Episode 18 - The Metaverse and Virtual Reality


1	Episode 18 - The Metaverse and Virtual Reality - Transcript
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4	Louisa	Hello. This is the online resilience podcast with me Louisa Street and Professor Andy Phippen. We're discussing all aspects of young people's online lives and giving practical advice on how to support the young people you work with. Music is by Roo Pescod. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Online Resilience Podcast. Today we are talking about how to manage risk in VR and particularly around the metaverse.
5		And I'm going to start off by asking Andy, what is the metaverse?
6	Andy	Well, the metaverse is according Mark Zuckerberg, who is, the well was the head of Facebook. Then they rebranded as Meta. The metaverse is the way we're all going to be communicating in the future. I remain cynical I'm an old buggerand I've seen this stuff before, but apparently it's basically VR based interactions. So you get yourself a virtual reality headset you place it on your head, and then you are placed in environments where lots of other people with their virtual reality headsets are also there as well.
7		So, you know I saw someone who said they were attending a motor sales conference with a thousand people attending, and it was all in a virtual space and oh, what was that like then? And he went, Oh, it was crap, it's oh, you know, VR is a concept has been around for quite a long time. It's something where techy people get very excited about it because it's cool and it's virtual worlds and all that sort of thing.
8		But most people go, Well, if I put that headset on and then I what's going on around me, you know, there are so many TikTok videos of people sticking their heads through doors and things because they're doing VR gaming and they've forgotten where they are or they're ducking something and they end up punching a child. You know, it's if you isolate yourself from the real world, there are potentially, it potentially places you enter a vulnerable setting.
9		I also can remember it's probably more than ten years ago now. They used to be this thing called second life. Yeah. Which was another virtual world. And everyone was going to be every university in the country was going to set up Second Life Spaces, which was a virtual world where people used to go and interact and loads and loads of money was spent on it.
10		And now no one uses it because it's a bit now but, you know, it's, it's one of those things where the metaverse is going to get a big push because Facebook or Meta are behind it. And headsets are more readily available these days. As I said, I remain cynical. I don't I don't see many people in in the early days of social media, their Friends Reunited and stuff.
11		People go, Oh, it's great because I catch it with people from school. I wonder what they are up to or oh, I can, you know, I can use Skype and catch up with my nan in Australia or something. I'm not seeing many people going. I wish there was an entirely artificial virtual space where I can interact with my friends in a manner that I can't do with a group chat or a teams meeting or something like that.
12		It just seems like it feels like a step too far. But it is very much in the news at the moment. And you know immediately what happens, as you know as well as I do, a new piece of technology comes along and everyone goes, Oh, it's really dangerous to kids. And there was obviously that news story on the BBC a couple of weeks ago about a reporter using VR chat and being propositioned as a result of being in this virtual environment where I don't know whether you want to pick up on anything before we launch into that particular...
13	Louisa	Yeah, I mean, I guess I would just say, you know, I think I totally agree with what you're saying that I've I've played a bit with VR with a headset, and I have quite a small house. And so there isn't a huge gaming area in which to to play these games. So there have been some quite popular because you don't need a huge amount of space to move around in.
14		There's also increasingly lots of places where you can go and play games and have that bigger space, so a group of friends of mine, I think on a stag do went to one and they were all fighting zombies in VR and they were having a great time, really, really stressful. So they were screaming and shouting and swearing and they all took their headsets off and there was like a load of ten year olds sitting around in a circle with mouths wide open, like, Oh my God, what are the adults doing?
15		So yeah, I think that that thing of if you're not aware of what's going on in the world around you, you might make some faux pas like that. Yeah, you might bump into things. So just kind of I'm not sure that there will be a huge uptake of people wanting to go to work meetings in the metaverse. I think Bill Gates said that he reckoned in three years time, 90% of meetings would take place in the metaverse.
16		But I have I have had contact with a lot of professionals who still struggle to get into virtual meetings.
17	Andy	So we need to also bear in mind that Bill Gates once said that the Internet was a flash in the pan. It was going to go anyway. So let's not view these people as visionary, I think, you know, I can see its value in gaming and, you know, something like a flight simulator or something, it's a far more immersive experience.
18		But what you don't see is people going all I had really good fun in that game. What will be great is if I could do work meetings in this as well. You know, the example you gave about taking your headset off and the environment you're in is not the environment you expected. Well, the sample I give a lot is that's why VR porn will never take off, because you take your headset off and your nan's there, it's, it's a facile example, but it's it, it does isolate you from the outside world and yeah.
19		Teams works quite well for meetings. Zoom works quite well for meetings. No one is going I don't feel immersed in the meeting. You know I think you probably got over that one but you know we could be wrong. Yeah. It happens very rarely but it does happen sometimes.
20	Louisa	I yeah I think I mean it's interesting to kind of think about technology adoption that hasn't happened. And I think often it is because people say, you know what, what I've got is enough. And yeah, I'm, I'm a - what's the opposite of a fan? I this I intensely dislike going to see movies in 3D and having to put 3D glasses on because that's not in 3D.
21		Then you're having to augment my body in order for me to experience experiences in 3D. I'm happy to just watch it in 2D. You know that that's sufficient.
22	Andy	That's a really, really good example. In 3D a few years ago was going to be the next big thing and you had these pictures of family, etc. in living room with their glasses on and things looking at screens, and then you had high frame rate 3D and things as well, and people just went, No, it made me feel sick.
23		Yeah. And I think the, I think the point you make there is a really good one. If it requires you to augment yourself in order to be able to have that experience, then it's probably going to be a barrier for most people.
24	Louisa	Absolutely. When you can, when you can have these sort of video calls that they have in Star Trek where the person just appears in the room, then that's the sort of virtual reality that I'll get on board with. But up until then...
25	Andy	I think that it is interesting that technology innovation does feel like it's slowing a little bit, phones or generally. Just remember the adverts for the two the Samsung Galaxy, S20 two, Ultra, which are all over the radio at the moment. They don't talk about the phone at all. It's the camera. Because like what what more can you do with this communications device?
26		It's like is really good for calls and it's really good for messaging. And it's really, oh, we'll ever convince anyone to buy. Oh. Oh, but the cameras that you can take I think the night vision camera is, you know, you can take really good shots where there is the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it is it does feel, you know, we had to Google glasses a few years ago, which was a mugger's paradise.
27		And again, people didn't really use them because you were taking on too much information. Plus you had to wear this very expensive thing. And you were then aware that people used to nick them all the time. Yeah. So so yeah, we shall see. However, the BBC has raised a serious safeguarding concern with them, which is probably worth reflecting on, even though it really ground my gears when that story came out.
28	Louisa	And so do you want to just give us an overview of what the article was about and then about what the issues were?
29	Andy	Tell me to shut up when I'm going on too much on this one. So so the news story broke. The reporter created a fake personality where she said she was a 14 year old girl and she went into an app called VR Chat where people can create virtual rooms for people to meet in and she went into these rooms went, hello everyone, I'm a 14 year old girl and people were very suggestive and lewd and harassed to her and got too close to her and were offering asking she whether she wanted sex and things like that.
30		And some of the rooms were called a sex room or something like that. And the BBC were very pearl clutchy Let's think about this going, oh, this is, this is absolutely terrible. And this is what the metaverse is. Why isn't Mark Zuckerberg doing anything to stop this sort of thing from happening on a night. We've done a recent podcast recording of Harm Reduction and the first question that came to my mind in this, this terrible situation where you sat with the reporters out on the breakfast sofa talking about how harrowing this experience was.
31		where's the harm? You are being approached by some people where if you'd research the tools properly, you could have blocked them or muted them. And I'm old enough to remember almost ten years ago to the day, a very similar story came out about Habbo hotel, which was an old avatar based environment where young people would be able to create a little avatar and dress them up whatever they wanted to make them look a certain way.
32		And then they go into certain spaces and that interact with the people through... it was it was text based dialog in those days. And remember, being contacted by Channel four at the time because, well, what I thought about this was like, well, yes, if you do go into these environments and go Hello everyone, I'm 12 one 13 there is a chance you are going to be exposed to some sexual discourse.
33		However, that sexual discourse is likely to be from other 12 and 13 year olds it's not that these platforms are awash with groomers because you know, and why are we having this same conversation again? The thing that really worried me up about it was first of all, yes, some some pillocks have created a room called the Sex Room.
34		And if you go into the sex room, someone goes, Hey, do you want to fuck? Okay, well, you can say no. Oh, you can book them or you can report them and go here's this thing called the Sex Room, and they really think it's appropriate. But no one talked about that. They just went about how dangerous and nasty the metaverse was and how Mark Zuckerberg needs to be doing something about this.
35	Louisa	And which I think actually I'll just kind of come in there to say, like, I, I was really confused about this. And until someone actually told me categorically: Meta, do not own the metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg has renamed his company matter because he believes that the metaverse is going to be is like the metaverse could be the Internet essentially, and it would be like him renaming his company 'Inter'
36		So yeah, he doesn't own it. It's not up to him to fix the problems in it. But he is kind of heavily invested in the idea.
37	Andy	It's become a brand any VR based interactions basically. And, you know, there's platforms that you can do this stuff on. But yeah, you know, it's in the same way that if someone's son calls someone else's son a twat on Instagram, doesn't mean that. What did Nick Clegg do to prevent? Yeah. See, it just seems somewhat bizarre because, you know, if you go onto the VR chat website and you have a quick read around it, there are a number of tools available to you, like meeting, like blocking people reporting accounts and all of those things are possible.
38		Yeah. So standing in the middle going, this is outrageous. What's some, what's going to be done about this? This is terrible. How could this have been subject to me? It's very difficult for a platform to provide an environment where in real time they are listening to all the conversations that are happening and deciding which ones are appropriate, which ones are inappropriate, because that would be, you know, massively intrusive.
39		And, you know, AIs not very good at all. But reading live audio streams and doing it. So you've got the one approach, which is I talk about the response end user quite a lot. The end user goes, oh, there's this new environment. I wonder what the risks are and what the harms. I'll see what tools are available to mitigate those risks.
40		Or you've got the other response, which is I'm going to blindly go into this and someone's got to make sure I'm not harmed as a result.
41		I just think the fact that virtually the same thing happened with a different platform ten years ago and we're still having the same conversations, it really does grind my gears.
42	Louisa	And, and I think that's a really interesting kind of reflection of like, yes, the platform could potentially ban any rooms from being called Sex Room, but assuming that they don't because there might be adults who might want to consensually go into these spaces and do that, you're not going to be able to guarantee that no 14 year old is going to think, Oh, I wonder what's what sex room is?
43		And I know that the level of risk here is quite different. But I remember at 14 phoning up sex chat lines with my friends and thinking it was the most hilarious thing we'd ever done. So yeah, young people will potentially be curious about that sort of thing, but that I think is where the the sort of appropriate response to it comes from, which is that parental supervision.
44		So what sort of things can parents do to prevent the risk and the harm that the BBC article identified?
45	Andy	I'm still struggling to understand what the harm was. The BBC article, you know, they were all sat around on the breakfast sofa say, Oh, this is terrible. I will spend 15 minutes in the school playground because you're going to lose your mind because. Because if you fall in, that was terrible. And it's causing you to have an existential middle class crisis and go and spend some time in a secondary school and hang around in the corridors and listen to the conversations that are going on because they are far worse than what this report was talking about.
46		But that was not to say, Hey, parents, get your kids a headset and then just leave them to it. You know, a lot of these headsets a lot of these platforms provide you with the means to be able to cast whatever's on the headset onto the family TV or something. So why wouldn't you do that? If you if you got a young person for I can't see what you're saying, and that means being able to see it, but I won't.
47		And then you go, Oh, where are you going? There was one that called the sex room then. And don't just leave them alone to go with it. But but yeah, you know, in the same way that you learn to drive before you put your kids in the car and to school and you figure out how to make the call go faster and slow things, find out about what tools are offered and if there are any tools offered.
48		All the platforms that anyone can do anything here. You know, if you if you're looking at something like Parla, where we don't tell you what to say, then it's like, well, maybe you don't want to go. There might be a different platform instead. But but, you know, I just find the whole thing really just irritating.
49	Louisa	And I think, you know, it's I I'm a strong believer that we shouldn't just use technology as a stick to beat parents with and say you're not doing a good enough job if you're letting your kid play on the iPad. Obviously, there are some things which happen and are quite normal, like a five year old playing on an iPad for an hour, which we might say is not great but happens.
50		Let's not beat parents up about it. However, when it comes to things like VR, I would say it isn't a good babysitter. It might be an effective babysitter, but it's not a good babysitter. And so, you know, I think if if parents are kind of thinking, oh, well, you know, this keeps them entertained and it means that they're not just watching TikTok.
51		They're moving around and, you know, maybe getting some exercise in the process. Sure. That might seem great. But realistically, it is sending them out into the world unaccompanied. And if you wouldn't feel comfortable sending your child into a city and letting them wander around unsupervised, then, you know, the VR world is going to be much the same as we as we kind of work out the safety measures.
52		I think supervision is going to be the key one.
53	Andy	Yeah. Well, you know, supervision and what tools are available to manage the risks inside of it. And, you know, you don't have to be in an environment where you have to put up with everything, you know, right I'll block that person. they seem like an idiot I'll block them. Hopefully that won't happen so much in the meetings, but.
54	Louisa	My boss tells me to do stuff, so I blocked her.
55	Andy	I blocked them and now they can't get to the meeting. Yeah, but you know, this is, this is the thing. You know, if you look at where current policy is and things play well, platforms are providing tools. If you then don't use them and then go on the BBC breakfast, this is terrible. Children are at risk. That's a really problematic narrative because you're you're looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
56	Louisa	Yeah, definitely. And I think also, you know, we've all seen a lot of what, well I say we've all seen. I've definitely watched a lot of dystopian sci fi where people go and plug themselves into these machines and live in a world that's as realistic as has our world. And obviously, Red Dwarf was quite, quite famously that that storyline.
57		And that isn't how it is in VR. It's actually very realistic. And, you know, the the avatars that people have, then they don't look like real humans yet. And they might do in the future. But we're definitely not that indistinguishable from real life stage with it.
58	Andy	I think sci fi has got some responsibility here in that it portrays you know, everyone thinks A.I. is amazing and it's a thinking machine because it happens a lot in sci fi and things as well. And the virtual worlds and things are talked about a lot in sci fi but no the reality is that generally not well anywhere. You know, you take something like, oh, in five years time you're going to have autonomous cars.
59		No, we're not, because there are so many edge cases. It might be fine for us to be going down a motorway, but try driving around the lanes around my place with you know, a trees about the fall on you. You know, it's, it's, it's one of those things where technology is there's a lot of really cool things and things, but it's not the utopian vision that you see in all of these things.
60		And you have to reflect upon the fact that you still got those squishy humans in the middle of it all as well, which are generally the things that are causing the problems problems rather than the technology.
61	Louisa	Yeah, definitely. And so, I mean, we, we didn't include VR in the online resilience tool when we put it together. And, and although we're in the process of reviewing it, we probably won't be adding anything specific about VR because a lot of the behaviors that people engage in on VR are going to be the same as behaviors they would engage in just on regular Internet.
62	Andy	To be honest as well. Very few young people brought up and conversation. A few hardcore gamers took a lot of risk, but it just wasn't, you know, I'd say don't stick a VR headset on a young kid because you'll probably end up giving them neck ache.
63	Louisa	Yeah they're quite heavy.
64	Andy	Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's, it's I shall remain cynical about its adoption until I'm proved wrong, but I'm I don't think it or mainstream now.
65	Louisa	I mean, I, I'll be very interested to see whether it it kind of does take off whether, you know, for gaming or whether we see more of the places, you know, a few than say a few decades ago laser tag was everywhere and then, you know, very sadly not not so many years ago, all of the laser tag places shut down.
66		But now they were reopening as VR places.
67	Andy	I didn't know a lot of the laser tag places have shut down.
68	Louisa	I think a lot of them shut down in lockdown because.
69	Andy	What even the one in Redruth?
70	Louisa	I'll Google it shall I? There was one it Scorrier that was outdoors, which was really great.
71	Andy	Oh, yeah.
72	Louisa	Yeah. Doesn't look like this one in Redruth anymore.
73	Andy	Yeah. I guess COVID would have killed them all.
74	Louisa	Now that we've given you a little bit of local information. Yes. The you know, the technology that is needed to have VR in your house is quite expensive, is quite niche. I would say if you were a professional and you're working with a young person and they're telling you all about the great fun they've had in VR, it would literally, as with all sorts of other technology, it would literally just be a case of checking in with parents, making sure that they know what's going on, finding out what they're doing to kind of manage any potential risks and supervise what's going on.
75		But, you know, with the exception of perhaps older teenagers who might have their own jobs, I would guess that if kids have access to VR it's because mum or dad is really into it and has bought it and that could be.
76	Andy	It is interesting to reflect on the Oculus Rift, which is basically before the Oculus Rift headset, everyone to get motion sickness when playing ball because if you turned your head, it turned immediately and your brain doesn't look like that. And the Oculus Rift sorted that out. There you go a bit of Geek Knowledge there.
77	Louisa	Yeah, it didn't.
78	Andy	But it's been around for two or three years now and it's still not picking up. You know, the Oculus Rift was not top of the list presents for Christmas this year.
79	Louisa	No.
80	Andy	You know, like I said, I can I can see how it appeals to hardcore gamers and I can see some sort of party gaming environments where it might be appealing. But I just don't see you know, although I see the first thing in the morning I'll be putting my headset onto to deliver a lecture. You know, it's going to look at what's wrong with the recorded video file instead.
81	Louisa	Yeah. Yeah. Well, I won't I won't go into my issues. I follow a very amusing creator on TikTok who found Bill Gates' comment, so hilarious that she started making TikTok videos about what people in her organization contact the IT helpdesk about.
82	Andy	I can imagine, you know, if you're struggling with trying to get a Zoom meeting going. Yeah, trying to get 15 people together with headsets.
83	Louisa	Yeah.
84	Andy	Yeah.
85	Louisa	And, and, you know, that that's it. Like I can't see any organization that I've ever worked for being willing to shell out for an Oculus Rift for every single employee. And anyway, so yeah, we're probably not about to see a huge revolution in how we do it. And aside from anything else, the risk is going to be mitigated by the functions like blocking and reporting.
86		So making sure that people are aware of how to do that and you know, your role as a professional may literally be just to check that the parents know how to do that. And if they don't, it might be a case of saying they really need to find out how to do that and be ready to do that with their young people if they should come across anything upsetting.
87	Andy	I think the main thing that that BBC article did for me was remind me that this is still going on ten years later. And the first response is always this is terrible, this is terrible. What are we going to do about that? Rather than going actually, we could have mitigated all those risks ourselves. And we're struggling to articulate the damage because actually it's just someone in a VR room when someone goes, Do you want to fuck?
88		It's not, you know, it's it's unpleasant, but it's not a.
89	Louisa	Yeah, and and I don't want to simply retell another podcast. I was listening to the other day, but I'm the head and founder of the Drug Policy Alliance was saying, you know, quite often the risk to children is used as a reason to make something illegal or to say we shouldn't do something. And the risk to children might actually be quite minimal where the benefit to adults could actually be quite significant.
90		So we should consider whether children are actually likely to be using this, whether they're likely to be using it unsupervised. And in those cases, think about how we support the families.
91	Andy	No big a guarantee of kids using something again. Well, a load of old men in suits love this technology. So why don't you use yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I do I do think it's some yeah, it was just a it was a news article that irritated me rather than raised any genuine concerns, you know, saying about say, 'kids are at risk' to make it illegal.
92		We have within the culture of this thing called the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, says any new technology coming out say it's used by terrorists, drug dealers, organized crime pedophiles, as a way to win over public opinion that it's bad.
93	Louisa	Absolutely. And then you can see Andy's full response to that article on the conversation and I will pop a link to it in the show notes. Is there anything else that you want to add to anyone.
94	Andy	I don't think so, no.
95	Louisa	Brilliant well, we will end of there and we will be back with another podcast soon. That's it for another episode of the Online Resilience Podcast. If you liked it, please tell someone you know who might also enjoy it. You can share on Facebook, Twitter, or even just pop a link in an email.