Friday is weekly: a summary of what the team has seen, read, listened to and wants to share with you.

Instagram at the dawn of a major revolution 

The battle has dragged on for years, ten of them if the launch of the hashtag #freethenipple is any guide. You will certainly remember this movement if you pay even the slightest bit of attention to what is going on in the social networks. It represented the pinnacle of a significant mobilisation to protest Meta’s general policy concerning its social networks, Facebook and Instagram. The policy was judged discriminatory against women because it quite simply banned them from posing bare chested, nipples exposed. A ban which was not however applied to men. Go figure….

Whilst until now the movement hasn’t succeeded in getting the American tech giant to back down, at this moment in time the situation is radically changing, following a new controversy. A transgender couple had the photos it had placed on Instagram censored by the algorithm. A decision made on the grounds that the two people in question posed bare chested. After the couple appealed, Meta finally backtracked and the deleted photos were restored.But that is not the end of the story, as this umpteenth problem of this kind spurred the company’s Oversight Board into action, leading it to urge for an amendment to the current regulations, arguing that in its opinion ‘such an approach makes it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people.’ Meta now has sixty days to respond to this injunction. And the chances are high that in the near future chests and nipples will be able to be proudly displayed on Instagram. And no matter the gender of the person they belong to!

Meta offers a new argument to attract people to its Metaverse

To say that the Metaverse project launched by the Meta company has up until now not been a resounding success would be putting it mildly. Launched in 2021, this somewhat megalomaniacal idea aiming to create a virtual world enabling everyone to interact online is quite simply not gaining any traction. The visitor numbers are disastrous, enthusiasm levels are far from being satisfactory, notwithstanding the hype of the advertising campaigns, and the world in itself is, both graphically and in terms of interest, very disappointing. 

The outcome is obviously a stock exchange quotation which has taken a dive, a series of ever larger layoffs within the Meta group and a future which is increasingly taking the form of a big question mark. Yet, for all that, Chris Cox, Meta’s Chief Product Officer, remains very optimistic. The reason being is that our man has, in his opinion, the key which will enable his company to pull itself out of this tricky situation.Have you seen the film Ready Player One? (If not, get a move on and do so). And, by and large, there you have it, the solution. Cox in fact thinks that the current format of Metaverse has not yet entered its final phase. To achieve that it will be necessary to connect the whole of the already existing metaverses so that users will be able to transit from one to the other without hindrance. Similarly, they will be able to keep the items they have won or purchased in all of the different metaverses they visit. Only then will visitors understand the concept’s incredible potential and the Metaverse will become the planetary success its creators were aiming for from the beginning. Well, Cox forgets an important point: it is that at the present moment in time neither the platforms nor even the web in its current form permit such interconnectivity. 

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