We can expect the companies in the Metaverse to simply collect various information for the purpose of individual identification, tracking and advertisement via multiple channels like microphones, wearable devices, respiratory and heart monitors, and user interactions to the extent that we have never ever seen before.
This could even lead to a world of no privacy.
Apart from this having some of the major concerns for the way private data will going to be used and collected, there is also a concern over how the metaverse could help to provide with an escape from reality. As per the report, “the potential to alter our sense of reality, distorting how we interpret our direct daily experiences.”
In other words, they can even strategically place you in various context and offer you content that only help selected people can see to bend your reality, form your amplify and opinions divisions between people.
Leaving the Metaverse will not be as easy as removing Augmented Reality Glasses because we are already too much dependent on technology. As per Elon Musk, we are already cyborgs and leaving the metaverse would even help to shut down some of the essential aspects of our lives like our work or how we used to socialize.
Privacy in the Metaverse needs to be carefully considered and protected both by the users and organizations that should start implementing privacy by the design when developing technology that we are dependent on.
As per the market size statistics, metaverse will be a fertile ground for big latest technology firms to gain more power and exploit their market advantages and mechanisms such as Artificial Intelligence in ways that look likely to further erode the autonomy and privacy of their end-users.
Change the way you think about your privacy.
When they engaged in a simple communication about privacy just a couple of years ago, the most common reply to why people are not more active when it comes to their privacy was that they have nothing to hide.
And that might be so correct. Most people probably have nothing to hide, but the issue is, the world might change. Moreover, it is already changing.
The criticism of our freedoms due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the beginning of the subtle yet inevitable move to the Metaverses are perfect testaments to this change.
The primary presumption that we are going to have nothing to hide should be abandoned and replaced with we have something to protect, and Metaverses could be the first battlefield that will test how willing we are to fight to our privacy.
