Metavers and meta-media

Audio 02:29

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on October 28 that his group was changing its name to “Meta”.

© AFP / CHRIS DELMAS

By: Amaury de Rochegonde Follow

2 min

Facebook promotes the famous metaverse and recognizes that it needs to do more against disinformation.

The opportunity to question the role of the algorithm, the Internet user and the media in the propagation of infox and hate speech.

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This is the story of a giant who announces that he is renaming himself Meta, and that he will invest 100 billion dollars in this parallel universe where his social networks, Facebook and Instagram, will no longer depend exclusively on advertising. .

Apparently, this is good news for the media since we know that Facebook captures most of the advertising videos for its own benefit.

But since we know that the idea of ​​Meta is to be a kind of marketplace within reach of virtual reality glasses, we say to ourselves that very quickly, just as we will have our own meta-physical life, the media will have to invest to be present in this meta-world.

And of course, it will always be Facebook, finally Meta, which will be at the box office to sell the tickets.

Facebook wants to strengthen its fight against disinformation

But Meta, whatever he denies, it is also for Facebook a way of making people forget

. And this especially since another whistleblower confirmed that the platform's management was undermining efforts to fight disinformation or hate content for fear of displeasing Donald Trump. A Donald Trump who will end up being excluded and creating his own social network.

So, obviously, in front of these

which lead American newspapers to wonder if the giant will recover from it, Facebook reacts.

On Tuesday, its vice-president Nick Clegg announced that he had to do more to fight disinformation, especially in poor countries, while 87% of its budget to counter such infox is concentrated in the United States.

The platform also swore that it renounced the facial recognition of a billion Internet users who had activated this feature, to give guarantees on the respect of personal data.

A shared responsibility

Will this be enough? Nothing is less sure. Sciences Po sociologist Dominique Cardon recalls that the algorithm is not solely responsible for disinformation and hate speech. The Internet user who shares, makes known his anger or puts a heart in a hateful clash or an argument involving untruths participates by his commitment to a deleterious climate of information.

And they are not the only ones, the media and the journalists, adds the sociologist, are also responsible when they build their

or their

with what goes back the most on social networks.

It only takes a few influential groups on Twitter or Facebook to hold all viewers hostage with subjects such as the so-called “ 

 ” or the fear of Islam.

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