OneShared.World Campaign

Making sure the Metaverse serves the common good

While no one can yet know exactly what the Metaverse will be, it’s already clear that our personal and professional lives will increasingly be lived in interactive and communal virtual spaces.

But if we want to make sure our security, integrity, and freedom will be protected in these new worlds, we must now organize ourselves to help make that possible.

OneShared.World is working with partner organizations and people across the globe to help establish preliminary core principles for ensuring that the Metaverse, in whatever form it may take, will be optimized for the common good.

Join us now to receive campaign updates and news. And if you would like to help out, please let us know!

Learn more

Do We Need A Constitution for the Metaverse?

Co-Presented by OneShared.World and 92NY, September 15, 2022

Even if the Metaverse is years away, critical decisions are being made now about how the future is being built. If we want to make sure we all have a voice, should we start thinking about a Constitution for the Metaverse? Featuring Philip Rosedale, web pioneer and creator of virtual world Second Life, Dave Waslen, Co-Founder of Metaverse platform Wilder World, and Gayatri Khandhadai, Digital and Human Rights and Policy Expert, in conversation with Brittan Heller, Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, for an in-depth discussion on safeguarding global democracy in this emerging digital environment. Introductory remarks by Jamie Metzl, Founder and Chair, OneShared.World.

The Metaverse Could Become an Oppressive Dystopia. It Needs a Congress.

Jamie Metzl, Newsweek, March 23, 2022

“When Facebook first launched in 2004, many people thought it was just a digital photo album for college kids. Flash forward a decade and it was being used to swing real world elections and spark mass human rights abuses. Just like the early fantasies of an open internet liberating the world have given way to authoritarian governments using internet tools to control their populations, so too can the code of the Metaverse be written to oppress. Many corporations and governments might feel incentivized to abuse our privacy, manipulate our actions, and limit our freedoms…”

Toward a Constitution for the Metaverse: Key Principles for the Creation Process

Emily E. Arnold-Fernández, with contributions from Jamie Metzl, Shagun Sethi, Sandi Gendi and James Clarke-Lister, September 2, 2022

“Digital worlds today are often largely lawless spaces. Where rules are enforced, they tend to be either feudal, imposed by the lord of a particular part of the digital world (such as a specific platform) and subject to few of the ordinary legislative or interpretative processes of a more democratic legal system; or cultural, relying on a shared sense of etiquette that evolves rapidly and encouraged (but not enforced) by social mechanisms. Neither of these approaches leaves room for the safeguarding of fundamental rights or the equitable inclusion of those with less power…”

Additional resources

Life: Coming to a Screen Near You

Jamie Metzl, World Policy Journal, 2008

Owning the Metaverse: Blockchain Democracy in a Virtual World

Matt Tengtrakool, Harvard Technology Review, August 22, 2021