After announcing that Facebook’s parent company will be renamed to switch to Metaverse, many projects have begun similar initiatives to enter the virtual space, from buying real estate to testing the limits of what the universe can provide.

Digital cities: Santa Monica and Seoul

The Santa Monica downtown area west of Los Angeles was one of the first real areas that allowed users to access the virtual world through the FlickPlay application. As a metaverse tool, walking around the area seems more like a limited augmented reality experience rather than a virtual experience. People collect digital tokens in the style of Pokémon GO.

In contrast, once Seoul enters Metaverse, once it is launched in early 2023, it is expected to be a 100% virtual environment. In November, the local government Announce It will launch its own platform, Metaverse Seoul, and slowly integrate services related to economics, culture, education, and civil complaints. In addition, the Korean capital plans to create virtual versions of its main tourist attractions and host festivals in Metaverse.

Does Meta have a “female problem”?

Following the launch of the virtual reality game and online community platform Horizon World released by Meta (formerly Facebook), at least one user has reported that the virtual environment allows sexual harassment.In the Thursday report of the MIT Technology Review, one of Horizon’s Beta testers Say A stranger touched her head. Although there is a feature that can wrap the avatar in a protective bubble to seem to prevent such attacks, the user either cannot activate it in time or is unaware of it.

Catherine said: “In the final analysis, the essence of virtual reality space is that it is designed to induce users to believe that their bodies are in a certain space, and every movement of their bodies occurs in a 3D environment.” Cross is an online harassment from the University of Washington. researcher. “This is part of the reason why emotional responses are stronger in that space, and why VR triggers the same internal nervous system and psychological responses.”

November, another woman Report Her Metaverse character was attacked, this time she didn’t use an avatar, and it seemed to have a more real impact on her business. When Facebook changed its name to Meta, Australian artist Thea-Mai Baumann reported that her Instagram account was locked. Her handle? “Metaworld.”

Since Meta owns Instagram, and Baumann’s account is relatively small—with fewer than 1,000 followers at the time—many social media suspects that the company would only confiscate her account instead of buying it. Before Instagram regained access, she was eventually locked out for more than a month without being able to verify her identity.

“This account is the ten years I have lived and worked. I don’t want my contribution to Metaverse to disappear from the Internet,” Bowman said. “This has always happened to women in the field of science and technology, and it also happens to women of color in the field of science and technology.”

The company moves towards the meta

On December 10, Chinese Internet giant Baidu Announce It plans to launch its own Metaverse product called XiRang, a universe capable of processing input from 100,000 users, and it also plans to hold an artificial intelligence developer conference there.Baidu Creation Conference is expected It will be held on December 27th.

Athletic footwear and apparel manufacturer Nike’s products will be in Acquisition of virtual sneakers and collectibles brand RTFKT this week. RTFKT describes itself as “completely formed in the meta-universe” and may help Nike advance its plan to “do this.”

Facebook whistleblower issues a meta festival warning

Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen surrendered thousands of documents that imply that the company did not do what it claimed to remove hate speech and posts that encourage violence, expressing her concerns about Metaverse .On a Thursday Newsletter from Time Magazine, Haugen said that she is “very afraid” of the potential risks of surveillance and social networking in the virtual world:

“When you enter the metaverse, your profile picture is more handsome or more beautiful than yourself. Your clothes are better than ours in reality. The apartment is more stylish and quieter. Then you take off your headphones and brush your teeth at the end of the night. Maybe you just don’t like yourself in the mirror. That cycle…I’m very worried that people will look at their apartment, it’s not so good, look at their faces or their bodies, it’s not so good, and then Say:’I would rather wear my headphones.'”