Facebook

Meta to fight AI-generated fake news with ‘invisible watermarks’

Meta will make use of a deep-learning model to apply watermarks to images generated with its AI tool, which would be invisible to the human eye.

Social media giant Meta, formerly known as Facebook, will include an invisible watermark in all images it creates using artificial intelligence (AI) as it steps up measures to prevent misuse of the technology.

In a Dec. 6 report detailing updates for Meta AI — Meta’s virtual assistant — the company revealed it will soon add invisible watermarking to all AI-generated images created with the “imagine with Meta AI experience.” Like numerous other AI chatbots, Meta AI generates images and content based on user prompts. However, Meta aims to prevent bad actors from viewing the service as another tool for duping the public.

Like numerous other AI image generators, Meta AI generates images and content based on user prompts. The latest watermark feature would make it more difficult for a creator to remove the watermark.

Bitcoin underperforms stocks, gold for the first time since 2018

Bitcoin’s yearly losses are similar to high-profile stocks like Tesla and Meta, with BTC investors down 70% in 2022.

Gold and stocks have underperformed in 2022, but the year has been difficult for Bitcoin (BTC) investors, in particular.

Worst year for Bitcoin since 2018

Bitcoin’s price looks prepared to close 2022 down nearly 70% — its worst year since the crypto crash of 2018.

*Bitcoin monthly returns. Source: Coinglass*

BTC’s depressive performance can be explained by factors such as the United States Federal Reserve hiking interest rates to curb rising inflationary pressures followed by the collapse of many crypto firms, including Terraform Labs, Celsius Network, Three Arrows Capital, FTX and others.

Some companies had exposure to defunct businesses, typically by holding their native tokens. For instance, Galaxy Digital, a crypto-focused investment firm founded by Mike Novogratz, confirmed a $555 million loss in August due to holding Terra’s native asset, LUNA, which has crashed 99.99% year-to-date (YTD).

*Click “Collect” below the illustration at the top of the page or follow this link.*

Meta, Tesla stocks mirror Bitcoin in 2022

The above catalysts have prompted Bitcoin to drop 65% year-to-date.

*BTC/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

Meanwhile, the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 has plunged nearly 20% YTD to 3,813 points as of Dec. 28. That puts the index on its biggest calendar-year drop since the 2008 economic crisis. The bloodbath has proven to be worse for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, down 35% YTD.

High-profile losers include Amazon, which has crashed approximately 50% YTD, as well as Tesla and Meta, whose stocks have dropped nearly 72.75% and 65%, respectively. As it looks, tech stocks and Bitcoin have suffered similar losses in 2022.

*BTC/USD vs. IXIC, TSLA, META YTD price performance. Source: TradingView*

Just as with Bitcoin, the Fed’s rate hikes remain the most-critical factor behind the U.S. stock market’s underperformance. But whether a tighter monetary policy would cause an economic recession in 2023 remains to be seen.

This uncertainty has driven capital toward the U.S. dollar for safety, with the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), a barometer to gauge the greenback’s health versus top foreign currencies, rising nearly 8.5% YTD.

*DXY daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

Gold not such a “safe haven”

Spot gold is up 0.14% YTD to nearly $1,800 an ounce, which makes it a better performer than Bitcoin and the U.S. stock market.

*XAU/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

Nevertheless, the year has seen gold deviating from its “safe haven” characteristics in the face of a stronger dollar and rising U.S. bond yields.

For instance, the precious metal is down 22% from its 2022 peak of $2,070, though some losses have been pared as the dollar’s uptrend lost momentum in the second half of 2022.

Bitcoin still winning since March 2020

Bitcoin had gained 1,650% after bottoming out in March 2020 below $4,000, boosted by the Fed’s quantitative easing policy. Even as of Dec. 28, investors who purchased Bitcoin in March 2020 are sitting on 332% profits.

*BTC/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

In comparison, U.S. stock market and gold‘s pandemic era-rally was small.

For instance, the Nasdaq Composite index grew up to 143% after bottoming out at 6,631 points in March 2020. So, investors who may have gained exposure in the Nasdaq stocks during the easing era are sitting atop a maximum of 56% paper profits as of Dec. 28.

*IXIC weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

It‘s the same for gold, which rose a mere 43% during the pandemic era and is now up 26.50% when measured from its March 2020 bottom of around $1,450.

*XAU/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

A Supreme Court case could kill Facebook and other socials — allowing blockchain to replace them

If the Supreme Court decides to strike down Section 230, it’s going to become considerably more difficult for centralized social media companies to operate.

The internet — arguably the greatest invention in human history — has gone awry. We can all feel it. It is harder than ever to tell if we are engaging with friends or foes (or bots), we know we are being constantly surveilled in the name of better ad conversion, and we live in constant fear of clicking something and being defrauded.

The failures of the internet largely stem from the inability of large tech monopolies — particularly Google and Facebook — to verify and protect our identities. Why don’t they?

The answer is that they have no incentive to do so. In fact, the status quo suits them, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1996.

But things may be about to change. This term, the Supreme Court will hear Gonzalez v. Google, a case that has the potential to reshape or even eliminate Section 230. It is hard to envision a scenario where it wouldn’t kill the social media platforms we use today. That would present a golden opportunity for blockchain technology to replace them.

How did we get here?

A key facilitator of the internet’s early development, Section 230 states that web platforms are not legally liable for content posted by their users. As a result, social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are free to publish (and profit from) anything their users post.

The plaintiff in the case now before the court believes internet platforms bear responsibility for the death of his daughter, who was killed by Islamic State-affiliated attackers in a Paris restaurant in 2015. He believes algorithms developed by YouTube and its parent company Google “recommended ISIS videos to users,” thereby driving the terrorist organization’s recruitment and ultimately facilitating the Paris attack.

Section 230 gives YouTube a lot of cover. If defamatory, or in the above case, violent content is posted by a user, the platform can serve that content to many consumers before any action is taken. In the process of determining if the content violates the law or the platform’s terms, a lot of damage can be done. But Section 230 shields the platform.

Imagine a YouTube after Section 230 is struck down. Does it have to put the 500 hours of content that are uploaded every minute into a review queue before any other human is allowed to watch it? That wouldn’t scale and would remove a lot of the attractive immediacy of the content on the site. Or would they just let the content get published as it is now but assume legal liability for every copyright infringement, incitement to violence or defamatory word uttered in one of its billions of videos?

Once you pull the Section 230 thread, platforms like YouTube start to unravel quickly.

Global implications for the future of social media

The case is focused on a U.S. law, but the issues it raises are global. Other countries are also grappling with how best to regulate internet platforms, particularly social media. France recently ordered manufacturers to install easily accessible parental controls in all computers and devices and outlawed the collection of minors’ data for commercial purposes. In the United Kingdom, Instagram’s algorithm was officially found to be a contributor to the suicide of a teenage girl.

Then there are the world’s authoritarian regimes, whose governments are intensifying censorship and manipulation efforts by leveraging armies of trolls and bots to sow disinformation and mistrust. The lack of any workable form of ID verification for the vast majority of social media accounts makes this situation not just possible but inevitable.

And the beneficiaries of an economy without Section 230 may not be whom you’d expect. Many more individuals will bring suits against the major tech platforms. In a world where social media could be held legally liable for content posted on their platforms, armies of editors and content moderators would need to be assembled to review every image or word posted on their sites. Considering the volume of content that has been posted on social media in recent decades, the task seems almost impossible and would likely be a win for traditional media organizations.

Looking out a little further, Section 230’s demise would completely upend the business models that have driven the growth of social media. Platforms would suddenly be liable for an almost limitless supply of user-made content while ever-stronger privacy laws squeeze their ability to collect massive amounts of user data. It will require a total re-engineering of the social media concept.

Many misunderstand platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They think the software they use to log in to those platforms, post content, and see content from their network is the product. It is not. The moderation is the product. And if the Supreme Court overturns Section 230, that completely changes the products we think of as social media.

This is a tremendous opportunity.

In 1996, the internet consisted of a relatively small number of static websites and message boards. It was impossible to predict that its growth would one day cause people to question the very concepts of freedom and safety.

People have fundamental rights in their digital activities just as much as in their physical ones — including privacy. At the same time, the common good demands some mechanism to sort facts from misinformation, and honest people from scammers, in the public sphere. Today’s internet meets neither of these needs.

Some argue, either openly or implicitly, that a saner and healthier digital future requires hard tradeoffs between privacy and security. But if we’re ambitious and intentional in our efforts, we can achieve both.

Blockchains make it possible to protect and prove our identities simultaneously. Zero-knowledge technology means we can verify information — age, for instance, or professional qualification—without revealing any corollary data. Soulbound Tokens (SBTs), Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and some forms of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) will soon enable a person to port a single, cryptographically provable identity across any digital platform, current or future.

This is good for us all, whether in our work, personal, or family lives. Schools and social media will be safer places, adult content can be reliably age-restricted, and deliberate misinformation will be easier to trace.

The end of Section 230 would be an earthquake. But if we adopt a constructive approach, it can also be a golden chance to improve the internet we know and love. With our identities established and cryptographically proven on-chain, we can better prove who we are, where we stand, and whom we can trust.

Nick Dazé is the co-founder and CEO of Heirloom, a company dedicated to providing no-code tools that help brands create safe environments for their customers online through blockchain technology. Dazé also co-founded PocketList and was an early team member at Faraday Future ($FFIE), Fullscreen (acquired by AT&T) and Bit Kitchen (acquired by Medium).

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

The metaverse is happening without Meta’s permission

Despite Facebook’s new name, focus and billions in investment, the metaverse will emerge drastically different from its vision.

In changing the name of its parent company to Meta, Facebook put a stake in the ground: It would be the symbol of the evolution of the internet, the metaverse. Whether we liked it or not.

According to Meta, the metaverse is “a set of digital spaces to socialize, learn, play and more.” Its first true attempt came in the form of Horizon Worlds, a virtual reality universe so lifeless and devoid of content that it has people asking if the metaverse is a step forward or backward.

Thankfully, it won’t matter.

The metaverse, a term from long before Facebook existed, is happening. Its potential and draw are found in existing places — games like Fortnite, platforms like Roblox and online hubs like Discord. There will be no launch of the metaverse, no switch that turns it on. You’ve been experiencing parts of it whether you’ve realized it or not. More and more of your real-world identity has blended into your digital one. IRL to URL, and back again.

The metaverse isn’t what you’ve read

Pointedly, the metaverse isn’t what Meta says it is.

“A set of digital spaces to socialize, learn, play and more” accurately describes current apps and games, but this simplified definition has made the term “metaverse” synonymous with stilted software like Horizon Worlds, a painfully unimaginative 3D world with early 2000s-era graphics and plenty of space for ads.

Empty 3D world with large digital billboards with ads on them, digital art, Y2K aesthetic. Source: DALL-E

For those not deep into the weeds of writer Matthew Ball’s precise definition, the metaverse can be thought of as a change in how we view and experience our digital lives — not a 3D world, but a shift into a more immersive, simultaneous, representative relationship between our physical and digital selves. The metaverse causes the line between the real and digital to blur, an evolution of the change triggered by the mobile internet.

So naturally, the metaverse won’t flourish because of Meta’s isolated, soulless dystopia. Nor will it do so in Decentraland’s attempt at creating a digital world, which fails to draw more attention than a mildly popular indie game after two years and billions of dollars in funding.

It’s no surprise: Horizon Worlds and Decentraland are competing with digital escapes that are exponentially more fun — games, movies and social networks.

And even more directly, they’re competing with the real world. If you’re telling people they’re going to work and play in the metaverse, it better offer something magical beyond their normal lives. Right now, the meatspace still wins. It’s not even close.

The metaverse needs magic

That magical feeling has always been present in games. Visiting your feline neighbor in Animal Crossing is infinitely more compelling than seeing your legless coworker at a conference table in Horizon Worlds. Making immersive experiences compelling requires that magic, and it’s hard to create a company culture that can build fun, perhaps impossible when your revenue is from driving more clicks — or whatever call to action exists in 3D.

3D platforms like Roblox and VRChat have instead built a path for creators to bring their own magic, albeit a narrow one. Spending time on VRChat vs. Horizon Worlds showcases the difference between a user-generated world and a corporate one. The former is human and surprising, while the latter is depressing and expected.

But creators must be motivated to create in a specific medium — and given the tools to do so. The old path to motivating creators with sponsorship is toxic and dying. Creative people don’t want to restrict their visions for corporate profits or limit their options by platform restrictions.

Fortunately, there is another way.

The metaverse needs ownership

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have largely been viewed as giving power back to the consumer, acting as a way for real ownership to be held by the collector, not the platform. And that’s all true.

But ownership has a different effect on creators: It motivates them. Rather than creating content for other platforms or ads for brands, their work is instantly and indefinitely monetizable. And in the rare but best-case scenarios, it’s handled in a truly decentralized way away from deception.

Decentralization and ownership provide that critical motivating factor for creators — the people who should be defining what the metaverse looks like. Tokenization sets creators free from the serfdom of today’s rent-seeking social networks (think of Instagram or Snapchat), allowing them to create and sell their work without needing to be sponsored by a brand to feed themselves. Protocols built for decentralization will be where creators naturally gravitate, creating avant-garde spaces and defining what creativity in the metaverse means. Gentrification can come later.

Instead of giving power and freedom to creators, Meta is structured to think of ad revenue and brand partners first, a strategy that is actively hostile to creators and users at large.

A direct relationship between creators and their communities (an increasingly fuzzy distinction) creates a new trust, and the foundation for that relationship is what will usher in an awe-inspiring metaverse. The “gray space” where creators and communities meet — an idea embraced by David Bowie — drives an entirely different dynamic and experience than one where the core relationship of a platform is built on the relationship between the platform owner and its advertisers.

A futuristic green city being painted by a brush held by an artist, digital art. Source: DALL-E

The metaverse needs context

Truthfully, creating that magic in the metaverse is challenging, even with digital ownership and the right motivation. Even the best 3D worlds and digital meeting places fail to connect meaningfully back to our real lives. NFTs have yet to impact the physical world beyond their financial impact. We haven’t brought URL back to IRL.

But the signs are there.

Mixed reality games like Pokémon Go, which bring iconic digital characters into augmented reality, show a centralized approach to an immersive digital world built on the physical one. Tying our inherent connection to our digital collectibles, like Psyduck, back into our real lives is where the metaverse can reach new relevance.

Alone, the context-driven version of the metaverse is at risk of centralization and attention-economy economics, too — and must be paired with decentralization and a creator ethos. Empowering creators to define reality itself will bring about a future that enhances our lives instead of taking away from them.

The metaverse is happening

The metaverse is happening, and it won’t look like Meta’s version.

The metaverse is not a specific technology but an era where we have a changed perception of technology’s role in our lives. One where digital realities represent a larger piece of our shared reality and where purely using technology is replaced by creating, owning and experiencing it. The more tactile and connected to us that those digital realities become, the more real the metaverse is.

Protocols, not platforms. Creators, not brands. Context, not isolation. Principles and people will define this next evolution of the internet, and Meta is not the arbiter of either.

Alex Herrity is co-founder of Anima, a protocol for ownable, dynamic augmented reality. Prior to Anima, he built products and games used by billions of people with companies like Epic Games, HBO and his former startup Ultravisual, which was acquired by Flipboard.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Meta fined €265M for allowing scrapers to steal Facebook’s centralized user data

Blockchain and Web3 companies are attempting to prevent leaks like these in the future by creating alternative login processes and distributing necessary data collection in a highly decentralized way.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced on Nov. 28 that it has fined Facebook developer Meta €265m for breach of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Specifically, the commission stated that it had fined Meta for failing to design Facebook in such a way that it would protect users from data breaches.

The announcement followed a more than year-long investigation that began in April, 2021. The breach itself occurred even earlier, in late 2019.

Data Protection Commission announces decision in Facebook “Data Scraping” Inquiry: https://t.co/xW9nVqiJ2Y pic.twitter.com/6iDYnyVk5R

— Data Protection Commission Ireland (@DPCIreland) November 28, 2022

The data breach was first discovered when a Tech Crunch report revealed that hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers were listed in a publicly-accessible database online. Although the database was later taken down by the web-host, its existence revealed that Facebook’s data had been breached.

In April, 2021, the DPC began investigating the breach. At the time, Meta posted a statement about the breach called “The Facts on News Reports About Facebook Data.” Meta claimed that an attacker had used its contact importer tool to spam the server with phone numbers to see which ones had Facebook accounts associated with them.

Each time the attacker got a response, they were able to gain the personal details of the user and match these details up with the users’ phone number. As a result, users’ personal data had been leaked to malicious actors.

In the statement, Meta claimed that it had patched this contact importer vulnerability once the breach was discovered and that the tool was now safe.

According to the new DPC statement, it found “infringement of Articles 25(1) and 25(2) GDPR” due to this incident and “has imposed administrative fines totalling €265 million.”

The use of personal data in social media apps has become controversial in recent years as data breaches have become commonplace.

Several blockchain companies have attempted to solve the problem by creating blockchain social media apps that do not require users to give out their email addresses or phone numbers. For example, both Bitclout and Blockster are social media apps that allow users to sign in with just an Ethereum wallet.

Ethereum Developers have also offered a proposal, called “EIP-4361,” to standardize the wallet login process across all apps. Supporters believe this could eliminate the need to ask users for sensitive personal information in social media apps, which could help to prevent breaches like this in the future.

Meta fined 265M euros for allowing scrapers to steal Facebook’s centralized user data

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced on Nov. 28 that it has fined Facebook developer Meta 265 million euros ($274.8 million) for a breach of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Specifically, the commission stated that it had fined Meta for failing to design Facebook in such a way that it would protect users from data breaches.

The announcement followed a more than year-long investigation that began in April 2021. The breach itself occurred even earlier, in late 2019.

Data Protection Commission announces decision in Facebook “Data Scraping” Inquiry: https://t.co/xW9nVqiJ2Y pic.twitter.com/6iDYnyVk5R

— Data Protection Commission Ireland (@DPCIreland) November 28, 2022

The data breach was first discovered when a Tech Crunch report revealed that hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers were listed in a publicly-accessible database online. Although the database was later taken down by the web host, its existence revealed that Facebook’s data had been breached.

In April 2021, the DPC began investigating the breach. At the time, Meta posted a statement about the breach called “The Facts on News Reports About Facebook Data.” Meta claimed that an attacker had used its contact importer tool to spam the server with phone numbers to see which ones had Facebook accounts associated with them.

In the statement, Meta claimed that it had patched this contact importer vulnerability once the breach was discovered and that the tool was now safe.

According to the new DPC statement, it found “infringement of Articles 25(1) and 25(2) GDPR” due to this incident and “has imposed administrative fines totalling €265 million.”

The use of personal data in social media apps has become controversial in recent years as data breaches have become commonplace.

Ethereum Developers have also offered a proposal called EIP-4361 to standardize the wallet login process across all apps. Supporters believe this could eliminate the need to ask users for sensitive personal information in social media apps, which could help to prevent breaches like this in the future.

Bitcoin options data shows sub-$17K BTC price gives bears a $200M payday on Friday

BTC bears are set to profit from this week’s $710 million options expiry, which could be used to add further sell pressure to Bitcoin price.

Bitcoin (BTC) crashed below $16,000 on Nov. 9, driving the price to its lowest level in two years. The two-day correction totaled a 27% downtrend and wiped out $352 million worth of leverage long (buy) futures contracts.

To date, Bitcoin price is down 65% for 2022, but it’s essential to compare its price action against the world’s biggest tech companies. For instance, Meta Platforms (META) is down 70% year-to-date, and Snap Inc. (SNAP) has dropped 80%. Furthermore, Cloudflare (NET) lost 71% in 2022, followed by Roblox Corporation (RBLX), down 70%.

Inflationary pressure and fear of a global recession have driven investors away from riskier assets. This protective movement has caused the U.S. Treasuries’ five-year yield to reach 4.33% earlier in November, its highest level in 15 years. Investors demand a higher premium to hold government debt, signaling a lack of confidence in the Federal Reserve’s ability to curb inflation.

Contagion risks from FTX and Alameda Research’s insolvency are the most pressing issues. The trading group managed multiple cryptocurrency project funds and was the second-largest trading exchange for Bitcoin derivatives.

Bulls were overly optimistic and will suffer the consequences

The open interest for the Nov. 11 options expiry is $710 million, but the actual figure will be lower since bulls were ill-prepared for prices below $19,000. These traders were overconfident after Bitcoin sustained above $20,000 for almost two weeks.

*Bitcoin options aggregate open interest for Nov. 11. Source: CoinGlass*

The 0.83 call-to-put ratio reflects the imbalance between the $320 million call (buy) open interest and the $390 million put (sell) options. Currently, Bitcoin stands near $17,500, meaning most bullish bets will likely become worthless.

If Bitcoin’s price remains below $18,000 at 8:00 am UTC on Nov. 11, only $45 million worth of these call (buy) options will be available. This difference happens because the right to buy Bitcoin at $18,000 or $19,000 is useless if BTC trades below that level on expiry.

Bears aim for sub-$17k to secure a $200 million profit

Below are the three most likely scenarios based on the current price action. The number of options contracts available on Nov. 11 for call (bull) and put (bear) instruments varies, depending on the expiry price. The imbalance favoring each side constitutes the theoretical profit:

Between $16,000 and $18,000: 1,300 calls vs. 12,900 puts. Bears dominate, profiting $200 million.
Between $18,000 and $19,000: 2,500 calls vs. 10,200 puts. The net result favors the put (bear) instruments by $140 million.
Between $19,000 and $20,000: 3,600 calls vs. 5,900 puts. The net result favors the put (bear) instruments by $40 million.

This crude estimate considers the call options used in bullish bets and the put options exclusively in neutral-to-bearish trades. Even so, this oversimplification disregards more complex investment strategies.

For example, a trader could have sold a call option, effectively gaining negative exposure to Bitcoin above a specific price but, unfortunately, there’s no easy way to estimate this effect.

Bulls probably have less margin to support the price

Bitcoin bulls need to push the price above $19,000 on Nov. 11 to avoid a potential $140 million loss. On the other hand, the bears’ best-case scenario requires a slight push below $17,000 to maximize their gains.

Bitcoin bulls just had $352 million leverage long positions liquidated in two days, so they might have less margin required to support the price. In other words, bears have a head start to pin BTC below $17,000 ahead of the weekly options expiry.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Meta joins big tech layoffs, lets go of 11,000 employees

The Facebook parent company announced it will let go of approx. 13% of its current workforce in the first mass layoff in the company’s history.

The Facebook parent company Meta announced that about 13% of its current workforce has been cut in the first mass layoff in the company’s history.

In a letter to his employees, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the layoffs and also reiterated that the hiring freeze, which began earlier this year, will be extended into the first fiscal quarter of next year.

According to the statement published through Meta’s newsroom, the layoffs terminated 11,000 jobs. The initial rumors of layoffs emerged over the weekend on Nov. 6 via Wall Street Journal report from inside sources.

Zuckerberg says he takes full responsibility for the layoffs, which were caused by soaring costs and a recent collapse of its share price:

“I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

The CEO also said his over-investment in certain areas, along with “the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss,” led to lower-than-expected revenue.

This news comes after startling reports released by Meta on Oct. 26, which revealed billions in losses in its metaverse development branch. Reality Labs, the metaverse R&D department, posted a $3.67 billion loss for Q3.

During the same quarter, the business only made a revenue of $285 million, which is its lowest on record within the given timeframe. The news startled company shareholders and raised concerns over Meta’s metaverse prospects.

Meta is not the only big-tech company going through mass layoffs.

After Elon Musk acquired Twitter for over $44 billion, the social media company underwent a series of layoffs itself. Allegedly the layoffs began on Nov. 4, with speculations that Musk will lay off nearly 50% of the company’s 7,500-person workforce.

As a response, employees launched a class-action lawsuit against Musk, which says he ignored a law that restricts mass layoffs from big companies without at least 60 days of prior warning.

WhatsApp crash: Are decentralized blockchain messengers a real alternative?

Centralized communication apps share one crucial feature: They crash often. Cointelegraph investigates to see if decentralization can offer a solution.

Since the introduction of ICQ — the progenitor of online chat applications — the expectation from instant messaging (IM) services has never changed. Users simply want them to work, which apparently turned into a tall order, given the frequent downtimes most popular chat apps experience nowadays.

Launched the same year as Bitcoin (BTC), WhatsApp is one of the most widely used chat apps on the planet. Owned by Meta (the stable of which also boasts Instagram and Facebook), WhatsApp stands as the epitome of centralized services. That’s why when the service goes down, it has a much broader impact than just leaving over two billion monthly users scratching their heads and complaining on Twitter.

WhatsApp embodies the qualities of a centralized mindset perfectly: It has mainstream reach, an industry giant backs it and despite nearly one-third of the planet using it, people have absolutely no say over the final product.

Why do centralized chat apps go down?

When a product is controlled and managed by a central entity, it tends to follow certain processes during its lifecycle. Someone has to shoulder full responsibility for the various aspects of the centralized product.

The massive scale of the product turns even tiny updates into a chaos of human errors, database issues and not having enough time to test the version before pushing out the update to meet stakeholder expectations. Coupled with the numerous cyber attacks on the infrastructure itself, the more the service is centralized and managed by a single entity, the more the “usual suspects of failure” fill the room.

Can decentralized services fix downtimes?

Communication-focused decentralized apps (DApps), on the other hand, provide anti-fragile systems, co-founder and CEO of Web3 service provider Heirloom Nick Dazè told Cointelegraph. He said that decentralized messengers get stronger with every user onboarded because they essentially function as “nodes” that keep the system functioning properly.

“The key difference is that there is not one single point of failure,” Dazè stated, likening it to a balloon that is compressed on one part, which becomes geometrically smaller while still containing the air from the compressed section: “All of the air still exists. It is just pushed to a different section of the balloon.”

Recent: The state of crypto in Southern Europe: Malta leads the way

Of course, decentralized apps come with their own set of challenges, and one of them is scaling. DApps can’t compete with centralized services without being able to take on a billion-level user base, but Dazè believes DApps can overcome scaling issues by answering two questions: “Where does all of this data ‘live?’” and “How do we reduce network spam?”

Addressing the first issue, Dazè sees public key-based addressing as a decent solution, “As it serves as a limiting function on the amount of data necessary to handle.” Regarding the second issue, Dazè said that disincentives for spam must be created, accompanied by Captcha servers.

Redundancy is the name of the game

Cointelegraph also reached out to Chris McCabe, the co-founder of the Oxen Project — known for its decentralized IM app Session. When asked how decentralized IM apps handle crashes and downtimes, McCabe pointed to redundancy:

“Decentralized networks have a lot of redundancy built in. If one server goes down, another one is there to take its place.”

He said the Oxen Service Node Network, a set of incentivized nodes serving as the infrastructure of Oxen and its offerings, has over 1,600 nodes operated by hundreds of people worldwide.

“It would take a catastrophic event to take the network down,” McCabe claimed, adding that the network is equipped to continue as usual despite experiencing major events from time to time.

“In the past, we saw one-fifth of nodes go offline suddenly, but Session continued sending messages as normal. The network self-heals, and it hasn’t had a total freeze of communication as we have seen with centralized networks.”

Session can currently handle about five million users — a tiny portion of WhatsApp’s user base. However, McCabe said the team will continue to release updates for a more extensive decentralized storage network and higher network bandwidth.

The Oxen co-founder admitted that whether a decentralized network could handle the traffic that WhatsApp or Messenger face daily has yet to be proven. However, he is hopeful that Session could be the first app to test that theory.

“Session is gaining popularity not only because it hasn’t gone down,” he summarized, adding, “But also because people are sick and tired of having their data systematically collected, analyzed and weaponized against them.”

Unmanipulated, unreadable and untraceable

The decentralized ecosystem offers a wide range of projects and apps with different priorities. One such is TransferChain, a peer-to-peer messaging app that focuses on privacy. Tuna Özen, the co-founder of TransferChain, told Cointelegraph that while the scalability aspect in decentralization is a gray area, being scalable or non-scalable is the result of design decisions.

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“The main misconception that drives products to be non-scalable is assuming that any blockchain design can meet all needs,” Özen said. He suggested that multiple variables including block volume, block generation rate, consensus, selection algorithm, token integration, network cost and benefit structure and network participation structure should be taken into account:

“Just as it is reasonable to expect a track-proven race car built purely for speed to deliver the same performance in off-road conditions, it is just as reasonable to expect a blockchain approach that is not specifically designed for products and services to be scalable.”

Tuna Özen and his team describe TransferChain as a cloud platform powered by a decentralized decision-making mechanism on a distributed ledger. The app differs from its centralized counterparts with where and how the communication data is saved as well as the transparent storage of the process — which is unmanipulated, unreadable and untraceable according to Özen.

Although decentralized services offer more resilient infrastructures, they still have a long way to go to catch up with their centralized counterparts in terms of user base and mainstream adoption. Another thing to remember is that as DApps get more popular, they will probably need to face more regulatory scrutiny and governments worldwide would definitely have trouble with this new form of communication — given they only recently started to get a grasp of the new form of money.

Facebook became Meta one year ago: Here’s what it’s achieved

The company changed its name on Oct. 28, 2021, reflecting growing ambitions to transcend beyond social media and into Web3 and the metaverse.

It’s been just over a year since social media giant Facebook rebranded as Meta at the Facebook Connect conference on Oct. 28, 2021.

The name change reflected the company’s growing ambitions to transcend past social media and into the world of Web3, crypto, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and the metaverse — virtual worlds where consumers are likely to spend more of their time for both work and play.

The company has been busy.

In December 2021, Meta debuted its Horizon Worlds virtual reality social networking project, while it also opened up advertising for more crypto ads on Facebook.

In April 2022, reports emerged that the company has been considering a digital currency designed for use in the Metaverse internally, dubbed as Zuck Bucks, though no further updates on the project have been seen since.

In May, the company filed five trademark applications for a payments processing platform with support for cryptocurrencies and digital assets called Meta Pay.

In September 2022, the company announced that 2.9 billion users would have the ability to post the digital collectibles and NFTs they own across Facebook and Instagram across 100 countries by linking their wallets.

Meanwhile, on Oct. 11, Meta announced a partnership with tech giant Microsoft to bring a range of Microsoft Office 365 products into Meta’s virtual reality (VR) platform to try and coax other companies to work in virtual environments.

However, the year has not come without its challenges, particularly when it comes to the company’s metaverse ambitions.

Last week, Altimeter Capital’s CEO and founder called Meta’s $10 billion to $15 billion a year investment into the metaverse as “super-sized and terrifying.”

Meta’s Q3 report appeared to only solidify these concerns, with the stock price falling 23.6% following its release, while Meta’s virtual reality research and development arm Reality Labs posted an accumulated loss of $9.44 billion so far this year.

Many may also remember Meta’s Eiffel Tower fiasco when an image of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s avatar standing in front of a virtual Eiffel Tower was mocked over lackluster visuals.

*Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse avatar, which became an internet meme*

Meanwhile, an Oct. 15 report from The Wall Street Journal suggested that the company has slashed its monthly active user goal for Horizon Worlds by more than half, suggesting the company’s flagship Metaverse was “falling short.”

This backlash was touched on by Zuckerberg during the Q3 earnings call on Oct. 26, noting that “we’re iterating out in the open” and that the social metaverse platform was still an “early version.”

“It’s a kind of a live early product platform, and that’s evolving quickly, but obviously has a long way to go before it’s going to be what we aspire for it to be,” said the CEO.

Nevertheless, the technology giant is continuing to push forward with its foray into Web3 and other projects, including artificial intelligence, with Zuckerberg noting on the call that “we’re on the right track with these investments” and the company “should keep investing heavily in these areas.”

The company recently unveiled its latest virtual reality headset, the Meta Quest Pro during an Oct. 11 virtual event, along with the partnership with Microsoft and a new computer platform from Reality Labs.

“Work in the metaverse is a big theme for Quest Pro. There are 200 million people who get new PCs every year, mostly for work.”

“Our goal for the Quest Pro line over the next several years is to enable more and more of these people to get their work done in virtual and mixed reality, eventually even better than they could on PCs,” said Zuckerberg.

“Between the AI discovery engine, our ads and business messaging platforms, and our future vision for the metaverse, those are three of the areas that we’re very focused on,” he added.