Metaverses for adults in Horizon Worlds from Meta
05/08/2022Meta has announced that it will offer special spaces in Horizon Worlds for user up of 18 years old. To do this, the company has already begun to contact users who are creating their digital worlds on this platform, who have been asked to classify their content. Otherwise, it will be Meta who does it and regardless of its character, it will classify it as restricted adult content. All universes containing nudity, alcohol, soft drugs, blood, gambling promotion, etc. they will need to be rated 18+ through the Horizon Worlds settings section, "Build Mode" of the "World" tab. Meta has also announced that regardless of rating, worlds that contain explicit sexually content or promote violence or crime will be banned. Content depicting intense real-life violence or attempting to sell, buy, or trade regulated goods such as weapons, tobacco, or alcohol will be also prohibited.
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Common front against advertising based on user surveillance
19/01/2022Facing the forthcoming vote on the EU Digital Services Law, a group of 17 civil organizations and 14 digital companies have demanded the European Parliament prohibit invasive and hostile practices with privacy that take place in digital advertising such as user tracking. According to his complaint, companies that specialize in monitoring the behavior of Internet users, integrate data from all websites, something that entails a violation of EU data protection regulations. In addition, they remember, these advertising practices make use of "inferred data that reveals vulnerabilities of the users" and, in general, they insist, this data are obtained without the knowledge of the user and beyond their control. The signatories, including the privacy-focused search engine companies DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, denounce also that these types of practices only favor a few “dominant players” based in the United States, and they specifically cite, among others, Facebook and Google. As an alternative to these advertising systems, they propose to follow initiatives such the Dutch television channels NPO and Norwegian TV2, which opted for contextual advertising and increased their income from ads.
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