Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, stirred up the firm last year by disclosing hundreds of internal papers and accused the social media network of failing to do more to combat the spread of disinformation. Now, Haugen is suing Facebook (now Meta), this time for the metaverse, which caused the company’s rebranding in 2021.
Haugen told Politico that Meta has made “quite extravagant claims” about how the metaverse is safe by design, but that if they didn’t, the metaverse would be vulnerable.
Intrusive gear like as sensors, microphones, and cameras would have to be deployed in homes and maybe even public areas to collect data and recreate it in the digital realm for the company’s metaverse vision to become a reality.
“I’m quite worried about the number of sensors involved.” When we implement the metaverse, we’ll need a lot more Facebook microphones and other types of sensors in our houses,” Haugen told Politico. At this point, you don’t really have a choice about whether or not Facebook can spy on you at home. All we have to do now is put our faith in the corporation to do the right thing.”
According to a CNBC article, Meta plans to take a 47.5 percent cut on digital asset sales on its virtual reality platform Horizon Worlds, which is key to the company’s metaverse strategy.
Haugen worked as a product manager at Facebook before becoming a whistleblower and pushing the social media business into the limelight for all the wrong reasons. Last year, she granted The Wall Street Journal access to tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents, dubbed “The Facebook Files” by the media.
She said at the time that Facebook “prioritizes business above the well-being of children and all users,” and that the company had ignored or discarded the vast majority of its workers’ content concerns.
“I’m here today because I think Facebook’s products damage children, foment divisiveness and erode our democracy,” Haugen told a US Senate panel in October 2021. We need to put pressure on Facebook to make changes.”