Quick take:
- Vestager says “We should not jump to regulation as the first sort of safety pad.”
- The EU antitrust chief said the raft of legislation drafted in the last five years to regulate Big Tech gives the body time to explore the metaverse.
- Vestager announced in February 2022 that the EU was assessing options for regulating the metaverse.
Margrethe Vestager has provided an update about user privacy and regulation of the metaverse. The EU antitrust chief believes there is no need to start regulating the 3D virtual world yet.
Speaking on Thursday, Vestager said the raft of legislation drafted in the last five years to regulate Big Tech gives the body time to explore the metaverse.
According to Vestager, the metaverse has not yet triggered any concerns that will warrant the regulatory body jumping in with a raft of regulations. Vestager is expected to share the same initiative when she speaks about the metaverse at a conference next week.
The initiative is aimed at helping competition regulators understand the industry better, she said.
Several players have expressed concerns that the big tech companies including Microsoft, Apple and Meta Platforms could dominate the metaverse after unveiling various products and services.
However, Vestager maintains that she does not believe that one company can claim to own the metaverse.
“Actually we see that there is a lot of innovation when it comes to virtual worlds. I don’t think that any company can claim that they will own it, so to speak, but that is what we hope to find out,” she told reporters on the sidelines of a conference.
In February 2022, the EU antitrust regulator revealed that the body was assessing options for regulating the metaverse.
And now, she believes that the raft of regulations adopted in the last five years to regulate Big Tech ranging from privacy to market power and upcoming artificial intelligence rules can also apply to the metaverse.
But a similar approach to the crypto industry has received backlash from industry players in the US after the Securities and Exchange Commission moved to court to sue Binance and Coinabase last month.
Therefore, while the EU’s approach to the metaverse (i.e not rushing to create specific regulations for the industry) sounds great in the early stages, it will be interesting to see how players in the space react when the regulator begins to enforce rules designed for the big tech on the burgeoning industry.
****
Stay up to date:
Subscribe to our newsletter using this link – we won’t spam!
