Yet despite the language about tearing down monopolies and empowering creators, the metaverse does not offer a meaningful alternative to existing business models and their collateral damage. As recent patents suggest, it would extend the current platforms’ modes of commercialization, surveillance, and data extraction. The metaverse is just another platform like the ones we already know: a means for bosses to better control workers, for retailers to have more information and leverage over shoppers, and for advertisers to have the data and space to target people with more ads.
Tech companies have always overstated the benefits their technologies will grant us and understated how much they serve their own ends of power and profit. The metaverse will be no different, especially since it’s unlikely to arrive in the form currently being sold to us. But the concept builds on the pressures that have shaped the internet’s development since its inception: the need to control the people who use it and find new forms of commercialization to generate profit. While capitalism persists, so too will those driving forces.
Marx, P. (2022, February 24). False futurism. Real Life Magazine. https://reallifemag.com/false-futurism/