Week 5
ORIGINAL PAPER
The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks: Threats to Privacy and Autonomy
Fiachra O’Brolcháin • Tim Jacquemard •
David Monaghan • Noel O’Connor • Peter Novitzky •
Bert Gordijn
Received: 8 August 2014 / Accepted: 9 December 2014 / Published online: 1 January 2015
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract The rapid evolution of information, communication and entertainment technologies will transform the lives of citizens and ultimately transform society.
This paper focuses on ethical issues associated with the likely convergence of
virtual realities (VR) and social networks (SNs), hereafter VRSNs. We examine a
scenario in which a significant segment of the world’s population has a presence in a
VRSN. Given the pace of technological development and the popularity of these
new forms of social interaction, this scenario is plausible. However, it brings with it
ethical problems. Two central ethical issues are addressed: those of privacy and
those of autonomy. VRSNs pose threats to both privacy and autonomy. The threats
to privacy can be broadly categorized as threats to informational privacy, threats to
physical privacy, and threats to associational privacy. Each of these threats is further
subdivided. The threats to autonomy can be broadly categorized as threats to
freedom, to knowledge and to authenticity. Again, these three threats are divided
into subcategories. Having categorized the main threats posed by VRSNs, a number
F. O’Brolcháin (&) � T. Jacquemard � P. Novitzky � B. Gordijn Institute of Ethics, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
e-mail: Fiachra.obrolchain@dcu.ie
T. Jacquemard
e-mail: tim.jacquemard@dcu.ie
P. Novitzky
e-mail: pnovitzky@gmail.com
B. Gordijn
e-mail: bert.gordijn@dcu.ie
D. Monaghan � N. O’Connor Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Dublin, Ireland
e-mail: david.monaghan@insight-centre.org
N. O’Connor
e-mail: noel.oconnor@insight-centre.org
123
Sci Eng Ethics (2016) 22:1–29
DOI 10.1007/s11948-014-9621-1
of recommendations are provided so that policy-makers, developers, and users can
make the best possible use of VRSNs.
Keywords Social networks � Virtual reality � Ethics � Privacy � Autonomy � Freedom
Introduction
The on-going societal transformation that is being brought about by the digital
revolution might in time prove itself to be as radical and turbulent as that brought
about by the invention of the printing press. Indeed, in a speech delivered to the
CeBIT 2014 trade fair in Hannover, Germany, the current British Prime Minister,
David Cameron, recently referred to a ‘‘new industrial revolution’’ (Cameron 2014).
The Internet’s evolution from a network of networks containing chunks of static
content into something that incorporates interactive features—the so-called ‘‘Web
2.0’’—has seen much of contemporary life represented online. This rapid evolution
shows no sign of abating—‘‘apps’’ and mobile devices are now profitable, useful, and
an almost integral part of daily life. The economic value of apps was demonstrated by
WhatsApp being bought by Facebook for $19 billion in February 2014 (O’Dwyer
2014). The increased focus on personalisation might even herald ‘‘Web 3.0’’.
The Internet has changed and continues to change the ways in which people interact
and socialise, access information, and find entertainment. It is a major source of news
and entertainment,aswellasa hubfor commerce.This empowerscompaniessuchasthe
searchengineGoogleandplacesthemin a hugely influentialposition,asthe gatekeepers
tokey elements of individual and sociallife e.g.fulfilment ofinformational needs,social
environments, and entertainment. Online social networks (SNs) such as Facebook,
MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, Pinterest, and Twitter are a contemporary social phenom-
enon, with Facebook claiming to have 1.32 billion active daily users (Facebook
Newsroom 2014). Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have
become enormously popular, with World of Warcraft (WoW) perhaps the best known,
having an estimated 77 million subscribers (Karmali 2013). MMORPGs have a number
ofinterestingcharacteristics:theyare socialandtheyare setinimmersivevirtual worlds.
Virtual worlds are the best-known manifestation of virtual reality (VR)—computer-
simulated environments—and have been driven primarily by the computer gaming
industry, however VR can have a multitude of other uses outside computer games.
Depending onhow the digitalenvironment isdisplayed,it is moreorlessimmersive. For
example, if a virtual world isdisplayed ona high-end3Dcave, itwillbe more immersive
than if it were displayed on a standard screen.
The focus of this article is on the increasing convergence between SNs and VR. 1
There are indicators that these two technological areas might increasingly merge
1 There is also academic interest in the merger of VR and SNs: the European Union has funded a 4 year
research project that brings together key players in both domains—REVERIE—that aims to provide ‘‘the
means for building a mixed reality space in which real and virtual worlds engage and seamlessly interact
in real-time, generating compelling and highly realistic immersive environments’’ (Objectives-REVERIE
2014). This will, it is thought, ‘‘introduce a paradigm shift for how communication happens in social
2 F. O’Brolcháin et al.
123
together in the future. Facebook’s acquisition of the VR technology company,
Oculus VR Inc., for 2 billion dollars (Cellan-Jones 2014) has increased interest in
the technology, with Facebook planning for a future in which its members ‘‘[share]
not just moments with [their] friends online, but entire experiences and adventures’’
(Zuckerberg 2014). Meanwhile, gaming has taken on aspects of SNs, with the
immersive worlds of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs)
functioning (to some degree) as sites for socialising and interacting with friends. It
is not only that games are becoming more social, but SNs are taking on aspects of
games. The idea of ‘‘Gamification’’, i.e. making day-to-day activities resemble
games by awarding points or similar and recording these on apps and SNs, further
illustrates the impact of Internet technologies on everyday life: the providers of the
‘‘games’’ profit by gathering data on the players.
In a converged virtual reality social network (hereafter VRSN), people would be
represented by avatars and be able to interact in real-time in virtual environments.
VRSNs would build on the success and popularity of social networks, in which
users can post information about their lives, their interests, their friends and family,
for others to peruse as well as contact each other and talk to message each other.
Significantly social networks are based on the assumption that people in them are
who they say they are, unlike MMORPGS where people play a character. VRSNs
would extend the social aspect of social networks and combine it with developments
in virtual reality by facilitating people using avatars that are realistic representations
to interact with each other in immersive virtual environments. An avatar can be
thought of as any graphical representation of a person or user. There are a wide
variety of forms avatars can take: from simple icons, personalized cartoon
characters, pictorial mock ups to full 3D humanoid representations. In computer
gaming, avatars are primarily fictional or fantasy based characters (such as in WoW)
and often the user will personalize the avatar based on how that user wishes to be
represented. However, recently there has been a shift towards realistic personal
avatars that accurately capture the likenesses of the user. This shift has been brought
about, in part, by readily available and cheap data-capture platforms such as the
Microsoft Kinect depth sensor and low-cost HD web cameras. Avatars that
represent the person in real-time are now being developed—these avatars will do in
the virtual what the person does in the real world. In our conception of VRSNs
realistic real-time avatars are likely to dominate, thus differentiating them from
MMORPGS and online worlds such as Second Life. The popularity of current social
networks illustrates that there is exists a desire amongst people to interact with
others as themselves—to put their lives online. It is the premise of this paper that
future social networks will retain their popularity whilst making use of the
technological capacity to create realistic avatars and more immersive environments
in which people will be able to virtually interact. Indeed, depending on the level of
immersion and the technologies available, people might be able to receive
Footnote 1 continued
networks’’ (ibid) by revolutionizing ‘‘immersive media distribution from a passive centralized context to
a personalized highly distributed framework’’ (ibid). Furthermore, this ‘‘will provide for the individuals
new ways of 3D/immersive media sharing and distribution under a socially aware, personalized, col-
laborative and distributed framework’’ (Expected Results-REVERIE 2014).
The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 3
123
sensations from interacting with others. The avatars would be able to communicate
with other avatars controlled by ‘‘real’’ people, with artificially intelligent (computer
controlled) avatars, and with the virtual world. This would not only be used in
gaming, but could also be used for historical reconstructions, political debates,
business meetings, health services, and for education. These worlds would likely be
‘‘walled-off’’ and under the control of the designers, developers, or governments
responsible for their creation.
The distinguishing feature of VRSNs as opposed to game environments with a
social aspect will be that people will by and large enter VRSNs as realistically-
represented versions of themselves. Data-capture technologies already make this
feasible. Many avatars will be representing how the person is in real-time. A VRSN
would not only allow a user to look at a person’s profile, but to meet them in an
immersive virtual environment. Thus, people with similar interests in various parts
of the world will be able to meet in immersive environments. Haptic technology that
provides sensations to users would make encounters even more realistic. These
worlds—VRSNs—are the focus of this article.
So, in discussing a VRSN, we hypothesise a scenario in which a significant
portion of the world’s population is a member of a social network, which either are
immersive or at least offer immersive experiences. A significant difference between
current VRs and even prototypical VRSNs such as WoW is that in this new
scenario, users would enter the VRSN as themselves, rather than playing a character
as in a game. Users would appear in these immersive worlds as either realistic
representations of themselves or as avatars, which may or may not resemble the
user. New technologies permit avatars to represent the movements, expressions, and
emotions of the user in real-time. It is likely that this sort of representation will be
extremely popular outside of the gaming spheres. For instance, it is possible that
many important services, currently primarily available off-line, will be available in
VRSNs, e.g. teaching or extra-tuition, medical check-ups, and business and financial
advice. As artificial avatars become more sophisticated and people’s interactions
with them more closely resembles interacting with a real person, more and more of
them would be used in VRSNs in order to facilitate people receiving these services
without having to travel or wait for appointments. A further point to consider is that
VRSN providers would have financial incentives to encourage users to appear as
real-time representations of themselves. Facebook is, for example, very keen that
people use their real names and identities when joining as this allows them to
harvest information about real people that can then be sold to advertisers. Real-time
representations of users of VRSNs would provide more detailed, and consequently
more valuable, information.
It is possible that social networks will evolve to incorporate these features, with
the result that all social network users will participate in immersive worlds. Whether
or not this sort of convergence comes to dominate the way people interact with the
Internet overall, or just becomes another feature of the online world cannot be
known at present. For instance, it is plausible that current users of social networks
are quite content to post photos of their holidays and to comment on their friends’
posts, without wanting to meet their friends in an immersive environment.
Nonetheless, there is evidence for an ongoing process of convergence and it is
4 F. O’Brolcháin et al.
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equally plausible that those users who do not always want to participate in the
immersive aspects of a VRSN will nonetheless create profiles that would enable
them to do so if they chose. On top of this, there will be a significant number of
users that will regularly participate in VRSNs. In doing so we are presupposing a
scenario in which a large proportion of the world’s population are members of
VRSNs, meaning that they participate in online immersive virtual environments in
which they are represented as avatars, and possibly by avatars that realistically
represent them in real-time.
The ethical problems VRSNs present will not be entirely new. VRSNs
themselves will emerge only gradually, in stages. Thus, many ethical problems
will already be present in current social networks or virtual worlds. Our contention
is not that VRSNs will present completely new problems but that the convergence of
current technologies into VRSNs will transform current ethical concerns, making
them more acute and urgent. Moreover, the scale of VRSN usage will be far greater
than is the case for virtual worlds now, with VRSNs replacing the necessity of real-
world interaction in many cases. More information about peoples’ traits and
behaviours will be available.
The threats to privacy arising from new Internet technologies taken individually
are already the subject of much debate (Vallor 2010; Sartor 2012). The threats to
autonomy are less prominently discussed in explicit terms in the current ethical
debate. However, issues with autonomy underlie many of the problems raised in the
academic literature. Hence, we deem them equally important. Numerous potential
social and political ills have been identified relating to, amongst others, addiction,
manipulation, and political and/or corporate control (Cranford 1996; Gotterbarn
2010; Gooskens 2010; Papagiannidis et al. 2008), all of which might reduce an
individual’s capacity to act according to their own desires and wishes. Moreover, we
argue that the threats to privacy may themselves pose a danger to autonomy.
Outlining two of the chief ethical issues that might emerge from VRSNs ought to
aid policymakers, providers, and users in avoiding the worst pitfalls.
We focus on autonomy and privacy, as they are foundational principles in the
Western liberal democracies i.e. the cultures primarily responsible for the
development of VRSNs. The autonomous human subject is a central one in
contemporary liberal thought. Liberalism is explicitly concerned with protecting
people’s opportunities and abilities to choose for themselves what to do with their
lives. One ideal of liberalism is to protect the rights of autonomous individuals, who
can choose their own goals and create their own values. It is therefore particularly
important from a liberal perspective to preserve the conditions that facilitate
individuals being autonomous. Insofar as a lack of privacy undermines the
conditions required for autonomy VRSNs pose an indirect threat to autonomy as
they undermine privacy. VRSNs also pose more direct threats to autonomy.
However, there are some scenarios in which VRSNs will possibly enhance people’s
autonomy. Thus VRSNs might create new societal norms in which privacy is all but
absent and autonomy is much more precarious.
The paper is organised as follows. We begin with an analysis of the concept of
privacy, distinguishing informational, physical, and associational privacy. We then
look at the ways in which each kind of privacy is threatened by the convergence of
The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 5
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VR and SNs. We subsequently analyse the concept of autonomy as having three
necessary components: knowledge, freedom, and authenticity. This then allows us
to explore how each of these components is affected by the convergence. We
suggest that both privacy and autonomy are of great ethical importance and that
there are therefore obligations for policymakers, providers of VRSNs, and users of
these services to protect these values. We provide some recommendations and
strategies for tackling the problems of privacy and autonomy in the final section,
which we believe will help policymakers, providers, and users understand the issues
of privacy and autonomy at stake and avoid the potential losses of privacy and
autonomy.
Privacy
Privacy plays an important role in protecting valuable conditions of moral
personhood or normative agency. Most people would not be comfortable exploring
certain ideas, expressing some opinions, or behaving in specific ways without a
certain degree of privacy. Persons, if they are to develop themselves and explore
their ideas, require a degree of privacy in which to do this. Life in a world of
diminished privacy will affect the development of individuals’ moral characters.
Individuals will no longer have as much of a private space in which to make
mistakes, experiment, explore different aspects of themselves (Vallor 2010). It is a
founding principle of liberal states that there should exist a personal realm exempt
from government interference (Locke 1689; Mill 1859). Without privacy, the ability
of governments (and companies) to influence individual and group behaviour will
be extensive.
Unfortunately, the possibility of maintaining privacy is seriously reduced with
the advent of digital technology, and with the further convergence of SNs and VR,
the threats to privacy will in some cases be exacerbated. The fact that people are
carrying out more and more daily tasks and activities online means that they are
leaving an increasingly larger and larger digital footprint. This footprint can be used
to find out a lot about individuals and thus threaten their privacy. Furthermore,
others might capture a person’s image or record them, thereby making it more
difficult for an individual to control how information about them is released. Indeed,
if the ‘‘Internet of Things’’ (which would see the creation of a world of ambient
technology) emerges as predicted (‘‘Internet of Things’’ 2014), genuine privacy is
likely to become even less feasible. Moreover, VRSNs are likely to provide users
with the possibility of being realistically represented in real-time. In some cases,
VRSNs will insist on users being represented in this manner. This will require that
users’ likenesses, expressions and emotional reactions are captured as they interact
with the virtual world and the other people within it.
Helen Nissenbaum advances the idea of privacy as ‘‘contextual integrity’’
(Nissenbaum 1998: 559). According to this theory privacy norms will be dependent
on context. For Nissenbaum, violations of privacy can be determined by non-
compliance with norms that relate to appropriateness and distribution. Some norms
concern the appropriateness of asking for and revealing information; whilst others
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concern the distribution of information. The aim of this section is not to provide a
full exploration of the concept of privacy as such, but to explore the ways in which
VRSNs will create new contexts and consequently new norms of privacy. In order to
do so, we distinguish three different kinds of privacy (adjusted from Allen 2011).
Informational privacy relates to protection against third party access to all kinds of
information about an individual including an individual’s thoughts, utterances,
correspondence, and financial, medical and educational records. Physical privacy
relates to some sort of shelter against third party sensory access to an individual’s
body and actions. Thus it concerns modesty, separateness, bodily integrity and the
like. Associational privacy concerns an individual’s control over excluding and
including third parties in certain specific experiences. It thus guarantees the
intimacy of certain social situations that an individual wishes to be intimate (Allen
2011). Based on this distinction we identify three kinds of threats to privacy.
Threats to Informational Privacy
There are several threats to informational privacy. In order for VRSNs to function
we would need personal information to expand functionality and create a better
user-experience. For example, medical information would be required for virtual
meetings with doctors (either fully artificial doctors or the avatars of real-life
doctors). There are two threats related to information privacy when VRSNs become
a reality.
Increased Vulnerability of Data
The first such threat is that by digitizing data, it becomes accessible to a larger group
of people. Some threats to informational privacy come from hackers, government
agencies, malware and criminal organisations that are able to use electronic media
to access information about an individual. Widespread use of VRSNs will mean that
more information about an individual will be potentially available to these groups
than ever before. The fact that information is being stored electronically makes it
accessible to people irrespective of geographical location. For instance, bank
details, medical records, personal correspondence are all stored online. This is
obviously a very useful feature, but it means that personal information is at risk of
being used in ways that are inappropriate or unjust, e.g. being stolen by hackers,
criminal organisations, or used by government agencies. In the VRSN scenario,
these sorts of data will need to be protected. 2 The recent discovery of the Heartbleed
bug—which enabled people to steal data, eavesdrop, and impersonate users and
servers by accessing sites thought to be secured by OpenSSL (used to encrypt
communication between a user’s computer and the server) without the possibility of
detection, illustrates the risks of online information (Wakefield 2014). This affected
a huge number of sites, including Internet behemoths such as Google as well as
smartphones running Android 4.1.1 (cca. 35 % of all smartphones, 50 million
users), Amazon Web Services and Pinterest. Prior to the digital era it was possible to
2 Clearly data will need to be protected in other scenarios also.
The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 7
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steal this information too, but now it can be potentially stolen from anywhere in the
world, very quickly, and the theft might go unnoticed. These threats exist currently,
prior to the widespread adoption of VRSNs. However, as mentioned above, the
extra information that a VRSN will gather (eye-movements, emotions, real-time
reactions), will mean that even more data about the individual is digitized and
(potentially) available to those who would misuse it. Furthermore, in our scenario,
VRSNs would be used for more than gaming—people might meet virtual doctors,
virtual accountants, virtual teachers and so on. As such, more people are likely to
make use of VRSNs than currently partake in either VRs or SNs and they are likely
to reveal more intimate and personal information in online scenarios, placing it at
risk.
Furthermore, individuals are often unaware of the amount of personal data that
they are making available online. Therefore, although a person might be extremely
careful regarding certain information (e.g. medical records) and might be content to
reveal a certain degree of information, they may find that they are revealing more
than they intended. Companies arguably purposefully use overly complicated and
convoluted terms and conditions so that individuals might not be aware of the
amount of information about themselves that they are ‘‘agreeing’’ to make available.
Websites gather huge amounts of data about the individual (Ford 2001), e.g. via
‘‘cookies’’ or other user-tracking activities. There is little reason to assume that
VRSNs, were they to become popular, would not also gather data about their users.
The business model of Internet firms such as Google and Facebook is predicated on
gathering information about their users and selling these data on to others—take for
example Facebook’s aforementioned acquisition of WhatsApp, which provided it
with the phone numbers, locations, user names and contact lists of the 465 million
users. Increasingly websites and Internet features request users to create profiles or
to sign up to membership, which involves providing real (the host’s hope) personal
information and submitting to legally binding contracts, in order to use the service. 3
Misuse of Data
The use of these data can have undesirable consequences. The erosion of
informational privacy will have significant effects. With VRSNs more data about
more people will likely be available. Many individuals will have an interest in
certain information remaining private, i.e. information about health, financial status
and sexual preferences (Gill 2008). If this sort of information were no longer private
individuals might face discrimination as a result of what is known about them. It is
already possible to determine to a significant degree a person’s political stance or
sexual preferences through analysis of their ‘‘likes’’ on Facebook (Kosinski et al.
2013). For example, someone who has previously had mental health issues might
find their job opportunities reduced or their social life affected (Lory 2010; Kaupins
and Park 2011; Birky and Collins 2011). Consider the story of the Target store in the
3 Everyone with a Gmail account has automatically been given a Google? account; whilst Microsoft’s
latest Windows system—Windows 8—requires users to create a Microsoft account if they are to avail of
many of the applications that come with the software.
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US enraging the father of a teenage girl by sending coupons for baby clothes and
other maternal items to the daughter (Duhigg 2012). It later emerged that she was
pregnant and the store had worked this out by analysing her purchases. A similar
scenario might cause huge problems for a teenage girl who wished to control when,
and if, she told her parents about being pregnant. Another example is information
about a gay person’s sexual preferences; in certain countries they would face time in
prison, were these to be made public. As more socialising moves online, this sort of
information will be accessible to more people. A VRSN may give the illusion of
greater privacy in these matters than is actually the case, e.g. a person may act with
fewer inhibitions in a VRSN than in the real world, forgetting that their actions
might become known to many more people than expected—both within and outside
of the VRSN. This is more likely the more immersive the VRSN. Users are going to
be immersed in the moment and may be tempted to abandon caution about their
actions more so than they would be in the offline world.
Threats to Physical Privacy
These threats are likely to arise from the proliferation of devices that can record
people in their physical surroundings and the ease with which recordings can be
shared and made public. Indeed, it is reported that there exists one CCTV camera
for every 11 people in the UK (Barrett 2013). For example, it is likely that new
smartphones will be able to continuously record sounds around them without the
consent of the user (Talbot 2013). Recordings of people’s faces and emotional
states, and possibly bodily movements might be required to create virtual avatars
and can be considered a threat to physical privacy. We will access VRSNs via
devices, be they on mobile phones, tablets, laptops, computers TVs, or even in
everyday objects. These devices will be able to record us and send that data to the
VRSN. There are three main threats from VRSNs to physical privacy.
Prevalence of Recording Devices
The first threat is that we might lose control over being observed in our physical
environment. Recording devices will be essential in order to access VRSNs,
particularly if persons are to be realistically represented as themselves in real-time.
That recording devices might be both ubiquitous and practically invisible, or
embedded in furniture or clothing, will make physical privacy even more difficult to
protect. Ideally if a person is alone in a room, they can be confident that they have a
degree of physical privacy. They can check if someone is hidden somewhere, they
can ensure that no one can look in through a window or an open door. However, the
convergence of VR and SNs makes this type of privacy less certain. Physical
privacy can even be compromised for those that are aware of the existence of these
recording devices. The fact that these devices are often accessible and possibly
activated through the Internet makes it in theory possible that a third party would
activate the device outside the control of its legal owner. For instance, under certain
circumstances, the FBI can turn on a person’s camera on their phone or computer
without their knowledge (Timberg and Nakashima 2013). This technology is also
The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 9
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used by criminal gangs, who, in a phenomenon known as ‘‘camfecting’’, gain
control of a person’s webcam. If VRSNs were to become hugely popular—as in our
scenario—these threats would be exacerbated.
Unintended Revelation of Physical Information
A second threat is that we might lose control over what information is revealed
when using these devices required to enter a VRSN i.e. these devices will record not
only what we intend to reveal but also many things we did not intend to reveal.
Whilst this is the case to a degree in current social networks, the addition of data-
capture technologies will exacerbate this problem in VRSNs. When a person is
watching something online they will react in numerous, unconscious ways—their
eyes will flicker, their position will shift, their face will react and so on. The
incorporation of eye-tracking devices or emotion-capture technologies into immer-
sive worlds, games, SNs and the web in general, will make it possible to track these
physical reactions to online stimuli. As such, data can be gathered about a person
that they might not be aware of, such as the length of time they looked at a particular
product and their physical reaction to what they’re seeing. Indeed, it will be possible
to record and track reactions that the user is unconscious of and is unable to mask.
New facial recognition technology, in particular a newly developed algorithm
known as ‘‘GaussianFace’’ exceeds the ability of humans to identify matching faces
(Tomkins 2014). Previously, it was possible to obtain physical information of
people’s facial reactions and eye-movements, but it generally required obtrusive and
obvious close observation or the employment of experts. Eye-tracking and emotion
capture software—likely to play a major role in VRSNs—make obtaining this type
of information far easier, more accessible to a wider number of people, and more
precise.
Loss of Anonymity
A third threat is that we might become increasingly unable to choose anonymity or
to hide ourselves. The development of avatars designed to realistically represent the
user (for reasons of transparency) would mean that there is a digital representation
of their physical self on the web. This feature would make the loss of anonymity a
particularly acute problem in the VRSN scenario. Entering one of these VRSNs as
someone else would be extremely difficult. Facebook, the most popular SN at the
time of writing tries to get its members to use their real names; it is plausible that if
there were a convergence of VR and SNs led by Facebook, they would want avatars
to represent the real users. This would have the benefit of ensuring that people
would know the age of the person they are interacting with in a virtual environment.
It would also be beneficial if VRs were used for business meetings or educational
purposes. There is something of an overlap with informational privacy at this point,
as the digital representation could also be defined as digital information. Depending
on the accuracy of the representation, observers of the digital representation might
be able to extrapolate much information regarding the real person, e.g. age, health,
distinguishing features, emotional responses to certain cues.
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Threats to Associational Privacy
These will come from the greater ability of people to record and make widely
available interactions amongst people as these will take place or be publicised in a
VRSN, as well as from the greater difficulty in controlling who finds out about
upcoming events. There are two threats identified.
Online Socialising
The first threat is that one may lose control over associational freedom outside the
VRSN. An increasingly common media story is of parties thrown by teenagers
(usually) who use Facebook to send out invites, and then find that thousands of
people turn up, usually because they neglected to control the privacy settings (BBC
News 2012). This is an example of the loss of ‘‘associational privacy’’, which refers
to the ability to include or exclude people from certain events. The phenomenon of
‘‘revenge porn’’, where disgruntled exes post intimate and explicit photos or videos
of former lovers illustrates the problem further. Such material can lead not just to
anger and humiliation, but to people losing their jobs (Cadwalladr 2014). This last
example obviously overlaps with informational privacy. In the event of the
convergence of VRSN, it is likely that more social life will take place in online
environments, thus exacerbating these threats as online events are going to be
accessible irrespective of geographical location. In VRSNs it will be harder to
control who attends a virtual event—it will be more difficult to control who knows
about it, and harder to control who attends it.
The Global Village
The second threat is that important public and private places in which we
communicate suffer from a lack of privacy. The threat to associational privacy has
implications beyond birthday parties ending in riots, of course. Being able to
socialise, share experiences with others, and debate and argue with others is
instrumentally important for the individual’s growth as a moral agent and for
society. Individuals may wish for their activities with others, even if it is something
as simple as eating a meal, to remain private. If VRSNs become significant
platforms for discourse and social interaction, huge amounts of data will be created
about people. This will be different from current social networks due to the scale
and to the fact that information about the real person (including physical
information) is being used to create the avatar of the user. This data will therefore
be available to all. The fact that much of our social activities could take place on
VRSNs might mean that many of our conversations about trivial and important
matters are potentially available to third parties. Individuals lose much of their
ability to control who shares experiences with them once it becomes possible for
any one of those directly involved in the experience to release a video of that
experience online. Furthermore, depending on the prevalence and security of the
devices used to access VRSNs, a person might not even have to be in the VRSN for
this to be a problem. As mentioned, if the device can be hacked, a person might not
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be aware that their activities are being recorded. This could be called the ‘‘global
village’’ problem. In villages, everyone knew everyone else’s business. This could
lead to small-mindedness, conformity, and a stifling social atmosphere. With the
development of SNs and recording devices, this aspect of village life—the ability to
pry and see what others are doing—is becoming a feature of the global village. It is
now harder to control who can hear your conversations, see your actions, and find
out about your life in general.
Autonomy
For our purposes, autonomy can be understood as ‘‘self-government’’ (Buss 2008).
Autonomy plays a central role in Kantian ethics, in liberal political theory, and in
the political theory of Hegel. All these theories emphasise, albeit in different ways,
that to be autonomous is to obey only ourselves—to be able to deliberate and make
decisions without being influenced or manipulated by external sources. The value
we place on our status as human beings centres on our being agents, i.e. we choose
and deliberate, make plans and form goals. That we are autonomous then, is of the
utmost significance (Griffin 2008). For some libertarian thinkers, such as Robert
Nozick, autonomy is of such great importance that it overrides all other
considerations (i.e. equality) (Nozick 1974). Unlike the impact on privacy however,
it must be noted that, the convergence of SNs and VR might also bring some
benefits to autonomy. For instance, people might be able to reveal their authentic
selves online whilst being prevented from doing so socially (i.e. gay people in
homophobic cultures), or people accessing more information in order to make
better-informed decisions. These benefits are not discussed here because the aim of
this paper is to analyse only the threats and provide recommendations on how these
might be avoided. The benefits are loudly trumpeted by technology companies and
thus need little further promotion.
In our analysis we understand autonomy as requiring three components: (1)
knowledge, (2) freedom, and (3) authenticity or being one’s own person. In order to
be autonomous then, people will need access to relevant information in order to
make choices; they will need a certain lack of constraints so that their autonomy is
not hollow; and they will need to be able to choose for themselves according to their
own ideas and values.
Threats to Knowledge
The threats to the knowledge condition of autonomy can come from filter bubbles,
cyberbalkanization, and from gatekeepers such as search engine providers or SNs or
governments controlling the availability of information. Being adequately informed
about relevant facts is essential for autonomy. However, the power of SNs, virtual
worlds, and, especially, of search engines, to act as gatekeepers of information pose
a threat to the informational condition of autonomy. Those with control over
information can control how people perceive and interpret the world. It follows that
insofar as companies or governments monopolise how and what information is
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presented to users online, they will have a great deal of influence over how people
perceive and interpret the world. For instance, it was recently revealed that
Facebook was able to affect over 689,000 peoples’ moods by altering their
newsfeeds over the course of one week (BBC News 2014a; Kramer et al. 2014). If
SNs and VR converge and become one of the chief ways people access information,
users will only receive the information that the designers of the world wish them to
receive. This is similar to the problems arising from search engines as such, but
within a walled off VR, there might be less scope to examine alternate information
sources. There are various threats to this control over knowledge, some of which are
already present and some of which will be exacerbated by the convergence of
VRSN.
The Filter Bubble
A first threat is the personalisation of the web, as this presents information based on
an algorithm-based interpretation of a user’s interests. These concerns are explicitly
addressed in discussions of the ‘‘Filter Bubble’’ (Pariser 2011). The term ‘‘Filter
Bubble’’ refers to personalised searches in which algorithms decide on the search
results shown to a user based on information about the user. Information is being
filtered based on the perceived preferences of the user, ultimately leading to a
personalised online experience. Both Google (via personalised search results) and
Facebook (personalised news streams) contribute to the creation of filter bubbles.
For instance Google uses algorithms to determine search results and the design of
the algorithms deciding which data sources are selected is opaque. If people
primarily access news and information about the world via sources recommended to
them by friends on SNs or by the preferences a company (via automated assessment
software) considers they have, they are at risk of having a reduced range of
information. Adding a virtual element to personalised news streams already extant
in social networks will not reduce this threat as VRSNs come into being. Just as
Facebook was able to influence users’ emotional states, people in charge of a VRSN
could also select the news available to a user, or the presentation of that news, e.g.
through the use of sound effects or colour schemes that make certain topics more or
less attractive. The filter bubble effect might also be exacerbated by the enhanced
social aspect offered by a VRSN—not only would people get to post and respond to
each other in text, but they would be able to meet (virtually) face-to-face—with the
result that they would have even less incentive to move beyond the confines of their
filter bubble.
Cyberbalkanization
A second threat is cyberbalkanization. Cyberbalkanization is the phenomenon of
users confining themselves to specific but mutually incompatible perspective-
forming positions (Parsell 2008; Brey and Søraker 2009). This can be partly the
outcome of individual choice—individuals will prefer some sources over others—
and partly as a result of personalised searches, i.e. filter bubbles. Another way in
which cyberbalkanization might occur would be the nation state exerting control
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over access to the Internet (BBC News 2014b) or attempts to build its own Internet
(arXiv 2012). Furthermore, if companies such as Google and Facebook are thought
to be too close to the US security system (for instance), nations distrustful of the US
are likely to wall off their Internet in order to control information for reasons of
security. Both filter bubbles and cyberbalkanization could have serious implications
for public discourse, as they will make it harder for people to see each other’s point
of view. Cyberbalkanization is already an issue with social networks, as people can
interact with others who reinforce their views. Adding a virtual element to these
interactions, particularly if the virtual world responds to the users, is likely to make
such a world more appealing to those users with the result that they are less likely to
look beyond its horizons. The development of artificial avatars that further reinforce
users’ beliefs and perspectives would further exacerbate this threat.
The Gatekeeping Problem
A third threat is that companies can also manipulate or select the information being
presented, as in the above-mentioned Facebook example (Kramer et al. 2014). This
can be called the ‘‘Gatekeeping problem’’. Companies such as Google, as well as
being a primary gatekeeper to information on the web, control vast quantities of data
about individuals, but their main agenda is profits rather than the public good.
Accordingly, there is a risk of conflicts arising between the goals of these companies
and the public good. Information gatekeepers will have the ability to present
information so as to create crises or stifle debate, depending on their interest or to
influence the emotions of their users. This ability could allow them not only to
influence public policy. If a company decided to invest in developing artificial
intelligence (AI) or robotics, as Google is doing, they would, by presenting
information in a certain way, be able to influence public policy. Criticisms of AI
might not appear near the top of search results, whilst favourable articles about AI
might be given great prominence. This is not to say that this is currently happening,
but it is certainly possible that it or a similar scenario might occur in the future.
Whilst there are other ways to access Internet information than to access Google
(people can use a different search engine such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, or just typing
the URL), if the site is running Google Analytics in the background, Google will be
informed about the site being accessed. Real alternative ways to block Google from
gaining this information would be to use some sort of Private OS (booted from a live
distribution), blocking all Google Ads and Analytics attempts to track you, or using
Tor or VPNs. It is not yet known whether such alternatives will be available in
VRSNs. If VRSNs become the main gateway to online activity, the companies
designing and controlling them will become the new gatekeepers.
Distortion of Knowledge
A fourth threat is that the design of VRSNs can distort knowledge. Threats to the
information condition of autonomy might also arise in the design of virtual
environments, especially if immersive virtual worlds (particularly those that operate
as SNs) become dominant gateways to the online world. Online worlds can be
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designed with colour schemes, or aesthetic patterns that are designed to make
certain ideas appealing at the expense of others. One of the EU’s REVERIE
project’s use-cases is a tour of a virtual European Parliament Building (‘‘Objectives-
REVERIE’’ 2014). The Parliament Building could be presented in myriad ways,
each of which might have a subtle effect on how the visitor emotionally responds to
it. A virtual world could portray the city of New York as a den of vice and iniquity
or as a vibrant and fun place. Similarly, direct portrayals of ideas or peoples can be
manipulated. The underrepresentation of ethnic minorities and of women in virtual
worlds (to date) mirrors and possibly adds to discrimination in the real world.
Another such issue is related to the virtual representation of the user. Artificial
avatars that interact with users could be designed to influence those they interact
with so as to manipulate or nudge the user towards accepting certain propositions or
worldviews. An avatar might respond with a smile if asked about one political or
religious idea, and frown when discussing another. Whilst the example is not subtle,
these and similar designs will influence the way in which users in virtual worlds
think about the information being presented to them. Artificial avatars would be all
the more effective if they can access data about the user’s emotional responses via
eye-tracking or emotion capture.
Threats to Freedom
The most likely threats to freedom arising from the convergence of SNs and VR
come from addiction, and from governments using information gathered from these
technologies to limit freedom. A person cannot be said to be autonomous if they do
not have a sufficient degree of freedom. The psychological harms that the
development of the Internet, electronic games, online shopping and online worlds,
etc., might create was a significant theme in discussions of the topic (Brey 1999; Gill
2008; Johansson 2009). Addictions and surveillance pose direct threats to autonomy
Addiction
A first threat is posed by addiction. Both SNs and VR have shown themselves to be
potentially addictive. The convergence of both into VRSNs is likely to maintain the
most appealing aspects of both VR and SNs (being able to see friends and keep in
touch, whilst also being able to explore fantastically-designed immersive environ-
ments) making the VRSN potentially addictive. People with addictions cannot be
considered to possess full autonomy. Users risk becoming addicted, losing touch
with external reality (Cranford 1996; Gooskens 2010; Andreassen et al. 2012),
developing bad social or behavioural habits (i.e. habits that might be rewarded in a
virtual scenario but condemned outside of this virtual environment) that carry from
their online behaviour to behaviour in the real world (Papagiannidis et al. 2008).
The virtual world also facilitates some other addictions—for example, gambling and
pornography are, with the Internet, available all the time. Thus, it is much more
difficult for those with these problems to avoid temptation. There is also some
discussion that frequent Internet use or SNs themselves might be addictive (Carr
2010). Developments such as eye-tracking and emotion capture greatly increase the
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ability of engineers to create addictive online situations—the data gathered from
eye-movements and facial changes will allow sites to respond and adapt to their
users’ wishes and emotional state, ensuring that their users spend more time on the
site or in the virtual world.
Manipulation
A second threat is that VRSNs could be used to manipulate behaviour. Games that
accustom players to certain norms have been developed. The US Army developed a
game intended to promote enlisting, whilst jihadist groups (amongst others) are
known to use SNs and YouTube for recruiting. It is conceivable that such games—
using VR technologies, eye-tracking, emotion capture, and even brain-computer
interfaces (BCIs)—would be able to influence players beyond the games by training
them to respond in specific ways. Users of VR—particularly if VR headsets
integrate BCIs—might be open to forms of brainwashing. Users might become more
aggressive as a result of playing violent video games (Muñoz and El-Hani 2012).
The degree to which this can be said to undermine a person’s liberty will need to be
determined by further empirical study. The recent controversial study conducted by
Kramer et al. on Facebook users’ emotional states illustrates that social networks
can easily influence a person’s mood. It illustrated that ‘‘emotional states can be
transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same
emotions without their awareness’’ (Kramer et al. 2014: 1) and that this contagion
could take place on a massive scale via social networks. In short, it was found that if
people saw more positive posts in their news feed (i.e. the stories, pictures, and
videos they are shown, they would be more likely to post positive content
themselves, and if they received negative posts in their newsfeed, they would be
more likely to post negative stories. Furthermore, the terms and conditions of the
social network were viewed as providing consent—the users affected had no
knowledge that they were subject to this social science experiment.
Moreover, depending on how sophisticated emotional manipulation—via track-
ing of emotions, for instance—becomes in virtual worlds, certain programs could
possibly manipulate a user’s mood so that they behave in a certain way when
offline, which, again, could reduce autonomy.
The Big Brother Scenario
A third threat is that information obtained from VRSNs could be used by
governments to exert their power on users. Individuals might lose freedom as a
result of the convergence between SNs and VR in other ways too. Governments can
use the data they gather to influence individuals in selected ways, to promote certain
courses of action and dissuade people from others. In some ways this is an extension
of the issues associated with advertising and propaganda. If a person is constantly
tracked, their activities monitored, their purchases registered and their physical and
mental states frequently recorded, it is much easier to either manipulate them or to
reduce their liberty. Rebelling or acting contrary to group norms in such a scenario
would be practically far more difficult than it is currently.
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This does not require governments to be malevolent. Governments may, unless
they are careful, act on fluke results—fluke results that appear statistically
significant. This is a problem that can be exacerbated by large datasets. If
governments are using the data gathered from information and computer technol-
ogies (ICTs) to nudge their citizens in particular directions (c.f. the British
Government’s Behavioural Insights Team) that aims to encourage people to make
better decisions for themselves and to inform public policy using insights from
behavioural economics and psychology) but act on mistaken interpretations of the
data or falsely perceived patterns, they could limit liberty without strong
justification (Behavioural Insights Team 2014). Nudging in this fashion is not
necessarily malevolent, but democratic oversight will still be required.
The issue of privacy discussed is also a concern here. The more privacy is
eroded, the easier it will be for governments to curtail a person’s liberty—
governments will, if they choose, be better able to find out where a person is, what
they are interested in, and who they communicate with. The deluge of data about
individuals—whether it is the content integrally or data about the content
(metadata)—is potentially a Trojan horse for an Orwellian dystopia. This
knowledge will aid governments in curtailing liberty should they choose to do so.
People involved in causes disliked by governments will be easier to identify and
arrest: for instance, it was reported that the Ukrainian government of Victor
Yanukovych texted protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square in 2014 (Walker
2014). There is also an extreme scenario in which governments use the massive
amounts of data that will be available to them to pre-emptively arrest those that
assessments of the data (undertaken by individuals or by algorithms) deem likely to
commit criminal acts. The LAPD is already using ‘‘big data’’ techniques to predict
future crimes (Morozov 2013). The resemblance to Orwell’s thought police is
unsettling (Orwell 2013).
Self-Censorship
A fourth threat to liberty is the issue of self-censorship arising from the loss of
privacy (Light and McGrath 2010; Coll et al. 2011). If people constantly feel that
they are being watched, and begin to self-censor, they cannot be said to have full
liberty. The perception of constantly being under-surveillance alters the conditions
of liberty significantly—individuals would not risk saying certain things or acting in
specific ways. Jeremy Bentham’s prison—the Panopticon (Bentham 1995) in which
an unseen observer was able to see every prisoner—will find a digital component
when search, social, and entertainment converge. Within a VRSN, all actions will be
recorded, just as all our activity on social networks is recorded. Thus, within
VRSNs, users will be become accustomed to being under surveillance.
Threats to Authenticity
The threats to authenticity could come from increased peer pressure and expectation
of conformity to group norms, from immersive VR tempting people away from real
life, and from people’s habits being governed by computerised guides. Authenticity—
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the third key element of autonomy—might also be threatened by the convergence
between SNs and VRs. Authenticity can be thought of as the degree to which a person
acts according to their own will, and not simply because it is how ‘‘one’’ acts.
Social Conformity
The first threat is that of social pressure to conform to norms. Those who spend
significant amounts of time on SNs will influence each other’s norms and
expectations of behaviour. This is almost certainly an issue where sexual behaviour
is concerned with peer pressure regarding sexual behaviour being exacerbated via
SNs. It must also be noted that VRs and SNs might allow people with unusual tastes
to find others similar to them and that this might lead to greater tolerance for diverse
tastes and behaviours (Soderlund 2008; Eichenwald 2013). However, the culture of
certain online fora may also make it difficult for people to feel as if they are acting
as their authentic selves as due to peer pressure, people feel as if they must conform
(Vallor 2010). Even the settings in a VR or SN may solidify social norms—consider
the range of options available when setting up user profiles. By necessity, a person
must choose to represent their authentic being via a relatively narrow range of
categories. The companies hosting VRSNs will, assuming that large numbers of
people spend significant amounts of time in VRSNS, be capable of setting social
norms that conform with their interests. Furthermore, the awareness that every
action undertaken by an agent in an online world might be stored and recorded—
might also become a threat to autonomy as people will be more likely to internalise
group norms if they do not have a private space in which to develop their own
selves. The ubiquity of SNs has made surveillance and self-surveillance part of
everyday life. If VRSNs become extremely popular, it is likely that users will come
to accept surveillance as a new norm.
The Quantified-Life
A second threat is that the data gathered by VRSNs could be used to instruct users
how to behave in real-life. Consider loss of liberty might come from SNs alone—as
technologies record more information about people and SNs encourage people to
share that information—those that step outside the social norms risk ostracism and
social opprobrium. As more and more data is gathered about individuals, they will
be able to determine how much exercise they take each day, what they ate, how long
they spent doing certain things, and so on. This data will be available for people to
use in making decisions, guided by apps. There are obvious health benefits to this,
but there is a risk that people will begin to live according to the diktats of
technological guides (Sartor 2012). Central aspects of human life, from reading, to
cooking, to exercise can be quantified and recorded; and technologies designed to
instruct people in how to undertake these pursuits are being developed. Whilst such
technologies will have many benefits, e.g. informing people of how much exercise
they’ve taken, how many calories they’ve consumed, etc.; they might also be
considered to diminish authentic living if people begin to live lives governed by
technological diktats. There might exist greater pressure to conform to quantifiable
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norms and less openness to the arbitrary aspects of daily life. As more of these
experiences become subject to technological guides—apps, ‘‘smart’’ technologies,
and autonomous artificial avatars—individuals may have less exposure to ‘‘real’’
life, thus diminishing the authenticity of their experiences. The ‘‘gamification’’ of
normal activities could also be used to steer people in certain directions.
Gamification is the phenomenon of using game techniques—i.e. awarding points
and setting tasks—to encourage participants to achieve certain goals. In VRSNs it is
likely that artificial avatars (i.e. types of AI) will be prominent. These artificial
avatars could be extremely influential, acting as guardians policing all aspects of a
person’s life.
The Experience Machine
There is a third threat, namely that the convergence of VR and SNs further
complicates our metaphysical assessment about what is real and what is not.
Arguably, those living predominantly in a VRSN, would not be living in the real
world, hence not living authentic lives. On top of this, the ‘‘Experience Machine’’ of
Robert Nozick (1974: 42–45), is becoming more and more feasible: indeed an
immersive VRSN would be quite similar to Nozick’s experience machine (with the
caveat that the user might be aware that they are in a VRSN). In this scenario,
people have the choice to enter into the titular machine and live out their dreams in a
virtual environment, never aware while they are inside that the experiences are not
real. Nozick doubted that people would choose such an ‘‘inauthentic’’ life (Nozick
1974: 43). It is not impossible, however, that some people might find such a life
appealing. The question of whether experiences in an online world should be
considered real and authentic experiences is, however, an open one (Weckert 2002).
From a phenomenological perspective, the conscious events one has inside the
machine are as real as conscious events one has in the ‘‘real’’ world. If this is the
case, the life in the machine is just as real as life outside the machine.
Shallowness
There is a fourth threat, namely that people might become ‘‘shallower’’ as a result of
spending more time in VRSNs. Facebook is seen as enabling forms of commu-
nication that might result in ‘‘a bracketing of contextualizing and synthesizing
activities that are at the core of critical engagement with the world’’ (Dubrofsky
2011: 112). People might read less substantive works, engage in political debate in a
more vitriolic and less thoughtful way (or not at all), and otherwise lose their
capacity and interest in taking part in the life of the society around them. It is
possible that people might become so reliant on computers deciding things for them,
that their own capacity for thought and decision-making might be diminished.
VRSNs, being immersive, are likely to be extremely easy to spend time in; are
likely to present information in a very immediate way that does not require a person
to concentrate or spend time digesting. Indeed, it is plausible that people might find
their real lives drab and banal in comparison with the idealised world available to
them in a VRSN. This sort of society would resemble the world as described by
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Huxley in Brave New World (Huxley 2013). With little exposure to ‘‘higher’’
culture, to great works of art and literature; and without the skills (and maybe
attention spans) to enjoy them; people could be less able to engage with the world at
a deep level. People without exposure to great works and ideas might find that they
inner lives are shaped to a large degree by market-led cultural products rather than
works of depth and profundity. This issue is controversial however; as it assumes
that people with reduced access to, or interest in, great works of literature and art, in
some way lack authenticity. Whilst this may not, ultimately, be a threat to
authenticity, it might nonetheless be an unfortunate occurrence.
Tackling Strategies and Recommendations
Which are the best strategies available that will allow us to deal with the threats to
privacy and autonomy raised by the convergence between SNs and VR? At first
sight there seem to be three possible approaches: (1) a neo-Luddite approach, (2) a
technophilic approach, and (3) an ‘‘Aristotelian’’ approach.
1. The neo-Luddite approach would mean abandoning the new and innovative
VRNS technologies so as to preserve privacy and maintain autonomy to the
largest possible degree. If we try and live off the grid, this would avoid many of
the problems sketched above. This would necessitate people refusing to
participate in VRSNs at minimum. A properly neo-Luddite approach would
necessitate people leaving SNs and using ICT technologies less.
However, on closer analysis this strategy seems neither desirable nor practical. It is
clear that the digital revolution has brought with it many benefits, in terms of
entertainment, socialising, and the capacity to research. One problem with this
approach is, of course, that new ICTs, including both VR and SNs, are of immense
usefulness and value. People enjoy being able to access information and
entertainment quickly and easily: everyone from governments to researchers to
children are able to access more information than ever before for whatever ends
they deem worthwhile to pursue. There is no reason to suppose that VRSNs would
not achieve similar levels of popularity. There are also huge economic benefits
arising from these new technologies—the video game market is now larger than
Hollywood (Correa 2013). If our ability to communicate would be diminished, we
would lose access to huge amounts of knowledge, and we would have less
entertainment. Another problem with this approach is that it would require top-
down prohibition on the development of technologies already firmly embedded
within society. Thus the neo-Luddite approach, although attractive because it most
conclusively avoids issues with autonomy and privacy, is probably too impractical
to be a serious option and maybe even ethically undesirable.
2. The technophilic approach would do the opposite, meaning that it would
endorse adopting VRSNs irrespective of the costs to privacy or autonomy. It
would probably mean giving up on privacy to a large extent as well as accepting
the negative effects on autonomy, whilst profiting from all the advantages of the
new Internet technologies.
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This approach currently appears more prevalent—new technologies have often
been adopted prior to consideration of either autonomy or privacy. There
already exist prototypical VRSNs, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life,
although this has been losing members (Newitz 2014)—there is little reason to
think that new VRSNs will not emerge before societies have prepared
legislation for them. The privacy debate has begun in earnest, though the threats
to autonomy are less frequently discussed. These threats are subtler and less
immediate—they will emerge incrementally. Furthermore, the concept of
autonomy, although its value is quite concrete, is itself abstract; and it can be in
conflict with more concrete concepts such as pleasure, entertainment, and
efficiency. Living in a world without privacy and autonomy is not only
undesirable but causing this state is immoral. Autonomy and privacy are
extremely valuable as essential aspects of human life, so technologies that
undermine them need to be approached with great care.
3. The ‘‘Aristotelian’’ approach would be to find a middle ground—a golden
mean. This is referred to as the Aristotelian approach due to Aristotle’s
antipathy towards extremes and preference for a middle grounds. This would
address both concerns of the neo-Luddite as well as the technophilic approach
to avoid both the weaknesses and profit from the strongpoints of both strategies.
This is the option we prefer. Since, neither extreme option appears desirable, we
will adopt something of an Aristotelian strategy, and attempt to locate an
appropriate mean, i.e. outline an approach to these difficulties that is
proportional. Accordingly, the following recommendations are provided for
policy-makers, providers of services, and users.
Recommendations for Policy-Makers
Policy makers have a duty to protect their citizens. Privacy is practically important to
people and thus deserving of protection—it is, in addition, important for autonomy.
Moreover, liberalism as a political philosophy aims to protect the rights of the
autonomous individual. No liberal society can sanction the undermining of the
autonomous individual and remain a liberal society. Insofar as individual autonomy
and freedom are values that a society wishes to protect and uphold, it is incumbent on
governments to protect these values. VRSNs pose challenges most obviously to
privacy, but also, over a longer term, to autonomy. Thus it is imperative that policy-
makers prepare for their emergence. In order for this to happen, serious thought will
have to be given to emerging norms of relating to both the appropriateness of
requesting and storing the data and the rights to distribute the data that will emerge
from VRSNs—particularly data relating to people’s physical bodies.
Legislation
As such, strong legal limits need to be placed on the sorts of information companies
and government agencies can gather on individuals and on what they can do with
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that information. Laws and regulations are required in order to ensure that (a) the
powers of government agencies and private companies are strictly limited in relation
to accessing information, 4 (b) users of the technologies know when their privacy
might be threatened, i.e. it should be obvious when a camera or recording device is
activated, and (c) that companies provide opt-out policies for their users. Legislation
to ensure that VRSNs provided users with the ability to alter settings so as to
maintain associational privacy might be considered. Legislation might also be
required to prevent the direct manipulation of users of VRSNs and to regulate and
prevent the emergence of new addictions. Providing incentives to encourage the
creation of secure networks, online environments, and other digital technologies that
will protect people’s autonomy and privacy, or provide individuals with the means
to protect themselves is necessary. This could be achieved by making certain
breaches of privacy and threats to autonomy illegal or by providing funding for
companies, tech developers and research groups to develop technological means of
protecting privacy and autonomy. Previously, the development of to peer-to-peer
networks for content sharing (e.g. Napster) stimulated increased research into
digital watermarking (or Digital Rights Management) and audio/video fingerprint-
ing. The development of analogous technologies for avatars and immersive worlds
might go some way towards ensuring that only the genuine owner of an avatar can
use it.
The EU is considering a new legal framework for the protection of personal data.
This would include a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament regarding
the processing of personal data and the free movement of that data.
Contracts
Policymakers will need to examine the sorts of contracts being offered to users of
VRSNs technologies and analyse the fairness of these contracts, particularly in
relation to the protection of autonomy and privacy. This will be one of the keys in
setting the new and appropriate privacy norms. A choice offered to an addict or to
someone unaware of the deeper implications of this choice is not a fair choice.
Users, in their eagerness to use the service, will accept the terms and conditions,
particularly if they have already built use of the service into their daily lives. This
means they are unlikely to consider the terms of the contract, a condition
exacerbated by contracts often being written in technical language, meaning they
may not understand it. This is very illustrated by Facebook’s terms and conditions
were considered to be consent for the emotional-contagion research experiment
(mentioned above). Finally, users are not required to consider the wider societal
implications of the rights they give up when agreeing to these contracts. Therefore,
4 The EU has been active in these areas, e.g. a proposed directive of the European Parliament on the
protection of individuals regarding the processing of their data by authorities security or criminal
purposes (Commission 2012). See also the ‘‘right to be forgotten’’ ruling that makes internet search
engine operators responsible for the processing that they carry out of personal data which appear on web
pages published by third parties (Skouris et al. 2014).
22 F. O’Brolcháin et al.
123
the rights of companies providing these technologies to create contracts that lay
claim to such intimate information must be questioned.
Transparency
Similarly, users should be alerted to what sort of digital footprint they are leaving in
a VRSN and who will be able to see it. Ensuring that individuals can see that data
about them, and remove it, would also be desirable. This should also apply to data
about a person’s physical self. This will be of the utmost importance if realistic real-
time representations become the norm in VRSNs. Real-time representations of
people will gather a great deal of information about people—users should be
permitted to access this information. Many of these bodily actions might not be
intentional meaning that the storing of data about bodily activity therefore would be
storing information about a person, which they are neither conscious of nor
responsible for. Promoting open-source software, so that users can see whether there
exist backdoors for security agencies, could be considered, though this is unlikely to
benefit many (possibly most) users, who are unlikely to have the expertise to assess
the safety of the software they are using. Nonetheless, this would be of benefit to
those with coding literacy.
Research Funding
Research funding bodies need to be made aware of the threats to privacy and
autonomy and the ways in which VRSNs will exacerbate these threats. Funding
could be conditional upon addressing these threats in some ways. Governments and
funding bodies that value privacy and autonomy might aim to fund technological
developments that would protect people’s privacy and ensure that autonomy is not
threatened. Governments might also consider funding of alternatives to Google,
Facebook, and Yahoo—the providers of nominally free services that gather data on
individuals. Governments that value autonomy and privacy could, in theory, provide
alternatives that performed the same services, e.g. free email, but that did not gather
data on users and thus protected autonomy and privacy. If users trusted the
governments (which would ideally be subject to democratic oversight), they would
have an alternative to the products of large companies only beholden to
shareholders.
Education
Governments will need to ensure that their citizens are educated regarding the
threats posed by VRSNs. With education users will be able to make informed
choices regarding how they interact online and what sort of information they are
willing to reveal. Given that many people are likely to begin to make use of
VRSNs at a young age, lessons relating to the threats posed by VRSNs may need
to be incorporated into school systems. People should also be educated regarding
their legal rights
The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 23
123
Recommendations for Providers
Data Protection
Providers of VRSNs will need to ensure that people’s data is protected,
e.g. adequately encrypted at all times during storing and use. Providers will need
to demonstrate that they will protect their users from government prying. In order to
maintain the trust of their users, transparency ought to be the norm. Permitting users
to access the data held about them, and to delete this data should the user choose to
do so, would help users trust the providers. The provision of clear privacy policies,
store information securely, avoid releasing information about others, and minimise
the amount of personal information in the possession of corporation offering VR
and SNs. Beyond this, there may be economic opportunities for providers to create
means of protecting people’s privacy and securing their information (at least if
people begin to take their online privacy more seriously).
Transparency
Transparency in relation to the results provided by search features, and the design
choices made by VRSNs would help avoid the ‘‘gatekeeping problem’’. VRSNs
should include settings that allow users to determine who they wish to include and
exclude from certain social circles. Providers (including designers) of online
environments will also need to be aware of the potential to include unconscious
biases in their designs.
Avoiding Filter Bubbles and Cyberbalkanization
Providers of VRSNs should also aim to avoid filter bubbles and cyberbalkanization. To
this end, a move away from personalisation and back towards ‘‘objective’’ gatekeepers
would be desirable. The algorithms providing the ‘‘objective’’ guidance, be it search
results or an autonomous avatar, should be transparent and available for democratic
oversight. Unfortunately, while this would help avoid filter bubbles and cyberbalkan-
ization (to some degree) and thus protect autonomy, it runs up against the economic
interests of these companies. In specific instances of VRSNs, such ‘‘objectivity’’ may
not be possible.
Encryption Services
There may be economic opportunities for providers to create means of protecting
people’s privacy and securing their information, e.g. selling technological means to
allow people to encrypt data. End-to-end encryption that protects people’s
correspondence, cloud services that encrypt all data with individual keys, might
become very desirable for companies and citizens wishing to protect their privacy,
though will do nothing to avoid the use and selling of mass data arising from other
accessible sources. Moreover, there is a risk that with end-to-end encryption if a
24 F. O’Brolcháin et al.
123
user loses their key, they will lose the ability to access all their data. However, this
would not resolve the threats to autonomy arising from mass-data.
Recommendations for Users
Avoid the Technology
The convergence of SNs and VR will threaten privacy in society, with serious
implications for autonomy. The simplest and most efficient way to avoid these
problems is to avoid or minimise interaction with the technology. Users interested in
privacy could also use software that blocks cookies, trackers, and so on. Citizens
who value autonomy and privacy—both personally and for its social importance—
might avoid using services that will undermine these values. If autonomy is utterly
undermined, people will not be free to pursue any other goals they might normally
have valued. However, unless a majority of users avoid allowing their data to be
accessed, even those who do value their privacy will be at risk due to the losses of
associational privacy, and the gathering of big data. However, in our scenario, in
which VRSNs occupy a social space akin to Facebook or LinkedIn, avoidance will
not be an option for many.
Awareness
If avoidance is not a viable or desirable option, citizens need to be aware of the
potential to be manipulated and misinformed. Given that many of the changes to
privacy are unlikely to be halted, with consequent impacts on autonomy, people need
to be informed about what others can know about their future actions. People should
carefully analyse the contracts they are signing when joining VRSNs, examine
changes to terms and conditions, and take care in what personal information they
reveal. Citizens still have the power to sets new norms of appropriateness and
distribution of private information in VRSNs.
Consumer Action
If governments and corporations neglect their responsibilities for protecting privacy
and autonomy, this responsibility for protecting privacy then might fall on users,
those that wish to avoid invasions of physical privacy can resort to technological
solutions, both low and high tech. Low-tech solutions might mean physically
blocking cameras on phones or computers to ensure privacy; whilst high-tech
solutions would involve using hardware or software to block potential invasions of
physical privacy. Users might also consider paying for services currently provided
by large tech-companies, i.e. buying encrypted VRSNs similar to how they can
choose encrypted email services. For instance, mailbox.org, houses its servers in
Berlin and thus is subject to the strict German laws on data protection. In short,
citizens can reward companies and services that value the protection of privacy and
autonomy and punish those that do not.
The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 25
123
Conclusion
We have outlined the threats to privacy and autonomy arising from the convergence
of SNs and VR—focusing on informational privacy, physical privacy and
associational privacy and on the information, the freedom, and authenticity. These
were further subdivided into specific threats/problems arising from VRSNs. The
threats to privacy were as follows: the vulnerability of data problem and the misuse
of data problem (threats to informational privacy), the prevalence of recording
devices problem, the unintended revelation of informational problem, and the loss
of anonymity problem (threats to physical privacy), the socialising problem and the
global village problem (threats to associational privacy). The threats to autonomy
were as follows: the filter bubble problem, the cyberbalkanization problem, the
gatekeeping problem, and the distortion problem (threats to the knowledge
condition of autonomy), the addiction problem, the manipulation threat, the
government threat, and the self-censorship threat (threats to the freedom condition
of autonomy), and the social conformity threat, the quantified life problem, the
experience machine problem, and the shallow threat (threats to authenticity
condition of autonomy). The threats to privacy are well known and serious; whilst
those to autonomy are less-well known but equally as profound. Moreover, it is
suggested that the threats to privacy themselves may in fact constitute a threat to
autonomy, as people might become used to a life under surveillance.
This is not to say that the development of the technology needs necessarily to be
curtailed. Whilst these problems are serious, they might not be insurmountable. More
research is no doubt needed to determine the full extent of the ethical problems
associated with VRSNs and to develop appropriate responses to their emergence. We
have provided a preliminary sketch of the broad options available to society at large and
provided specific recommendations for policy-makers, providers, and users of these
converging technologies. It is in the long-term interests of all three groups of people to
protect people’s privacy and guarantee their autonomy. All three groups are likely to
need to work in harness to ensure that people retain control over the development of
technologies that ought to serve us rather than determine how we interact.
Acknowledgments The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programmes (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement No. ICT-2011-
7-287723 (REVERIE project).
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- The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks: Threats to Privacy and Autonomy
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Privacy
- Threats to Informational Privacy
- Increased Vulnerability of Data
- Misuse of Data
- Threats to Physical Privacy
- Prevalence of Recording Devices
- Unintended Revelation of Physical Information
- Loss of Anonymity
- Threats to Associational Privacy
- Online Socialising
- The Global Village
- Autonomy
- Threats to Knowledge
- The Filter Bubble
- Cyberbalkanization
- The Gatekeeping Problem
- Distortion of Knowledge
- Threats to Freedom
- Addiction
- Manipulation
- The Big Brother Scenario
- Threats to Authenticity
- Social Conformity
- The Quantified-Life
- The Experience Machine
- Shallowness
- Tackling Strategies and Recommendations
- Recommendations for Policy-Makers
- Legislation
- Contracts
- Transparency
- Research Funding
- Education
- Recommendations for Providers
- Data Protection
- Transparency
- Avoiding Filter Bubbles and Cyberbalkanization
- Encryption Services
- Recommendations for Users
- Avoid the Technology
- Awareness
- Consumer Action
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- References