You have the right to complain if you believe a metaverse platform has violated your rights.
There are complaint mechanisms available, depending on the nature of the violation of your rights that you have faced.
Data protection
If you believe your personal data has been processed unlawfully and that your right to private life has been violated, you can complain to the State Data Protection Inspectorate. This includes cases of gathering of your data without a legitimate ground, or your consent, and failing to remove or rectify data and others.
example You asked a metaverse platform to remove the history of your avatar but they refused to do so.
Read about how to complain regarding your data in this Guide.
Discrimination
If you believe that you have faced discrimination, you can complain to the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson.
example A business does not allow women to enter a specific digital space in the metaverse.
Read about how to complain when you face discrimination in this Guide.
Complaints about the actions of platforms
You have the right to complain if a decision was made whether to:
- remove, disable access to, or the visibility of information
example Your creation – a painting – on the metaverse is not deleted fully but its visibility is restricted, and the algorithms of the metaverse do not show the creation to other users.
example You reported an insulting environment on the metaverse that is full of hate speech but the platform did not take any action.
- suspend or terminate the provision of the service to you
example Because of an alleged abuse of the system, you can no longer use the marketplace of the metaverse to sell the digital items that you no longer need.
- suspend or terminate your account
example Because of alleged abuse of your account you are suspended for a month from accessing the metaverse.
- suspend, terminate or restrict the ability to monetise information
example The platform suspends the monetisation of an influencer’s account because they did not follow the rules on tagging advertising.
Complaint mechanisms for actions of a platform
Read further to find out about the ways available to complain about the actions of a platform.
Providers of online platforms have an obligation to provide an internal complaint-handling system that allows you to lodge complaints, electronically and free of charge.
The specific procedures will be listed in the terms and conditions of the platform. You have 6 months to submit a complaint.
If you are not satisfied with the decision of the online platform, you can select any out-of-court dispute settlement body to resolve disputes.
Both users and online platforms must engage in good faith with the selected out-of-court-dispute settlement body with a view to resolving the dispute. The allocation of the fees depends on the outcome of the procedure. In any case, the dispute settlement will usually be available free of charge or at a nominal fee for the recipients of the service. Out-of-court dispute settlement bodies do not have the power to impose a binding settlement for the dispute on the parties.
You can find the list of such out-of-court dispute settlement bodies on the website of the European Commission.
In Lithuania, the designated Digital Services Coordinator is the Communications Regulatory Authority. You can read about how to complain to the Authority on its website.
example You can complain to the Authority about failures related to the terms and conditions of service providers, breaches of the protection of minors on the internet, issues relating to the transparent presentation of advertising on the internet and others.
note The Authority will not handle complaints about very large online platforms and search engines. These are handled by the European Commission.
The Digital Services Coordinator does not examine or decide whether specific content is lawful and should be removed. You must first inform the service provider on the service of which you have noticed potentially illegal content. You can also inform the Office of the Inspector of Journalistic Ethics which can act to take down illegal content.