Tech

The Metaverse Is the Ultimate Surveillance Tool

Silicon Valley is rushing to build the next big thing, and people should be skeptical of their intent.
The Metaverse
Image: Facebook
Screen Shot 2021-02-24 at 3
Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.

The Metaverse. The term was coined by author Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash. It was a digital playground where people were only limited by their imagination.

Facebook has changed its name to Meta and says it’s trying to make the metaverse a reality. Now, other companies are rushing to get a piece of Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future. Here to help me puzzle out the nightmarish world Silicon Valley billionaires want for us is Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose and panopticon expert and professor of English at Macomb Community College Chris Gilliard.

This wide-ranging conversation starts with Rose’s recent piece, “Zuckerberg’s Meta Endgame Is Monetizing All Human Behavior”, but it gets into the deeper and systemic issues around machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the kind of future we want.

We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.

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