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October 19, 2021

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Home » Sunday » Technology

Facebook building a ‘metaverse’

Source: AFP | 00:00 UTC+8 October 19, 2021 | Print Edition

Facebook yesterday announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the “metaverse,” a virtual reality version of the Internet that the tech giant sees as the future.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice in Silicon Valley hype around the idea of the metaverse, which would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.

The technology might, for example, allow someone to don virtual reality glasses that make it feel as if they’re face-to-face with a friend — when in fact they are thousands of kilometers apart and connected via the Internet.

“The metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social, and economic opportunities.

And Europeans will be shaping it right from the start,” Facebook said in a blog post.

The European Union hires, spread over the next five years, will include “highly specialised engineers,” but it gave few details of its plans for the metaverse team.

“The EU has a number of advantages that make it a great place for tech companies to invest — a large consumer market, first-class universities and, crucially, top-quality talent,” it said.

The announcement comes as Facebook grapples with the fallout of a damaging scandal, major outages of services, and rising calls for regulation to curb its influence.

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