Facebook Hoarizon is creating an interesting social VR offering with powerful building tools that allow players to create and share their own worlds. But just as powerful are tools that the company baked into Hoarizon for monitoring users and maintaining the appropriate version of Facebook.
While Facebook wants users to think that hangs in there Hoarizon is no less private than being in a public space, there are several enormous differences.
First, all users in Hoarizon register each other involuntarily. The last few minutes of everything users see and hear is recorded on a rolling basis. Facebook says that this recording is stored on the headset itself, unless one user reports another, at which point the recording can be sent to Facebook to check for violations of rules. The company says the recording will be deleted once the report is closed.
Second, anyone you interact with can invite an invisible Facebook observer to follow you and your conversations in real time to make sure you do not break any rules. The company says this can happen when one user reports another or when other “signals” are detected, such as multiple players blocking or muting each other more quickly. Users are not notified when they are reviewed.
And third, everything you say, do and build Hoarizon is subject to Facebook’s Community Standards. That while you’re in a public space you’re free to talk about anything you want, in Hoarizon there are many perfectly legal topics that you can not discuss without fear of criminal action against your account.
Facebook explained these observation and moderation tools in a “Horizon Safety Video” and explained them in further detail in an interview with Road to VR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijmnk5L767U
Transparency and authenticity
Facebook keeps throwing the word “transparent” around him regarding his position on privacy and user tracking, and they seem to have the word true to heart … after all, what’s more “transparent” than an invisible stranger who whether or not to look at you at all times?
Facebook also likes to use the word “authentic”. And what can make a community more authentic then ensure that all users constantly record each other and are just a click away from submitting behaviors that they do not like to a corporation for analysis?
“Unsettling” is the word that comes to mind when I think of these features. Yes, Hoarizon should be a place where people can come and have fun without fear of being trolled or exposed to bad behavior, but is the introduction of another fear – potentially being controlled at any moment without your knowledge – really the best answer? I do not think so.
Company-approved behavior
The thing about real public spaces is that what is happening in them – beyond what is illegal – is going on folk the space inhabited. In Hoarizon it feels much more to the space makes the rules, not the folk. And in this case, the space is Facebook.
Facebook’s approach to privacy in Hoarizon is not much different than when the company tried to police real public spaces by using the Facebook app on everyone’s phone to constantly record their conversations, just as there is a chance that someone will follow the approved social guidelines of the corporation breaks.
Before I thought much about it, when it came to privacy, I was roughly in the camp of ‘what should you worry about if you have nothing to hide?’. But at one point, someone said something very simple that made me understand the naivety of that position: “If you knew you were viewed every time you searched for something on Google, would it change what you were looking for?”
My answer is a definite one Yes, and I think any honest person would agree. Even if I’m not looking for something illegal, just the action of be guarded would change my behavior. And this is exactly the problem with Horizon’s privacy model … even if no one breaks the rules, change is seen – as the ability to be judged unconsciously – behavior.
Do not cut – this is the beginning of the Metaverse
And you could still say “so what, Hoarizon is just a game. But the most important thing to understand all this is that Hoarizon is the proto-metaverse of Facebook. The company has been fairly public about its goal of bringing one billion people into VR; the privacy standards set by Facebook now will have a profound impact on the way these billion people deal with each other in the future. Should Facebook write guidelines for how they communicate and decide how private their conversations should be?
