Safety experts query allowing minors into Horizon Worlds

Executive summary

Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:

• Headline: 70 children’s safety groups sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, asking for Meta to cancel plans to allow minors into Horizon Worlds (analysis below).

• Stat of the week: Global market size for the metaverse in healthcare is estimated to be worth $72bn by 2030 (this encompasses immersive technologies, like VR for surgeons).

• Festival: Submissions are now open for LFF Expanded, an international arts festival.

• Funding: StoryFutures is looking for projects to turn into an 8-10 minute experience for VR.

• Other stories: Apple switched assembly partners from Pegatron to Luxshare, Pico unveiled the Pico G3, and AWE announced that its events would be carbon-neutral (more below).

Analysis

70 children’s safety groups sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, asking for Meta to cancel plans to allow minors into Horizon Worlds.

• “We urge you to protect young people and assist parents by ceasing plans to open Horizon Worlds to users under 18 until after Meta has procured independent research which reliably details potential impacts on adolescents’ wellbeing,” the letter said.

• Are minors entering Horizon Worlds? Researchers found 19 instances after visiting it a hundred times, despite the age limit of 18.

• Does the letter hold water? I think so. Meta has an important obligation to ensure their platforms are safe for underage users, and using age limits is important for gating people. If Meta continues its plans to allow more people into Horizon Worlds, these restrictions need to be as tough as, say, Youtube Kids or its equivalent. Plus, there isn’t enough research on how VR impacts kids - there’s some, but not enough to show a wider impact.

• On the other hand, I can also see children circumvent restrictions when they log into new services. I’m not the only child who quickly became a 97-year-old adult when visiting sites like Miniclip. If these restrictions are going to work, it needs stronger tools than simple age-gating.

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Other notable stories

Got any stories? Let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.

• Apple switched assembly partners for its headset, from Pegatron to Luxshare. 

• ARwall introduced ARFX StudioBox, a solution designed to help professional filmmakers get started in virtual production.

• ATLAS: EARTH announced a partnership with two restaurant chains, Zoup! and Barberitos.

• AWE announced that its events would be carbon-neutral.

• France published a consultation exploring the regulation of the metaverse.

• Pico unveiled the Pico G3, an enterprise VR headset.

• Porsche is working with Microsoft to use HoloLens 2 for corporate training.

• Together Labs announced its collaboration with Pussy Riot creator Nadya Tolokonnikova.

• The Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology in the UK will lead the country's metaverse and web3 strategy.

• Vrgineers and ART worked together to make an immersive tracking system for pilot training.

Help corner

Need some assistance from other readers? Let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.

• Headonists, a UK-based XR community, is looking to compile XR-related events within a single calendar. The calendar itself can be found here, and the submission is here.

• Lowpass is a new newsletter run by Janko Roettgers, who wrote a multitude of XR-related exclusives at Protocol. Check it out here.

• Bristol Games Hub is hosting an XR event in Bristol on 27 April. More details.