Meta and Microsoft can’t self-regulate their metaverses, UK regulator warns
An avatar of Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., speaks during the virtual Meta Connect event in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The boss of the U.K. media regulator Ofcom warned “metaverse” forays from tech giants like Meta and Microsoft will be subjected to incoming rules forcing platforms to protect users from online harms.
Speaking at an event in London hosted by policy consulting group Global Counsel on Tuesday, Ofcom Chief Executive Melanie Dawes said self-regulation of the metaverse, a hypothetical digital world touted by Meta and others, wouldn’t fly under U.K. online safety laws.
“I’m not sure I really see that ‘self-regulatory phase,’ to be honest, existing from a U.K. perspective,” Dawes said. “If you’ve got young people in an environment where there’s user-generated content according to the scope of the bill then that will already be caught by the Online Safety Bill.”
The Online Safety Bill is a set of legislation that seeks to curb harmful content from being widely shared on the internet. The rules would impose a duty of care on firms requiring them to have robust and proportionate measures to deal with harmful materials such as vaccine disinformation or posts promoting self-harm.
Violations of the law — once it is approved — could lead to fines of up to 10% of annual global revenues. Down the track, senior tech executives may also face criminal liability for more extreme breaches.
The bill is especially concerned with the protection of children, having been developed in response to the death of Molly Russell, a U.K. teen who took her own life after being exposed to suicide-related posts on Instagram. In September, a coroner investigating Russell’s death made the landmark conclusion that “negative effects” of social media contributed to her death.
Dawes made clear that the metaverse wouldn’t be legally immune to the new rules. The U.K. is “in good stead” to regulate the metaverse, she said, adding the scope of the Online Safety Bill is wide enough to accommodate platforms and companies that play a role in the metaverse. “We can pull it off.”
Dawes said it has been easier for “horrific” illegal activities to have a larger impact through the internet. She cited the May 2022 live streaming of the Buffalo, New York shootings on Twitch. In a recent report, Ofcom recommended platforms take measures to limit access to live streaming, including age verification.
There “are some differences” with the metaverse compared to “traditional” social media, Dawes noted, including the immersive nature of VR services and the difficulty in determining what a child is experiencing once they’ve got a headset on.
“You do need moderation to make sure that you manage these things because they’ve happened at such scale,” Dawes said. “I think that things like metaverses are adding intensity into that mix.”
What is the metaverse?
The metaverse is a term that’s proven difficult to define. It loosely refers to the idea of virtual worlds in which thousands, or even millions of people, can congregate in vast, 3D worlds. It is often associated with technologies like virtual and augmented reality.
Consumers are largely in the dark about the metaverse, with awareness of the technology lower than of other technologies like VR, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, according to research from Global Counsel presented Monday. Only four in 10 people in the U.K. know much about the technology beyond its name, a survey by the organization found.
Brits are much more skeptical about the metaverse than their French and U.S. counterparts, according to Global Counsel. Attitudes to the technology are mostly negative, with the research finding a net favorability score of minus 3% in the U.K. In France and the U.S., consumers were more favorable toward the metaverse, Global Counsel said.
Meta, formerly Facebook, is betting heavily on its vision of a metaverse in which users can interact socially or even work in. The company this week released its new Meta Quest Pro headset, which retails at $1,500 and makes some improvements on its predecessor, the Meta Quest 2. Such investments are weighing heavily on the company’s bottom line, though, contributing to a $15 billion loss since the start of last year.
Microsoft is similarly investing aggressively to achieve its own metaverse creation with its augmented reality HoloLens headsets and proposed a $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the video game maker behind Call of Duty.
In gaming, in particular, regulation will need to be more “active” to make sure safety is baked in from the start, Dawes said, adding video games are “particularly attractive to kids.”
The Online Safety Bill had been stalled following the resignation of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the subsequent appointment of Liz Truss as U.K. leader. After Truss’ short tenure recently came to an end, regulators are hopeful the bill will soon advance through Parliament under new PM Rishi Sunak.
Sunak’s choice of digital minister, Michelle Donelan, had committed to strengthening the law’s child protection aspects under Truss.
In its current form, the bill is highly controversial. The wording of the bill, targeting content that is “legal but harmful,” has provoked outcry from some digital rights activists, who fear it may be too restrictive of free expression online.
“The idea that platforms can opt people out of such things is nonsense,” Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, an organization that campaigns for internet freedoms, told CNBC.
Technology
Amazon was questioned by House China committee over ‘dangerous and unwise’ TikTok partnership
Amazon logo on a brick building exterior, San Francisco, California, August 20, 2024.
Smith Collection | Gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images
Amazon representatives met with the House China committee in recent months to discuss lawmaker concerns over the company’s partnership with TikTok, CNBC confirmed.
A spokesperson for the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party confirmed the meeting, which centered on a shopping deal between Amazon and TikTok announced in August. The agreement allows users of TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, to link their account with Amazon and make purchases from the site without leaving TikTok.
“The Select Committee conveyed to Amazon that it is dangerous and unwise for Amazon to partner with TikTok given the grave national security threat the app poses,” the spokesperson said. The parties met in September, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news.
Representatives from Amazon and TikTok did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
TikTok’s future viability in the U.S. is uncertain. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If TikTok fails to cut ties with its parent company, app stores and internet hosting services would be prohibited from offering the app.
President-elect Donald Trump could rescue TikTok from a potential U.S. ban. He promised on the campaign trail that he would “save” TikTok, and said in a March interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” with the app.
In his first administration, Trump had tried to implement a TikTok ban. He changed his stance around the time he met with billionaire Jeff Yass. The Republican megadonor’s trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, owns a 15% stake in ByteDance, while Yass has a 7% stake in the company, NBC and CNBC reported in March.
— CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.
Technology
Amazon launches fixed pricing for treatment of conditions such as hair loss. Hims & Hers stock drops 15%
Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says censorship is still “a dominant threat,” advocating for a more decentralized internet to help better protect individuals online.
Her comments come amid ongoing tension linked to online safety rules, with some tech executives recently seeking to push back over content moderation concerns.
Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Manning said that one way to ensure online privacy could be “decentralized identification,” which gives individuals the ability to control their own data.
“Censorship is a dominant threat. I think that it is a question of who’s doing the censoring, and what the purpose is — and also censorship in the 21st century is more about whether or not you’re boosted through like an algorithm, and how the fine-tuning of that seems to work,” Manning said.
“I think that social media and the monopolies of social media have sort of gotten us used to the fact that certain things that drive engagement will be attractive,” she added.
“One of the ways that we can sort of countervail that is to go back to the more decentralized and distribute the internet of the early ’90s, but make that available to more people.”
Nym Technologies Chief Security Officer Chelsea Manning at a press conference held with Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin in the Media Village to present NymVPN during the second day of Web Summit on November 13, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Horacio Villalobos | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Asked how tech companies could make money in such a scenario, Manning said there would have to be “a better social contract” put in place to determine how information is shared and accessed.
“One of the things about distributed or decentralized identification is that through encryption you’re able to sort of check the box yourself, instead of having to depend on the company to provide you with a check box or an accept here, you’re making that decision from a technical perspective,” Manning said.
‘No longer secrecy versus transparency’
Manning, who works as a security consultant at Nym Technologies, a company that specializes in online privacy and security, was convicted of espionage and other charges at a court-martial in 2013 for leaking a trove of secret military files to online media publisher WikiLeaks.
She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released in 2017, when former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
Asked to what extent the environment has changed for whistleblowers today, Manning said, “We’re at an interesting time because information is everywhere. We have more information than ever.”
She added, “Countries and governments no longer seem to invest the same amount of time and effort in hiding information and keeping secrets. What countries seem to be doing now is they seem to be spending more time and energy spreading misinformation and disinformation.”
Manning said the challenge for whistleblowers now is to sort through the information to understand what is verifiable and authentic.
“It’s no longer secrecy versus transparency,” she added.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports7 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway