Building Metaverse Responsibly: Findings from Interviews with Experts

TL;DR

This paper explores privacy challenges in the metaverse through interviews with experts, providing empirical insights and practical guidance for privacy-preserving development and policy-making.

Contribution

It offers new empirical findings on privacy considerations in metaverse development from expert perspectives, extending information systems privacy research.

Findings

Highlights the importance of privacy by design in metaverse platforms

Identifies key privacy challenges faced by developers and designers

Provides practical recommendations for policymakers and developers

Abstract

The metaverse promises unprecedented immersive digital experiences but also raises critical privacy concerns as vast amounts of personal and behavioral data are collected. As immersive technologies blur the boundaries between physical and virtual realms, established privacy standards are being challenged. However, little is known about how the experts of these technologies such as requirement analysts, designers, developers, and architects perceive and address privacy issues in the creation of metaverse platforms. This research aims to fill that gap by investigating privacy considerations in metaverse development from the experts perspective. We conducted in depth, semi structured interviews with metaverse platform and application experts to explore their views on privacy challenges and practices. The findings offer new empirical insights by extending information systems privacy research into the metaverse context, highlighting the interplay between technological design, user behavior, and regulatory structures. Practically, this work provides guidance for developers, and policymakers on implementing privacy by design principles, educating and empowering users, and proactively addressing novel privacy threats in metaverses.