Topic: The Metaverse economics and Meta-laws (Read 320 times)

I know that right now it is difficult to see how the metaverse could be applied and be used to solve some of the issues that we are having but the same could have been said about the Internet and now it is an integral part of ourselves, so I think something similar is going to happen here and soon enough people are going to use the metaverse for all kind of things on our lives that I would not be surprised that in just a decade it is impossible to understand our lives without it.

The metaverse reminds us of the movie called “Ready Player One” where it shows us the glimpse on what our future economy would be, especially when it comes for the government to regulate this industry.

On the other hand, Wion News’ correspondent Palki Sharma mentioned that 2022 is going to be the year of the metaverse, but on her final statement she said that it is an “imprisoned reality”.

Metaverse is still on it’s early stages and we don’t know how it can make an impact to our lives over the next few years or so. It’s just that our world nowadays is evolving and adopting so fast in this new kind of reality.

The problem with this train of thought is that if we let it be regulated after a while when it gets more popular, then we are going to get governments involved. Do we really want that?

I personally do not want something like that. Let it be a chaotic place where private ownership decides what is allowed and what is not allowed. They have the right to just close down ones account if they so wish to, you can't stop them from buying NFT but you can stop them from showing bad stuff, they "show" it themselves on the screen, even if it is the NFT someone owns, it could be censored.

I know many people will say "but muh free speech!!" but you enter a freedom of speech against the government, not against each other. So, if a company wants to censor you, they can, without a problem, because it is their platform and they do not want you to say certain things.

It is still kinda new so yeah there are uncertainties. It is still new, that is why so many big investors are grabbing the opportunity and because they also saw a big potential with it but this did not mean that small players cant join the game but in fact we can also benefit from this once they already build a platform (thanks to the investors money).

When it comes to laws and regulation, I think it the one that can set that is the owner and for the punishment, I think it will be the same as what other projects but for the privacy matters, I think we will have more privacy here because this is metaverse and metaverse is something that deals with decentralization just like cryptos.

While the rush to see who will be the first to release the best platform for this is on, at the same time it will follow what we have seen in the development of many other technologies, when the Internet was on the early stages before search engines existed and web browsers were just being developed it was like the wild west, but eventually the governments and private companies have come to an agreement that benefited them and it allowed them to mine as much data as possible from their users, and I think something similar could happen with the metaverse, with the difference that the invasion to our privacy will be even greater than what we see now.

Indeed it is still in such a young phase and that despite this being the fact, some existing laws can be used.
The only thing that worries me though are the personal interests of the parties that have power in making decisions regarding things about the metaverse. If greed and selfishness reigns over I pity the small plebs like me not being able to maximize on the opportunities that this new thing can offer. Still though, it is indeed better than nothing.

To go to the "verse" of the matter, I think that the metaverse with the adherence of facebook is centralizing in the number of users and that is the innovation of the metaverse, because in its technology it is not that it is a novelty, the truth has not been successful, augmented reality has captivated a niche of followers, even the industry has made (continues) attempts to market itself in an innovative but unsuccessful way.

There is a lot of expectation, but the reality is that the metaverse should have autonomy in its own users, but such a thing is not so in the final decision, so everything is governed by ToS. (imo)

Metaverse policies are still in the shadows of uncertainty. It's kind of like the world the big investors are coming in and we'll still be sticking users by the side. But at first glance, I think the impact will not be too supportive of the economy of the middle to lower class people. A metaverse is just a place of business for big companies to set up 3D online stores and sell some expensive NFT collections. I don't think it will have much of a big impact on our economy, except for investors and companies that will make more money.

Obviously laws regarding something new will always lag behind, but at the same time they will be shown as "similar" to something else to get a judge to decide. So, let's assume that metaverse is similar to games, well then whatever laws were present for games will be same for metaverse until a new law comes out.

Obviously game money that you get, wow gold or something like that, do not worth too much, you need to have a lot to actually mean something, whereas metaverse has real tokens and coins which do worth something serious, so the laws are still lacking for sure. We just need time for laws to get ready and shown and happen in few cases to know where the law stands for these cases.

Regarding the laws or rules in the Metaverse, there are still very few formalizations. We're still in the news that it's unclear where this will move in the future. but what is certain is that Metaverse is the largest platform and also has a high financial nest, so the role of the government will include providing regulations that are later centralized and difficult to secure privacy for each user.

Regarding the control group, they are those who have already invested heavily in the development of the Metaverse. Over time the existence of a certain group always benefits and will control 50% of the finances in the Metaverse. Taxation and regulation must be a point for the government to receive multiple benefits compensation.

Great topic to talk about.

It seems to me that we can only speculate on who or which group of people will be part of the governing body of the metaverse or anything like the sort in the future. And I believe that on the way to making the final decision for the core members of the governing body will be messy because a lot of parties or individuals will aim for this type of power.

Only by the time though that the governing body is decided is when we will he able to have an insight of what type of laws or rules will he present in the metaverse etc.

You can find that here

I was searching online to see if metaverse is a totally new innovation probably from mark zugerberg but no it is not. It is a rebranding that zugerberg himself confirmed from above quote.

There if we have used different technologies to support human life as a result of higher knowledge and capacity as homo sapiens to subdue our environment against other animals then metaverse is just one of the phone calls to voice note and to video calls , desktop to labtops to web to mobile, text message to mmm (multi media message) to videos.  .It is a creation of our world.

And as @ Charles Tim submitted from the question from Op, it is going to be subjected to government regulation just as all the list in technological process and progress in human life above but only bitcoin is free from regulation because it is decentralised and uncontrollable.

Don't doubt, remember Nigerian government effectively banned twitter from operating in the Nigerian space for political reason and have lifted the ban this month also for political reason (election is approaching after all  ).

So as well, metaverse can be delimited.

The Metaverse have series of unanswered questions and this is because it is still a new and young growing aspect of the crypto space and I believe with time all this questions are going to be answered. I think the company should create the rules that guides the metaverse since it is their creation they will know better. But, in terms of privacy it should remains decentralized as possible if not the whole idea will die before it even gets to maturation.

The metaverse, like any other virtual space, is governed by the laws of the country of the participants or wherever the servers are based - depending on what type of criminality is being discussed. Any players within the supposed metaverse (how is the world getting closer to the Matrix every day?) would simply sign up to and be required to follow a terms of service. It doesn't seem to present any sort of legal or economic questions as you suggest. If someone were to hack into the servers, that person would be prosecuted. If someone were to sell drugs via a virtual marketplace, they would be subject to laws in whatever country they are based. We see in certain countries like Russia that internet crimes are rarely prosecuted when the benefit the leadership, so certain things might be ignored and other things might be prosecuted if a Russian person was involved - it really changes country to country on how they can be handled.

I believe it’s the same with “Web3”. What actually is Web3? Another rebranding, by some entities, to run a narrative and for people to ride that bandwagon for the entities to make billions.


I believe incentivization, and reputation scores within the “metaverse” would be one idea to make users behave accordingly.

Well, I think that there can be quite a difference between a "wild-wild-west" style mining/harnessing user data and the later, regulated one. The first comers will have a huge (unfair) advantage in the market (if they don't already have it).
FB is still finding lame excuses for their "wild-wild-west" approach over user data through their entire history, while even now, after quite some regulations, they don't know how (nor want) to get do the things right, hence paying pretty big fines (imho far too small compared to the money they receive from 3rd parties for these "mistakes").

Regular gaming laws would probably be enough. I mean do you end up doing something illegal in world of warcraft? You don't, you can't, you can do fantasy stuff like be an Orc if you want, but you can't just write or say or show anything illegal there.

Is it possible to be a drug dealer and create a world of warcraft account and publicly state that you are selling drugs and their prices and your contact? Of course not, they will catch you and throw you in jail and you can't just say "I was joking, it was a game!!" because they will contact you asking to buy and then catch you that way. All in all I have to say that there is nothing wrong with metalaws, just act as if it is a game and you will be fine.

Why else would corporations be interested in something like the metaverse (which I confess I don't completely understand)?  They sure aren't getting involved for charitable purposes, and while monetary profit is no doubt one of their aims, I think you're absolutely right that they're looking to squeeze as much personal information out of people as possible.

Personal data is almost better than cash to companies like Facebook, since the more they know about you the more efficiently they can target all that bullshit advertisement.

Yeah, I was watching some videos on good ol' YT and I heard that fact mentioned.  As I said above I'm pretty ignorant of what the metaverse is exactly, and I wouldn't have known it didn't come zipping straight out of M. Fuckerberg's brain had I not been made aware of that fact.  Seems sort of like a very hostile takeover of old, publicly-available tech, being rebranded by an evil company for sinister purposes.  Think that's being overwrought?  MZ is worse than every single Google employee put together.

I disagree. The Metaverse has already been proven by Second Life and even Fortnite to be engaging to the point of addiction perhaps. Many people out there would certainly like to have a spare life or avatar or others, so the demand is there. Regarding the technology, it is pretty much there if perhaps not fully developed, but certainly not far from being good. The sales opportunity is inevitable. There is hype, but there is also substance to all this.

Metaverse will not have much of the value because it will be more or less "governed" by that whichever dominant party that will take it over. I see deep inside its just way to inject the power into this system and have their own rules and regulations.

However its worth noting that different projects have started to jump into the metaverse backbone recently. Whether it is MARS4 NFT or whether its Cardano they all are liking it some or another.

Not sure where the developers are taking this thing? Next level or in the black hole?

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Imagine FB having it, User Data on metaverse ---> Ctrl + A = Download. Lolz

Zuckerberg is attempting to do it backdoor. They didn't pass his Libra thing so might as well use my own company to insert it in a different way that the government will have a difficult time tracing it. Whoever team of Meta is behind this surely want to force it to happen and is wise enough to use the crypto trend of NFT and Metaverse. Perhaps the government should track who is that and hire him in their team. 
There will be an ending to the long road of Facebook and its near so they are looking for ways to extend that life using every trend that will happen.
No idea about the laws though but it should be per country or wherever the company base is.

On the overall, I think this is nothing but a sort of a game. This should have been purely made for fun, but things are escalating rather quickly and more seriously with the participation of influential global brands. But still there is probably nothing so serious about this to the point that heavy commitment will be required. Surely, there will be some forms of governance and laws within, but since this does not implicate the real people behind the characters they project in this cyber universe, there is probably not much weight in them. What will probably be implemented are nothing but a sort of a set of terms and conditions which are still to be approved in the outside world.

The cynic in me thinks facebook and the metaverse movement could be social media attempts to recreate crypto platforms like LBRY.

Mark Zuckenberg probably used LBRY and other crypto earning social media platforms at some point and decided he wanted to steal their ideas. Only he had to pretend he wasn't borrowing their concepts, which could be where the VR angle comes in. Plausible deniability. Zuckenberg can fool many into thinking he isn't borrowing LBRY's concepts and platform structure if he incorporates VR into it, due to LBRY lacking VR support.

Mentioning roblox is an interesting example btw. I think their platform does seem like a strange world where copyright laws no longer exist. But in their case, I think a lot of copyrighted content used on their platform is not directly monetized and doesn't receive much in the way of public exposure. And if it does, the earnings and views are practically non-existent which is what allows a blind eye turned to it. If metaverse tried something similar, I doubt they could get away with it.

Regulations would be two tired ofcourse, they would be decided by the company itself and also the government monitoring them. The rebranding would not mean they they have entered a new universe. They are definitely trying to include everything at one place which is definitely something that might work or might not work as well. But people have to make their own decision regarding trusting them or no since privacy is of a great concern here. Plus virtually designed shoes 👟 clothes ?? I don't know where I am with this decision definitely. People are already paying for such things. Using NFT's would be quiet important here. We might see a lot of changes but we can't comprehend how it's going to go.

Before the Metaverse were virtual court proceedings, online meets using apps like zoom. I remembered two or three years ago when a brother of mine had a job interview using zoom app on Android. Metaverse is truly just a rebranding, but people like new experiences.

I may be wrong. According to what I read about Nike, Inc. about Metaverse, the company will have virtually designed shoes that people can wear in the Metaspace, this will create ways for designers and other organizations to making more money. The cyberspace is rebranded but there are some differences.

"Metaverse" is just a rebranding of "cyberspace". There is nothing new about it.

Metaverse is nothing but hype. Basically Facebook the site is not doing great, young people don't want to use it, so Facebook the company decided to rebrand and make a new product to win back the kids. Virtual reality is at very early stages at the moment, we are miles away from what you see in sci-fi movies like the Matrix, and it's not like Facebook is going to make some breakthrough in the next few years. It's not even a fact that Metaverse is going to be popular, there's many examples of game-changing products from big companies that were a complete failure, like Google Glass, which could also be called "Metaverse", by the way.

This is a point that really needs to be considered. Regarding which privacy in the Metaverse will be wide open. While the concept of crypto especially Bitcoin is to maintain identity. In addition to adopting crypto in the metaverse, it also opens opportunities for anyone and anywhere to open up our personal data according to the initial agreement. How this can happen is a mix between decentralization and the concept of government that goes into it to oversee actions that refer to crimes or violations. As the OP said the rules in the Metaverse would indeed be very broad and difficult.

Repeatedly watching the implementation of Metaverse on YouTube and all social media. In my opinion, this is a platform for the government to offer CBDC to companies to convert their earnings on Metaverse. So that those who initially have a private nature will be easily detected without the need to laboriously audit each transaction.

The Metaverse will be centralized, the government will later look into it to regulate it better, Facebook and others that are the central organizations will follow the government. Metaverse is new but the government will look into it as it is looking into crypto to make sure crime will be reduced.

Metaverse can never be private, anyone that wants privacy can not use Metaverse. But are we having privacy in all aspects of our life? I do not think so. We have online malls we cart and order for goods, we have some areas of our life like this that we know we can not have privacy and we do not have any privacy in such areas.

I watched a video on YouTube how Metaverse will look like, there are many areas about Metaverse that privacy is not necessary, like you and your friends meeting in a virtual world to meet, talk and interact. Or like you being in a virtual world but attending a show in real life. All these aspects do not need privacy.

But if dealing with coins and tokens, it requires privacy. But did you know that only bitcoin is the coin that can fully be used for privacy purposes? All other coins are using a kind of wallets and designs that makes privacy impossible. As the world is adopting more altcoins and getting into Metaverse, expect more centralization and privacy deprivation.

My feeling is that this kind of companies are pushing this metaverse idea so hard exactly because it will be a good "platform" for advertising, mining user information, do all "wild west" things for a while until the point it gets regulated. Just at that point the big companies have already filled their pockets and can slowly patch and adapt the system.
And as long as the punishment for misuse is late and only a few percents from the income, it worth it.

The laws and rules just can't keep up. And I think that this is exactly what FB & Co are counting on.

I just dropped an specific topic on the Gambling Discussion board, but I think the issue is far wider. As many of you are aware, Facebook, now rebranded Meta, has effective plans to invest a very significant amount of money on the "Metaverse" to become the leader in this innovative area of human experience and interaction.

Whoever succeeds and becomes the dominant meta-platform (call it Roblox, Meta or however is there) is very likely to use crypto, NFT and some form of governance. My question to the forum is what do members think that will be the regulations inside the Metaverse? Who set the law (government, the company, both, the users,...)? Who and how decides the "punishment" or penalties for missuse? How do they deal with privacy?

The Metaverse seems full of legal, philosophical and economic questions yet to be answered.