I didn’t think I would be able to persuade Mark Zuckerberg, with a letter, to let me be the next CEO of Meta, replacing him, but I meant it.
Here is why I am saying this and what I would do differently from what Mark Zuckerberg has been doing in the past.
I said that I wanted to be the CEO of @Meta because 1. Based on his comments & actions this year it seems to me like Mark Zuckerberg might be losing enthusiasm for his job. In his own words his company might be heading towards decline, and his 2nd officer, Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former COO recently jumped ship to focus on philanthropy full time.
I see potential for the company to reverse its decline dramatically by changing its direction now.
Reference this article to see Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments predicting a down turn in revenue for Meta
Reference this article to read what the mainstream news is reporting about Sheryl Sandberg’s exit.
Not long ago Meta hired Nick Clegg to take over many of the duties that were previously under the role of the CEO.
I interpreted this event as Mark Zuckerberg being tired of having that role.
Highly influential US Politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren want to change Meta
Ocasio-Cortez thinks Meta is “a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society”
Warren wants to break up what she sees as a monopoly, and a system that doesn’t do enough to respect truth in advertising
I think of Democratic Governments as representative of large numbers of people. What Ocasio-Cortez & Warren want is representative of what lots of Meta’s customers actually want.
As a corporation, at the root level, Meta has the job of generating revenue for its shareholders. That’s why it continues to exist. To accomplish this job Meta needs to pay attention to what its customers want, and then figure out a way to monetize the services that it is providing to those customers.
1. Meta needs to understand what the Governments that represent the people want, because those are Meta’s real customers.
2. Meta needs to figure out a way to make money by giving the people what they want.
3. If Ocasio-Cortez & Warren want higher standards for what is allowed to be an advertisement, then Meta needs to raise their standards for what kinds of ads are allowed, and Meta needs to charge more money to provide this more costly service.
4. If the Government wants to break up a monopoly because it is unresponsive to the public’s needs, then let’s have Meta figure out a path to making that break up profitable. I propose a social network franchise model. Meta could spin off copies of Instagram, Facebook, Whatapp, to Governments, Corporations, and Individuals. License those copies, and make them interoperable with Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram. Essentially allowing other entities to become owner operators of a social network that can earn revenue through Meta’s ad partnerships & links to Meta’s networks.
Meta could split off instances of itself, copies, license them to Governments & Corporations, and generate revenue through ad partnerships, and through a contract that keeps these instances connected to Meta’s ecosystem in a way that does not compromise user privacy or permit Oligarchies & Fascists to have a predatory relationship over the poor masses.
Mark Zuckerberg apparently loves McDonalds, so maybe the franchise business model can work for social networks? What if McDonald’s was able to purchase its own instance of Instagram, Facebook, and Whatsapp that was interoperable with Meta’s software without transferring all the private information that Meta has collected over time to McDonalds? It’s a thought experiment. I’m not happy with McDonald’s menu personally so I don’t eat there.
I do not believe that social networks are corrosive to Democracy. Twitter’s use of artificial intelligence to translate Ukrainian, Russian, German, English and many other languages is an understated example of how social networks with artificial intelligence are transforming global politics and helping to end genocide.
In my vision Social Networks & Artificial Intelligence can help billions of people, they can become trustworthy tools that are pro-Democracy, and anti-fascist.
On Twitter I’ve said a lot about WebXR, particularly about React Three Fiber, but also Aframe, I think that there is a path to the Metaverse that has been overlooked, and I think that the existing WebXR technologies, such as Exokit Web provide a path to bring Meta’s existing social networks into the Metaverse.
Exokit Web allows multiple WebXR webpages to be co-rendered into the same scene. This is exactly what we need to start the WebXR Metaverse, because that first canvas can be the home canvas that contains & keeps you, your avatar, your items, your digital objects, and the next canvas is the webpage that you visit. That’s the metaverse of the Oasis, now you combine this with the beautiful graphics that you see in React Three Fiber, and bam I’ve defined in one paragraph a plausible path for the future of the Metaverse with WebXR (I’ve been thinking about this for over a year.)
With React Three Fiber Meta’s existing Facebook & Instagram products, which are React based, could be brought into 3D, to be explored in Virtual Reality and with Augmented Reality.
In notes that can be found in my discord group about webxr, I describe additional UI UX design ideas for creating a VR AR Social Network. Some of those ideas I have already turned into code that you can see if you look at my past work.
References
Videos of my code:
My writing
More links to my work
My ideas about how to build a WebXR Social Network can also be found in part in my discord under “Aframe WebXR Online Hack Night Archive”
I’ve written a lot about the future of the Metaverse, how we are going to get there, but most people haven’t read or heard of my work, yet.
Lately I’ve also been posting my notes on github for building the next generation of artificial neural networks, based on years of studying neuroscience & computer science. You can read my notes here at github.com/v5ma in the Self Aware Networks repo.
So what I would do differently from Mark Zuckerberg is that I would ask the executive team at Meta to help me chart a path that gives Democratic Governments & the people they represent what they want, and do that in a way that generates profit for the company.
I think the franchise social network model could be one way to accomplish that goal, but I am open to other ideas for the specific strategy implementation. The CEO’s job is to recognize & communicate at a high level what needs to be done for the company to prosper, and for their customers to benefit from the interaction.
I would help chart a path to the real Metaverse, that is based on prioritizing open web standards, like WebXR. I would work with researchers to create VR & AR social network enabled research tools that rapidly accelerate innovation in various industries especially in the areas of medical research.
Finally with my help Meta would lead the world in AI innovation. I have done extensive research, that will prove to be valid, for the creation of next generation artificial neural networks. My work is not done, but I would have Meta’s AI team help me complete it. We will have Sentient & Self-Aware Neural Networks. We can license robots that are safe, below human level, and able to solve the biggest challenges, such as labor shortages, that humanity faces.
Read my unfinished notes that lead to building next generation artificial neural networks here at github.com/v5ma (in the Self Aware Networks repo)
I did not realistically think that Mark Zuckerberg was going to step aside and let me run Meta. I love the company. I appreciate most of what the people who work at Meta have done over the years. I believe that the people of Meta can help billions of people in a real way with this strategy that I am proposing. Be well folks.