Mega-apps: Warning Signs for the Metaverse by Daniel Goldfelds

The Metaverse is still a new concept to many, the term first being introduced in a fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, titled Snow Crash, published in 1992. It is defined by being an environment purely in virtual reality, where people can interact, shop, and do what is mostly capable in the physical world but in a virtual space. Now a very real thing, at a first glance it appears almost dystopian, with most works published surrounding a virtual world having a very negative undertone, take the famous Matrix trilogy or the novel and film, Ready Player One as examples. With most depictions of a Metaverse or virtual ecosystem being depicted as controlling, addicting and all-consuming, many perceive these works of fiction as warning signs. Meta (formerly Facebook), is leading the charge into the world of the Metaverse, a company infamous for its data irresponsibility, breaches of privacy, and introduction to addictive social media, within its social networks such as Facebook and Instagram, so it comes with no surprise that people are wary of what they might be capable of with their influence on the Metaverse. Applications such as Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter are what can be considered ‘mega-apps,’ social media platforms that have over 500 million users each, Facebook alone having 2.9 billion individual accounts. These mega-apps are important to the discussion of the Metaverse, being a precedent for how dangerously dependent we can grow on a non-physical plane that cannot just be easily exploited but can be unhealthily addicting.

To truly understand the potential risks of the Metaverse, you have to understand what is currently going on within our main source of online communication: social media. Going back to the beginning, Facebook is the prime example of social media. Across Meta’s reach, there is a combined amount of 6.2 billion profiles as of early 2022 (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Whatsapp combined). When Facebook was growing, before Meta’s other applications were introduced, social networks were not as commonplace, with internet visitors perhaps communicating on websites such as Bebo or MySpace. Before long, Facebook grew into a platform that was far more than just a social site, resulting in its rivals falling short. Early critics acknowledged that ‘Facebook was originally set up to facilitate social contact between individuals, it is now a site on which people can do so much more than just communicate with other people’ (Griffiths, MD. 2012). Facebook offered shortcuts to common internet-users, making it inconvenient to get off Facebook. Facebook in 2022 now allows user-driven advertisements, games that can be played, a marketplace where items can be bought – essentially it has grown from its limited 2004 social shell to a sprawling hub where commerce is available, along with easy communication and the ability to find information sometimes quicker than if a typical search engine such as Google was used. As other competitors rise to mega-app status, one of the most striking examples being TikTok, it becomes clear why Meta is aiming for a shift to the digital space. Although platforms, such as the aforementioned TikTok (1 billion users as of December 2021 (Ang, C. 2021)), might not have the same amount of features as Facebook, especially when considering Facebook’s links to Meta’s other platforms, it threatens the foundation of Facebook which in its core is still a social platform, with better alternatives

being available for all of its features. Moving to an immersive experience offers an edge for commercial marketers and Meta itself in granting users a unique experience, but this might not be as positive as it looks on the surface. This becomes more apparent when you dive into how ethical and moral situations have been handled by mega-app organisations in the last decade, and how dangerously addicting and invasive non-immersive social media platforms already are.

To put into perspective just how much society interacts with applications, it was reported that 218 billion applications were downloaded in 2020 (Perez S., 2021). Despite this large number of applications, we are reliant on only a small amount of applications, governed by bodies that oversee multiple of these apps at a time. Whether you use them hourly, daily, or weekly, corporations such as Tencent, Meta, and Bytedance are responsible for how a large portion of our modern society is run. Marketing, relationships, and information are now largely centred around these specific companies. This centralisation, although convenient at first, poses multiple issues and concerns. When factoring in how personal data is distributed to marketers, it becomes clear why some claim that ‘mobile applications are the new oil of the information industry,’ (Iglezakis et al., 2019) with centralised social networks providing a goldmine of valuable data. Although this distribution of user information has been criticised and companies such as Apple are implementing preventive measures, applications have long fallen into a legal grey area. Still a fairly new concept, laws have not been fully developed to counter the exploitation of these mega-apps, or the downsides of using them, with many effects still being researched. It is no secret now that user data is fed into algorithms to produce ‘targeted ads,’ and with mega-apps being heavily interacted with, every interaction from a user is another piece of information about them. With the success of advertising and the value of information, it is crucial to the developers and investors that users spend as much time on their networks as possible. The moral controversy of addictiveness and the ethical controversy of sensitive data being easily accessed and distributed conglomerates into a reasonable fear of what we can trust and what we do online, but the dependence on these platforms leaves many of us with little choice. Researcher, Judith Wright, explores the dependence on social networks despite negative effects through the definition of “soft addiction.” She states that usage of social media ‘satisfies surface desires/urges while ignoring deeper needs.’ Elaborating on this, mega-apps are pervasive and because of their simplicity and accessibility, people find themselves constantly using them to relieve our social cravings and thirst for information, perhaps not completely fulfilling users’ needs, but is satisfying enough to keep them online. Because “soft addiction” is primarily based on the surface, it becomes more socially acceptable and more difficult to find its flaws for the common user, whereas addictions will stereotypically have visible adverse effects. Researchers also claim that this addiction is not just stemmed from satisfaction but from habit (Wang et al., 2015). In the digital age, many feel they have a responsibility to be present online, either to stay updated on what everyone else is aware of, a requirement for their work or just to sustain their online persona. Returning to the Metaverse, this “soft” addiction of mega-apps and their pervasiveness into every branch of our habits along with the value of data and time being a currency, can be so harmful and risky. The Metaverse, which is largely governed by one central body rather than over multiple (like the spread of mega-apps), these effects only amplify, by creating a further dependence on just one corporation in a more immersive world.

One of the main reasons the Metaverse can be seen as a risky environment when compared to its mega-app predecessors is its power of immersion and pervasiveness. The Metaverse may not just be confined to virtual reality, but may also employ features of augmented reality (digital elements visible in the real world), mixed reality (interaction of physical and digital objects), and eventually extended reality (such as with somatosensory devices that allow users to feel senses within the digital world) (Ning et al., 2021). These extensions would allow the metaverse to blend with aspects of reality, making the Metaverse more appealable but also more addicting, as more satisfactions could be met. Closing the divide by integrating the digital space into the real world offers less reason for users to abstain from using it, apart from taking a break to wash or eat, a very dystopian reality. While mega-apps such as Facebook might offer users a hub of interactions and convenience, less can be fulfilled on them than to the proposed features and capabilities of the Metaverse. Referring back to the addictive behaviour of mega-apps, researchers suggest that habits are reinforced as quickly as they are because users are able to ‘maximise media utility,’ which in turn compensates for any negative effects. “Media utility” is increased within the Metaverse, its convenience surpassing that of mega-apps. Meta having control of a space where users do most of their tasks and spend most of their time offers them many opportunities for how users might be unknowingly exploited for profit or control (censorship could be employed, cutting off unwanted individuals from the Metaverse, leaving them without a crucial tool others have access to). Perhaps sounding too dystopian, the Metaverse may see guidelines and new laws restrict what it is capable of. Despite its dangers, it can be a useful asset within internet-heavy societies, its convenience and potential should certainly not be discredited, with current social media also offering many advantages, but as mentioned this positive aspect can also not be overlooked, as there may become a pattern of excused behaviour and addiction. Stepping away from the virtual nature of the Metaverse, there are real-world differences to its mega-app counterparts, such as the movement away from centralised servers to a blockchain-run system, which uses every device as a connection point to other devices, rather than all devices linking to one server. Although this might seem like a step in the right direction for decentralisation, it poses other risks. As seen with other blockchain systems, such as NFTs and cryptocurrency, there is a lack of moderation because tracing blockchain interactions is very difficult, and also privacy and safety become a user’s responsibility. With conventional servers, attempted cyberattacks are commonplace but are quickly responded to with big budgets and professional teams, on the scale of an individual, their key/account could still be accessed or attacked, like with a larger server but the user is responsible for backing up their information and if the Metaverse grows to a feature of users’ daily lives. An attack or invasion could result in more being lost than that of an Instagram account being taken over or a hacker posting an embarrassing Tweet, if people interact financially and do business on the Metaverse for example. Another risk is that the Metaverse, like with mega-apps, has a digital footprint, meaning stalkers can track habits and find information that can link victims to their real world counterparts, introducing a more dangerous form of cyberstalking and grooming younger users.

“Cyber syndrome” is a term that defines the mental, social and physical effects of participating too much within the cyber world (Ning et al. 2021). This is not dissimilar to the terms associated

with social media addiction, such as ‘internet dependency,’ ‘media addiction’ and ‘technological addiction’ (Wang et al. 2015). When you compare the impact of mega-apps to our current society, it becomes clear why the Metaverse can be so harmful if left unchecked. Many of social media’s harmful and exploitable features are naturally transferred to the virtual world. It is not just the same harms that are amplified, but new risks that are introduced within the Metaverse when it comes to moderation and user-specific responsibility without giving up the centralised control of Meta over the developed experiences and features within its Metaverse. This places Meta in a position where they have less legal responsibilities for potential crimes or forms of harassment within the Metaverse, but keep many of the same advantages that mega-app providers currently have. The Metaverse if left unchecked, can grow into being a facade of opportunity and convenience, to hide the personal and criminal risks associated with its concept.

Bibliography:

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Griffiths, M.D., (2012). Facebook addiction: concerns, criticism, and recommendations—a response to Andreassen and colleagues. Psychological reports, 110(2), pp.518-520. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2466/01.07.18.PR0.110.2.518-520

Wang C., Lee M., Hua Z., (2015) A theory of social media dependence: Evidence from microblog users, Decision Support Systems, Volume 69, pp. 40-49, ISSN 0167-9236, Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2014.11.002. or https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167923614002693

Ning, H., Wang, H., Lin, Y., Wang, W., Dhelim, S., Farha, F., Ding, J. and Daneshmand, M., (2021). A Survey on Metaverse: the State-of-the-art, Technologies, Applications, and Challenges. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.09673

Ang C., (2021) Ranked: The World’s Most Popular Social Networks, and Who Owns Them, Visual Capitalist, December 6, Available at: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-social-networks-worldwide-by-users/

Perez, S. (2021) Appstores Saw Record 218 Billion Downloads in 2020, Consumer Spend of $143 billion, TechCrunch, 13 January, Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/13/app-stores-saw-record-218-billion-downloads-in-2020-consu mer-spend-of-143-billion/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9maW5hbmNlc29ubGluZ S5jb20vbnVtYmVyLW9mLW1vYmlsZS1hcHAtZG93bmxvYWRzLw&