Making a Metaverse That Matters

Appendix A: Rules for Avatar Radicals and Reformers

The Metaverse is made by imperfect people with conflicting interests, but more than anything, it exists because user communities make it real. Rarely, however, do these communities act in solidarity to improve their own virtual world for the good of all.

Angry YouTubers often post rants complaining about a platform's new policy change or feature update, but they are usually ignored, or not even noticed amid the Internet's constant churn.

Small disorganized groups of users sometimes lash out at the platform's corporate owner in a way that doesn't help their cause but does threaten the overall health of their own community. We saw that with the Steam review bombing of VRChat featured in Chapter 7. While the startup's cofounders moved quickly to address the protest's legitimate concerns, the protesters’ use of unfairly poor reviews hurt VRChat's growth and reputation on the world's largest game/VR distribution platform.

The need for focused activism by metaverse communities on behalf of metaverse communities has never been greater. User creators devote much of their lives to laboring on user-generated content that disproportionately profits the company owner; everyday users are often preyed upon by trolls and predators and don't feel sufficiently protected by the company. (Just to name a few of many concerns.) Government bodies or class action lawsuits may eventually step in to force change, but not usually before tremendous ...