Secret Deals Not So Secret Anymore
SEAMUS BRUNER Breitbart.com
Out today, Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life, blows the lid off of Meta’s pattern of intentionally using harmful and aggressive tactics to get users addicted to social media apps like Facebook and Instagram and documents a shocking rise in depression and suicide that some scientists have linked to social media use.
This comes just weeks after dozens of state attorneys general (AGs) filed suit against Facebook’s and Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta), and three of its subsidiaries, for harming children by addicting them to the social media platforms. Forty-two states, including California and New York, allege that billionaire creator Mark Zuckerberg’s company “knowingly designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram and Facebook to purposefully addict children and teens.”
Previously, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen claimed that Meta targeted children and teens for monetary reasons and a leaked document showed that the youth demographic was “a valuable but untapped audience.”
Just weeks after Haugen blew the whistle on Facebook’s tactics, Zuckerberg unveiled his plan to release what may prove to be Meta’s most addictive product yet: Facebook Horizon. Zuckerberg’s October 2021 virtual tour of the new product, which was panned as “super weird,” was his coming-out party for what has become known as “the metaverse”—a digital world that users can essentially live in and access via a virtual reality (VR) headset such as Facebook’s Oculus Quest.
Zuckerberg’s metaverse launch was a conveniently timed and thinly veiled rebranding effort to distract from whistleblower documents and allegations that, according to the Associated Press, show that “Facebook ignored or downplayed internal warnings of the negative and often harmful consequences its algorithms wreaked across the world.”
In October 2021, Zuckerberg changed the name of the Facebook Inc. family of companies to Meta Platforms Inc. to signal the direction his social media empire would be heading. And Zuckerberg has pumped more than $36 billion into making his metaverse ambitions a reality.
Controligarchs reveals that Zuckerberg’s $36 billion (and growing) metaverse efforts are only just the beginning. The book documents Zuckerberg’s ongoing efforts to make the most addictive product in history: the metaverse.
One of the first virtual shops in the metaverse was a cannabis store. But it is not the tangible drugs that are the most dangerous of Meta’s offerings. The metaverse brings new consumer product offerings—including physical and biotechnological upgrades for the human body.
Meta has already filed a patent for bionic eyeballs so that users can bring their virtual reality with them everywhere and never have to leave. Zuckerberg is tinkering with other brand-new technologies, including a synthetic skin prototype called ReSkin and pneumatic “haptic gloves,” so that users could literally feel and grasp the metaverse.
Innovators are even developing scent blasters that shoot chemical mist at a user’s nose to allow them to “smell” the metaverse. In addition to basic scents like chocolate and strawberry (and even “beach”), there are more nuanced fragrances such as “fascinate,” “annihilate,” and “carouse.”
And while Meta’s VR aspirations appear to be failing with consumers, Zuckerberg’s obsession with the metaverse shows no signs of ceasing, as evidenced by its ongoing partnership with the popular Ray-Ban sunglasses franchise. Last Thursday, Meta announced a new strategic partnership China’s Tencent to make headsets cheaper and more accessible.
As Controligarchs documents, Meta’s losses are short term while its metaverse determinations are here to stay. More than five hundred major corporations are also helping to build the metaverse. Coca-Cola has released a new “pixel-flavored soda” that was “born in the metaverse.” Another company called Taste the TV has devised a method for users to literally lick their screens to “taste” the metaverse.
Critics believe that Meta’s losses mean that the metaverse is doomed to fail, but not so fast. iPhone’s manufacturer is set to release its own set of augmented reality glasses called Apple Vision Pro and the metaverse has big support from the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The WEF website has thousands of pages about the metaverse and a new initiative titled “Defining and Building the Metaverse.” It runs positive headlines such as “71% of Executives Say the Metaverse Will Be Good for Business. Here’s Why,” “Younger Generations Expect to Spend a Lot More Time in the Metaverse,” and “Who Will Govern the Metaverse.” The WEF has positioned itself as the arbiter of “best practices” for this new digital world.