The metachallenges of the metaverse

Online issues such as personal privacy, marketplace competition, and misinformation only become greater challenges in the metaverse. Rather than being distracted by the shiny new bauble, policymakers need to focus on the underlying problems of the digital revolution, which won’t go away with new technological developments. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained, “you can think about [the metaverse] as an embodied internet that you are inside of rather than just looking at.” According to the Washington Post, Facebook is “meeting with think tanks to discuss the creation of standards and protocols for the coming virtual world.” The threshold question is whether the new quest for standards is more than a strategic deflection from a company beleaguered by regulatory and judicial attacks and weakening support from the general public. The development of government-overseen behavioral standards protected consumer, workers, and competition in the industrial revolution—while simultaneously enabling a vibrant and growing economy. The digital revolution requires similar government-overseen standards. It is good that Facebook is discussing behavioral standards for the metaverse, but it is not sufficient. We must not be distracted by the shiny new metaverse and forget that we have yet to resolve the challenges in the current online universe—problems that will simply metastasize into the metaverse if we don’t deal with them now.

[Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. Wheeler was Chairman of the FCC from 2013 to 2017.]