This paper introduces a method enabling anonymous collaboration in the
metaverse. As the Internet is turning to its next revolution in which time and
space are incorporated more thoroughly to the everyday communication, visual
and aural communication are given more prominent roles. This might lead to more
biased interaction since people may possess pre-judgmental attitudes regarding
other people’s age, gender, and ethnical attributes, which could impact collaboration.
These attributes are rather easy to visually change within the metaverse by
simply changing the avatars’ appearance. This research focused on the real-time
aural communication in the metaverse, and the risks of harmful profiling based
on people’s language use and voice. The research setting was a custom-made
metaverse, where two anonymized participants interacted with each other to
achieve the goal through collaboration. In the study, their interaction was
monitored. Afterwards, they answered to questions in which told about their
experiences and tried to de-anonymize the other participant. This preliminary
research indicated that via modulating the sound, it was possible to anonymize
users to a reasonable range within the custom-made metaverse.

Keywords: Metaverse, Ethics, Anonymization, Virtual Reality, Linguistic
Profiling, Collaboration