The world’s most significant technology corporations — Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others — are charging headlong into creating the Metaverse. In this virtual reality environment, individuals can have their avatars do anything from playing video games to attending gym classes to participating in meetings. In October, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s creator and CEO stated that he was so confident in the Metaverse that he was willing to invest billions of dollars in it. He also changed the name of his firm to Meta. Even though tech behemoths have placed large bets on the notion, concerns about the Metaverse’s safety have arisen.

Harassment, assaults, bullying, and hate speech are already common in virtual reality games that are part of the Metaverse, according to experts, and there are few procedures in place to report the misconduct readily. According to the organization Center for Countering Digital Hate, a violating incidence happens every seven minutes in one popular virtual reality game, VRChat. Bad behavior in the Metaverse can be even worse than internet harassment and bullying today. This is because virtual reality immerses individuals in an all-encompassing digital environment where undesired digital touches may be made to seem natural, and the sensory experience is enhanced. Toxic conduct in gaming and virtual reality is not a new phenomenon. However, when Meta and other large firms make the Metaverse their future platform, the concerns are likely amplified by the companies’ reach into billions of individuals. The firms are urging consumers to join the Metaverse, with Meta manufacturing the Oculus Quest headgear, slashing costs around the holidays.

After 15 years of riding a mobile computing boom that has transformed the industry’s most prominent companies into trillion-dollar behemoths, the industry’s power brokers believe that controlling the doors into the Metaverse and virtual reality could be the centerpiece of a new business, similar to smartphones and apps or personal computers in the 1990s.

Fifteen years is a long time to wait for a new technological trend to emerge. Many expected ideas would take center stage by now, such as powerful artificial intelligence and quantum computing, taking longer than expected. And while the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies and newer ideas like decentralized computing looks promising, its mass appeal remains unknown.

Sexual Harassment

According to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, Meta has urged its staff to volunteer to test the Metaverse. A stranger recently molested the avatar of one tester of Horizon Worlds, a Meta virtual reality game, according to a company spokesman. The Verge first reported the event, which Meta claims it learned from. Misbehavior in virtual reality is tricky to detect since instances happen in real-time and are rarely documented.

Abuse on the Internet is nothing new. It has been proven to be lethal in its conventional form, with many people committing suicide after being harassed online. It is, however, exacerbated by the Metaverse. The abuse becomes more accurate with VR headsets and, in some instances, full-body garments that may transfer feelings.

This annoyance is especially harmful to women and minors, as it is in everyday life. Several women have come forward to describe the abuse they face on virtual reality platforms, even organizing support groups to assist them in coping.

The Metaverse might have its evil counterpart, similar to how the Internet has the black web. What would that entail? And how will you know what your kids are up to?

How will women’s rapes in the Metaverse be dealt with in court? The trauma would be the same — albeit it might be claimed that all you’d need to do to wake up from the nightmare would be to remove your VR goggles. However, no one should discriminate between virtual and actual rape.

What about metaverse gangs who roam the virtual worlds, abusing and trolling gamers and intimidating them to join their gang or be constantly attacked?

Mental Health Effects

Although technology has many advantages, it also generates addiction and mental health problems. This was recently emphasized in social media papers linked to the discovered social media networks. A Facebook (Meta Platforms) whistleblower working on the Metaverse has warned that it will be addicting. In addition to whistleblower reports and uncovered documents, research has shown that the Internet, particularly video games and social media, can cause or exacerbate mental health issues such as anxiety or depression, attention deficit disorder, eating disorders, and body dysmorphic disorder, and can be highly addictive. There are several causes for this, a few of which are worth analyzing and speculating on the Metaverse.

Every time you progress towards the game’s goal, such as moving on to the next level, dopamine is released. Dopamine is released every time you get a follow, like, remark, or other form of engagement on social media. Dopamine is released during cryptocurrency trading and investing if your investment improves in value or lowers if you are shorting the currency. When speculating about the Metaverse, everything appears to be on the steroids of what we already experience in our digital world. All virtual interactions are projected to be more intense and exciting, with a considerably more realistic feel than what we presently experience on our phones, tablets, and laptops.

In terms of drugs, the Metaverse may be compared to fentanyl in heroin or crack in cocaine, providing a more severe and fast-acting high to the user. Consider the influence on virtual pornography addictions, virtual video game addictions, virtual social media addictions, virtual gambling addictions, and so on.

Effects on kids

According to research, video games may become pathological and damage family life. One in every ten players has a pathological issue. Among these signs are:

• Lying about video game usage to relatives and friends
• Using video games to distract oneself from challenges or negative emotions
• When attempting to stop playing video games, you may become agitated or restless.
• Skipping schoolwork to play video games.
• Doing poorly on a school project or test as a result of spending too much time playing video games

Sleep deprivation, insomnia, circadian rhythm abnormalities, depression, anger, and anxiety have all been linked to gaming.

There is also fear that exposure to excessive violence in video games may desensitize teenagers and young adults to such violence, producing emotional difficulties and perhaps leading to young people performing violent acts.

Digital Privacy

With the arrival of the Metaverse, discussions over data-driven advertising and consumer data protection are already raging. While it is evident that a society based on consumers’ usage of immersive technology would generate new types of personal information, a variety of diverse perspectives and techniques to manage this data are developing.

Just as consumer data has been used to fuel tailored experiences in the digital sphere, so will it be in the Metaverse, where information ranging from a user’s location and demographics to their browsing habits and the traits of their friends may impact how companies try to approach them.

Advertisers and developers may be able to track how people spend their time and attention in the Metaverse, just as they do in real life or digital places.

Although specific versions of the Metaverse currently exist – think Roblox, Discord, Oculus, and Fortnite – the type of Metaverse that Meta envisions is probably definitely a few years away. Nonetheless, Meta maintains it is already considering user data privacy in this future condition.

Some experts agree with Meta’s premise that the Metaverse will provide consumers more control over their information, but only if it is decentralized and not held by a single player.

Some privacy issues include:

• Next-level location tracking ensures transmission and collection of data from the owner’s location back to the tech company. This way, these companies have access to our exact location and the data transmitted.
• Lots of Data to use- Due to the widespread of data available online, it is accessible to tech companies and individuals who are exceptional at hacking.

Fake ID’s/Avatars

Our most valuable asset is our identity in the actual world – it is literally who we are. Similar to how identification and authentication are crucial in today’s physical and digital worlds, the Metaverse will need people to claim an identity and allow companies, organizations, and other virtual residents to validate who they are.

But what lessons might the builders of the Metaverse draw from today’s internet environment when creating their identification and authentication systems, and what specific obstacles will they face? VentureBeat spoke with some of the folks presently debating this very subject.

The Metaverse will provide its own set of issues in terms of identification and authenticity, necessitating the evolution of verification systems.

If a single firm owns both identity and authentication, it indicates that the identity is exclusively available within that company’s ecosystem. As a result, a Steam account owner will only interact with Steam apps, and the same is true for Meta (Facebook) and Oculus.

Identity theft is highly prevalent in today’s physical and digital worlds; passwords may be stolen, passports can be forged, and biometrics compromised. While NFTs are far from perfect, considering that NFT encryption keys may also be compromised, the Metaverse provides prospective answers for solving today’s identity-related security flaws. When a user, for example, wears AR or VR headsets or glasses, they get access to a more excellent range of authentication tools.

Augmented Reality

Many experts believe that, in the end, Zuckerberg’s vision will be achieved only through lightweight eyeglasses that can overlay digital pictures onto what you see in real life — a concept known as “augmented reality.”

Google is one of the companies working on this type of eyewear. Years after unveiling Google Glass — smart eyewear that drew widespread criticism for their quirky aesthetic and cavalier approach to personal privacy — the corporation is working on a new project.

Google bought North, a business that had obtained several patents underpinning a smart-glasses project that started at computer chip giant Intel last year. According to early tests, the glasses could display digital pictures straight into the eyes of anyone who wore them, and although being heavier than regular spectacles, they were relatively comfortable. Google declined to make a statement.

However, the broad appeal of what IT firms describe remains to be seen. Virtual reality that completely covers the eyes is something you will use for specific tasks — and the experience might be unique — but it is not something for the general public.

Intel’s augmented reality effort resulted in creating a prototype, Vaunt, which was tested with users. In a recent interview, the project’s leader, Jerry Bautista, stated that these glasses held enormous promise as a personal technology that individuals desired to use and a new type of computer platform that might generate new sources of money.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are experimenting with comparable technology. Some may see them as a means of selling software and services. Others, according to Bautista, may use them to sell advertisements. However, scientists estimate that mastering this technology would take at least a decade, if not longer. Some augmented reality glasses are as thin and light as regular eyeglasses, but they lack the computer power required to produce the realistic yet discreet pictures necessary for everyday usage.

Many of the world’s most prominent technology corporations are now grappling with the same issues.

When asked whether the dangers of the Metaverse are worse than those of other platforms, experts claim that, while media technologies have made us vulnerable, we still prefer to switch off our phones and enjoy authentic experiences in the real world.

One of their main worries is the potential use of augmented reality’s capabilities to manipulate people’s perceptions of reality, deepen the divisions that currently exist between us, and endow us with a single bubble that isolates us from collective reality.

It took a worldwide pandemic to motivate everyone to put in the effort to learn how to utilize the technology. Still, in the absence of a similar catastrophe, the barriers to accessing the Metaverse in the workplace will be far higher.

Even if these technological challenges are addressed, it is worth debating whether we should construct a digital representation of the universe merely because engineers can. The enormous power of social media companies, as well as the recent fury directed at them, arises from their ability to collect data on us and swiftly determine what content entices us to return.

We’ve all had the bizarre experience of our gadgets attempting to sell us something hours after we’ve told our friends about it, and some of the world’s most excellent technologists have demonstrated that our devices aren’t listening to us.

The fact is that our gadgets have become so adept at modeling and classifying our behaviors, as well as anticipating what we’ll buy next, that they recognize we’re interested in something at the exact moment we can express it.

On the other hand, disconnecting from the Metaverse will be impossible, and reality may evaporate totally since the lines between the real, and the false would be imperceptible. The digital universe may even block reality if people in charge of the platforms wish.

Augmented reality can positively impact the world, converting it into a beautiful place and broadening our understanding of what it is to be human.

However, to protect ourselves from possible hazards, we must continue with caution and deliberation, anticipating challenges that may damage it. Rosenberg warned that it should be uplifting technology.

References:

https://technosports.co.in/2021/12/14/dark-side-of-metaverse-know-why-the/?amp

https://sci.usc.edu/2022/01/17/the-dark-side-of-the-metaverse/

https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/the-dark-side-of-the-metaverse-harassments-assaults-sexism-child-abuse-and-more/

https://marketresearchtelecast.com/the-father-of-augmented-reality-warns-of-the-dark-side-of-the-metaverse-our-environment-will-be-filled-with-non-existent-people/198905/amp/

https://enterlifeonline.medium.com/children-in-the-metaverse-e39ff6e1ce8c

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2022/01/20/the-metaverse-data-privacy-debate-getting-feisty-here-s-what-you-need-know

The Author is Intern at Legal Desire Media & Insights.