Black Box Series 1: Metaverse & Ethics

We have been talking with you about Metaverse for a long time, and we even meet at events to talk and practice these topics in more detail. Let us once again bring the issue to our agenda with its sociological aspects that we have not mentioned.

There’s a lot of dialogue revolving around the concept of the metaverse. Although I have tried to define it in many articles or speeches, there is no definite definition, but its main vision; is a 3D (3D) immersive world where we can spend a lot of time socializing, working, having fun, learning and more action. It carries the concepts of “Virtual reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), Gaming industry, Blockchain Technologies, cryptocurrencies and social media” piece by piece and consists of a combination of these topics.

In its financial approach to Metaverse, it will rely on blockchain technology and digital assets such as non-tradable tokens (NFTs) to monetize digital transactions; and we will be able to use artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) technologies to provide uninterrupted communication.

As we continue to discuss the metaverse, many tech companies continue to invest heavily in the development of the Metaverse and the concepts within it.

1. Meta (formerly Facebook) announced an annual investment of $10 billion in themetaverse and plans to increase its investments in the coming years.
2. Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard (a company that owns online games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft) for approximately $69 billion, with the perspective that the game will be a big part of its metaverse development.
3. Qualcomm has set up a $100 million metaverse fund to further develop VR and AR technologies.
4. Alibaba has invested $50 million in augmented reality glasses maker Nreal.
5. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, spent nearly 5 billion yuan ($772 million) on VR headset maker Pico.

Despite all these significant investments, the Metaverse is not yet a tangible reality and no one can predict exactly when it will become a discipline — it may take years or even ten years, but these huge investments in the development of this field are promising and offer promises of what our new future reality could be.

The precise extent and impact of the Metaverse on society and the economy is of course still unknown, and will likely open up a host of opportunities as well as a host of risks and various ethical issues and concerns.

So, even though the metaverse is years away (I’d say we’ll speed up the process given the sheer number of social media usage rates), it’s never too early to start thinking about ethical issues and creating guidelines and frameworks for the ethical principles that underpin societies and the future.

In general, Ethics and Metaverse are a broad topic that includes many disciplines and needs to be discussed, so Black Box Series 1 is online as the first of a series of articles that examine and research the ethical and sociological problems of our metaverse and suggest possible approaches to problems or discussions.

First of all, we should start and understand what the concept of Ethics is, which is not always easy to express for someone like me who works intensively in positive sciences.

What is Ethics?

Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that determine what people should do — usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, justice, or certain virtues.

Virtue: It is the individual’s conscious desire for what is morally good and valuable.

More specifically:

In terms of obligations: Ethical standards describe standards that establish reasonable obligations to avoid rape, theft, murder, assault, slander and fraud.
In terms of rights: Ethical standards may refer to rights such as the right to life, the right not to be injured, the right to privacy, andthe right to equal opportunity and accessibility to services (ie non-discrimination).
In terms of virtues: Ethical standards may include those that promote virtues such as honesty, compassion, and loyalty.
Such standards are adequate ethical standards because they are supported by consistent and sound grounds.

Ethics Is Not Law 👩🏻‍⚖️

Being ethical is not the same as obeying the law. Laws often contain ethical standards to which most citizens adhere, but laws can sometimes deviate from what is ethical. Pre-Civil War slavery laws and South Africa’s apartheid laws are examples of laws that deviate from the ethical.

Ethics Is Not Religion 🤦🏻‍♀️

Most religions advocate high ethical standards. Yet if ethics were limited to religion, then ethics would only apply to religious people. But ethics applies to the behaviour of any person, religious or not. Ethics cannot be limited to religion and is not the same as religion. Ethics is behaviour and behavior that is not limited to any religion, belief or region. It is universal, but it can also be subjective.

Well… Is ethics exactly what society accepts?

Some people might say that being ethical is doing “what society accepts”. But sometimes an entire society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is an example of a morally corrupt society.

Moreover, the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with everything accepted by society. To take a current issue as an example: Some people accept abortion, and some do not. If being ethical is to do whatever society accepts, one has to agree on issues; Such agreements do not usually exist.

As we saw above, laws and social norms can deviate from ethical. One must continually review standards to ensure they are reasonable and well-founded. But this also means that ethics can be a personal-subjective quality — the same as when there is no consensus on something.

“ETHICS, Personal Criteria” are used to distinguish between right and wrong, These criteria take their power from the “conscience of people”.

Personal / Subjective Ethics and Metaverse

Ethical standards and morals are not bound by borders or countries. People from different countries, regions or ethnic groups may have similar morals and values. They may have a greater moral agreement with people who are not necessarily from the same ethnic group or country. This suggests that there may be a diverse international community united based on the same moral and ethical standards.

How can members of this unique community find each other and work together? A decentralized metaverse may offer a solution.

The metadata warehouse can be centralized and owned by a central company, such as Meta or Sandbox, or it can be in a decentralized blockchain structure where no one can assume control.

But if users’ ownership is prioritized, the implementation of the metadata store must be decentralized.
To ensure universal operation and interoperability, a metaverse model must emerge, based on blockchain technology and open standards, controlled by users themselves in the form of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

The DAO is a community-led entity with no central authority. It is completely autonomous and transparent. Smart contracts (i.e., self-executing code) set ground rules, enforce agreed-upon decisions, and at any point, proposals, voting, and even the code itself can be publicly audited. A DAO is entirely led by its individual members, who collectively make critical decisions about the future of a project (such as technical upgrades) or community (such as treasury allocations or working for a common cause).

A DAO can also set the community’s moral and ethical standards, as well as establish a mechanism that promotes good behaviour that supports the community and punishes bad actors who break its rules. Those who feel that they agree with these ethical standards can join the community. Being a member of this community is not limited to a region or ethnic group. You can become a member of this diverse, universal community as long as you accept the group’s ethical standards and do not violate them.

We can experience different metaverse communities in which people come together and act together on the basis of common ethical standards, regardless of region, age, gender or other differences — what binds them together will be ethical and moral standards.

What are the Ethical Concerns in Metaverse?

Most of the ethical concerns in the Metaverse also consist of issues related to non-digital living — privacy, social and economic inequalities, accessibility, identity control, freedom of creative expression, etc. can be given as an example. Naturally, these are not really new problems, they are general problems that society has, and if we look at the big cake from afar, ethical problems have always existed; We can say that society has only recently begun to attempt to react to many of them.

In addition, new concerns will arise with these emerging technologies. For example, wristbands or products that record biometric or brainwave data to control thoughts and behaviour may be maliciously accessed; or social problems may exist with the feature of having multiple identities for different digital domains. I’ll explore some of these ideas in future articles, but for now, suffice it to say that it’s never too early to start discussing the metaverse and ethical problems.

Ethical concerns and possible solutions should be incorporated into the development of the metaverse from its inception — which must begin now. We can learn from our past mistakes and build a better future this time. We can solve this not only with big companies that invest but together.

Please feel free to write me about it, I will always be a message away.

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Financial Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am not a financial advisor. This account is for entertainment and expressing my opinions. Please do your own research and make your own decisions.

See you in the next articles!