The upper house of Parliament decided on Wednesday to include the metaverse in a U.K. bill on online safety that includes safeguards against minors being harmed online.The March 17-introduced Online Safety Bill is very close to being approved and becoming law.The superset of virtual worlds known as the metaverse has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Social media giant Facebook even changed its name to Meta to demonstrate its dedication to the growth of the industry.Some officials have claimed that the safety of children is also at stake from these virtual worlds.
“These virtual reality experiences are very immersive and the degree of harm that can be created and indeed the degree of enjoyment can be that much more intense,” Melanie Dawes, CEO at Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulator said during an event in October.
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate discovered that children are frequently harassed by photographing and examining 100 visits to the most well-liked worlds in Meta’s flagship platform, Horizon Worlds.Lawmakers in the UK’s House of Lords stated that it was important to make sure that the Online Safety Bill applied to the metaverse given the potential harm children could encounter in these virtual reality activities.
“The metaverse is in scope of the bill, which, as noble Lords know, has been designed to be technology neutral and future-proofed to ensure that it keeps pace with emerging technologies,” Lord Stephen Parkinson who is also a minister at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, said at a Wednesday debate on the bill. The department was also responsible for ushering in the Online Safety Bill.
According to Parkinson, the law covers “anything communicated by means of an internet service,” such as user-created objects or avatars as well as communications between users in the metaverse.