Facebook is creating 10,000 new jobs in the EU as part of its drive to create a virtual world for its users.
The company has marketed the metaverse as a next large stage of growth for other tech companies and recently announced a $50 m 36 m investment programme to ensure that this meta-world is built responsibly Facebook and other tech firms envision the metaverse as a world where people lead their social and professional lives virtually, via virtual reality headsets like Twitter s Oculus Rift and through virtual reality where a digital layer is placed on top of real life, such as the popular Pok mon Go game. The company envisages an interconnected network of metaverses as users step into a third world created in Facebook s realm seamlessly by Apple or Google, another video game publisher.
In a blog post announcing the hiring drive, Nick Clegg s VP of global affairs at Facebook said that EU will play an important role in shaping the metaverse. Clegg said that developing an inhabitable VR and AR world would require continued investment in talent across the business.
Today, we announced a plan to create 10,000 new high-skilled jobs within the EU over the next five years, says Clegg. This investment is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and potential of European tech talent. Clegg cited Sweden's work on MRNA vaccines and Germany s progress toward becoming a cashless society as examples of the continent's innovativeness. Facebook also invests in tech research in Cork, Ireland, including an artificial intelligence research lab in France and research into virtual reality and augmented reality in Europe.
The statement also stated the status of the EU as an influential regulator of new Internet ventures. This month the EU competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said that the mass outage on Facebook platforms which affected billions of users worldwide showed the dangers of relying on just a few big tech players.
European policymakers are leading the way in helping to embed European values like free expression, privacy, transparency and the rights of individual people into the day-to-day workings of the internet, said Clegg.
Facebook is developing its metaverse strategy against a backdrop of further regulatory and political pressure on both sides of the Atlantic after a series of document leaks by a whistleblower, Frances Haugen. Haugen has accused Facebook of putting astronomical profits before people and has released documents, which formed the basis for a number of revelations in the Wall Street Journal, including an article showing that Facebook was aware its Instagram platform damaged the mental health of some teenage girls. Facebook has described the WSJ revelations about Instagram as a mischaracterization of its research.
Last month the company announced a $50 million investment programme to ensure the metaverse meets regulatory and legal concerns, with the money distributed among organisations and academic institutions such as Seoul National University and Women in Immersive Tech.