b'Member News July 2023 19Solving societal challengesCan Oversight of OnlineAdd in body suits and gloves loaded with haptic technology, which simulates feelings of touch and motion, and it becomes possible to create an Environments Turn intoever more real virtual world. Because this technology, by its nature, excludes non-users monitoring becomes very Overlooked Harms? difficult if not impossible.This is of particular risk to children. The IETs report Safeguarding the Metaverse found children as young as six with access to the metaverse, some without supervision. Similarly, several offences have already been recorded by a number of British police services. The IETs spokesperson on the subject and co-author of its Safeguarding the Metaverse report, Catherine Allen, has been quoted by The Times: she had witnessed child sexual abuse simulations in the metaverse. She said that VR could be amazing with so much opportunity, but added: The UK Governments proposed Online SafetyI dont find going in these Bill contains a potentially serious hole spaces particularly enjoyable, because I ended up being sort The UK Governments Online SafetyThe concern of many withinof mother hen/police enforcer. Bill is currently at the committee stageParliament and elsewhere is that theI find theres just so much that of its journey through the House ofBill has a glaring loophole. It doesnt Lords. Sponsored by Michelle Donelanapply to immersive environments.goes on that is of concern, MP in the House of Commons and LordWhat do we mean by immersiveits actually quite hard to just Parkinson of Whitley Bay in the House ofenvironments? Such an environmentrelax in these spaces.Lords, the Bill requires online platformswould be a 3D visual world entirely that publish user generated content, togenerated within a computer, such as protect children from any content andVirtual Reality (VR) and Augmented behaviour that causes harm.Reality (AR). After listening to the IETs feedback It will oblige companies to publish riskVR is at the centre of plans byon the issue, a number of lords tabled assessments of their sites, along withFacebooks parent company, Meta,an amendment, which calls on the how they intend to deal with theseto create what some suggest couldSecretary of State to periodically review harms, probably in the Terms of Service. be the next iteration of the internet,how the Bills provisions can apply the Metaverse. This is a single, sharedto immersive environments i.e., the When describing user generatedspace where users are immersed in aMetaverse.content we usually refer to platforms3D world, in which they can interactLike so much else with the internet, the such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.with other users. It is described asMetaverse has enormous potential to Whilst these sites are currently openimmersive because it requires 3Dimprove many areas of life, education, to anybody, whether harmful or not, itgoggles to interact with a virtualcommunication, entertainment, business is possible for others to monitor themenvironment, doing away withand so on but it also has the potentialsimply because they appear on a screen.monitors and keyboards.to be used to cause great harm.'