If Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has his way, we will live in the Metaverse in the future. With data glasses, you connect to a digital parallel universe where you work, learn or shop with your avatar, just like in the 1992 novel »Snow Crash« by the American science fiction author Neal Stephenson, from which the term originates. Zuckerberg wants to build the Metaverse as the successor to the mobile Internet. Where you click on a link on the web today, you will be teleported through the Metaverse in the future, said Zuckerberg at the in-house developer conference Connect.
After various data scandals, Meta, as the new parent company is called, wants to open a new chapter, also in terms of privacy. As a first step, Facebook has switched off facial recognition in its social network. But the risks to privacy could be far greater in an immersive, embodied parallel universe than in the two-dimensional web.
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First of all it has to do with the hardware. Headsets for augmented reality or virtual reality collect a lot of (biometric) data – where you are, how you move in space or where you look. Modern eye-tracking systems record the position of the pupils. From this, in turn, one can infer age, emotional state and even drug use. If someone blinks like crazy in front of a virtual shop window, the person is most likely very interested in buying and can later be shown advertising for the corresponding products.
The Metaverse will probably have to do without the annoying and also problematic third-party cookies that are placed by website operators for their advertisers. However, privacy advocates fear that the tracking of user interests in the Metaverse could drive completely new blossoms. In contrast to the Internet, where one can “only” record mouse movements, searches and websites visited, body movements and physiological reactions can also be tracked in the metaverse.