proteus effect", after Greece's identity-changing demi-god.  When embodied in a physically attractive avatar, volunteers were more willing to talk about themselves, and move closer to other avatars, showing more open, self-confident friendliness.  By contrast, people controlling plainer-looking avatars remained more distant.

So all that's worth factoring in. Also, Meta's specific avatars are decidedly cartoonish and have no legs, so I'm not quite sure how attractive they'll ever be.