The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> JANAINA COSTA: Good morning, good afternoon. It is morning, night, afternoon?
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Yeah, it is good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night or whatever all over the globe. That's one of the interesting things about talking at the IGF. So meanwhile we wait for our panelist Claudia Del Pozo we can slowly start. And hopefully she will be joining quickly.
>> CLAUDIA DEL POZO: Hi.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Thank you very much. I was looking at my e‑mail because I was looking for you. Thank you very much for being here today. I'm Christian Perrone. I'm the head of rights and technology at ITS Rio, which is a non‑profit research institute in Brazil. And we are very much interested in discussing the intersection between technology, society and to a certain extent regulation as well. And joining me today are some of the best and brightest minds in the field discussing, you know, the future of the governance of the Metaverse.
So with me from Latin America as well is Carolina Aguerre, director of the CETyS. We have Monica Steffen Guise, director of public policy at Meta, and Claudia Del Pozo, Executive Director from Eon Resilience Lab. It is very much focused on Latin America and how we as part of the Global South and majority of the world, depending on your point of your view, can start thinking about from the past, can bring from the discussion to the discussion on Metaverse. That's our town hall discussion today is called the New Metaverse, this should be applied to the Metaverse today and in the nearby future.
So what we are going to do is a round of questions, three rounds of questions for our three discussants today. And then we are having a few more minutes in the end for questions from the audience.
So the first question is a matter of, you know, discussing how diversity, inclusion and interoperability should be seen in terms of developers. We have seen in the '90s when Internet Governance was starting that one of the main talents of Internet Governance was inclusion. And it was a done deal. That it should be, you know ‑‑ the system should be interoperable. But as we have seen this is not exactly what has materialized. So how we should think about that in terms of understanding what has happened, and why it hasn't materialized as inclusive and interoperable and as diverse as we have expected.
And what should be the other values that we should add to this growing concern of diversity and interoperability and inclusion.
I would like to start asking Carolina Aguerre, what do you think should be the lessons we have seen about diversity and inclusion from the '90s and Internet Governance that we should bring to the table to learn and move forward from the standpoint of your legal and very ‑‑ your very interesting research?
>> CAROLINA AGUERRE: Thank you, Christian. Yes, I must say I'm not a legal scholar. So but I do ‑‑ I do share some of the concerns, the normative concerns that legal scholars bring in to the debate about Internet Governance. I think that one thing that we do want to capture from the Internet Governance debates in to the de ‑‑ in the years to come is the ‑‑ the generativity around this technology. It is because the technology was designed as open and with unforeseeable users that we are ‑‑ that I think that is kind of capturing a bit the spirit of the ‑‑ of the Metaverse these days. And though there is this ‑‑ I mean we have been revisiting some of the lessons and the hard better ones around Internet Governance and what has worked and whatnot. We have to acknowledge that we are at a crucial turning point. And we have managed spectacularly to address inclusivity and embark, I mean more ‑‑ I mean nearly half of the world is now online, et cetera, but what ‑‑ when we talk about inclusion and we conceptualize things around the digital divide with the Internet and more so with the Metaverse in the future we are thinking of more and more people with a different set of skills and different sets of needs and use case scenarios that are very different from the very narrow approach of how the Internet was originally designed.
And even I mean in the history of the Internet, there is this kind of wow, the Internet was used a lot and it had this value, immense value and e‑mail, for example, as one of the kind of the things that ‑‑ in a way distracted some of the early engineers with these uses. They thought it would be about data sharing and processing. And so it is unforeseeable sometimes users that make this technology move and steer in one or another direction. And then video streaming and that all began to change how the Internet was conceptualized and rules from other sectors became more and more kind of embedded and began to sort of address concerns as use cases of how the Internet was being developed. And because you want this ‑‑ we want this technologies to be ‑‑ to evolve in an open and interoperable manner, then there is kind of this inevitable tradeoffs that we face with Internet Governance and that I think are inevitably tied to the future of Metaverse and bringing in the additional values about what we want to think about the Metaverse is never relinquishing something that we should not relinquish for Internet Governance. And it's not thinking of users. It is just user ‑‑ let's make this technology very simple, very stupid.
And then technologies are trapped in this very kind of okay, we just want to use this and not think about this technology and something that is more evolutionary and even users without the highest skills in the world can make something more of a tool that works with them and for them in the future. And let be dumb. So I think that if we make users more inqusitive, create an approach to these technologies and less packaging around this, which is extremely challenging for the complex layering of the Metaverse of the future, we will have learned a little bit of what some of the things we missed in the days when the Internet began to lose this generativity.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Fantastic. And I think you have a very good point, connecting the way things are being developed in terms of inclusion where if the user and understanding what the user can do, what are the individuals that are using these different technologies. So I find it quite interesting and somewhat gives me a chance to ask Monica Steffen Guise, what do you think about how we can develop the Metaverse in a way that's going to be interoperable and will not follow in the way that you see the user as one person there and not necessarily capable of making the choices of going around the different spaces that the Metaverse will be creating?
So a little bit about how we can develop in a certain way more inclusive and diverse in terms of being interoperable in different places.
>> MONICA STEFFEN GUISE: Thank you for the invitation. It's such a pleasure to be here today. And thank you ITS Rio for putting this town hall together. I know you must all be very tired this being the last day, but I think there are still very great discussions that we can have. I love the question that you proposed. Because it really does give me the opportunity to let you know how Meta is looking at these types of challenges.
There are many challenges in ensuring that the Metaverse is designed to maximize opportunity for all. And I love that you touch upon interoperability because we at Meta believe that industry must come together around shared technical standards that can allow for the Metaverse to be interoperable. That's a baseline for the work that we're doing.
Second, for people to actually want to use these technologies, they will need to feel safe. And companies like ourselves, we have a lot of work to do to build the credibility of the Metaverse as an idea and to also demonstrate to people that we are committed to building it in a very ‑‑ in a very responsible way. We have set out a number of priority areas that will be guiding our work and I can, you know ‑‑ I think it's ‑‑ it can be important to highlight some of these. And the ones that really stand out for me are economic opportunity, how can we give people more choice and maintain a thriving Digital Economy. Privacy, how can we build meaningful transparency and control in to our products.
Safety and integrity, how can we keep people safe on our platforms while also giving them the tools to take action or get help if they see or experience something they're uncomfortable with.
And fourth, and for me, one of the most important equity and inclusion. How can we make sure that these technologies are designed inclusively and in a way that's accessible.
Meta will be working across the industry and with experts from all sorts of different fields to develop these technologies and to enable others to do so. That's a very important particular, you know, point.
We need to ensure that industry standards or regulations are inclusive of the concerns of the Civil Rights and Human Rights communities. So that these technologies can be built in a way that are empowering to everyone.
And, you know, these are not just empty words. I have been able to follow up very closely a lot of the work that we have been doing in the company. I'm very, very happy to say that these principles are at the heart of everything that we're doing at Meta in terms of building the Metaverse. Let's not forget we are only in the first steps of this process. The Metaverse is something that we will probably be seeing fully developed in 10 to 15 years. And so it is amazing to be able to be here today at this very early stage and to be working for a company that is open to building these principles together. And to sharing and to hearing the inputs that will make this a diverse and inclusive place in the future.
Thank you.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: I think that is really interesting to think whenever you are talking about inclusion, and the lessons of Internet Governance has shown, having community. Another aspect I find fascinating we are in a very, you know, unique opportunity because we are discussing the main talents for technology that will come to fruition 10 to 15 years from now. This is one hell of an important opportunity for us. Another thing, look at the past. We have the Internet and talking about how we had the Internet, Internet Governance in the past, I want to ask Claudia, what's your take? One of the things that Monica mentioned about communities spring to my mind that in the '90s the Internet was developed to have different spaces. Where you have, you know, .com, .org, .gov. How can we manage to create also, recreate to a certain extent sets of spaces as well as thinking about the Metaverse in the future? I gave a little bit of a twist in the question. I hope you are not put out too much on that.
>> CLAUDIA DEL POZO: Thank you. Thank you for organizing this space. It is such an honor to be here with other people from Latin America. I mean talking about inclusiveness and representation, I think that one of the lessons learned from the early '90s Internet is that maybe the countries that came together to design it were the ones that had more resources. So I think it is very exciting to see more and more spaces for other countries, other regions of the world to be involved. And I think that's definitely one important step towards inclusiveness.
And I kind of want to bring together what Monica and Carol said by giving some concrete examples of what can be done, and what is being done, to kind of address the different challenges that they have mentioned, right? So I think that it is also wonderful that we have Monica here. I mean one of the realities that has come to be around Internet Governance, one of the main actors have become the social media platforms, Meta being a very relevant one and having these conversations without these actors doesn't make sense anymore.
I'm so happy to see Monica here. And we have been ‑‑ from the Eon Resilience Lab, we have been working closely with Meta to explore how we can create an inclusive and safe Metaverse. Be sure that the Metaverse is going to be an inclusive space.
The only way you can do that and especially right now like Monica mentioned that the Metaverse is so incipient. This is the moment to be having conversations with your communities, inviting them to the table and sitting them together and say hey, what are the challenges to your communities right now. How can the Metaverse ‑‑ how can the Metaverse create new or make the challenges you face bigger. And what solutions or tools do you recommend from your expertise because you are a representative or a leader of that community?
So that's something that we have been doing here in Mexico, with the number of communities. And we have had some really unexpected and interesting answers. So I think that really reaching out and working with these users' community representatives is going to be more surprising and more exciting than we think. And I would be happy to delve in to that, but I'm going to move on to the second part for the sake of time.
Another point regarding inclusiveness, how can we create a Metaverse that makes different kinds of players? So another thing that we're looking in to is kind of like policy prototypes to understand what maybe smaller players have to say about the Metaverse, have to say about challenges, like privacy and these exercises where we work directly with companies, with industry they can directly feed the industry standards around which the companies will come together. That's a really interesting way to do it. We are working on this with the Government as we provide public policy recommendations. And also with academia. So I think it is a beautiful exercise.
Academia and Government coming together to put, you know, the initial like exploration points there that can then be taken and stretched in to standards that come from a very inclusive and a very real place. This is not a general exercise. This is something we are doing in Uruguay directly.
Another point that has to do with how can we ‑‑ there is different ways of thinking of inclusiveness. You can think of it also as the users. Going back to the countries, me and Carol are working on a document to kind of put forth the perspective of what is the Metaverse for Latin America. And ensuring that the region keeps having a say in these conversations. And the same can be found either in this panel or in the different documents that we will be putting forth.
So like Monica said we are at the beginning and I think this is a great time to be looking at the different kind of exercises that we can do to inform standards and be as inclusive as possible.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Thank you. Basically set the stage for my next question because we are talking about not only inclusion but there are other situations that deserve our attention, values that we are actually looking towards as well. And one of the things that it is how we govern the Metaverse will be the different governance that will happen. And this will have to happen in different layers in different levels. So and interestingly, one of the main developments we have seen in Internet in the last 30 years is sort of a multi‑stakeholder governance. And it is very interesting to see that this has emerged in a mixed bag of very good and very interesting developments, for instance, at IGF where we are discussing now is one very interesting example but also in different national and regional levels to a certain extent. But also not necessarily has been very effective in creating an actual governance regime.
So my question will go back to Carol, what do you think has to be an interesting engagement with the different actors so that we will have an actual multi‑stakeholder governance regime or at least a multi‑stakeholder governance model in terms of Metaverse in the future? Whether you think this is an interesting idea and how we should implement it. In terms of challenges how should this infrastructure tackle different ‑‑ the different multiple challenges which could be first? If you have any thoughts on that.
>> CAROLINA AGUERRE: Thank you. These are very thoughtful questions. So I think that one of the ‑‑ I mean there are many challenges on the governance landscape concerning the Metaverse and considering our lessons learned from what we might call the Internet Governance landscape. It has become very specialized in the last 10 to 15 years, extremely specialized. And even I mean the fact that the IGF is still running despite I mean some of ‑‑ crisis in terms of the legitimacy of why are we here when we can be in more specialized venues discussing data protection, discussing open data and open signs for the development of new applications in the Metaverse and the future of the Internet.
Cybersecurity concerns and all these Forums and even Civil Society has its own mega Forum. And so there has been this venue proliferation due to the fact that the agenda has become extremely specialized. So I don't think that ‑‑ I think the Metaverse will require some additional institutional fixtures and features to address some of these governance concerns that are emerging. But I mean they are very much linked with pre‑existing debates. I see it might be very problematic particularly from a Global South perspective to make additional different venues around the Metaverse which makes it even more difficult for Global South participants and organizations to follow in such a diversified environment when the concerns if they ‑‑ if the concerns are about equity, about privacy, about safety. Those are the same concerns that we see in the Internet these days.
So I would not encourage diversifying, extremely diversifying this scenario. And I will also encourage the Metaverse to think about the Metaverse players which is very much about the private sector. I'm very happy that Monica is here. Monica, she is one of the few representatives of the private sector in this panel. But I mean it is the private sector that is leading the technological innovations around the Metaverse. And actually for me I have become more social, technical in my last years. And so I don't see a lot of governance taking place at the IGF, for example, or in many venues such as ICANN. I do see discussions around the governance and the governance taking place inside in the case of ICANN registration operations, policy decision‑making processes, inside ISPs, inside platforms such as Meta.
If we have to discuss about governance, then we are talking about one thing. If companies who are shaping the future of the Metaverse really want to engage in an open and honest debate about governance, then they should make the effort that Claudia was mentioning with a policy prototype become really embedded in to the technology and the policies of this company's developments around the Metaverse.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Fantastic. It gives me a little bit of a platform to ask Monica a little bit of this question. The private sector is in a peculiar position as well. Participating in a multi‑stakeholder debate. At the same time in some way an implementer of these policies. So what do you think should be, Monica, this ‑‑ the role of this multi‑stakeholder engagement in terms of governance of the Metaverse? And you mention a few of the challenges. And you mention five of them that Meta is pushing forward. One or two that should be discussed first. Creating this space to be more interoperable. I would like to hear your thoughts of what should this multi‑stakeholder engagement look like and the first values we should be discussing.
>> MONICA STEFFEN GUISE: Thank you. I want to start by making a comment on Carol's final point and she makes a really, really good and important point on if we want to engage in a really open and honest debate, that space has to be built. And I am so proud to say that at least in LATAM where I am working head on regarding the Metaverse, these spaces are being built. I think Claudia can speak to some of the initiatives we have in Spanish speaking LATAM. In Brazil we are working with so many institutions, academics, Civil Society groups in order to bring diverse perspectives in to everything that we are doing, and I'm so proud that we get to do that work.
I'm sorry to hear, Carol, that there are few industry representatives this year at IGF. It has been a really tough year for the industry as I'm sure you are all very much aware.
But it is very, very important for me personally to be here and to be able to participate in these debates. And to, you know, affirm from the place I'm sitting at the company that yes, it's adamant to us, it is extremely important to us to have there be honest, open, transparent considerations. Look, I think, regarding multi‑stakeholder debate and we have a really, really good lesson at Meta to draw from which is our external oversight board. That for me has been one of the most challenging but yet rewarding projects I have ever been able to participate working for the private sector.
And I mean, you know, we ‑‑ we have lessons to draw from. We will love to have, you know, more industry players come and join us in this open, transparent, and inclusive debate. There is no way we are going to be able to build the Metaverse if we don't do it together with the people who are using and being affected by it. I want to highlight, look, the Metaverse is not a single product in the way that our apps, for instance, Facebook or Instagram or Messenger or WhatsApp are, right? Nor is it an operating system, like, you know, what you have on your cell phones. Like today's Internet, the Metaverse will be a constellation of technologies, platforms, and products. It won't be built, operated or governed by any one company or institution.
It will take a range of companies, large and small, Civil Society, the public sector, and millions of creators, right, I think it was Claudia that touched upon, maybe Christian, that the importance of having creators in the Metaverse, it will take these creators to build it and make it work. The Metaverse is not a single piece of cloth. It is a patchwork quilt that's a better pronunciation. So given this really, really variety mix of companies, of institutions and people who will operate in the Metaverse, the rules for what happens in them will be set in a variety of ways.
So having this multi‑stakeholder approach to how we are going to be regulating it, how are we going to build it together is extremely important.
You know, collectively, we can think of this process as, you know, developing a system for governance for the Metaverse. And it really must not be shaped by tech companies, like us on our own. It needs to be developed openly with a spirit of cooperation. This is an effort that must be undertaken in the best interest of people and society. And not just tech companies. I think that's a really important note to end my, you know, this answer with, Christian.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: I think it is fantastic. Your point of view. And you mentioning the experience that is your oversight board. I keep thinking this is something that we will have to strive on. So in terms of governance there will be a discussion on how to deal with different, you know, conflicts of norms and understanding, different interests. How to implement Human Rights to a certain extent in terms of overboard Metaverse. And maybe the example or the actual institution of the oversight board can be one interesting aspect. We can go back to that in a bit if you have more time in the end.
I want to ask Claudia what we have already cued in. So Monica mentioned there is a discussion of developing a very Latin American environment, space for discussion and she already gave you a little bit of the floor. So I will just go a little bit more and ask can you explain to us a little bit more in how this is seen as a multi‑stakeholder approach? Whether it is seen as a multi‑stakeholder approach and how it may or may not defer from, you know, the different initiatives that have been discussed in the past during when we are discussing Internet Governance.
>> CLAUDIA DEL POZO: Thank you. So one thing I want to specify before that Monica mentioned the term regulation. I know that in Latin America with the Governments that we have been speaking with there is this big appetite, let's start with Metaverse regulation. One thing that I think is important to point out there is give it a minute. We are only starting to talk about this now.
We are only having this governance conversation now. We are only reflecting on the governance of the early Internet now. I think the Metaverse that's too far away right now to start regulating. We don't want to fall in to what happens with the Internet in its earlier phases and not so early where you can do what you wanted with it. That's another important lesson.
But I think that just if we have people here from the Government listening, I think that it is time to explore regulation and what it would mean. But not necessarily regulate right now. So I do encourage these kinds of exercises like you mentioned. It is really a multi‑stakeholder approach. We are trying to get as many people in the conversation as possible. And are we doing the ‑‑ I mean is this the absolute solution? Maybe not. Maybe we are missing a lot of things. There is a lot of standard forms that already exist. Are they addressing the right topics? We are learning along the way as happened with the governance of the early '90s Internet. And there is not one solution.
The Internet evolves, becomes more relevant in our lives. Also about governance around the social impact of the Internet, all of that is going to change. Social impact of the Internet with the Metaverse is going to be even bigger. What are the new questions rather than what are the new answers. Let's start with the questions and let's start exploring them like in this Forum here, like in this specific panel with different actors. That's what's needed right now. As Monica mentioned, you know, the Metaverse should not be shaped by tech companies. I think there is an important role here. Rather an important place to encourage more competition in this tech sector to make sure that there is more and more actors who are creating a Metaverse. I'm focusing on the tech sector while that there is other sectors that need to be included. Make sure we are creating something that's sustainable and makes sense that somehow may be correct or contribute to correcting the mistakes that have occurred in the past. And I think it is really exciting that we have this Metaverse standards Forum, that's been led by Meta among other companies.
A lot of different actors can come together and talk about the specific aspects of the Metaverse. One thing that I like that Carol said at the beginning how great it is to have spaces. And continue having these general conversations where they recognize and apply the reality that as the Internet evolves so must its governance and topics that are considered as part of its governance.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: We have a third question but we are running out of time. We had a question in the chat. So we will rephrase it a little bit so that you can somehow reflect what we are trying to discuss as our third block.
So one of the things that we are discussing in the third block is how do we place this difference between what I would call the paradox we have, a very global technology that most of the times the policy aspects and even the regulation tends to be somewhat national. In the chat one of the questions was representatives in different countries.
What I wanted to ask you is how do you manage to see whether there is an avenue for dealing with a very broad global Metaverse in terms of the many different spaces that will be developed. And this interaction with specific national regional policies. If you see there is a potential for conflict and anything. It is an open question. So any of you, Claudia or Monica or Carol want to jump in? We don't have to follow the exact order.
>> MONICA STEFFEN GUISE: I'm happy to jump in. Whenever I tell people about my work at this global company, I always mention this multi‑jurisdiction challenge as, you know, it can be overwhelming but that's also why, you know, it is so interesting, it is so amazing. In a past life I used to be a full‑time Professor of Law. And I worked very much very closely with public and private international law. Right?
So, you know, which law applies, it makes this question really remind me of the good old days, Christian.
Now look it's ‑‑ there is one thing about working for a global company, which is we have global standards that apply to every, you know, that apply in every single jurisdiction in which users are using our products. But I think it is very, very important to highlight that this doesn't mean that we don't take local laws and local contexts in to consideration. I have heard over and over again that the American companies don't respect local contexts. And that's just not true. We do have rules and policies and standards at Meta. We call them the community standards that apply to what we want to see in our platforms and services and what we don't want to see. Right?
So, you know, there are some hard lines that need to be drawn. So there is no place for child exploitation in our platforms, right? That is quite obvious. And that's globally. But also there are nuances to local laws that need to be taken in to consideration.
For instance, and I will take Brazil as an example. Of course, local laws will be respected. And if we do get, for instance, a court order in Brazil, because something in Brazil might be violating Brazilian law and it won't be violating a particular law elsewhere. It is important to point out that we do respect the laws of the countries in which we operate in. And we comply with them. And we just came out of a very polarized difficult election. We had electoral rules in Brazil change overnight so as to be able to accommodate several of the concerns that we were seeing in the country.
We had, for instance, the time frame from which we were forced as a company to remove content by the order of a local Brazilian judge. It diminished from 48 to two hours. That's huge. When we are talking about a size of a company we are. But we worked around the clock and we made every single effort that we could make to make sure that we were complying with these, you know, with these court orders in the time that the superior electoral report demanded of us. In that sense we do have global rules, but we are also very respectful of the jurisdictions in which we work in and with the authorities with which we work in.
And look, the Metaverse is not going to be different in that sense, I believe. In terms of this myriad of laws and local complex and ‑‑ that we're going to be seeing the Metaverse. We already face them as a company operating in so many different countries. So I think we also have a lot of lessons to learn from our experience as well.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Thank you, and I know your good old days, a little bit about my good old days as well. I love this type of discussion. Thank you very much for the clarifications. Carol, please go ahead.
>> CAROLINA AGUERRE: Thank you. So thinking about the idea of this bringing in the local context, et cetera, there is something about the Metaverse that is ‑‑ that we haven't discussed in the session yet. And it is the ‑‑ it is not only that it is the Internet, it is the Internet and the AI. And the AI models that power and the Internet platforms today and the content that we see but the future of this 3‑D images around the Metaverse and the holograms and everything. They are extremely sensitive to algorithmic intelligence.
And less intensive users around data but less ‑‑ machine learning is trying to get smaller in its data, data learning patterns. And it brings in the flavor and need for making a meaningful Metaverse experience become embedded in to the ‑‑ what the local content and the local context really looks like in terms of the user experience.
So I think as we have seen, I mean training algorithms with ‑‑ not with the people from a particular environment whether ethical background or religious features, et cetera, is a problem. And I think this will be exacerbated in the Metaverse. And there is a need to make the experience and the learning experience for the algorithms but also for meaningful experience for users to be aware of these local sensitivities, interests, et cetera.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Fantastic. That's what I find fascinating. These will be the challenges that we see. How to divide the space when you have one law from one country and one local interest and specificities that may be impacted. And they are leaving or at least interacting in the same space. I will give a little bit more of the floor, but I want to see whether there are questions from the audience in Addis. So our Moderator on site, can you give us whether there is a question there?
>> JANAINA COSTA: Of course. Thank you. Thank you for our panelists. I think it is great to take a peek to the future. It is amazing to wrap up this week here at IGF. Anyone here have a question for our great panelists at this point? Okay. Yes. One question.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay. My name is Josefina. I'm from Ethiopia, from the judiciary, vice‑president. In the last four days, was so short because we were very interested with discussions with the sessions and the presentations. The panelists, anxiety that has been erased was so nice. Internet Governance, maybe it could help to how to do such an event in the future. The first one is this harmonization of different laws, governing data, governing the privacy in the Internet I think is very important. And countries have their own laws, it is mandatory to have their own laws. Digital Age, digital order is becoming converging and having the basic principles, having the overarching principles that could help to govern this new order is very important. Therefore harmonization at the regional level and global level is very also important.
And the second one is the new context matters, if the local context is not incorporated in the global governance of Internet, that's going to be a problem. Inclusivity has been said again and again, that is very important.
And inclusivity will be expressed in different ways. The language, the local context, the culture, and this and other things should also be included. If that's not included, then the society who are excluded may not benefit from this new digitalization. Inclusivity is very important. The voices and priorities of the Global South also should be included in discussions including in this Metaverse. We are embracing that Metaverse that is ‑‑ that is convergence of reality with the virtual world. It is a new experience for all of us.
Even some countries are so advanced in harnessing this digital order, some are like in the middle. Some are like they don't know about it as has been expected from the ‑‑ therefore I think we need to be on the same ‑‑ on the same plane in order to get the benefit. Therefore, like we need to use a model, like no man left behind, like we need to onboard all of the communities of the world in order to benefit from this.
The last point I want to add is that there are different Conventions at the regional levels. Like the EU has the Budapest Convention and African UN has Convention on cybercrime and protection of data. Therefore, you should also work to have overarching principles that could tackle cybercrime is what I want to add. Thank you.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Thank you very much. That's interesting. I will jump in before I give the floor to Claudia just saying there is sort of an interesting concept of having harmonizing rules and a local context in terms of interoperability of different types of regulation.
So how can those regulations work together, not necessarily harmonizing them but, you know, sort of not being one against each other respecting their own perspectives, not conflicting and overlapping.
Since we do have only five minutes I will give the floor to Claudia very quickly and then pass the mic for the others to give final words as well. So thank you very much. Claudia.
>> CLAUDIA DEL POZO: Thank you. So I have a question. And I'm supposed to be answering them. Something I wonder, that I want to share with everyone is talking about the local context, I think what's going to be interesting in the Metaverse is the possibility to create a virtual world where each world can represent the values. And I understand there will be some worlds where everyone comes together. What happens when we have specific worlds? For example, in Spain they have Catverse where they push their own values, use the Catalan. In that sense how much power do we give to the creators of these different worlds to address the specific challenges of their communities? How much power will they have to say and here linking Metaverse governance a lot with AI governance, in an ideal world would they say okay, let's ‑‑ and maybe here I'm not so much speaking about the Catalan but other marginalized communities that have been impacted quite poorly by algorithms across the world.
How do we give them a role on a say and the power to kind of ‑‑ I don't know if the word is moderate or filter through or maybe just simply the word would be have responsible checks in place to make sure that the different tools that are being used in their virtual world are tailored to the needs of the people in their virtual that can represent their communities. That's one of the questions they have. I don't expect an answer. I want to leave anyone with that question, like how can we give more power to the local through these communities in the virtual worlds. Thank you.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Fantastic. And that's a very interesting question. With that segue way I will give the floor to Monica for her final remarks.
>> MONICA STEFFEN GUISE: Thank you. I have no final remarks. I have tons of questions actually in place. And I think we are at that stage, right, we are at that amazing stage of the technology in which we have much more questions than answers. I just want ‑‑ really, really want to thank you for the opportunity to be here and to share, but mostly to learn from, you know, from this group. And very much open to keeping this conversation moving forward.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: Fantastic. So now to you, Carol. Do you have more questions as well for us? This is the moment for us to place the questions and place the hard ones so that we as a society with different layers can actually go forward and try to answer them or try to come up with others that will spring even more innovation, more questions and more features. You have the floor.
>> CAROLINA AGUERRE: Just 20 seconds. I think that asking the right questions at this moment in time of the evolution I mean ‑‑ uncertain future of the Metaverse as it is still a long way ahead of us. It is really the ‑‑ a very wise way to move forward. I don't think anyone has answers, even the industry who has the knowledge to develop many of these technologies are not having the answers. So asking questions I think it is essential. And I also think that it is very important to ‑‑ as this town hall has tried to address, I mean that nothing is taking place in a vacuum. I mean although we acknowledge innovation and we ‑‑ all the ‑‑ and unforeseen opportunities that we can harness with these technologies, they never occur in a vacuum, in a vacuum of past experiences and a vacuum of past regulatory approaches. In a vacuum of existing global governance tensions and options. Let's also not try to be naive and I am not saying that we are. I'm saying that fortunately and unfortunately we have these constraints from history and that plays a game in how we envisage and use this.
>> CHRISTIAN PERRONE: I agree. We got to have this major idea of a clean slate. So we have to find ways to live with the past and build the future. I think this panel was much more about that. Understanding the lessons or trying to come up with some sort of best practices or lessons that we have seen in the past and trying to come up with future questions so that we can build the future together to a certain extent.
So just to finish. This is not a finish. It is just the beginning of a major discussion in between. We want ‑‑ I just wanted for you to leave this town hall with one very interesting idea, is that we have to discuss this question, not only from the Global North but also from the Global South, particularly from our different experiences.
And I'm very, very fortunate to have all this fantastic women around here with me. I feel so blessed having Monica, Carol and Claudia, Janaina and Nina. And thank you for the people who have joined us on site and from around the world. I hope the IGF continues promoting these opportunities for us in the future.
Thank you very much. And hope to see you and continue this discussion offline and online in the different parts of the world. Please check our different websites. Check ITS as well. A little bit about us and check everyone else. Let's continue this in many different places. Cheers.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> JANAINA COSTA: Such a high level. Thank you so much.
>> CLAUDIA DEL POZO: Thank you. Bye.