Facebook announces the creation of 10,000 dedicated jobs in Europe

Dancing in a nightclub with people thousands of miles away, working as a croupier for a virtual casino… You could imagine yourself in a dystopian science fiction film, but this is the world that Mark Zuckerberg wants to build. The metaverse, understand by that “meta-universe”, the digital backbone of the physical world, is only in its infancy and many of its uses remain to be invented.

But the boss of Facebook wants to develop it at all costs, and will invest in it. The Californian giant has announced that it wants to hire 10,000 people in the European Union within five years to develop this “metaverse”. “This investment is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talent,” Briton Nick Clegg and Spaniard Javier Olivan, two of the group’s top executives, said in a blog post. .

No details were given on the countries where these jobs will be located, nor the type of jobs concerned, even if the press release mentions “highly specialized engineers”. Facebook is not the only one to bet on this virtual world, presented as an extension of the Internet. Epic Games, the group behind the Fortnite video game and which raised a billion dollars this year, must devote part of the sum to the “metaverse”.

More human interactions, less physical constraints

“No company will own or operate the metaverse,” explain Facebook decision-makers. “Like the Internet, its main feature will be its openness and interoperability. To bring it to life, collaboration and cooperation will be necessary between companies, developers, creators and policy makers, ”they say.

If Mark Zuckerberg believes in “an economic wave that could create opportunities for people around the world”, he does not forget one of the essential aspects of the “metaverse”: the human being. Through virtual reality and augmented reality, he hopes to multiply human interactions, freeing them from physical constraints, creating “a great new experience”.

The card of virtue

“The essential quality of the metaverse will be presence – the feeling of really being there with people,” he explains. We need at least that, while Facebook has been the subject of strong criticism in the United States since the revelations of Frances Haugen. Accused of ignoring the negative social impacts of its activities, especially among adolescents who develop addiction and a bad image of themselves, Facebook must restore its image.

This is perhaps an explanation for the choice of Europe for the development of the “metaverse”. “European decision-makers are leading the way in helping to integrate European values ​​such as freedom of expression, privacy, transparency and the rights of individuals into the daily functioning of the internet”, underline Nick Clegg and Javier Olivan. One way for Facebook to play the virtue card on a project that will obviously bring back a lot of money.

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