[Paper Review] Life, the Metaverse and Everything: An Overview of Privacy, Ethics, and Governance in Metaverse

Carlos Bermejo, Pan Hui|arXiv (Cornell University)|Mar 25, 2022

Ethics and Social Impacts of AI28 citations

TL;DR

This paper surveys privacy, governance, and ethical design challenges in the metaverse and proposes a modular, ethics-focused framework for its development.

ABSTRACT

The metaverse is expected to be the next major evolution phase of the internet. The metaverse will have an impact on human society, production, and life. In this work, we analyze the current trends and challenges that building such a virtual environment will face. We focus on three major pillars to guide the development of the metaverse: privacy, governance, and ethical design, to guide the development of the metaverse. Finally, we propose a preliminary modular-based framework for an ethical design of the metaverse.

Motivation & Objective

• Analyze trends and challenges in building the metaverse with a focus on privacy, governance, and ethical design.
• Identify current approaches in privacy, security, and regulation relevant to metaverse platforms.
• Propose a preliminary modular-based framework for ethical design and governance in the metaverse.
• Highlight open questions and future research directions for inclusive and responsible metaverse development.

Proposed method

• Literature review of privacy, governance, and ethics in XR/metaverse contexts.
• Analysis of privacy at sensory, behavioral, and safety levels with proposed PET-based and data-local approaches.
• Discussion of governance mechanisms including code rules, blockchain/DAOs, and modular governance.
• Proposal of a modular, human-centered design framework aligned with ethical needs.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What are the major privacy, governance, and ethical design challenges facing the metaverse?
• RQ2 How can current platforms and research address privacy, safety, and governance in a scalable way?
• RQ3 What modular governance architecture can support inclusive and local/regional regulatory alignment while enabling global metaverse functionality?
• RQ4 How can ethics-centered design be operationalized in the metaverse using DAOs, blockchain, and PETs?

Key findings

• Privacy concerns span sensory data (biometrics, gaze), behavioral metadata, and safety risks (occlusion, collisions).
• Existing privacy approaches include data input control frameworks and PETs to obfuscate sensitive data before cloud sharing.
• Governance can leverage code-based rules, DAOs, and modular governance to enable scalable, participatory decision-making.
• Modular, human-centered design can align ethical principles with technical architectures using blockchain-based reputation and transparent algorithms.
• Ethical design should integrate accessibility, diversity, equality, and trust considerations, with alignment to local regulations when needed.