A Safe Space for Everyone – A Plea for a Democratic and Participative Metaverse
Octávia Madeira, Georg Plattner · Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG eBooks · 2025
Malevolent Actors in the MetaverseThe vision of a metaverse presented by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in October 2021 was a watershed moment for society and for the tech world.Although the concept of a second digital life, including a digital identity, is neither new nor exclusive to Meta (see, for example, Second Life), this was the first time that almost all the possible functionalities of the metaverse had been presented up to that point.Here, there is a special emphasis on immersion via virtual reality which, as an extension of today's Internet applications, is meant to give users a completely new sense of participation and let them experience the metaverse in a multimodal and multi-sensory way.The presentation of the vision also focused on technological perme ability, on the diffusion of social media in all areas of human life and therefore on the displacement of social media as a purely entertainment platform.Should the metaverse turn out to be as Zuckerberg and other proponents envision it, this would mean a radical transformation of social interaction with the digital space, and also a radical change in our everyday lives.Shop ping could increasingly shift to the metaverse as an immersive experience, sports classes could take place in a virtual environment and virtual church services could be held with believers from all over the world.The world of work has already permanently changed, partly due to the coronavirus pandemic -and we could soon move from working from home to working in the meta-office.But these innovations will not only change our everyday lives -they will also cause extremism and radicalisation to strike out in new directions and transform to adapt to new environments.Extremists use technologies that are cheap, readily available, easy to use and widely accessible for their purposes, like propaganda, communication and recruitment.Using technology for a function other than that intended by the developers with the intention of doing harm to others is an inherently creative process.59 10.