By many accounts, the internet is entering a new stage that will completely alter how we experience it. At its core it’s “a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before” that is focused on “tearing down the traditional barriers that have kept companies safe.” It will empower creators with new opportunities while ensuring the user is “handed control of the data they generate.” No longer will we have to be stuck in the walled gardens of tech giants, since any company “that seeks to lock in its application gains by controlling the platform will, by definition, no longer be playing to the strengths of the platform.” It’s a whole new paradigm — or at least it was nearly twenty years ago. All these claims were made back then for Web 2.0.
Why, then, are the same sorts of claims now being made about the metaverse, which is supposed to be superseding it? Mark Zuckerberg says the metaverse will create “a lot of economic opportunity where millions of people around the world can be doing creative work that they really enjoy,” while venture capitalist Matthew Ball claims it will “offer unprecedented interoperability of data, digital items/assets, content, and so on.” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney explains it won’t be created by one company, but “by millions of developers each building out their part of it,” which requires challenging the power that companies like Apple and Google have over smartphone app stores. As a result, Zuckerberg positions it as “the successor to the mobile internet.”
The metaverse does not offer a meaningful alternative to existing business models and their collateral damage
Today, the term Web 2.0 is associated with platform monopolies, exploitative business models, invasive data capture, and the dreaded “surveillance capitalism.” But when it first came on scene in the aftermath of the dot-com crash in 2000, it was a branding term to generate positive spin for new software that worked on centralized servers accessed online, making for more interactive and “social” applications. By the early 2010s, the term had done its work: The tech industry was back. After the 2008 financial crisis, Silicon Valley was hailed as leading the way to post-recession prosperity. Smartphone adoption was growing rapidly, along with the app and gig economies, and social media was regarded as a democratizing force as some companies benefited from associations with the Arab Spring. But as tech companies grew to immense sizes, they hardly fulfilled the promises of the Web 2.0 marketing copy. The gatekeepers were not deposed, as Jeff Bezos said was necessary in 2012. Users did not control their data, nor did the new paradigm disincentivize corporate control; it expanded further.
Web 2.0 enclosed the mess of the early web into organized data extraction, justified through interfaces that were easier to use. Not only could these be touted as “democratizing” internet participation, they also helped newcomers find materials and have experiences that would keep them coming back. Companies could claim that they tapped into a general human curiosity, desire for connection, and increasing need for additional income, while evading scrutiny for how they shaped those desires to benefit themselves. They incentivized users to post and make content to keep everyone else coming back. They designed user interfaces and algorithms to keep people engaged and spending as much time as possible on their platforms. And eventually they made themselves seem indispensable. Yet as social media has saturated the world, it has also become a conspicuous contributor to sociopolitical turmoil. Relatedly, its dominance has become so thorough that the main monopolies controlling the sector are running out of room for growth — if they haven’t already.
It’s against this backdrop of apparent hegemony that “Web3” and the “metaverse” have emerged. The metaverse is a branding term with a similar aim as Web 2.0 — to make tech companies’ efforts to reinvigorate existing business models and carve out new ones seem forward-looking and new, while repackaging their leverage over people to compel them to adopt new products as a kind of benevolent leadership, if not a humility in the face of what people “really want.”
In a short message played before his metaverse keynote at Facebook Connect 2021 to respond to the scrutiny that followed whistleblower Frances Haugen’s release of damning internal documents, Mark Zuckerberg sought to retake control of the narrative. “I believe that technology can make our lives better and I believe that the future won’t be built on its own,” he said. “It will be built by those who are willing to stand up and say, ‘This is the future we want and I’m going to keep pushing and giving everything I’ve got to make this happen.’”
Zuckerberg didn’t just dismiss the allegations against him; he also dismissed critics as people who don’t think “there ever will be a good time to focus on the future.” His message echoed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s argument from a widely read April 2020 essay, “IT’S TIME TO BUILD.” Its thesis is that governments and existing institutions cannot meet the major challenges facing Western countries because they cannot “build” — an assertion that assumes technology inevitably brings about social progress, while ignoring how neoliberalism has hollowed out the capacity of the very institutions he criticizes. From this perspective, the “builders” of the future are “the heroes of our society,” in Zuckerberg’s words, and it’s clear that he imagines himself as one of them. Tech’s existing hegemony stands as proof that their vision must be heeded.
This bold prologue was meant to set up Zuckerberg’s subsequent announcement of the metaverse as an impressive and necessary step toward humanity’s future — a future realized by technological development without the need for political chang
