February 2022

In December 2021, our post “Increased likelihood of US social media regulation” discussed Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and her call to hold social media platforms accountable for the potentially dangerous content that appears on their sites.

In February 2022, Haugen once again flagged Facebook’s algorithms as potentially harmful, but this time Haugen was speaking outside of the United States, to the Australian Parliament’s Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety (the “Committee”).

The metaverse is the answer to escaping your couch without actually leaving it to do whatever you want in a paralleled virtual universe – hangout with friends, drive race cars, shop designer brands, buy digital land, or do just about anything else you can imagine. The metaverse may seem far-fetched, but so did smart phones when everyone was talking on their corded landlines not too long ago.

The metaverse parallels social media with concepts of engagement and world-wide connection, for both users and business. Both spaces allow for users and businesses to expand outside of their geographical area and establish a strong online presence. However, social media and the metaverse are not the same thing. Our current interactions on social media are engaged on a ‘push’ basis. Information, such as comments and likes, are pushed to us with notifications. We are also ‘pushed’ video and image ads. However, the metaverse will be less ‘push’ information and more of an embodied interaction with information and our environment. The metaverse will offer an immersive digital world that feels physical and tangible in nature. Interacting with metaverse has the opportunity to shift the internet in a new direction and pose new intellectual property rights for developers, contributors, and users.