In the future, two people could be walking down the same street and seeing different things thanks to the augmented reality glasses they're wearing.
One who is conservative could block out aspects of their past that they have been conditioned to oppose. The other could walk by a gun store and not know it.
Others could have paid for a third-party "app" that lets them instantly know identifying characteristics of people they pass on the street, thanks to the data that Facebook, now Meta, has collected on its users. The word "Republican" hangs over the head of a person who is not a Republican.
The result is that the two people are in different realities within the virtual world, but they are still seeing the same street.
Insider was told that the metaverse could allow advertisers and third parties to give people the personalized worlds they want and make politics even worse.
"We're going to be in our own realities, instead of being in our own information bubbles," said Louis Rosenberg, a 30-year veteran of augmented reality development.
Social media's problems will be amplified in the metaverse.
The images are from the same company.
The grand metaverse concept, thrust into the spotlight recently by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has the potential to transform our lives.
It will make our world feel like Harry Potter.
Social media has already created problems for society and how we agree on what's real and what's not. The risks of the metaverse probably outweigh the good, but it doesn't matter, the internet is inevitable.
Third parties can now use social media to help us navigate our lives, because of the massive knowledge that firms have collected on us. Everyone thinks they are seeing the same thing as everyone else, but they may not be since the same content can be targeted in your echo chamber.
In a virtual world, third parties can dictate what you see in your home, on the street, and at work. It will be harder to identify misinformation and division.
Shawn Frayne, CEO of Looking Glass Factory, told Insider that people should be worried. Think about your entire field of view if you think Facebook is bad for democracy.
In a cautionary piece about Meta's metaverse in The Atlantic last month, designer of one of the first metaverses in the 1990s, Ethan Zuckerman, wrote about how a company that can block only 6 percent of Arabic hate content will deal with dangerous speech.
The advertising world will be changed by the metaverse.
Advertisers could pay for filters that would make their virtual world more realistic. It could be a virtual product placement where you pass a person that's not even real holding a can of a specific brand's soft drink.
It could be a simulation of a human that you think is real, only for them to covertly talk about what an advertiser paid them to try to sell to you, whether it's a bag of potato chips or political messaging.
The metaverse will need to be healthy for people, the same thing that social media needs, according to experts.
Who would be the governing entity in a virtual world? Ahmer Inam is the chief artificial intelligence officer at Pactera EDGE.
