Hey there. It’s Brady again.
There’s a lot of buzz surrounding the concept of working, playing, interacting, and exploring in metaverses. From major conglomerates to modest studios, there is a rush in China to create these virtual worlds and secure many millions of users who, in theory, may end up paying for the service.
But that rush has been hasty, and things are breaking. Baidu’s Xirang social network metaverse app has severe technical limitations, and ByteDance’s take on the format has yet to take off.
A smaller contender managed to make a splash over the weekend. The app is called Jelly, and it climbed to the top of the charts in app stores over the past week. But some users say their personal information that was provided to Jelly has ended up with spammers, leading to allegations of malpractice.
Plus, the outfits offered as options to clothe avatars in Jelly appear to have been lifted from designs without authorization, so the developers were accused of breaching copyright.
That’s all to say Jelly’s meteoric rise was just the first half of the story. The other half was a cratering, with Jelly being yanked from app stores so that the company behind it could perform “server upgrades.”
This episode is the confluence of many concerns of many internet users in China—who watches those who control their data? And what recourse does someone have if a larger entity knocks off their work?
Jiaxing had the story. You can read her article here.
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