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Many Americans decry the decline of civility online and platforms typically prohibit profane speech. Tech critics say the emphasis on civility alone is dangerous and that such thinking helps fuel the white supremacist movement, particularly on social media.

Theyre right.

Big Tech errs by treating content moderation as merely about content-matching. Polite speech diverts attention from the substance of what white supremacists say and redirects it to tone. When content moderation is too reliant on detecting profanity, it ignores how hate speech targets people who have been historically discriminated against. Content moderation overlooks the underlying purpose of hate speech to punish, humiliate and control marginalized groups.

Prioritizing civility online has not only allowed civil but hateful speech to thrive and it normalizes white supremacy. Most platforms analyze large bodies of speech with small quantities of hate rather than known samples of extremist speech a technological limitation. But platforms dont recognize that white supremacist speech, even when not directly used to harass, is hate speech a policy problem.

My team at the University of Michigan used machine learning to identify patterns in white supremacist speech that can be used to improve platforms detection and moderation systems. We set out to teach algorithms to distinguish white supremacist speech from general speech on social media.

Our study, published by ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), reveals that white supremacists avoid using profane language to spread hate and weaponize civility against marginalized groups (especially Jews, immigrants and people of color). Automated moderation systems miss most white supremacist speech when they correlate hate with vulgar, toxic language. Instead, we analyzed how extremists differentiate and exclude racial, religious and sexual minorities.

White supremacists, for example, frequently center their whiteness by appending white to many terms (white children, white women, the white race). Keyword searches and automated detection dont surface these linguistic patterns. By analyzing known samples of white supremacist speech specifically, we were able to detect such speech sentiments such as we should protect white children or accusing others, especially Jews, of being anti-white.

Extremists are active on multiple social media platforms and quickly recreate their networks after being caught and banned. White supremacy, sociologist Jessie Daniels says, is algorithmically amplified, sped up and circulated through networks to other White ethnonationalism movements around the world, ignored all the while by a tech industry that doesnt see race in the tools it creates.

Our team developed computational tools to detect white supremacist speech across three platforms from 2016-2020. Despite its outsized harm, hate speech is a small proportion of the vast quantity of speech online. Its difficult for machine learning systems to recognize hate speech based on large language models, systems trained on large samples of general online speech. We turned to a known source of explicit white supremacist speech: the far-right, white nationalist website Stormfront. We collected 275,000 posts from Stormfront and compared them to two other samples: tweets from users in a census of alt-right accounts and typical social media speech from Reddits r/all (a compendium of discussions on Reddit). We trained algorithms to study the sentence structure of posts, identify specific phrases and spot broad, recurring themes and topics.

White supremacists come across surprisingly polite across platforms and contexts. Along with adding white to many words, they often referred to racial or ethnic groups with plural nouns (Blacks, whites, Jews, gays). They also racialized Jews through their speech patterns, framing them as racially inferior and appropriate targets of violence and erasure. Their conversations about race and Jews overlapped, but their conversations about church, religion and Jews did not.

White supremacists talked frequently about white decline, conspiracy theories about Jews and Jewish power and pro-Trump messaging. The specific topics they discussed changed, but these broader grievances did not. Automated detection systems should look for these themes rather than specific terms.

White supremacist speech doesnt always involve explicit attacks against others. On the contrary, white supremacists in our study were just as likely to use distinctive speech to signal their identity to others, to recruit and radicalize and to build in-group solidarity. Marking ones speech as a white supremacist, for example, may be necessary for inclusion into these online spaces and extremist communities.

Platforms claim content moderation at scale is too difficult and expensive, but our team detected white supremacist speech with affordable tools available to most researchersmuch less expensive than those available to platforms. By affordable we mean the laptops and central computing resources provided by our university and open source Python code thats freely available.

Once white supremacists enter online spaces as with offline ones they threaten the safety of already marginalized groups and their ability to participate in public life. Content moderation should focus on proportionality: the impact it has on people already structurally disadvantaged, compounding the harm. Treating all offensive language as equal ignores the inequalities under girding American society.

Ultimately, research shows that social media platforms would do well to focus less on politeness and more on justice and equity. Civility be damned.

Libby Hemphill is an associate professor at the University of Michigans School of Information and the Institute for Social Research.

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Mastodon, an open-source and decentralized Twitter alternative, was trending as users sought out alternative social platforms in the wake of Elon Musk attempting a hostile takeover of Twitter.

Elon Musk, the co-founder of Tesla and Neuralink and founder of SpaceX and Boring Company, initiated a hostile takeover of Twitter on Thursday, April 14th. Twitter rejected and countered the takeover by initiating a so-called poison pill policy that would flood the market with discounted shares and dilute Musks ownership percentage.

Amidst the controversy, Twitter users started looking for alternatives to the platform. It didnt take long until Mastodon was trending on Twitter. Mastodon is an open-source Twitter alternative that is decentralized and can be run and used by anyone. Its somewhat similar to how email works, except instead of using a protocol like IMAP, it uses the open standard protocol ActivityPub.

Unlike Twitter, Mastodon doesnt have any ads, is not centrally controlled, and doesnt track you. It allows users to control every aspect of their online social presence, including running their Mastodon server, using a custom domain, and following people on other Mastodon servers.

Mastodon accounts can also interact with accounts on other social platforms that support ActivityPub. For example, PixelFed, an open-source and decentralized Instagram alternative, uses ActivityPub, allowing Mastodon users to follow and interact with PixelFed accounts. This cross-network social following and engagement capability is called the fediverse.

The fediverse has a long history of stalled and failed projects, but Mastodons use is growing. And its slow success is proving ActivityPubs efficacy as a decentralized social networking protocol of choice. ActivityPub does have challengers, though. Twitter has been working on bluesky, its version of a decentralized protocol. The biggest difference between ActivityPub and bluesky is that bluesky is still vaporware, and theyre attempting to create a version based on Web3 principles.

The easiest way to get started with Mastodon is to create an account at mastodon.social. If you want to run your own Mastodon server as I do at coywolf.social, I recommend using masto.host. Lastly, check out Fediverse Guide to learn how to get the most out of Mastodon.

If you like web technology and marketing news, along with the occasional random stuff, then this is the newsletter for you. No ads. No sponsors. No spam. Only interesting and timely stories. Unsubscribe anytime.

Jon Henshaw

Jon is the founder of Coywolf and the EIC and the primary author reporting for Coywolf News. He is an industry veteran with over 25 years of digital marketing and internet technologies experience. Follow

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This article was originally published on NisonCo and appears here with permission.

In the age of digital marketing, it seemsinfluencers,email marketing,SEO, andsocial mediareign supreme. Are there any classic marketing tactics that have withstood the test of time? The answer is yes there are quite a few old school marketing moves that still pack a punch. Lets look at six tried and true marketing tactics you should still consider using in the modern era.

Networking online or in-person is just as important in the modern-day as it was in the past.Strong networking skills are essential for any marketing professional or business owner. Successful networking generates referrals and leads, encourages steady client retention, and helps to build a positive reputation among peers and patrons, alike.

Attending conferences in your areais a great way for you to meet other people in your industry and build connections with local businesses and clients that are geographically nearby. Attending national networking events or conferences can also help you expand your network across the country and meet prospective clients and professionals that are doing similar work and perhaps can partner with your business or brand to form a mutually beneficial relationship.

No, were not talking about FaceTime with screens. Investing in facetime with your audience or customers is still a necessary part of doing business and can be greatly beneficial to your relationship with clients, collaborators, and partners. You will developstronger circular regional relationshipsby curating interaction opportunities as well, which in turn helps to build more resilient local economies.

When you have face-to-face time with clients or business partners youre able to pick up on things that are often missed in emails or audio calls such as facial expressions, body language, and other social queues that can get left out in written text or audio-only interactions. This can help build trust and deepen relationships which can yield fruitful business opportunities.

People like free stuff. Its as simple as that. This is a marketing tactic that wont be retired any time soon because it has proventime and againto be effective. Freebies and discounts allow your target audience to interact with your brand or business and engage more actively with your services and content or sample your products.

It also offers an excellent opportunity for free advertising. When hosting a contest or free giveaway you can get entrants to repost the contest on their social media accounts, follow your brands account, and tag other people to spread the news extending your reach and engaging your target audience in a fun way. Everyone wins.

The USPS created a guide titledStill Relevant: A Look at How Millennials Respond to Direct Mail (PDF)to help companies understand why millennials respond to mail and how to create an appealing mail piece.

If you think paper mail is dead,then you would be wrong. It turns out everyone reallydoeslove mail. Direct mail is still a great way to reach out with the right purpose in mind, even for younger generations. There are several benefits to using direct mail. Direct mail campaigns give a high return on investment (ROI)even higher than paid ad campaigns.

It is possible to reach your target audience with the right information at the right time. Direct mail campaigns can work solo or in conjunction with a digital marketing campaign such as by integrating online sales or QR codes, and it is very easy to track their progress.

Audio is making a significant comeback, so dont sleep on this medium! Listen to what the founder and CEO of NisonCo Evan Nison had to say aboutthe benefits of radio advertising in Forbes:

The resurgence of radio-based advertising has become increasingly apparent. Podcasts and web-based streaming audio ads can reach national and global platforms. Radio ads can be used to target very specific local regions and varied audience segments.

For those with a brick-and-mortar business location especially, radio advertising is the fun, affordable option of choice for hyperlocalized advertising. For those looking to level up their findability in the technological age, look intooptimizing your local SEO performance.

People are generally more attuned to the tactics used to get them to buy things or engage with a brand. Testimonials provide both credibility and accountability for brands and businesses because customers are naturally more likely to trust feedback from other consumers. Creating space for testimonials and reviews allows for clients to leave positive feedback or bring attention to issues that can then be addressed to help better the brand or business. In addition to these benefits, bringing them into the modern era bydedicating time to respond on social media sites and to poor reviews will aid in your local SEO strategyso your site will rank better on search engine results pages.

It is imperative to examine the past for the lessons it has to offer our present, with the caveat that the world we live in exists today in the here-and-now. Each marketing strategy old and new has strengths and weaknesses when placed in different applications and contexts. If your brand is uncertain what blend of old-school and digital marketing strategies to employ,reach out to our team of PR, SEO, and Content Writing specialists todayto begin crafting a comprehensive plan.

This article was submitted by an external contributor and may not represent the views and opinions of Benzinga.

2022 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Last week OpenAI released DALL-E 2, which produces (or edits) images based on textual prompts; this Twitter thread from @BecomingCritter has a whole host of example output, including Teddy bears working on new AI research on the moon in the 1980s:

A photo of a quaint flower shop storefront with a pastel green and clean white facade and open door and big window:

And, in the most on-the-nose example possible, A human basking in the sun of AGI utopia:

OpenAI has a video describing DALL-E on its website:

While the video does mention a couple of DALL-Es shortcomings, it is quite upbeat about the possibilities; some excerpts:

Dall-E 2 is a new AI system from OpenAI that can take simple text descriptions like A koala dunking a basketball and turn them into photorealistic images that have never existed before. DALL-E 2 can also realistically edit and re-touch photos

DALL-E was created by training a neural network on images and their text descriptions. Through deep learning it not only understands individual objects like koala bears and motorcycles, but learns from relationships between objects, and when you ask DALL-E for an image of a koala bear riding a motorcycle, it knows how to create that or anything else with a relationship to another object or action.

The DALL-E research has three main outcomes: first, it can help people express themselves visually in ways they may not have been able to before. Second, an AI-generated image can tell us a lot about whether the system understands us, or is just repeating what its been taught. Third, DALL-E helps humans understand how AI systems see and understand our world. This is a critical part of developing AI thats useful and safe

Whats exciting about the approach used to train DALL-E is that it can take what it learned from a variety of other labeled images and then apply it to a new image. Given a picture of a monkey, DALL-E can infer what it would look like doing something it has never done before, like paying its taxes while wearing a funny hat. DALL-E is an example of how imaginative humans and clever systems can work together to make new things, amplifying our creative potential.

That last line may raise some eyebrows: at first glance DALL-E looks poised to compete with artists and illustrators; there is another point of view, though, where DALL-E points towards a major missing piece in a metaverse future.

Games have long been on the forefront of technological development, and that is certainly the case in terms of medium. The first computer games were little more than text:

Images followed, usually of the bitmap variety; I remember playing a lot of Where in the world is Carmen San Diego at the library:

Soon games included motion as you navigated a sprite through a 2D world; 3D followed, and most of the last 25 years has been about making 3D games ever more realistic. Nearly all of those games, though, are 3D images on 2D screens; virtual reality offers the illusion of being inside the game itself.

Still, this evolution has had challenges: creating ever more realistic 3D games means creating ever more realistic image textures to decorate all of those polygons; this problem is only magnified in virtual reality. This is one of the reasons even open-world games are ultimately limited in scope, and gameplay is largely deterministic: it is through knowing where you are going, and all of your options to get there, that developers can create all of the assets necessary to deliver an immersive experience.

Thats not to say that games cant have random elements, above and beyond roguelike games that are procedurally generated: the most obvious way to deliver an element of unpredictability is for humans to play each other, albeit in well-defined and controlled environments.

Social networking has undergone a similar medium evolution as games, with a two-decade delay. The earliest forms of social networking on the web were text-based bulletin boards and USENET groups; then came widespread e-mail, AOL chatrooms, and forums. Facebook arrived on the scene in the mid-2000s; one of the things that helped it explode in popularity was the addition of images. Instagram was an image-only social network that soon added video, which is all that TikTok is. And, over the last couple of years in particular, video conferencing through apps like Zoom or Facetime have delivered 3D images on 2D screens.

Still, medium has always mattered less for social networking, just because the social part of it was so inherently interesting. Humans like communicating with other humans, even if that requires dialing up a random BBS to download messages, composing a reply, and dialing back in to send it. Games may be mostly deterministic, but humans are full of surprises.

Moreover, this means that social networking is much cheaper: instead of the platform having to generate all of the content, users generate all of the content themselves. This makes it harder to get a new platform off of the ground, because you need users to attract users, but it also makes said platform far stickier than any game (or, to put it another way, the stickiest games have a network effect of their own).

The first iterations of social networking had no particular algorithmic component other than time: newer posts were at the top (or bottom). That changed with Facebooks introduction of the News Feed in 2006. Now instead of visiting all of your friends pages you could simply browse the feed, which from the very beginning made decisions about what content to include, and in what order.

Over time the News Feed evolved from a relatively straightforward algorithm to one driven by machine learning, with results so inscrutable that it took Facebook six months to fix a recent rankings bug. The impact has been massive: not just Facebook but also Instagram saw huge increases in engagement and increased growth the better their algorithmically-driven feeds became; it was also great for monetization, as the same sort of signals that decided what content you saw also influenced what ads you were presented.

However, the reason why this discussion of algorithmically-driven feeds is in a different section than social networking is because the ultimate example of their power isnt a social network at all: its TikTok. TikTok, of course, is all user-generated content, but the crucial distinction from Facebook is that you arent limited to content from your network: TikTok pulls in the videos it thinks you specifically are most interested in from across its entire network. I explained why this was a blindspot for Facebook in 2020:

What is interesting to point out is why it was inevitable that Facebook missed this: first, Facebook views itself first-and-foremost as a social network, so it is disinclined to see that as a liability. Second, that view was reinforced by the way in which Facebook took on Snapchat. The point of The Audacity of Copying Well is that Facebook leveraged Instagrams social network to halt Snapchats growth, which only reinforced that the network was Facebooks greatest asset, making the TikTok blindspot even larger.

TikTok combines the zero cost nature of user-generated content with a purely algorithmic feed that is divorced from your network; there is a network effect, in that TikTok needs lots of content to choose from, but it doesnt need your specific network.

I get that metaverses were so 2021, but it strikes me that the examples from science fiction, including Snow Crash and Ready Player One, were very game-like in their implementation. Their virtual worlds were created by visionary corporations or, in the case of the latter, a visionary developer who also included a deterministic game for ultimate ownership of the virtual world. Yes, third parties could and did build experiences with strong social components, most famously Da5ids Black Sun club in Snow Crash, but the core mechanic and the core economics were closer to a multi-player game than anything else.

That, though, is exceptionally challenging in the real world: remember, creating games, particularly their art, is expensive, and the expense increases the more immersive the experience is. Social media, on the other hand, is cheap because it uses user-generated content, but that content is generally stuck on more basic mediums text, pictures, and only recently video. Of course that content doesnt necessarily need to be limited to your network an algorithm can deliver anything on the network to any user.

What is fascinating about DALL-E is that it points to a future where these three trends can be combined. DALL-E, at the end of the day, is ultimately a product of human-generated content, just like its GPT-3 cousin. The latter, of course, is about text, while DALL-E is about images. Notice, though, that progression from text to images; it follows that machine learning-generated video is next. This will likely take several years, of course; video is a much more difficult problem, and responsive 3D environments more difficult yet, but this is a path the industry has trod before:

In the very long run this points to a metaverse vision that is much less deterministic than your typical video game, yet much richer than what is generated on social media. Imagine environments that are not drawn by artists but rather created by AI: this not only increases the possibilities, but crucially, decreases the costs.

There is another way to think about DALL-E and GPT and similar machine learning models, and it goes back to my longstanding contention that the Internet is a transformational technology matched only by the printing press. What made the latter revolutionary was that it drastically reduced the marginal cost of consumption; from The Internet and the Third Estate:

Meanwhile, the economics of printing books was fundamentally different from the economics of copying by hand. The latter was purely an operational expense: output was strictly determined by the input of labor. The former, though, was mostly a capital expense: first, to construct the printing press, and second, to set the type for a book. The best way to pay for these significant up-front expenses was to produce as many copies of a particular book that could be sold.

How, then, to maximize the number of copies that could be sold? The answer was to print using the most widely used dialect of a particular language, which in turn incentivized people to adopt that dialect, standardizing languages across Europe. That, by extension, deepened the affinities between city-states with shared languages, particularly over decades as a shared culture developed around books and later newspapers. This consolidation occurred at varying rates England and France several hundred years before Germany and Italy but in nearly every case the First Estate became not the clergy of the Catholic Church but a national monarch, even as the monarch gave up power to a new kind of meritocratic nobility epitomized by Burke.

The Internet has had two effects: the first is to bring the marginal cost of consumption down to zero. Even with the printing press you still needed to print a physical object and distribute it, and that costs money; meanwhile it costs effectively nothing to send this post to anyone in the world who is interested. This has completely upended the publishing industry and destroyed the power of gatekeepers.

The other impact, though, has been on the production side; I wrote about TikTok in Mistakes and Memes:

That phrase, Facebook is compelling for the content it surfaces, regardless of who surfaces it, is oh-so-close to describing TikTok; the error is that the latter is compelling for the content it surfaces, regardless of who creates itTo put it another way, I was too focused on demand the key to Aggregation Theory and didnt think deeply enough about the evolution of supply. User-generated content didnt have to be simply pictures of pets and political rants from people in ones network; it could be the foundation of a new kind of network, where the payoff from Metcalfes Law is not the number of connections available to any one node, but rather the number of inputs into a customized feed.

Machine learning generated content is just the next step beyond TikTok: instead of pulling content from anywhere on the network, GPT and DALL-E and other similar models generate new content from content, at zero marginal cost. This is how the economics of the metaverse will ultimately make sense: virtual worlds needs virtual content created at virtually zero cost, fully customizable to the individual.

Of course there are many other issues raised by DALL-E, many of them philosophical in nature; there has already been a lot of discussion of that over the last week, and there should be a lot more. Still, the economic implications matter as well, and after last weeks announcement the future of the Internet is closer, and weirder, than ever.

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DALL-E, the Metaverse, and Zero Marginal Content - Stratechery by Ben Thompson

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As the metaverse becomes an inevitable part of our future, little is discussed about the ethical implications for marketers entering this new frontier. As we head into 2022, the conversation surrounding this new digital landscape will only accelerate and deepen, with its fair share of cheerleaders and skeptics. On the one hand, I read articles every day from fellow marketing executives salivating at the thought of advertising to people mostly youth in the metaverse. On the other, figures like Elon Musk, Charlamagne tha God and Scott Galloway are doubtful of or outright hostile to the hype behind things like Web3, DeFi, NFTs and, yes, the metaverse.

No matter which side you fall on, I think we can all agree that a serious discussion needs to be had about marketing in the metaverse. What disturbs me is the lack of both prudent, incisive articles about where the humanist line is, and questioning how far we are willing to invade any kind of space. As a digital marketer with decades of experience running an award-winning agency, Ive seen how marketing has been radically transformed by technology for the good and the bad.

Since 2001, Ive built my business on lead intelligence. In that process, Ive used technology that allows me to put tracking code on peoples devices to monitor their engagement levels and literally score them on certain behaviors. When theyre not behaving in a way that benefits my clients, its my job to use persuasive content to push them in a direction that would make them more likely buyers.

So I understand the powerful sword Ive been wielding to sway and shape minds. In the most ideal sense, Ive done it with the aim of getting the right message to the right people at the right time to make educated buying decisions. But as weve seen, the same tools and tactics that can be used for good are the same tools and tactics that have persuaded people to act on and believe in things they previously wouldnt have. If were to gleefully step into a new world like the metaverse and the power is in the wrong hands, an important question must be raised: is this right? Can we go too far? And can the same tools that persuade in a noble way also be used to manipulate both impressionable people and, more critically, the youth?

The answer, simply put, is yes. We are just now coming to grips with the implications of huge social media platforms to steer discourse and impact the next generations mental health. Repeated intrusions into user privacy, rampant misinformation, and pinpoint-accurate political advertising has left regulators wondering about the extent to which, like telecoms, social media may need oversight. For the rest of us the question is: should the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft and other Silicon Valley executives really be our shepherds into this brave new world?

While we linger on that question, lets take it one step further to see why the metaverse may become a part of daily life. Unless youve been living under a rock, youve seen how automation coupled with the Great Resignation and remote work has changed how businesses will use human capital in the future. According to Tristan Harris, director of the Netflix hit The Social Dilemma, its almost inevitable that 30% of Americans could be radically unemployable within the next decade.

Youre starting to see this everywhere you look. Kiosks, self-checkout, and self-ordering on iPads are taking over retail and restaurants. The advent of self-driving cars could leave commercial truckers and Uber drivers without work. AI and robotics have even been rumored to someday replace radiologists and other medical personnel.

Only the most specialized, creative, and innovative jobs will retain some level of human touch and those employees can pivot during this sea change. But a large chunk of blue collar and service-sector professions, which together make up nearly 85% of American jobs, will suffer. As the number of permanently unemployed Americans balloons, there will need to be an ever-widening social safety net, including the once-ridiculed possibility of universal basic income (which Andrew Yang popularized during his 2020 campaign) along with expanded welfare, Medicare and related programs.

So how does this perfect storm of automation, AI and UBI play into the idea of the metaverse? Lets remember where the origin of the term metaverse was coined: a 1992 science fiction novel titled Snow Crash where people were provided a refuge from the dystopian reality that they were living in in the form of digital avatars they could use to explore the online world.

Studies show Americans derive a lot of their meaning or purpose in life from work. The term workism is used to describe the phenomenon among Americans that work is not only a means to an economic end, but is a pillar of identity from which we derive much of our meaning. So how does a world where thats increasingly absent look? And furthermore, where will we look for meaning? The metaverse could be that compelling place when its finally seamless: the moment where you cant tell whats real and whats virtual. An alternate universe indistinguishable from your life.

Augmented reality is a prelude to this as Ill discuss below, and stands in as a kind of boiling frog for our current situation where the failure to act against a problematic situation until its already too late is clear.

When all of this does unfold and tech giants make people painfully addicted to the metaverse, marketers will do what they do best: exploit our data, time, attention and privacy for profit.

You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didnt stop to think if you should. Dr. Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park

So here it is, the critical question about the metaverse that no one is asking: just because we can, should we? On a personal level, I wish that the metaverse wouldnt exist; that the bad far outweighs the good in terms of mental health and the ever-widening divide in human contact. But Im not naive enough to think that its anything but inevitable. Maybe not in its current form, but definitely in the future, the metaverse will be here to stay. What I do know is that whether this thing succeeds or fails will be because of people like me marketers and advertisers yearning for exposure for our clients.

Lets be clear: all social media platforms monetize their users by selling data to advertisers. If the metaverse was just a place where you could go ad-free, it wouldnt be able to sustain itself theres no revenue. Therefore, people like me who are against it belong to a larger group of people who will keep it alive if everyday people make the choice to utilize it. Even if we market for noble purposes, itll just keep the metaverse alive long enough for the bad actors to come in and exploit the system.

Knowing my role in this, I dont think that Im in a position to demand that individuals not use the metaverse. What I am saying, though, is to act with caution. Know that youre way more susceptible than youve ever been. And if youre a marketer, know that the next shift of humanity could be radically changed by this platform if we dont use it responsibly. Googles motto was once Dont be evil. With social media, we all gleefully dove in with no thought of consequences. This is our chance to not let history repeat itself.

Its already too late to reverse the damage on current social media platforms. Lets not make the same mistake twice. The power of history is when people learn from their mistakes, especially as we simply cannot fathom the power of this yet. Combined with AI and machine learning, the metaverse can quickly spiral out of our control by adapting to our next move in a way that is so incredibly scary. The pause between our response and the act is the only thing currently separating us from going down the path of destruction as fast as we can. But the adjustment will eventually be seamless, without a moral code to check or monitor it and ask: is this the right thing?

My hope is that the hardware issue in VR is slowing the pace of this down just enough for us to get our act together. Mass adoption hasnt occurred yet, as evidenced by the sales numbers of the Oculus VR headset in comparison to more traditional, handheld competitors like the Nintendo Switch.

We saw the early failure of 3D TV eyewear for home use and in theatres. It was too cumbersome and made our eyes hurt. Even VR in its current form is uncomfortable and can make some feel sick to their stomach. As long as the hardware is a roadblock toward true mass adoption, things like VR and 3D TV will be fun to dabble in as a novelty and little else.

But while everyone is waiting for a truly immersive and fully-sensory VR experience, I believe that the gateway drug for entering the metaverse will be augmented reality or AR. People will buy into this as theyve done with the wildly-popular Pokmon Go or in recent museum exhibits, and AR will pave the way until VR is seamless. AR breaks the barrier to allow us to live in a hybrid world. Once adoption happens and if the world around us isnt as compelling anymore itll expedite our willingness to go deeper and more virtual. AR feels safer currently because to live in a world that is 90% real and 10% fake is still doable. But as we warned in the boiling frog analogy above, that 10% will take up more and more real estate until the jump to VR or something like Elon Musks Neuralink will be the natural progression. At that time the hardware and experience will be so realistic, itll be indistinguishable from the real world.

Instead of collective power we ended up with mass exploitation Krystal Ball

If this past year has proven anything, theres a hunger for more decentralized, user-driven platforms. If the metaverse can stay decentralized, it could be a true force for good that flips the current social media paradigm of the person as a product for data collection and targeting, instead of putting data solely in the hands of the user to monetize as they wish. If we let big tech be the on-ramp, theyll be the big winners at our expense.

My suggestion is that we take this as seriously as the Manhattan Project. If history is any indicator of how slowly government moves remember how long it took to mandate seatbelts in cars? we dont have the time to spend years trying to discover viability, this will be upon us in 3-5 years. To quote one of the Winklevoss twins in the movie The Social Network about how quickly early Facebook took off: If I was a drug dealer, I couldnt give free drugs to 650 people in one day. The next decades drug, if we choose to take it, is a serious problem for humanity and a serious problem for the ethics of marketing.

The metaverse is here whether we like it or not, but we must use it responsibly. Congress is just now trying to figure out how to regulate social media; they are so woefully behind on this new landscape.

In the absence of regulation, we as marketers are going to have to stand in the gap and say: Knowing that the metaverse will probably be the wild west, its our choice whether we want this new frontier to just repeat history, or to become a brave new future. I hope we choose the latter.

Chris Carr is the President and Founder of Farotech

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The critical question about the metaverse that no one is asking - VentureBeat