Hey all! I’ll put this post in here to answer the questions I’ve been seeing so far regarding the legal and terms changes.
Please be aware that the Terms and the Privacy Policy are the end-all documents here. I am not the authority on legal documents and Terms – the documents themselves are. As such, I may fuzz details or even make errors. If I do make an error, I’ll correct it and note it.
Are you recording everyone’s voice and a video of them right now?
No, we aren’t. Right now, we don’t record any video from you.
For completion’s sake, there is a demo booth in the NYE2023 world that used a special AVPro script to make a video for you. That’s recorded locally though, and is not transmitted.
Your voice is only recorded so it can be sent to others. After its received, it’s discarded.
What’s with the eye tracking data? Movement data?
We have to use your eye tracking data to animate your avatar’s eyes, and movement data to move your avatar.
Section 10 of the Privacy Policy covers this:
We only use your Movement Information and Eye Movement Information to animate your avatar in real time. We do not store records of this information.
Are you going to record everyone’s voice or record video for moderation purposes?
Not en masse. That’s what these changes are about. We may record video/audio in some limited situations.
For example, we’re improving our report systems and setting up to (eventually!) implement a audio and video buffer that sends with a user report. This report would then be viewed and acted upon by a human. This is very helpful because right now, in-app reports have zero context. They’re really hard to action. Other similar platforms have done this and reported great success with this system.
We’re also considering running some kind of automatic voice moderation or detection system in public instances and Group public instances. As anyone who goes to Publics knows, they have a toxicity problem. Again, we’ve seen other games implement systems like this and it’s been impactful. This type of system is what we mean by the “automated system”, btw. We’d mostly want it to target hateful speech, as that’s what we’ve seen these automated systems be the most effective against.
It is neither practical nor realistic for us to record and store audio and video for everyone in VRChat. It also isn’t very useful for Trust and Safety purposes!
Will you ever record in private instances?
Maybe, but only when required. The reservations we make in the privacy policy are pretty clear.
This would only be done actively, by a Trust and Safety agent, in the pursuit of an investigation into a violation of the terms. We may also do this in cooperation with authorities (various three-letter agencies, law enforcement, etc) when required by law.
I would expect situations where this would be required to be quite rare.
Are you watching me do private stuff, talk about private things??
No. Our intent with this change is allowing us to remove the most egregious offenders in hate and/or harm to others from our platform.
We know that VRChat isn’t just a “game” or “app” to many of us. We feel that way too. People talk about private stuff, make friends, have relationships, laugh, cry, all of those things, and we don’t want to violate that space. However, we do need better tools to remove the worst offenders on the internet off our platform.
Our implementation of these systems will be made with this consideration held in mind.
Are these changes and systems compliant with GDPR / CCPA / etc?
Yes, it is! We’ve been very careful to ensure we are in compliance with these user privacy regulations.
Are you selling user data?
No. We have not and do not sell user data, per the CCPA definition of “sold”. You can always check our CCPA document, the “‘Sale’ and ‘Sharing’ of Personal Information” section covers this.
Why don’t you put all of this into the Terms and Privacy Policy?
We do when we can, but those documents must necessarily be generic in some senses. Changing them has an impact, and we try to do so as little as possible. In addition, there are certain legal and regulatory “best practices” to specificity (or generalization) that are important for us to respect.
I have other questions!
Please feel free to ask them here! Since this is in regards to a Terms of Service, there’s questions that are going to get the answer “that’s answered in the terms”.