Apple iPod creator warns the metaverse will encourage trolls by degrading human connection. According to Tony Fell, removing the ability “to look into the other person’s face” allows room for toxicity to happen. In this thread, our community discusses the metaverse and online trolling.
This Slogging thread by Mónica Freitas, Arthur Tkachenko, Jack Boreham and Sara Pinto occurred in slogging’s official #technology channel, and has been edited for readability.
“Apple’s iPod creator has warned the so-called metaverse risks creating more trolls and damaging human interaction.
The virtual reality-based metaverse removes the ability “to look into the other person’s face,” Tony Fadell said.
“If you put technology between that human connection that’s when the toxicity happens,” he said.”
“Ken Kutaragi, who invented Sony’s PlayStation game console, said: “You would rather be a polished avatar instead of your real self? That’s essentially no different from anonymous message board sites.”
Mr Fadell said: “We had the same problem with text-based commenting and with blogs, we’ve had it with videos now we’re going to have it in metaverse.”
Though this may be a controversial point to metaverse when such a significant number of people are on board, it seems reasonable to ask: what are we going to do about trolls in the metaverse?
As we’re on the topic, this podcast episode offers an inside perspective on online trolling and the individuals who do it. It might give you a different view on the matter:
I’m sure that a lot of ways to prevent trolling. I tend to think of metaverses, not about one huge place for everybody (at least from the beginning).
plus, MMeta started working on VRs for years now, but mass adoption still has not happened, yet. I know maybe 5-8 people from my circle that uses VR headset more than a few hours per month. Limarc Ambalina is one of them 🙂
People love monitors, and displays and buy new TVs more often.
I assuming we can finally put chips into our bodies and use it as login into metaverse, so trolls can be found and banned.
Arthur Tkachenko, interesting but that would raise a whole other discussion. Chip implantation and whether or not people would be okay with that.
Jack Boreham, Sara Pinto, are there any measures you think could be implemented to reduce online trolls? More robust community policies, better education on the subject…?
Sara Pinto, I had never thought of including facial verification but that’s smart. It doesn’t stop trolling but it tracks trolls. I’d also like for platforms to have more clear guidelines on online behaviour and real sanctions for those abusing those guidelines. For instance, TikTok’s guidelines are very strange – they don’t seem to make sense and there is a lot of pick and choose. I wish these were revised.
