Like it or not, the metaverse is coming, with pretty much all major tech companies working on technologies and solutions that would further drag us into their ecosystems.
While there will obviously be some benefits in all this, some challenges will also arise along the way — privacy concerns being one of them.
Tech giants already have a ton of data about everyone one of us and with the introduction of metaverse, they could yet again “up their game” and learn even more information about their customers. For instance, they will be able to track your eye movements and analyze for how long you gaze at certain commercials.
And that, my friend, will be the first thing we’ll explore in this article.
Tracking the user’s eye movements
It is said that the first few seconds are crucial for advertisers as it is during these first few seconds when we (inadvertently?) decide whether to buy something or not (or to look up for additional information).
Now, imagine Facebook and Google — which already have data on billions of users — adding this information to their user profiles. From that point on, we could envision a checkbox in the ad buying service offering advertisers the ability to serve ads only to people who watched similar products for more than 3 seconds. Wouldn’t that be a compelling offering?
On the other hand, privacy advocates (and common sense, we would add) think this is a scary scenario taken straight out of the Minority Report movie — that will allow advertisers to almost “know” that you’re going to buy something even before you actually press/tap the “add to cart” button. Scary indeed.
When Zuckerberg introduced the metaverse, he called it “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” Unfortunately though, that experience will include a ton of super-personalized, privacy-invading ads.
Sure enough, most people won’t mind giving away their privacy for free access to the metaverse, but those not willing to make this exchange will have little to no choice. That, after all, is the current situation with Facebook.
Taking into account biometrically inferred data
Biometrically inferred data (BID) refers to a collection of datasets resulting from information inferred from behavioral, physical, and psychological biometric identification techniques, and other nonverbal communication methods. This is the data the Big Tech hopes to “harvest” with its metaverse offerings, and this data is seldom included in today’s privacy laws. Therefore, experts suggest — and will keep doing so — updating existing legislation(s) to cover new kinds of data and its collection methods.
What makes this even more important is the fact that biometrically inferred data is often intermingled with health data, which is also being collected on a vast scale by the likes of Google and Apple. These two datasets combined could make for better health outcomes, but could also be misused to help advertisers sell their stuff.
In order to protect against the potential misuse of this data, clear and easy to understand user consent will be required across the process.
Final thoughts
We are still a few years away from the rollout of metaverse on a large scale and in the meantime, we could prepare for the onslaught of new technologies and methods that will bring along new opportunities (and new jobs) along with various challenges that include but are definitely not limited to privacy issues.
Privacy advocates — myself included — will always be wary, considering these are the same companies that have been invading our privacy for a few years now. In that sense, I will keep using a VPN and watch out for all the privacy-related news that could at some point have an impact on my (and your) privacy. As soon as something like that pops, I’ll make sure to share that with you. Stay tuned in the meantime.