Concerns At Peak As Meta Abandons Team Responsible For Negative Impacts Of Its Products

Meta has made it very clear on a number of occasions that the firm is keen on putting all of its focus and investments upon the metaverse.

While it’s a platform that’s dedicated to the future, one thing is for sure. The close environment space is not only immersive but one that’s going to impact your mental health greatly. After all, you’ll be donning VR headsets and spending most of your time in that place. Therefore, we’re pretty sure that it would be more damaging if strict control measures for security and health checks were not put into place.

Remember, the regular social media apps aren’t as harmful as the metaverse so we’re pretty sure Meta has this section handled.

But more concerns come today as a recent report by the Wall Street Journal has laid eyes on something rather interesting. We knew about a team that Meta had employed to look after the negative impacts and the downsides of its product. This team was called Responsible Innovation.

And today, we’re getting reports about how the team has been eliminated as a whole by the firm, causing a lot of alarm bells to ring. After all, who will be monitoring the situation now, was a question asked by plenty.

This particular team entailed around 24 different engineers and others that collaborated as one unit to address various concerns about different products and the changes being made on apps like both Facebook and Instagram.

Meta, as it is, has never been too great on that aspect, despite having a team in place to look over this. And now that team is disappearing, we can only wonder what’s next.

The Facebook owner says they’re disbanding the group but it still says they’re going to be committed to carrying out their goals as a whole. They also stated that while the team won’t be functioning as one unit, they’ll still continue similar kinds of work within the firm. But now, it hopes to focus more efforts on teams that are issue specific.

Obviously, we don’t know the nitty-gritty details about what all of this is all about in terms of Meta’s development. But one thing is for sure. The company is making way for the immersive project that it feels is its biggest launch ever. When we’re not quite sure but the Metaverse is going to happen someday, they claim. Hence, they seem to be requiring more guidance now than ever.

Pushing ahead with the VR metaverse project in full swing without considering what impacts that can have on a person’s mental health is surely concerning. And past history proves that Meta has had troubles with this concern.

It never outweighed the impact that the app’s data would have if and when it fell into the wrong types of hands. Therefore, it chose to work with academics to give users an outlook on research through the Cambridge Analytica ordeal.

I never wondered about the downsides of algorithms and how they would have the ability to alter people’s minds or thinking. For instance, can filters affect a person’s self-esteem? What perceptions of the app’s users would alter if and when the wrong metrics had been aligned? Simple like these don’t sound worrisome but they are.

But the company does claim to have learned lessons the hard way. And we do see it try and implement measures to address different types of matters. But whatever the case may be, one thing is for sure, they never anticipated the issues, to begin with.

Mark Zuckerberg is really too optimistic in this manner. Meta’s new motto is more related to bringing people closer together and while it may sound nice to you all, abandoning an entire team called Responsible Innovative has so many concerns arising.

Being focused more on your drive than a person’s safety is definitely worrisome because many could be hurt along the way.

In the Connect Conference that is scheduled to occur next year, more spotlight will be added to the Metaverse and we’re curious to see how much development has been made and what progress related to security was considered if any.


Read next: Facebook’s New Internal Document Says Its Engineers Have ‘Zero Clue’ Where Users’ Data Goes
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