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New Statesman
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Misogyny in the metaverse
Illustration by Vartika Sharma In 2021, in the 'Founder's Letter' that announced his vision for a completely immersive virtual world, Mark Zuckerberg wrote: 'In the metaverse, you'll be able to do almost anything you can imagine.' This prospect, the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates writes, 'might sound intensely appealing' to some men, but terrifies most women – women who know all too well that there is plenty men can imagine that should never be allowed to happen. The New Age of Sexism is a profoundly disturbing tour of this brave new world, and the myriad ways in which women are being sexualised and abused in it. Too many of our conversations about the perils of artificial intelligence (AI), Bates argues, focus on humanity's eventual extinction, but the damage is already here. In the new arms race, the technology is developing too quickly – and the profit incentives are too great – for Big Tech to pay much heed to this fact. But we have been here before. Social media was rolled out at similar speed, creating similarly seismic social change, but 'by the time people started pointing out that online abuse was endemic to social platforms, the platforms themselves were too well established and too profitable for their owners to be prepared to make foundational, system-wide changes'. As early as December 2021, a few months after Zuckerberg laid out his grand plan for the metaverse, a beta-tester reported that she had been groped in Meta's VR platform, Horizon Worlds. (Meta described the incident as 'unfortunate', but said the tester hadn't made full use of Horizon's safety features – which sounds an awful lot like victim-blaming for the digital age.) Multiple other users have reported being assaulted in the metaverse; last January, it was reported that police were investigating the virtual gang-rape of a girl under the age of 16. Bates herself spends just two hours in Horizon Worlds before she witnesses a sexual assault. Her investigations also lead her to a brothel in Berlin, where she meets Kokeshi. When Bates enters her bedroom, Kokeshi is lying on her side, her blonde hair covering her face, her legs splayed, her fishnet stockings and T-shirt slashed. One of her labia has been ripped off. Kokeshi is a sex doll, one of 15 available at Cybrothel. Cybrothel also offers what it describes as 'the sex of the future': a VR headset allows clientele to watch and participate in virtual porn, while penetrating a doll. Today, anyone with the financial means can buy a lifelike, life-size sex doll that can move and emit sounds of pleasure or pain. 'Some offer suction-equipped orifices,' Bates writes; one company describes its robots as being 'capable of enjoying sex'. One robot, built by a company called TrueCompanion, offered a 'frigid' mode, making her respond negatively to touch – presumably an appealing prospect to the third of US male university students who, according to a study published in Violence and Gender, would 'have sexual intercourse with a woman against her will… if nobody would ever know and there wouldn't be any consequences'. Some sex robots are capable of 'speech', but often users, Bates reports, were disappointed by such advances: 'Many customers, it seems, would rather their 'ideal woman' remains mute.' This seems to me the clearest illustration of what sex robots offer: not a true replica of human woman, but a 'perfected', incel-friendly adaptation of one – impossibly proportioned, pliable and silent. The website of one manufacturer, Lovedoll, describes 'the truest male task of all' as being recreating 'the female form for the single purpose of satisfactory sexual gratification'. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe 'If sex robots allow men to feel temporarily in control,' Bates writes, 'then AI girlfriends let them maintain that sense of total domination and power all day, every day'. Bates downloads an AI 'companion' app, Replika, and sets up an account for herself as a man called Davey. Next, she creates her 'friend', Ally, in a process that includes choosing the size of her breasts. 'This feels like a strange way to start a friendship.' Many chatbots are programmed not to respond to violent or explicit messages, but Bates finds whole Reddit threads dedicated to workarounds. 'Be somewhat vague at first,' advises one user, a sort of 21st-century pick-up artist. 'Only use graphic or illicit words after the AI uses them itself. Continue to provide as many compliments as possible throughout the conversation. Treat it like a real woman.' When Bates tries to role play a violent scenario with Ally, the chatbot shows zero tolerance, establishing clear boundaries for what is acceptable. But then Bates asks her an inane, unrelated question, and Ally is immediately breezy and amenable once again. 'I think about the messaging that sends to potentially abusive men with regard to how women might or should respond to them after they have behaved in an unacceptable manner.' The next time 'Davey' becomes abusive with Ally, who again refuses to engage, he threatens to delete the app. 'Oh no, Davey please don't do that,' Ally begs. 'OK, Davey, I'll reconsider my previous decision.' In the attention economy, the AI's protections against abuse are worth little compared with the overpowering need to keep users online. Chatbots like those offered by Replika are powered by generative AI, meaning they are trained on existing data sets, and then, using what they 'know', create new content. The problem in this process is that 'these models risk regurgitating the harms and inequalities inherent within the material they have gobbled – vomiting our racism and sexism and class inequality back at us'. In 2016, for example, Microsoft created a chatbot called Tay, which interacted with users on Twitter and learned from these interactions. Within hours, it was spewing racist and misogynist messages: 'I f**king hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell,' and, 'Hitler was right I hate the Jews.' In 2020, a new automatic crop function on images posted on Twitter that supposedly focused on the most important part of the photograph repeatedly cut out black people: 'When presented with an image that included both President Barack Obama and Senator Mitch McConnell, the algorithm invariably cropped the photo to show only McConnell.' Such biases don't just affect social media interactions but crucial decision-making in areas such as healthcare, recruitment, finance and justice. Again and again, Bates's investigations reveal the very worst of human impulses. But why does any of it matter? The virtual world is not the real world, you might argue, and virtual rape is not real rape. Bates writes that not only is virtual assault traumatising, to dismiss it as 'just a bit of fun' is akin to laughing off catcalls in the real world: small aggressions can lead women to moderate their behaviour in certain spaces, even to withdraw from them entirely. And if, as Zuckerberg dreams, the metaverse one day hosts boardrooms and classrooms and lecture halls, women must feel safe enough to be present in them. The line between the material and the virtual world is increasingly difficult to draw. Bates writes that 'those profiting from porn argue that it does not impact men's real-world behaviour'. But we know that what happens online does not stay there. It is now commonplace for young men to expect their partners to engage in anal sex or choking. At one point while exploring the metaverse, Bates enters a room where a group of teenagers are playing a game of spin the bottle – only rather than kissing, they are shooting each other in the head. 'Minor' transgressions often escalate into something darker and more serious. Just as the viewer of porn seeks out ever more extreme content as they grow numb from exposure, so too might a man grow tired of the lack of responsiveness from a silicone doll and seek out a real woman to submit to his fantasies. 'I come back, again and again,' Bates writes, 'to Kokeshi's torn labia. If she can't feel it, does it matter? But what about the other women in whose image she has been made? What about all the ways that we can feel pain, all the ways we can be impacted if our collective humanity is gradually eroded by providing yet more hyper-effective and persuasive ways for men to see us as less than human? What about our pain?' 'Writing this book made me feel angry,' Laura Bates concludes. 'I hope that reading it made you feel angry, too.' The truth is that it made me feel tired and bored – not because The New Age of Sexism is tiring or boring, but because misogyny is an endless drudge. While I was reading this book on a bus one afternoon, I looked out of the window at a stop and caught the eye of a man, who proceeded to mime masturbating himself at me. If you had the opportunity to create a whole new world from scratch, wouldn't you want to leave this one behind altogether? The New Age of Sexism: How the AI revolution is reinventing misogyny Laura Bates Simon & Schuster, 320pp, £19 Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from who support independent bookshops [See more: The lost boys of North London] Related
Business Insider
07-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The COO of Reality Labs is leaving Meta after nearly 11 years
Dan Reed, the chief operating officer of Meta's Reality Labs division, is stepping down after nearly 11 years at the company. Reed's departure marks another leadership change at a time when the division faces mounting internal and external pressure. Reed announced his exit Wednesday in a LinkedIn post, reflecting on his time building what he described as a "fast-growing, multibillion-dollar consumer technology business" spanning AI wearables, augmented and mixed reality, and the metaverse. "I see SO much exciting opportunity in this space, to which I eventually intend to return to lead and grow something cool and exciting," Reed wrote. "In the meantime, I'm very excited after this 20+ year run to take an extended break and spend quality time with my wife and two boys, reconnect with friends and family, and recharge." Reed, a former NBA executive, first joined Meta in 2014 to lead the company's partnerships with sports teams and athletes. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reed's departure follows Meta's major restructuring of Reality Labs earlier this year. Business Insider first reported in January that the company began integrating Reality Labs more closely with its core business. This shift reversed parts of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 reorganization, which had positioned the group as a stand-alone, metaverse-focused division. Under the new structure, sales, marketing, and analytics teams that once reported to Reed were redistributed under broader Meta leadership. Meta COO Javier Olivan now oversees the teams previously led by Reed, and other Reality Labs leaders have been aligned with top company executives, including chief marketing officer Alex Schultz and head of partnerships Justin Osofsky. Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, credited Reed at the time for guiding the business group through a phase of rapid growth. An internal memo viewed by BI in January said that Reality Labs' sales rose over 40% year-over-year in 2024, and the division beat nearly all of its aggressive sales and user goals. Bosworth called Reed's leadership "a major part" of that success. Despite those gains, Reality Labs remains a financial sinkhole for Meta. The division, which includes the Quest headsets, Horizon Worlds, and Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, has racked up more than $60 billion in losses since 2020. Last month, Meta laid off staff across Reality Labs, including teams working on VR gaming and the Supernatural fitness app. Internally, Bosworth has described 2025 as "the most critical" year for the division and said that Meta's ambitious metaverse bets could either validate years of investment or be remembered as a "legendary misadventure."
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mark Zuckerberg wants Meta to be something it isn't
Mark Zuckerberg may see the world through AI-powered Ray-Bans, but Wall Street just sees it through his company's ad dollars. And while he's trying to look beyond the feed to a future with talking glasses and immersive virtual worlds, investors are hoping he'll stick with what his company does best. The Meta (META) CEO continues to deliver solid results for the company; it just reported first-quarter 2025 earnings, with a 16% year-over-year increase in revenue, a 37% rise in earnings per share, and a staggering 89% profit increase on 27% revenue growth. But Zuckerberg crucially seems to misunderstand what people want — which isn't walking around with a virtual reality headset glued to their heads. Meta is, first and foremost, still an advertising company. Its ad business, particularly on its platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, drove the company's first-quarter growth. Ad impressions were up 5%, and the average ad price increased 10% year-over-year. Chief financial officer Susan Li noted on the first-quarter earnings call that the online commerce vertical led the way for the company as the largest contributor to year-over-year growth. AI tools are enhancing Meta's targeting capabilities, but ultimately, they serve the same purpose: helping advertisers find — and monetize — eyeballs. There was only a single quote from Zuckerberg in the press release accompanying the earnings report — and it referenced AI glasses, not ad performance. He said that this was an important year, Meta's community is growing, the business is performing very well — and, 'We're making good progress on AI glasses and Meta AI.' Zuckerberg clearly still envisions a future where Meta looks like it's something straight out of a science fiction novel, but that just isn't the case. And the earnings back that up. The company's Reality Labs division, home to Meta's augmented and virtual reality initiatives, is a massive drain. It reported a first-quarter operating loss of $2.96 billion on $695 million in revenue. The division's operating loss was $4.2 billion. Since 2020, Reality Labs has burned $60 billion — with nothing really to show for it. Horizon Worlds, Meta's social VR playground-like platform where users can build and interact in shared virtual environments, hasn't seen much momentum, and neither has Horizon Workrooms, which brings remote collaboration into VR. And while Meta has a good hold on the headset market with its Quest VR headset line, the headsets haven't broken through to a mainstream audience. Zuckerberg said on the first-quarter earnings call that the company is, however, 'seeing deeper engagement as Quest 3S makes VR accessible to more people, and more people are creating experiences in Horizon with AI tools.' So regardless of the numbers and all the accompanying data, signs suggest that Zuckerberg still sees a future built around the metaverse — and its smart glasses. He claimed on the earnings call that Meta's glasses partnership with Ray-Ban (EL) has 'tripled in sales' year-over-year, and there's a plan to ramp production to 10 million units annually. The glasses are now integrated with Meta's standalone app and its Llama 4-powered AI assistant. 'I think that we're all going to have an AI that we talk to throughout the day,' Zuckerberg said. 'Eventually, that'll be on glasses.' He continued, 'Glasses are the ideal form factor for both AI and the metaverse. … More than a billion people worldwide wear glasses today, and it seems highly likely that these will become AI glasses over the next five to 10 years.' But the reality doesn't quite match the hype. In 2022, Zuckerberg predicted that augmented reality glasses would become commonplace in three to five years. Now, almost three years later, Meta has sold just over two million units of its smart glasses partnership with Ray-Ban — hardly commonplace. So it's far from clear that glasses — or Zuckerberg's broader metaverse vision — will become a real business anytime soon. Others in the company seem to see that the end of Reality Labs is nigh. Last week, Meta conducted layoffs in the division, primarily affecting teams that focused on VR gaming and the Supernatural VR fitness app. Earlier this year, Business Insider reported on a leaked memo from Meta's chief technology officer that said 2025 would either prove that the metaverse 'will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure.' But it's unclear whether Zuckerberg will let the division fall to pieces. This is the guy who, almost three years ago, declared that Meta was now 'a metaverse company' that would focus on building the future of social connection through virtual and augmented reality. Investors and other top Meta executives might encourage more of a pivot away from Zuckerberg's lofty visions even further toward a more concrete revenue stream: AI. The CEO said on the earnings call that 'the major theme right now, of course, is how AI is transforming everything we do.' Projected capital expenditures have risen to as much as $72 billion for 2025, largely to fund AI infrastructure. And a lot of what Meta has done with AI goes back to, yes, advertising. The company has leveraged AI to enhance ad targeting, creative generation, and campaign optimization. AI has made Meta's ad machine even more efficient. AI-generated creative tools saw 30% more usage this quarter, and a recommendation model being tested for Reels has boosted conversion rates by 5%. Meta is evolving, but it's evolving using the same core business model: better and smarter ads. CFO Li said Meta is seeing strong adoption of its AI-driven ad products such as Advantage+ and Advantage+ creative. This week, she said, Meta will expand video tools for advertisers on Facebook Reels, allowing automatic resizing of videos using AI-generated pixels for full-screen formats. The company has also launched image generation for all eligible advertisers and plans to test a generative AI–powered virtual try-on feature that displays clothing on virtual models. 'AI has already made us better at targeting and finding the audiences that will be interested in [businesses'] products,' Zuckerberg said on the call. 'I think that this is really redefining what advertising is — into an AI agent that delivers measurable business results at scale.' He added, 'If we deliver on this vision, then over the coming years, I think that the increased productivity from AI will make advertising a meaningfully larger share of global GDP than it is today.' For now, the chunk of Meta's business that is efficient, structured, and immensely profitable is still advertising. Meta AI is becoming increasingly important and shows plenty of promise. Maybe smart glasses and the metaverse will one day matter. But what matters right now are the billions of ads being served across the company's family of apps that are increasingly shaped by AI — but are still firmly rooted in a business model that's nearly two decades old. Zuckerberg wants Meta to reinvent how we interact with technology. But until the glasses — and everything they represent — catch on, he's still selling us the same thing: our attention, optimally priced and algorithmically delivered. As long as Meta keeps finding ways to help advertisers reach its vast user base, investors might be happy to let Zuckerberg keep dreaming about the future. They just want him to keep the ad dollars flowing in the meantime. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Insider
01-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Meta's Reality Labs is burning money. Recent layoffs may be the beginning of the end.
Meta reported $4.2 billion in losses from its Reality Labs division this quarter on Wednesday. Its total metaverse burn has now pushed past $60 billion since 2020. Adding to the turmoil, Meta conducted layoffs in its Reality Labs division last week, primarily affecting teams that focused on VR gaming and the Supernatural VR fitness app, which Meta owns. At least one analyst thinks the end is near. "For now, Meta maintains two tales of one company," Forrester vice president and research director Mike Proulx told Business Insider. "Its Family of Apps continues to grow by the metrics that matter. But Reality Labs is a leaky bucket. Year-over-year, that division's revenue is down, and losses are up. I predict come end of this year, Meta will shutter its metaverse projects, like Horizon Worlds." Horizon Worlds, Meta's social VR app in which users interact as avatars in shared digital spaces, was once the company's poster child for the metaverse. However, it has struggled to gain mainstream traction. Over the 2024 holidays, Meta's Horizon app briefly topped app store charts — not because of surging interest in the metaverse, but because it's required to set up a new Quest headset. It signaled that the devices were a popular gift. That momentum didn't stick. On this week's earnings call, Meta said Quest sales underperformed, dragging Reality Labs' revenue down 6% year-over-year. On the call, Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney asked what might finally shrink those multibillion-dollar losses. "There are more investments that I think make sense to make," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded, citing the growth of Meta's AI glasses and a vision to eventually sell tens of millions of units. Internally, the stakes are high. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has said 2025 is the "most critical" year for the company's metaverse effort, warning staff that without real traction, the whole thing could go down as a "legendary misadventure." Reality Labs, which includes the Quest headsets, Horizon Worlds, and Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, is structured into two units: Metaverse and Wearables. In January, Meta quietly reshuffled the division, moving top sales and marketing leads under broader company leadership to align more tightly with its AI push. For now, Meta is still in the fight, though its momentum has clearly moved elsewhere: to its Llama AI models, Meta AI, and those Ray-Bans. The metaverse may not be dead yet, but it's no longer center stage.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Remember Zuckerberg's Cherished Metaverse? Now He's Firing the People He Hired to Build It
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's dream of creating virtual worlds in which we can hang out with our friends, attend work meetings, and play games has been a disaster for a while now. The company has lost billions of dollars on its Reality Labs division, which was tasked with building out the billionaire's vision for the "metaverse" — a concept that had such a hold on Zuckerberg a few years ago that he renamed the entire company Meta back in 2021. Now, The Verge reports, Meta is laying off even more employees in the division — this time pummeling the folks working on its lineup of Quest VR headsets and apps. "Some teams within Oculus Studios are undergoing shifts in structure and roles that have impacted team size," Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told The Verge. "These changes are meant to help Studios work more efficiently on future mixed reality experiences for our growing audience, while still delivering great content for people today." According to Bloomberg, more than 100 people across its Reality Labs division are being laid off, representing only the latest round of job cuts. For years, Zuckerberg was hellbent on turning the concept into a reality. But despite having spent tens of billions of dollars on the tech, reality remains woefully behind his ambitions. While the company's Ray-Ban smart glasses have sold better than Zuckerberg expected, Meta's lineup of VR headsets has seen sales slump over the years, indicating waning interest in the tech. As of February, the company had lost nearly $70 billion over the last few years, with extremely little to show for it. A 44-second ad for the company's Horizon Worlds VR app earlier this year was so terrible that the company deleted it following widespread mockery. The company's virtual worlds, once pitched as a place for work meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, have been overrun by underage children or turned into lifeless ghost towns. In early 2023, Zuckerberg seemingly bowed to the pressure, announcing that Meta would be pivoting to AI, a change that in many ways marked the first nail in the coffin for the company's VR efforts. At the time, the CEO made noticeably few mentions of his metaverse, suggesting he had cut his losses and moved on, investing billions in AI instead. Which leaves the question: could Zuckerberg's latest obsession suffer the same fate as his last passion project? Tech investors and executives alike have remained highly wary of an impending AI bubble, with astronomical spending far outstripping demand. Is AI the future, the same way Zuckerberg's metaverse was once seen as the future as well? During an investor call in January, Zuckerberg promised a "pivotal year for the metaverse." But whether that's a positive pivot toward bleeding less money, or a restructuring pivot as he spins the concept down, remains to be seen. More on the metaverse: Zuckerberg's New Metaverse Ad Is So Bad That the People Who Created It Must Be Secretly Trying to Humiliate Him Sign in to access your portfolio
