Professor Reid, of Hope's Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering, is calling for an urgent dialogue to start about how to safeguard users in a metaverse -- before it becomes reality over the next 5 or 10 years.
The metaverse is in fact expected to exacerbate the issues around security, privacy, and safety brought about by the Internet.
Updating laws so they are applicable to a digital environment will be a critical component of the governance of the metaverse. Keep reading to know how the metaverse can be dangerous and what issues we need to address before is too late.
There is a growing number of reports about disturbing and forced experiences in the Metaverse, raising questions over the security capabilities of such platforms, and leading to calls from industry analysts to step up security efforts to ensure that digital services sectors avoid damaging failures in the content industries that plague the social media industry. What is raising more concerns is a prediction that the problems with data privacy and security on metaverses will get worse as more and more people adopt such platforms.
But also the user's behavior will need to be regulated. Metaverse creators will need to develop a ruleset, which would enable moderators and AI-based tools to assess users' behaviors within the virtual space, allowing them to operate within that virtual space accordingly.
The metaverse creators will also need to implement mechanisms to keep users from spending extended periods of time in the virtual space.
In the case of companies that implement policies requiring daily metaverse employment, this may prove to be harmful to people already addicted to the virtual aspects of the online world. As buzz about the metaverse grows, many are raising concerns over potential risks in an environment in which boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds continue to blur.
What increases such concerns are factors like the sheer scale of the personal data that could be mined, involvement from a variety of different developers on such platforms, the disassociation of metaverse platforms from national authorities, and the unknown scope and potential of an expanded world of reality.
This seems to be confirmed by experts in this field, who warn us about information bubbles and a reality blockade that could be created both by AR and the metaverse. In addition, extended reality hardware, which is relied upon by many of the platforms on the metaverse, would introduce new vulnerabilities for business networks, as well as ways for hackers to take advantage of data.
Over the next decade, we will witness the formation of the One Metaverse, in which corporations and individuals can participate, experiment, build, contribute, and engage.
This will enable us to go anywhere in the world, meet interesting people, and expand our perspectives in a lot of ways. Then again, the metaverse could well turn out to be the final nail in the coffin known as a civilized society, where billions are strapped to something completely decoupled from the real world.
Add in that mix extreme data capture by AR and VR headsets -- with data to collect, abuse, and monetize potentially 100x greater than it is today -- and we are quickly living in a dystopian future, in which our data defines our freedom, for better and worse, if we are not able to build an open metaverse. The challenges within a metaverse will be many, including:
Some experts believe that the Metaverse is going to transform our lives in much the same way that the Internet did. There is concern about the massive amounts of data the metaverse can gather, and who controls it.
The metaverse might seem game-like because of the use of avatars, but as vulnerable populations start engaging with these platforms, they are likely to encounter an amplified version of the security issues that have already been evident online. Problems affecting traditional social media, such as the proliferation of fake news and the popularity of conspiracy theories, could appear on the metaverse, too. Already now we are seeing dangerous mistreatment against women emerging as an issue.
lastly, but not less important, the metaverse could widen the digital divide, since its platforms require access to and usage of multiple technologies, like virtual reality headsets and even special bodywear that contains haptic technology, posing an obstacle to entry for anyone who does not have the means to pay for that tech.
