Love it or hate it, social media isn’t going anywhere. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make some significant and useful changes to it. Things online and all over the world, from a technological standpoint, are rapidly evolving and influencing the way we think as people, and not always for the best. In fact, what if things evolve so much that, by the time we’ve damaged ourselves as a species, it’s too late? We need to be careful about how we approach it, as well as our relationship with it. 

In this episode of Building a Better World, Hrish is joined by Ayman Hariri, the Co-Founder and CEO of VERO, a social media platform for creators which is ad-free and focuses on building a community, allowing its users to share music, videos, and photos. He is the son of the late Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister, and he also invests in startups through New York-based firm Red Sea Ventures!

Building a Social Network to Enhance the Real World - Ayman believes that, were it not for social media, we would be way, way behind where we are today. However, the only problem with it is that it’s so diluted by ads now. With VERO, Ayman wants to build a social media that can impact and connect people across the world, enhancing the ‘real life social media’.

If You Give Everyone a Stage… - It’s commonplace for a lot of people to behave in different ways on social media than they do in real life, but why is that? Well, Ayman sums it up rather eloquently: “If you give everyone a stage, then everyone is going to perform.” That personality shift we tend to see can be a direct result from the influx of advertisements we’re forced to watch everyday, slowly programming our minds and influencing us. That’s why Ayman wants to create something that allows people to be who they are without any manipulation.

Are We Growing Too Fast? - Ayman says that we, as a society, will eventually reject whatever is a threat to our evolution and survival. Things are already moving so quickly that we’re having trouble catching up, and even though we will reject the bad things, it’s going to take us a while. There are most likely a lot of things - technologically speaking - that are already stunting our growth as a species, but we simply cannot comprehend any of it yet.

The Evolution of Technology - When it comes to technology, it should always be quality over quantity. Ayman brings up a very good point, saying that even in TV, the focus went from churning serialized shows, to churning out reality shows, until finally, studios decided quality over quantity was the way to go. It should be exactly the same with technology; by constantly coming up with new stuff, we run the risk of implosion.

The Building a Better World podcast is hosted by Hrish Lotlikar. In each episode, Hrish interviews people who are involved or interested in the Metaverse, VR, and Web3, and are actively using technologies to improve people’s real-world lives in a practical way.