Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Sep 03, 2025

The Metaverse: Will it be a decentralized haven or a centralized tyranny?

The Metaverse: Will it be a decentralized haven or a centralized tyranny?

Corporate-owned social media giant Facebook is getting ready to track you to the ends of the Metaverse and back — if you let them.

Facebook is looking to seize control of the Metaverse, but a blockchain-based counterattack has already been mounted.

Last week, Facebook rebranded to Meta and announced its plans to kickstart the development of the Metaverse — an entirely new way of interacting and navigating the internet. Now, the Metaverse landscape has a multi-billion dollar corporate behemoth vying for the helm, which has made its future all the more uncertain.

Whether we like it or not, major corporations will likely play a major role in how the Metaverse develops and evolves. But will it be plagued by the same problems faced by today’s social media giants, or will decentralized platforms and services take center stage?


Building a digital walled garden


At last week’s Facebook Connect conference, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to spend $10 billion this year alone on the development of the Metaverse — an ecosystem of interconnected digital experiences, services and platforms that seamlessly blend with the real world.


But as Facebook has shown time and time again — such as when it backpedaled on its pledge to not require a Facebook account to use its Oculus products — it will almost certainly look to enforce strict controls on how the Metaverse is used and accessed. After all, ecosystem lock-ins are a popular, tried-and-tested way to force continued engagement while isolating the competition.

Given that Zuckerberg himself billed the Metaverse as the “next generation of the internet” that will be used by hundreds of millions of users, it seems unlikely that a corporate goliath with shareholders to please won’t do everything in its power behind the scenes to position Meta at the center of the Metaverse.

As a vast, upcoming landscape that will without a doubt introduce new ways to create, socialize and work online, the Metaverse stands to become a ubiquitous medium that most internet-savvy individuals will interact with to some degree.

Likewise, given the recent release of the damning “Facebook Files” by The Wall Street Journal, it has been revealed that the social media platform has been suffering from a whole plethora of issues and operating with some seriously dubious business practices — ranging from a huge lawsuit to lax content moderation to the preferential treatment of certain users. All of which is in stark contrast to Zuckerberg’s supposed egalitarian vision for the Metaverse.

If the Metaverse is made in Facebook’s image, count me out.

These documents also show that Facebook is rapidly losing favor among millennials — the generation most likely to interact with Metaverse technologies.

Meta has already been widely slammed for its plans and was recently labeled a “cancer to democracy” by American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a recent Twitter lashing. This sentiment appears to be the general consensus on Crypto Twitter, which didn’t react favorably to the news.


The game is rigged and it’s not in your favor. Meta wants to own your digital identity, and given its way, it will have access to more of your data than ever before. No, thank you!

The blockchain catapult


Blockchain is widely expected to become one of the key technologies enabling the development of a truly pervasive virtual space that can be navigated just as securely as the Web 2.0 internet.

Thanks to blockchain-powered digital identity solutions that will power truly persistent digital avatars, along with digital assets that provide region-agnostic access to services and products, the Metaverse looks set to inherit the values that the blockchain industry was founded on — namely, permissionless access, censorship resistance, security and decentralization.

Nonetheless, tech incumbents will eventually look to muscle in on the blockchain infrastructure side of things in an attempt to direct the development of the Metaverse and shape it in their own image. After all, given that the Metaverse industry is slated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.1% over the next few years, while the blockchain technology sector is projected to soar by 32.4% until at least 2025, there is a strong financial incentive to establish an early foothold.


Twitter is set to be one of the first to get in on the action with Bluesky, a decentralized social media protocol that will eventually be used to host a variety of social networks — Twitter included. However, given that Twitter too has been subject to more than its fair share of controversies, including dubious account suspensions, high-profile account hijackings, and numerous reports of government censorship, it isn’t so clear-cut as to whether this will support the aforementioned core tenets.

Not to mention the fact that Twitter (and many other social media platforms) are banned in several countries. And as we have seen before with Facebook’s Novi wallet product, corporate crypto projects tend to attract excessive regulatory scrutiny, often severely restricting their scope and eventually resulting in a watered-down product, wherein the balance between profit and progress is often skewed to the former.

A range of crypto-native social media platforms and metaverse projects are currently in development and arguably have a major head-start and technical advantage over corporate-backed offerings in that they can remain truly permissionless and democratic. This includes the likes of Decentraland and Bloktopia — which already provide an early view into what the Metaverse could be through their complex, user-controlled economies, virtual real estate and digital VR-based digital experiences.

 
Other pure-play decentralized social media platforms are also on the horizon, including Bitorbit. Based on Velas (a Solana fork), Bitorbit is designed to tackle the very problems that make corporate-owned social media such a bleak experience for users and creators — using blockchain to restore privacy and help users better monetize their content and transact securely online.


Given its potential to radically change the way we interact with one another and go about our daily lives, the Metaverse is shaping up to be a pivotal technology for all of us.

But with corporate giants set to clash with the motivated and resourceful blockchain community over the development and nature of the Metaverse, it is still unclear whether it will be yet another tool designed to exploit the masses or the promised land we all want.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Germany in Turmoil: Ukrainian Teenage Girl Pushed to Death by Illegal Iraqi Migrant
United Krack down on human rights: Graham Linehan Arrested at Heathrow Over Three X Posts, Hospitalised, Released on Bail with Posting Ban
Asian and Middle Eastern Investors Avoid US Markets
Ray Dalio Warns of US Shift to Autocracy
Eurozone Inflation Rises to 2.1% in August
Russia and China Sign New Gas Pipeline Deal
China's Robotics Industry Fuels Export Surge
Suntory Chairman Resigns After Police Probe
Gold Price Hits New All-Time Record
Von der Leyen's Plane Hit by Suspected Russian GPS Interference in an Incident Believed to Be Caused by Russia or by Pro-Peace or by Anti-Corruption European Activists
UK Fintechs Explore Buying US Banks
Greece Suspends 5% of Schools as Birth Rate Drops
Apollo to Launch $5 Billion Sports Investment Vehicle
Bolsonaro Trial Nears Close Amid US-Brazil Tension
European Banks Push for Lower Cross-Border Barriers
Poland's Offshore Wind Sector Attracts Investors
Nvidia Reveals: Two Mystery Customers Account for About 40% of Revenue
Woody Allen: "I Would Be Happy to Direct Trump Again in a Film"
Pickles are the latest craze among Generation Z in the United States.
Deadline Day Delivers Record £125m Isak Move and Donnarumma to City
Nestlé Removes CEO Laurent Freixe Following Undisclosed Relationship with Subordinate
Giuliani Seriously Injured in Accident – Trump to Award Him the Presidential Medal of Freedom
EU is getting aggressive: Four AfD Candidates Die Unexpectedly Ahead of North Rhine-Westphalia Local Elections
Lula and Putin Hold Strategic BRICS Discussions Ahead of Trump–Putin Summit
WhatsApp is rolling out a feature that looks a lot like Telegram.
Investigations Reveal Rise in ‘Sex-for-Rent’ Listings Across Canada Exploiting Vulnerable Tenants
Chinese and Indian Leaders Pursue Amity Amid Global Shifts
European Union Plans for Ukraine Deployment
ECB Warns Against Inflation Complacency
Concerns Over North Cyprus Casino Development
Shipping Companies Look Beyond Chinese Finance
Rural Exodus Fueling European Wildfires
China Hosts Major Security Meeting
Chinese Police Successfully Recover Family's Savings from Livestream Purchases
Germany Marks a Decade Since Migrant Wave with Divisions, Success Stories, and Political Shifts
Liverpool Defeat Arsenal 1–0 with Szoboszlai Free-Kick to Stay Top of Premier League
Prince Harry and King Charles to Meet in First Reunion After 20 Months
Chinese Stock Market Rally Fueled by Domestic Investors
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
Ukrainian Nationalist Politician Andriy Parubiy Assassinated in Lviv
Corporate America Cuts Middle Management as Bosses Take On Triple the Workload
Parents Sue OpenAI After Teen’s Death, Alleging ChatGPT Encouraged Suicide
Amazon Faces Lawsuit Over 'Buy' Label on Digital Streaming Content
Federal Reserve Independence Questioned Amid Trump’s Push to Reshape Central Bank
British Politics Faces Tumultuous Autumn After Summer of Rebellions and Rising Farage Momentum
US Appeals Court Rules Against Most Trump-Era Tariffs
UK Sought Broad Access to Apple Users’ Data, Court Filing Reveals
UK Bank Shares Dive Over Potential Tax on Sector
Germany’s Auto Industry Sheds 51,500 Jobs in First Half of 2025 Amid Deepening Crisis
Bruce Willis Relocated Due to Advanced Dementia
×