The Metaverse will bring a further erosion of privacy
Unlike some of my peers in the technology space, I don’t see the Metaverse as a virtual world in which we work, socialize and shop. Rather, I see it as a point in time, reached in 2020 and into this year because of the global pandemic, when the digital world became as important as the physical world. It’s a shift away from the idea that physical reality is superior and preferred over digital reality.
Work for many has turned into a series of Zoom meetings, people are buying virtual real estate, and children are spending time with their friends in Fortnite and Roblox. Facebook’s rebranding as Meta signals that there’s no going back to the way things were before, as a critical mass of people has realized the benefits of operating within a digital reality.
And with this crashing of realities comes the realization that the shreds of privacy we have enjoyed could soon be transformed into a dystopian nightmare where we can be arbitrarily banned from the virtual environments in which we live, work and play.
Related: The metaverse: Mark Zuckerberg's Brave New World
As digital resources become more and more critical to us, they're being linked together more tightly. Although we haven't hit yet a point where everything is integrated under a single account, we can see where things are headed based on what’s already happened — specifically when it comes to using Facebook and Google accounts as a gateway to many different platforms.
Many of today’s digital privacy worries — such as identity theft, stolen personal information and targeted ads — can be traced to the very breakthrough that made Facebook a success, which was giving people enough incentive to register with their real names. Before Facebook, most people used pseudonyms online
Read more on cointelegraph.com
