As always, advertising is the root of all the evils we face today in our technological society. When is this industry gonna be regulated out of existence?
Without being reductive, though: there's obviously a middle-ground here. For example, property/space is "owned" by entities in Second Life and those owners can kick/ban others who aren't behaving from their space. It seems entirely possible for a large, 3D space to have areas where brands (or other entities) can ensure they have a penis-free space without dictating what the rest of the "world" is like.
It's not just certain websites anymore. The internet is no longer decentralized like it used to be. Independent communities are pretty much dead. Now everything is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, whatever. All of these are advertising companies and they regulate what you can and can't say there. Basically you can't say or do anything that offends these advertisers.
I'd rather have a free internet where I can witness the full spectrum of humanity, good and bad. Not what some company or even some government deems acceptable.
Sticking with the Epic example, a great deal of custom maps made it into regular rotations in the original Unreal Tournament community, and a great many mods were played for a very long time.
But people weren't doing it for money, or "brands" as you say. They were building stuff for their own enjoyment.
A community polices itself, ultimately. If "brands" try to police it, then yes you will get penises and Hitler, because "brands" have assumed liability for said policing and the community itself is rightfully reluctant to help them do their jobs. Penises and Hitler are more often than not a subconscious lashing-out at the "brands."
Oh do I hope it is.
Actually, they rarely do in Second Life. As I mentioned in a previous posting, in a big 3D world, being a jerk doesn't scale. You can only make trouble locally. Second Life is about the size of Greater London.
Most virtual land is leased to individuals, and the leaseholder can eject or ban annoying visitors. There's also peer pressure. People can and will tell jerks they are being a jerk. This works better in 3D than it does in text forums.
There are a few public places in Second Life that are jerk magnets. These are the "social islands", where new users enter the system after completing the tutorial. They're the bus terminals of Second Life. They're intended as transit points. Most users take one of the portals and leave for a new destination. Some new users, confused about what to do, stay there. Some losers go there to harass new users. They're the same kinds of losers found in real-life bus terminals.
People who write articles about Second Life sometimes don't get past the entry area, and they think that's typical of the whole virtual world. It's more like visiting only the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC and then publishing an article about your trip to New York.
> Second Life is about the size of Greater London.
Both these statements are directly contradicted by https://secondlife.com/land/ which says land is bought from LindenLabs and that SL is not fixed in size but they continuously add more "land" with new users, so anyone can buy land themselves. Premium users get 1000 square meters free.
Second Life Main Grid size as of 17 Oct 2021 is 1786.64 square kilometers.[1] The area of Greater London is 1,572 square kilometers.[2] The number of regions changes slightly from day to day, but not by much.
Wasn't this the promise of the internet? A place where any and all information could be free? Now we have ongoing war over who controls the information and who can see what information when. We have companies that skirt users privacy, manipulate user data and manipulate users so they can monetize them to the fullest.
I don't see how the "metaverse" will be any different than what the internet has become.
Is it not? I do not think the promise was that any and all information on someone else’s computers would be free.
Now does I believe Facebook has any chance of succeeding in that sphere? Not at all, but it won't be because of virtual penis everywhere. To be frank I don't even believe Facebook will still be relevant in 10 years (and maybe they agree with it and it's why they are trying to push that hard toward something else).
Given Facebook's history of prudishness I suspect their metaverse will be closer to "Fortnite -shooting +ads" rather than Ready Player One.