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: [email protected]

T. Jacquemard

e-mail: [email protected]

P. Novitzky

e-mail: [email protected]

B. Gordijn

e-mail: [email protected]

D. Monaghan � N. O’Connor Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Dublin, Ireland

e-mail: [email protected]

N. O’Connor

e-mail: [email protected]

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.

123

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

123

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

6 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

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

123

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.

8 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

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

123

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.

10 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

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

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 11

123

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

12 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

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

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 13

123

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

14 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

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

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 15

123

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.

16 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

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—

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 17

123

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

18 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

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

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 19

123

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.

20 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

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

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 21

123

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).

References

Allen, A. (2011). Privacy and medicine. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

(Spring 2011). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/privacy-medicine/

Andreassen, C. S., Torsheim, T., Brunborg, G. S., & Pallesen, S. (2012). Development of a Facebook

addiction scale. Psychological Reports, 110(2), 501–517. doi:10.2466/02.09.18.PR0.110.2.501-517.

arXiv, E. T. F. (2012). Evidence emerges that Iran is building its own hidden internet. Retrieved March

31, 2014 from http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429447/evidence-emerges-that-iran-is-

building-its-own-hidden-internet/

Barrett, D. (2013). One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey. Retrieved

from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-

people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html

26 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

BBC News. (2012). Facebook party invite sparks riot in Haren, Netherlands. Retrieved March 31, 2014

from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19684708

BBC News. (2014a). Facebook attacked for emotion study. Retrieved June 30, 2014 from http://www.

bbc.com/news/technology-28051930

BBC News. (2014b). Turkey ‘‘blocks YouTube access.’’ Retrieved March 27, 2014 from http://www.bbc.

com/news/world-europe-26773702

Behavioural Insights Team. (2014). Retrieved February 26, 2014 from https://www.gov.uk/government/

organisations/behavioural-insights-team

Bentham, J. (1995). The panopticon writings. London: Verso.

Birky, I., & Collins, W. (2011). Facebook: Maintaining ethical practice in the cyberspace age. Journal of

College Student Psychotherapy, 25(3), 193–203.

Brey, P. (1999). The ethics of representation and action in virtual reality. Ethics and Information

Technology, 1(1), 5–14. doi:10.1023/A:1010069907461

Brey, P., & Søraker, J. H. (2009). Philosophy of computing and information technology. In M. Anthonie

(Ed.), Philosophy of technology and engineering sciences (pp. 1341–1407). Amsterdam: North-

Holland. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444516671500513

Buss, S. (2008). Personal Autonomy. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall

2008). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/personal-autonomy/

Cadwalladr, C. (2014). Charlotte Laws’ fight with Hunter Moore, the internet’s revenge porn king. The

Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/mar/30/charlotte-laws-fight-

with-internet-revenge-porn-king

Cameron, D. (2014). CeBIT 2014: David Cameron’s speech—Speeches—GOV.UK. Retrieved April 10,

2014 from https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/cebit-2014-david-camerons-speech

Carr, N. (2010). The shallows: How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember.

London: Atlantic Books.

Cellan-Jones, R. (2014). Facebook buys the future. Retrieved March 27, 2014 from http://www.bbc.com/

news/technology-26746694

Coll, S., Glassey, O., & Balleys, C. (2011). Building social networks ethics beyond ‘‘privacy’’: A

sociological perspective. International Review of Information Ethics, 16, 47–53.

Commission, E. (2012). Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the council on the

protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of

such data (general data protection regulation). European Commission. Retrieved from http://eur-

lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2012:0011:FIN:EN:PDF

Correa, C. (2013). Why video games are more addictive and bigger than movies will ever be. Retrieved

Feb 23, 2014 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/christophercorrea/2013/04/11/why-video-games-

are-addictive-and-bigger-than-movies-will-ever-be/

Cranford, M. (1996). The social trajectory of virtual reality: Substantive ethics in a world without

constraints. Technology in Society, 18(1), 79–92. doi:10.1016/0160-791X(95)00023-K

Dubrofsky, R. E. (2011). Surveillance on reality television and Facebook: From authenticity to flowing

data. Communication Theory, 21(2), 111–129.

Duhigg, C. (2012). How companies learn your secrets. The New York Times. New York. Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Eichenwald, K. (2013). Facebook leans. In Vanity fair (May). Retrieved from http://www.vanityfair.com/

business/2013/05/facebook-future-mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg

Expected Results-REVERIE. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.reveriefp7.eu/project/expected-results/

Facebook Newsroom. (2014). Company Info|Facebook newsroom. Retrieved from http://newsroom.fb.

com/company-info/

Ford, P. (2001). A further analysis of the ethics of representation in virtual reality: Multi-user

environments. Ethics and Information Technology, 3(2), 113–121.

Gill, S. (2008). Socio-ethics of interaction with intelligent interactive technologies. Ai & Society, 22(3),

283–300. doi:10.1007/s00146-007-0145-y

Gooskens, G. (2010). The ethical status of virtual actions. Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European

Ethics Network, 17(1), 59–78.

Gotterbarn, D. (2010). The ethics of video games: Mayhem, death, and the training of the next generation.

Information Systems Frontiers, 12(4), 369–377. doi:10.1007/s10796-009-9204-x

Griffin, J. (2008). On human rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Huxley, A. (2013). Brave new world. London: Everymans.

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 27

123

Internet of Things: The Future of Business Technology|Microsoft. (2014). Retrieved July 23, 2014 from

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/internet-of-things.aspx

Johansson, M. (2009). Why unreal punishments in response to unreal crimes might actually be a really

good thing. Ethics and Information Technology, 11(1), 71–79.

Karmali, L. (2013). World of Warcraft down to 7.7 million subscribers. Retrieved April 22, 2014 from

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2013/07/26/world-of-warcraft-down-to-77-million-subscribers

Kaupins, G., & Park, S. (2011). Legal and ethical implications of corporate social networks. Employee

Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 23, 83–99.

Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., & Graepel, T. (2013). Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital

records of human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(15), 5802–5805.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1218772110

Kramer, A. D. I., Guillory, J. E., & Hancock, J. T. (2014). Experimental evidence of massivescale

emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

111(24), 201412469. doi:10.1073/pnas.1320040111

Light, B., & McGrath, K. (2010). Ethics and social networking sites: A disclosive analysis of Facebook.

Information Technology & People, 23(4), 290–311. doi:10.1108/09593841011087770

Locke, J. (1689). The second treatise of government (3rd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Lory, B. (2010). Using Facebook to assess candidates during the recruiting process: Ethical implications.

NACE Knowledge Centre.

Mill, J. S. (1859). On liberty. London: Penguin.

Morozov, E. (2013). How Facebook could get you arrested. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.

guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/09/facebook-arrested-evgeny-morozov-extract

Muñoz, Y. J., & El-Hani, C. N. (2012). The student with a thousand faces: From the ethics in video games

to becoming a citizen. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7(4), 909–943. doi:10.1007/s11422-

012-9444-9

Newitz, A. (2014). Is second life about to become a ghost world? Retrieved June 26, 2014 from http://io9.

com/is-second-life-about-to-become-a-ghost-world-1594324051

Nissenbaum, H. (1998). Protecting privacy in an information age: The problem of privacy in public. Law

and Philosophy, 17(5–6), 559–596.

Nozick, Robert. (1974). Anarchy, state and utopia. Oxford: Blackwell.

O’Dwyer, D. (2014). Why Facebook founder had to buy WhatsApp. Retrieved July 23, 2014 from http://

www.irishtimes.com/news/technology/gadgets/why-facebook-founder-had-to-buy-whatsapp-1.

1700459

Objectives-REVERIE. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.reveriefp7.eu/project/objectives/

Orwell, G. (2013). 1984. London: Penguin.

Papagiannidis, S., Bourlakis, M., & Li, F. (2008). Making real money in virtual worlds: MMORPGs and

emerging business opportunities, challenges and ethical implications in metaverses. Technological

Forecasting and Social Change, 75(5), 610–622. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2007.04.007

Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the internet is hiding from you. London: Penguin.

Parsell, M. (2008). Pernicious virtual communities: Identity, polarisation and the Web 2.0. Ethics and

Information Technology, 10(1), 41–56. doi:10.1007/s10676-008-9153-y

Sartor, G. (2012). Human rights in the information society: Utopias, dystopias and human values. In C.

Corradetti (Ed.), Philosophical dimensions of human rights (pp. 293–307). Netherlands: Springer.

Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/q731672287x354m2/abstract/

Skouris, V., Lenaerts, K., Ilešič, M., Bay Larsen, L., von Danwitz, T., & Safjan, M. (2014). Case C-131/

12. Google Spain SL and Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) and

Mario Costeja González (Grand Chamber May 13, 2014).

Soderlund, G. (2008). Journalist or panderer? Framing underage webcam sites. Sexuality Research and

Social Policy, 5(4), 62–72. doi:10.1525/srsp.2008.5.4.62

Talbot, D. (2013). Moto X and other smartphones are set to listen to their environments all the time.

Retrieved May 3, 2014 from http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517801/the-era-of-

ubiquitous-listening-dawns/

Timberg, C., & Nakashima, E. (2013). FBI’s search for ‘‘Mo,’’ suspect in bomb threats, highlights use of

malware for surveillance. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/

business/technology/fbis-search-for-mo-suspect-in-bomb-threats-highlights-use-of-malware-for-

surveillance/2013/12/06/352ba174-5397-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story_2.html

28 F. O’Brolcháin et al.

123

Tomkins, M. (2014). New face recognition algorithm knows you better than you know yourself. Retrieved

from http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2014/04/23/new-face-recognition-algorithm-knows-

you-better-than-you-know-yourself

Vallor, S. (2010). Social networking technology and the virtues. Ethics and Information Technology,

12(2), 157–170. doi:10.1007/s10676-009-9202-1

Wakefield, J. (2014). Heartbleed: Do you need to worry? Retrieved April 11, 2014 from http://www.bbc.

com/news/technology-26969629

Walker, S. (2014). Text messages warn Ukraine protesters they are ‘‘participants in mass riot.’’ The

Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/21/ukraine-unrest-text-

messages-protesters-mass-riot

Weckert, J. (2002). Lilliputian computer ethics. Metaphilosophy, 33(3), 366–375.

Zuckerberg, M. (2014). I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in

VR technology. Facebook.com. Retrieved March 27, 2014 from https://www.facebook.com/zuck/

posts/10101319050523971

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks 29

123

Copyright of Science & Engineering Ethics is the property of Springer Science & Business Media B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.