In an internal memo, Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer at Meta (former Facebook), issued a warning to employees. It can be seen that creating a secure virtual reality experience is still an important part of its business plan, but this vision may not be difficult to implement on a large scale. Obviously, Bosworth also wants the Meta virtual world to have a level of security comparable to Disney's, but the standards for third-party developers are bound to be more relaxed.
Focusing on keeping mainstream VR consumers away from harassment or other harmful behavior may pose an "existential threat" to Meta's future Internet plans. In addition, it is almost impossible to regulate user behavior in any meaningful dimension.
Financial Times reporter Hannah Murphy later posted on Twitter that Bosworth quoted Techdirt founder Mike Masnick as saying that "large-scale content moderation is impossible to do satisfactorily."
In response, Bosworth prefers to have Meta apply stricter versions of existing community rules to mitigate issues that platforms such as Horizon Worlds VR may encounter.
Specifically, Meta needs to weigh the boundaries of "warning" and "enforcement" appropriately. Violators are first given a longer "cooling-off period" and then assessed whether to expel them from the "metaverse" altogether.
Finally, while the full memo has yet to be made public, Bosworth wrote a blog post on Friday titled "Keeping Users Safe in VR and Beyond."
Several of Meta's existing VR management tools are described, including a Horizon system that allows users to block others in the VR world and a Horizon system for extensive monitoring and reporting of bad behavior.
In addition, Meta has committed $50 million to study the realities and moral dilemmas surrounding its "metaverse" program.