Edward Snowden’s Problem With the Metaverse

Edward Snowden is still in exile for exercising his moral compass and taking one for the team. Not being able to leave his hideout in Russia, one would imagine him a prime candidate to appreciate the liberties offered by Immersive VR of being social in a shared environment. Unfortunately, the situation is more complicated:

For what it’s worth, I’ve thought VR/AR meetings are going to be a killer app ever since I lost the ability to travel. But this? This ain’t it, and Facebook has gone to extreme lengths to prove it cannot be trusted to respect the boundaries required for private meetings — Edward Snowden

Of course, this should hardly come as a surprise. The man who risked his life and sacrificed his freedom in order to fight for our privacy is hardly the fellow to blindly agree to the privacy invasive terms and conditions of Facebook in order to re-gain it in virtual form. Snowden regards Facebook’s name change to Meta as mere “paperwork”, and commends that people don’t write about the name, but about what they do. This is great advice. Nowadays, you can read articles like Meta Will Drop Facebook Account Requirement, as if this in any way symbolises a transition from their heavy involvement with selling personal data. It is selling personal data that is what they do. Of course Meta will not require a Facebook account. It will require a Meta…