Mark Zuckerberg has a problem money can\u2019t fix: convincing Capitol Hill that the metaverse \u2014 whatever that is \u2014 isn\u2019t evil.<\/p>\n
His strategy is to start with a soft campaign to woo Washington insiders before deeply skeptical lawmakers begin to debate the controversial company’s next act. This is a change of gears for a Silicon Valley behemoth whose early motto was to \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d and that outspent all its peers to fend off legislation to curb the dominance of Big Tech.<\/p>\n
A whistle-blower blasted the company and its founder at an October Senate hearing, decrying Zuckerberg\u2019s outsized influence and calling for more regulation to stop the network giant putting profit above the public good.<\/p>\n
On the heels of that controversy, Facebook was rechristened Meta Platforms Inc., and its Washington team is already working to lay a favorable foundation for the push into this potentially lucrative landscape before lawmakers and regulators drill into what kind of harm it could cause.<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s product and policy teams are introducing this future virtual world to think tanks and nonprofits, according to people familiar with the discussions, holding conference calls in recent months to lay out the company\u2019s vision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of scrutiny on them, and they are trying to move into a new space and bring the temperature down at the same time,\u201d said Neil Chilson, who has participated in Meta\u2019s calls and is a senior fellow at Stand Together, a nonprofit associated with industrialist Charles Koch.<\/p>\n
For now, the effort is focused on outside groups, especially free market and libertarian-leaning organizations, many of which Meta supports financially. The calls center on policy discussions, according to people who have participated, as the company tries to anticipate issues that could arise when users socialize, work, shop and play in new virtual worlds. It\u2019s all part of a \u201csoft push\u201d to move past last year\u2019s controversies, said Wayne Brough, a technology expert at R Street Institute, a free-market think tank.<\/p>\n
According to Brough, who was invited to participate in the calls, \u201cthey want to separate the metaverse\u201d from the company\u2019s political baggage.<\/p>\n
A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the company is leading discussions about the metaverse, but declined to provide details, saying the team is working on issues that are still years away. A main goal is to ensure that features are \u201cappropriate to the new technologies and effective in keeping people safe,\u201d said Meta spokesperson Kristen Morea.<\/p>\n
The conversations show how far Facebook – now Meta – has come from its early days in Washington when the company sent staffers to congressional offices to show lawmakers how to open accounts and use the social media platform to reach constituents.<\/p>\n
Today one of the few things shared by Democrats and Republicans is their unease over Facebook\u2019s handling of misinformation, hate speech and protecting children online — all issues that would carry over to the metaverse. Addressing these would be even more difficult in a virtual space where fleeting interactions are much harder to monitor and report.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers across the ideological spectrum are already suspicious. Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, a conservative Republican, was unconvinced by Facebook\u2019s name change. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a progressive Democrat, compared the company and its future plans to a metastasizing cancer.<\/p>\n
\nMeta as in \u201cwe are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society\u2026 for profit!\u201d https:\/\/t.co\/jzOcCFaWkJ<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2014 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 28, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n