Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to open up the Horizon Worlds virtual reality metaverse to teens. This desire has generated many detractors. More than 70 advocates, advocacy organizations and security experts, led by Fairplay, the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the Center to Counter Digital Hate (CCDH) by have sent a letter to the CEO asking them to scrap their plans.
The letter, specifically signed by 36 organizations and 37 experts, notes that the company has to assess the potential risks in allowing access to minors in the metaverse, as they will face harassment and privacy violations in their app. virtual reality. Thus, they cite an investigation that the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) carried out last March, which pointed out precisely this fact, that adolescents were exposed to harassment and abuse, as well as racist and homophobic insults, among others.
In the letter they accuse Zuckerberg of targeting minors without taking into account their impact on well-being, in addition to other risks of the vulnerability of their privacy. “Meta is making the same mistake with Horizon Worlds that she made with Facebook and Instagram.
They have prioritized profit over safety in product design,” said one of the signatories, Imran Ahmed, executive director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, referring to the harmful impact of social networks Facebook and Instagram on minors.
“Before Meta considers opening its Horizon Worlds metaverse operation to teens, it must first commit to fully exploring the potential consequences,” Katharina Kopp, deputy director of the Center for Digital Democracy, added in the letter.
Despite the requests, Meta has no intention of abandoning his plans for the metaverse. Of course, according to Bloomberg, Meta spokesman Joe Osborne stressed that they are preparing to adopt measures that protect adolescent users from any violation that is related to the metaverse.
“Before we make Horizon Worlds available to teens, we will have additional protections and tools in place to help provide them with age-appropriate experiences,” he said. “Quest headsets are intended for ages 13+ and we encourage parents and caregivers to use our parental supervision tools, including app access management, to help ensure safe experiences,” she added.
Meta already considered opening Horizon Worlds to teens back in February, after having trouble keeping older users on the platform since 2021. In January, Meta noted that the retention rate was 11%. ; that is, only 1 in 9 users returned to the game. So the goal of this opening of their metaverse to teens is to achieve 20% retention, as they want to reach the monthly user base to 150,000 by the end of 2023.