Microsoft President Warns Technology To Compromise With Government Regulations, Here's Why!

Microsoft Corp president, Brad Smith, in an interview with a television station. (photo: doc. twitter)

JAKARTA - The technology sector needs to compromise with regulators and take government and public concerns seriously, said Microsoft president, Brad Smith, in an interview on Wednesday, November 3.

"Technology has to lean on...with real real ideas...even make concessions, so we can all compromise and build a common platform that protects people better than...the internet as a whole is recently past, ' Smith told Reuters.

On the sidelines of the Lisbon Web Summit, Smith said he doesn't believe the tech industry has shifted to trying to solve this problem as much as it might need to, in the next decade.

Tech companies must do more than lip-service to regulations while defying any government action, Smith warned.

"The government (will) see through that, and that's not going to bode well for the sector... We kind of need to be real," Smith said.

Smith made no mention of Apple's recent campaign against provisions of the EU Digital Markets Act that would have required the iPhone maker to let customers install software from outside its App Store, a practice known as sideloading.

After rebranding Facebook as Meta last week and the day after Microsoft touted the metaverse-related project in a blog post, Smith created the "hype" around the metaverse, a concept that overlays the digital and physical worlds.

"We all talk about the metaverse as if we were entering a new dimension. It's not like dying and going to heaven. We're all going to live in the real world with people," said Smith.

Facebook, used by nearly 3 billion people, changed its name to Meta amid strong criticism of its business practice of focusing on building a "metaverse," a shared virtual environment at stake in the world of mobile internet.

"I think (the metaverse) is going to be huge... and quite important," said Smith. "We have to make sure that it protects privacy, digital security, and protects against disinformation, manipulation. We have a lot to clean up."

Reflecting on the explosion of interest in technology visions that has existed for years, Smith notes that it's important not to let "hype" cloud long-term tech trends.

While early adopters of the cyberspace known as the metaverse have denounced Facebook's rebranding as an attempt to leverage a concept not created to fend off criticism, Smith said Big Tech actors such as Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple will likely develop their own versions of the metaverse.