Ability to opt out of recording or streaming (via visual notification or settings)
There are a number of people who livestream their HZW experience to youtube or twitch or elsewhere. It feels a bit uncomfortable to find out, after the fact, that someone you have been interacting with has been recording and/or broadcasting your entire conversation and everything you've been doing in HZW, even if it seemed you were mostly in private 1-1 or with friends.
It might be illegal in some states with 'two party' consent rules (such as California, where Meta is headquartered) to record conversations without all parties being notified.
Proper notification could be done by providing an icon or similar on the floating nametag above anyone who is either recording or casting their HZW session. Other people would then have the option of not interacting with anyone who was actively keeping a record of the world.
A more draconian version of this feature would be to allow users to adjust settings such that their audio and avatar do not appear in recordings. This sort of functionality already exists in HZW, and is used for blocking other users. When someone starts recording, anyone with such settings would have their audio stop being sent to the recording user, and have their avatars replaced with 'blue people' in the recording users view.
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Baron Shawn von Hartnell commented
Two party consent doesn't apply when there's no "reasonable expectation of privacy."
That's any public instance.
Regardless of the two party consent issue being moot, I'd still appreciate this feature.
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Wilbert John Wayne Graham commented
I hope they put zero resources behind this. There are many ways to record people outside of the app that it would be hard to display you are being recorded at all times.
You don't want to be recorded, there is private sessions or you can go into your app permissions and uncheck the allow to record, enjoy party chat.
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Dylan Kinnett commented
Yes I would definitely want to know if someone is recording.
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Ilina Ily commented
I’ve experienced something similar a few days ago and I’m still creeped out by it. Found out later that someone recorded me for over 1 hour while having a conversation with a friend. I reported that person, but as of right now there isn’t a “recorded me without consent” reason.
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MetaWisp
commented
I’ve experienced something similar at a small social gathering last fall as well. And I asked a couple times last year, in the Horizon Worlds Community FB group, for some sort of visual indicator that someone is recording. It’s too easy to be ambushed by people who don’t notify others that they’re recording and then post the recording on YouTube, or livestream. People should have a conscious choice to participate in recording or streaming session or not.