Facebook announces 10,000 new positions for “Metaverse” in the EU

Oculus

Facebook has been working on virtual reality for years with its subsidiary Oculus, and it should play a central role in Mark Zuckerberg’s plans in the future.

(Photo: Reuters)

Dusseldorf The social media group Facebook wants to create 10,000 jobs in the European Union within the next five years. The managers Nick Clegg (Vice President for Global Affairs) and Javier Olivan (Vice President for Central Products) announced this in a blog post on Monday morning. The new employees are to work on the development of the next computing platform, which Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg calls “Metaverse”.

The idea is Facebook’s central future project and can be described as an extension of the Internet. At an analyst conference at the end of July, Zuckerberg said the Metaverse was “a virtual environment in which you can be with people in digital spaces”. Metaverse users should, for example, be able to project themselves to other locations in the form of a hologram. One can imagine the metaverse “like an embodied Internet in which one is staying instead of just looking at it,” said Zuckerberg.

In order to bring the metaverse to life, Facebook urgently needs highly specialized engineers, write managers Clegg and Olivan in their announcement. “This investment is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talents.” The number of 10,000 new jobs is also significant for the tech giant: Facebook currently has a total of around 63,400 employees.

The communication does not specify exactly where the new jobs are to be created. The managers only refer to investments that have already been made in this area: The US company has opened its first European AI research laboratory in France, there is an office for virtual and augmented reality in Cork, Ireland, and at the Technical University of Munich (TUM ) fund the company grants.

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However, Facebook’s involvement at TUM is controversial: When the company announced in 2019 that it would be funding the Institute for “Ethics in Artificial Intelligence” over five years with 6.5 million euros, critics voiced concerns about independence.

Facebook wants to cooperate with EU politicians on Metaverse

In the announcement, the Facebook managers also emphasize that Facebook relies on cooperation at Metaverse, both with partner companies and with politicians: “We look forward to working with governments across the EU to find the right people and markets to build up our exciting project, ”write Clegg and Olivan.

Building trust is currently particularly important for the group when it comes to new projects. The announcement comes at a time when Facebook is once again publicly grappling with allegations that it is putting its growth and corporate profits above the safety of its users and society. This debate was triggered by whistleblower Frances Haugen. The computer scientist had worked as a senior product manager at the group from 2018 to 2021 and has now brought explosive information to the public.

More: Planned digital law: EU feels confirmed by Facebook whistleblower

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