Mon 18 October 2021:
As part of the social media giant’s push to construct a metaverse, Facebook Inc. announced it will create 10,000 new high-skilled positions in Europe over the next five years, but the UK will be left out.
“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,” Facebook said in a blog post.
“Today, we are announcing a plan to create 10,000 new high skilled jobs within the European Union (EU) over the next five years.”
The European hires will include “highly specialised engineers”, but the company otherwise gave few details of its plans for the new metaverse team.
The Republic of Ireland, which, unlike Northern Ireland, remains a member of the European Union, as well as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the Netherlands, are among the target markets for employment. According to Bloomberg, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the United Kingdom was not listed.
In July, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began aggressively promoting the metaverse as a vision for the future of Facebook and the internet, in which users would not only log on to the company’s platforms, but would also live, work, and play within its digital environment.
Facebook executives said in a blog post that the initiative is a vote of confidence in Europe’s tech sector, and that they want to see the completion of a digital single market and stability on international data flows.
“We look forward to working with governments across the EU to find the right people and the right markets to take this forward, as part of an upcoming recruitment drive across the region,” they said in the statement.
The news comes as Facebook deals with the impact from a damaging scandal, severe service failures, and growing calls for regulation to rein in its vast power.
After former employee Frances Haugen leaked internal studies suggesting Facebook knew its sites could be harmful to young people’s mental health, the company has faced a storm of criticism in the last month.
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