Wagner James Au / New World Notes

The man driving Facebook/Meta's Metaverse development is seriously worried about safety on their now-in-development platform, according to a leaked memo reported by the Financial Times:

Andrew Bosworth, who has been steering a $10 billion-a-year budget to build “the metaverse”, warned that virtual reality can often be a “toxic environment” especially for women and minorities, in an internal memo from March seen by the Financial Times. He added that this would be an “existential threat” to Facebook’s ambitious plans if it turned off “mainstream customers from the medium entirely”. The memo sets out the enormous challenge facing Facebook, which has a history of failing to stop harmful content from reaching its users, as it tries to create an immersive digital realm where people will log on as 3D avatars to socialize, game, shop and work. Bosworth, who will take over as Facebook’s chief technology officer next year, sketched out ways in which the company can try to tackle the issue, but experts warned that monitoring billions of interactions in real time will require significant effort and may not even be possible. Reality Labs, the division headed by Bosworth, currently has no head of safety role.

These are all valid concerns but nothing in the Times report says anything about a core safety vulnerability on virtual platforms:

User identities, and how they're linked to one's real life name and identifying details. But this is the key means by which people — mostly women, but also vulnerable minorities — are targeted for stalking and abuse across platforms. Especially in immersive Metaverse-type spaces, where many mistakenly assume their identity is safe behind their quirky avatar name.

To cite just one example, Linden Lab had to walk back a plan to require real names only in Sansar, its erstwhile Metaverse platform, after strenuous protest from women and members of the LGBT community. Their concerns are quite correct, when it's not uncommon for women to be stalked in real life after their stalker does a reverse image search of their avatar.

But the thing is, Facebook's brand and DNA is utterly linked with real names. It is even stated explicitly in its stock filing with the US government:

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