IGF 2022 Town Hall #90 'The New (Meta)Governors': Are there Internet governance-related lessons?

The metaverse, as envisioned by prominent tech moguls in Silicon Valley, will only become a reality in the next decade or so. Nonetheless, some versions of the metaverse exist at least since the early 2000s and others have gained traction over the past couple of years, such as Roblox and Decentraland. Past, present or future, the metaverse is expected to spark a new digital revolution, forever changing the way we socialize and interact online. It presents itself, after all, as the convergence between digital and physical realities. That means that numerous challenges that we face today as a society will, consciously or unconsciously, be replicated (and at times even augmented) in the metaverse. In order to grapple with this new digital reality, ITS Rio will bring together specialists in Internet governance and regulation together with civil society and members of the private sector to discuss the metaverse in a multistakeholder fashion in this IGF 2022 Town Hall session. Our main objective is to from the standpoint of the Global South reflect on and map out the main lessons taught by Internet governance since the late 90s that can (or even should) be applied to the governance of the metaverse. To make the most of our collaborative experience, discussions will focus on three pillars: (1) The importance of diversity, inclusiveness and interoperability, (2) the role of multistakeholder participation to perfect governance models, especially to raise awareness to its intrinsic risks, and, finally, (3) the need for transnational fora to develop a truly global governance of digital arenas. We hope, by the end of the session, to map out principles for a multistakeholder, inclusive and interoperable governance framework for the metaverse.

Building on our experience hosting a hybrid IGF Town Hall session last year and given that this format is intended to be interactive and promote engagement around Internet governance topics and even controversial issues, we propose a two-part structure. First, speakers will share their hands-on experience with Internet governance and regulation and how that translates to the metaverse. This will set the stage for our second phase, when attendees will be asked to voice their thoughts and impressions on Internet governance-related lessons that can or should be applied to the metaverse, focusing on the three pillars described above. As comments emerge, we plan on conducting a number of polls to measure how participants react to specific proposals. Let's say, for instance, that "participant A" suggests that we should consider "principle X" as a guiding governing principle in the metaverse. Following their suggestion, the online moderator will open a poll so other participants can weigh in. To guarantee broad participation of the public, we will also use participatory tools such as Jamboard / Miro, where attendees will be able to input their thoughts and ideas and the moderator will compile them “on the go” during the session. The moderator will also lay out ground rules for interaction through video / voice / on-site in order to ensure equal time of participation as well as diversity of participants. The interaction between speakers will be previously agreed upon in a pre-session meeting organized by the proponents.