I think the common opinion is that nobody will want or use the metaverse. Getting paid to build something that nobody will use isn't immoral, it's amoral.
Helping an advertiser trick kids into spending their time in a pupil dilation monitor/retinal scanner so that ads can be optimized for impact based on biometric markers isn't amoral, it's immoral.
I know it's an accepted sci-fi trope and people (including advertisers) genuinely believe it's the future, but advertising doesn't work that way.
When you peel back the layers and figure out how this sausage is made, underneath it's just sociology and broad target audiences. (Age, sex, location, social status.)
I mostly agree with your point, but it's a bit more specific than that. I used to work in airfare advertising and we could target ads at people who were interested in certain locations. You searched for flights to Paris and they were $600 and didn't purchase? Well now there's a weekend deal where it's $450 and we'll bid on Instagram ads that target you. You've flown to Europe, Asia and North America? Here's some Latam flight ads. Flew to Chicago over the Christmas holiday? We'll show you some Chicago flight ads next October.
We didn't get access to the actual user lists, but the queries you could build in your ad bids could include these factors. We were also in a special "Ads For Travel" partner program, so we probably had bid options not available to the average FB ads account manager.
Retinal scans do not help; however, 'eye tracking', which is currently available in Quest Pro and should filter down to the consumer tier headset in a year or two, does. When Meta knows what you look at, and for how long, and in which patterns, then advertising will legitimately have some 'next level' shit to work with.
The role of the retinal scans, I expect, has more to do with identifying which human is in the headset. In the metaverse, biometrics of that sort will be like cookies that you can't clear.
People are interested in VR for gaming. Not for the metaverse. Zuck should be building a console or something, not wasting time on something no one wants.
