i don’t think we have anything to worry about, the metaverse is never going to be the next phase of the web. as someone who was enthusiastic about the whole vr boom at first & jumped to buy a quest, the vision zuck is pushing where everyone just has a quest 2/quest pro & uses it as a general computer or for social gatherings is unrealistic.
vr headsets are uncomfortable as hell to wear for more than a few minutes at a time, doing everything in the ui is clunky because you have to deal with vr virtual mice/keyboards, hand tracking is bad at non-gaming tasks & so are the controllers, the people look low poly, low res & uncanny, the screens cause eyestrain & have weird lines/dots, i could go on & on about the numerous reasons why my quest has been in my closet since last year but you get the point.
imo we’re simply not far enough technologically to create a good metaverse experience. and even if we were, well, most people still aren’t going to want to spend most their time in a headset staring that close at a screen
man, as someone who used to be so into foss/privacy i refused to use anything that i couldn’t compile/host & giving out my gpg key to friends, & someone who used to always make charged, sweeping generalizations like the title of this article, reading this just made me remember why people didn’t like to talk tech with me. i was so focused on always spouting why every app/software/os everyone used was “evil” (with poorly thought out & overcharged arguments, because i was coming from a place of anger & “justice” rather than logic) that i became insufferable to have a conversation with. i’m not gonna knock the author too much because i know it comes from a place of passion & morals, but this person has really fallen into the trap of radical black & white thinking that plagues the field of foss so much.
op, if you are the author of the post (or if the author happens to be reading), my advice to you if you want to reach people better would be to avoid generalizing/judging (& any non-logical statements at all) when advocating for foss/against propietary services. always blame the companies, not the users, because most users are just uninformed. remember that software is not a political or moral issue to most people, it’s just a tool & they don’t research or know anything about it beyond that. all that headline is doing is losing the target audience - no one likes to be told they’re “morally lazy” for simply texting their friends & not knowing about issues in an app. if you are going to post sweeping judgements like this, then at least make sure the article is at least finished before you throw it out there, or else it’s gonna leave a really bad taste in people’s mouth.
on a positive note, the rest of the site is really cool; reminds me of the site i used to have up in high school. i really liked the “places” & “strong women” sections on the abyss page.