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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Hard Numbers: Meta’s mess, Bangladesh’s bailout, Africa’s floods, China’s gender gap
11,000: There’s nothing meta about it: Mark Zuckerberg’s company on Wednesday laid off more than 11,000 employees, totalling 13% of its workforce. The cuts come after a wretched year for Meta, which is struggling with lower digital ad revenue amid a global economic slowdown, while facing fierce competition from other platforms for younger users. Zuck says the company will now focus more narrowly on artificial intelligence, advertising, and his beloved metaverse.
4.5 billion: Bangladesh is the latest country to have secured a provisional bailout – worth a whopping $4.5 billion – from the International Monetary Fund. Already highly indebted before the dual crises of COVID and the war in Ukraine, Bangladesh has seen its foreign reserves completely dry up.
4 million: Farmers across Central and West Africa are reeling after torrential floods decimated their crops. At least 4 million people, mostly small subsistence farmers, say their harvests have been destroyed. This comes as many import-reliant African countries were already facing severe food insecurity due to the war in Ukraine.
33: Under President Xi Jinping’s tenure, female participation in the Chinese workforce has dropped significantly, with the country's place in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report having fallen 33 places since 2012. Cultural norms in China have certainly shifted since Beijing hosted the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, where Hillary Clinton famously proclaimed that “women’s rights are human rights.”
NFTs: Hype, mainstream growth - & implications
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
How wild is the NFT art world? And are there any loopholes behind the trend?
Well, to start with for me, the prices are insanely wild. It looked like a small circle of already wealthy fans are enjoying this new type of speculation. And while I love art, I think there's a world of difference between the Bored Apes and Van Gogh. And I have not quite discovered any appealing cutting-edge creativity in the NFT space. And meanwhile, the loophole are many, there is unauthorized use of images for NFTs, but also risks of money laundering and inflating prices artificially. And the whole hype reminds me a bit of Tulip mania, when in the Netherlands between 1634 and 1637, bulbs were sold for as much as 10 times the annual salary of a skilled artisan.
How will NFTs reshape our ways of living?
Well, since there's so much money exchanging hands, it's understandable that people want in on it. We see social media platforms accommodating NFT sales and their use. For example, Twitter offering the option of an NFT as an avatar, and venture capital investors are jumping on the bandwagon. Nike now looks to offer the sale of virtual shoes in the metaverse, and Bored Ape characters are expected to feature in the Super Bowl halftime show next week. So, it looks like NFTs are going more mainstream, but there's also question of regulation. They are currently not considered as securities in the US and I'm sure that regulators will be catching up to avoid some of the harms from this unregulated market. So ultimately regulation is also going to be very defining in the future of these investments.
Facebook metaverse launch leads other Big Tech firms to focus on AR/VR
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
What is Facebook planning with the metaverse?
Well, my sense is that Facebook mostly prefers a virtual reality over the actual situation the company is in, with overwhelming criticism about the many harms to people it is causing all over the world. The metaverse at launch would be added to a number of services and experiences online in a more virtual and augmented reality setting. Think about what the gaming sector has done, but now, also, other big tech firms are jumping on the bandwagon. The thing to remember is that the user experience would be more immersive.
What have responses been to the metaverse, which Mark Zuckerberg announced?
Well, as one might expect, the responses were mixed. Some compared it to the hyped and eventually failed Second Life experience, but others, like Microsoft, announced their own more soft version with the option to use an avatar to participate in Teams video calls. Now, if you are like me, I have had more than enough of those during the pandemic, but let's see what happens to this gamification of the online experience. Certainly, some investors are sniffing opportunities, so they are probably playing up the potential of virtual and augmented realities. I'm personally most excited about seeing people in real life again, so checking out and going offline.
Migrants walk towards the Bruzgi-Kuznica Bialostocka border crossing in an attempt to cross the Belarusian-Polish border in the Grodno Region, Belarus November 15, 2021.
What We’re Watching: EU vs everyone, Austria vs the unvaccinated, India vs smog, Barbados vs real world
The EU targets "everyone!" The EU on Monday unanimously agreed to impose fresh sanctions on "everyone involved" in bringing migrants to the Belarus-Poland border, where a diplomatic and humanitarian crisis continues as thousands of asylum-seekers shiver in makeshift camps. Brussels says Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has deliberately created this crisis to strike back against existing EU sanctions that were imposed in response to his sham re-election last year and his hijacking of a RyanAir flight this summer. Reports show that Belarus loosened visa restrictions for migrants — largely from Iraq — to serve as a transit point for migrants hoping to cross the EU border to apply for asylum. Details of the new sanctions aren't yet decided, but they are likely to target political officials, travel agencies, and airlines. Lukashenko has vowed to fight back, but he won't cut off the Russian gas flows that traverse his country on the way to Europe — Vladimir Putin quickly slapped down that possibility after Lukashenko raised it over the weekend. The question remains: will EU sanctions change Belarus' behavior?
Austria's lockdown of the unvaccinated. Beginning Monday, unvaccinated Austrians will be required to stay in their homes for all but essential outings or face a fine of 500 euros ($572). The move comes as Austria suffers one of the highest rates of new COVID infections in Europe. The country currently has a vaccination rate of 65 percent, which lags behind most of Western Europe but exceeds levels in Eastern Europe, which is experiencing an even harsher wave of the virus. The Austrian measures will last for 10 days and be enforced by police spot checks. The unvaccinated were already prohibited from entering restaurants, but the government says the additional restrictions are necessary to boost vaccination rates and head off a crunch at ICUs. Critics — including the right-wing Freedom Party — say the policy is discriminatory and violates Austria's constitution.
A different sort of lockdown in India. India's Supreme Court called on Monday for an immediate lockdown of Delhi, the country's capital. But this time, the threat to public health comes not from COVID but from the toxic smog that regularly pollutes the city's air. The Delhi government has pronounced itself "ready to take steps like complete lockdown," while calling on the governments of neighboring regions to do the same. There will be no in-person classes in schools this week, government officials will work from home, and private businesses are urged to do the same. The city's many construction sites will also remain shut down for three days. Delhi suffers from the exhaust produced by millions of vehicles, crop-stubble burning by farmers, coal-fired plants on the outskirts of town, and the open burning of garbage. By some measures, India is home to 13 of the world's 14 most polluted cities, and in 2019 air pollution was blamed for more than a million deaths.
Metaverse diplomacy. What happens if you run into trouble when visiting a foreign country? You call your embassy or consulate, of course. But what if you're in the Metaverse, a catch-all phrase for the virtual and augmented reality world Mark Zuckerberg wants you to spend a lot of time in? Well, you're in luck if you're a citizen of Barbados, the first country to open an actual embassy in this virtual world. The tiny Caribbean island nation plans to build and purchase digital "land," offer e-visas to visit virtual Barbados, and develop virtual transport to move avatars to and fro. What this all means in the real world is unclear, but crypto bros are very excited about it, and we don't want to burst their bubble.
Zuckerberg's metaverse trap
World leaders aren't any better at cooperating in that universe than they are in this one.
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