Facebook plans on hiring 10,000 people in EU to work on metaverse
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Facebook said that investing in EU offered many advantages, including access to a large consumer market, first-class universities and high-quality talent
Facebook is planning to hire 10,000 people in the European Union in order to develop a metaverse, which is an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice for the new concept.
In a blog post, Facebook said, "The metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social, and economic opportunities. And Europeans will be shaping it right from the start."
This will create new jobs for people over the next five years. This will specifically include "highly specialised engineers".
Facebook said that investing in EU offered many advantages, including access to a large consumer market, first-class universities and high-quality talent.
Facebook claims that the metaverse "won't be built overnight by a single company" and has promised to collaborate.
However, it thinks the true metaverse idea will take another 10 to 15 years.
As per critics, this latest announcement is an attempt to re-establish the company's reputation and divert attention.
This includes revelations made by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen who shared a trove of Facebook documents alleging that the social media giant knew its products were fueling hate and harming children's mental health revealed her identity on Sunday in a televised interview.
Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa, accused the company of choosing "profit over safety."
In an interview with the CBS news show "60 Minutes", she said that Facebook was "substantially worse" than anything she had seen before. "Facebook over and over again has shown it chooses profit over safety. It is subsidising, it is paying for its profits with our safety," Haugen said.
Haugen as an unnamed whistleblower shared documents with US lawmakers and The Wall Street Journal that detailed how Facebook knew its products, including Instagram, were harming young girls, especially around body image.