Life, the Metaverse and Everything: An Overview of Privacy, Ethics, and Governance in Metaverse

TL;DR

This paper provides an overview of the key issues related to privacy, ethics, and governance in the development of the metaverse, highlighting current challenges and proposing a modular framework for ethical design.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive analysis of metaverse challenges and introduces a novel modular framework for ethical design to guide future development.

Findings

Identification of key privacy, governance, and ethical challenges

Proposal of a modular framework for ethical metaverse design

Analysis of current trends and future directions

Abstract

The metaverse is expected to be the next major evolution phase of the internet. The metaverse will have an impact on human society, production, and life. In this work, we analyze the current trends and challenges that building such a virtual environment will face. We focus on three major pillars to guide the development of the metaverse: privacy, governance, and ethical design, to guide the development of the metaverse. Finally, we propose a preliminary modular-based framework for an ethical design of the metaverse.