Make Metadata optional | Voters

Make Metadata optional

Based Bass

as title says, metadata is good for personal use but it can create lots of stalker scenarios when these types of people go snooping. Its a big cause for concern when it comes to social media and having your userID and Author name in the metadata can cause lots of unwarranted friend request from creeps.

Please push out a toggle for it asap.

11 hours ago

Kyrah Abattoir

It isn't even that good for personal use.

Geeknificent

there are huge privacy concerns with this, especially for people who use vrchat for buisness reasons, people can be targeted when they want to keep their accounts anonymous but need to post promotional material.

on top of that just general privacy concerns too.

Litе

I'm gonna come out and say Not that big of a deal for two reasons.
#1: Most social media sites actually strip images of all that information by default so nobody copying the image off of social medias will even see it. If you're super concerned you can just strip it yourself easily before upload. Internet privacy 101
#2: The metadata is all public information anyways. Anyone can get your user ID just by searching you up on VRChat. Every account, world and avatar that is uploaded to VRChat is public by design because it's on the internet.

ღкαтну тαηυкιღ

Litе You're missing the point, a lot of people posted good examples as to why this is bad, I was even one of them, so I'll just let you search down to find them, some are even actual private things, not searchable, that appear in this metadata.
To note, Discord doesn't strip the metadata for example, nor do other sites, even if X and a few others do.
Not everyone will know how to scrub the metadata off pics, some may not even know this is saved if they don't keep up with patch notes, so they'll be accidentally breaching their own privacy through the metadata if they post pics in a Discord server for example, thinking they're not sharing their actual username.

ZephyrNikiforov

This is a terrible idea and approach. It shouldn't be added. At the very least, toggled off by default, optional for anyone who might be interest. Al though, I doubt anyone would want it unless they intend to give it a bad use. We all deserve privacy. This is just material for stalkers given in silver platter. With every decision VRC make, ALWAYS, consider your users, your community. It is the reason the platform still exist and stays active in a daily basis. Be considerate, be mindful, be respectful.

Orange_Joe

This is a horrible breach of privacy. Tons of creators and players are at risk with this, Remove this VRC, Or I'm moving on to another game.

ReploidSham

Considering I've been in parts where people have been fraudulently reporting people they simply don't like, as well as having to moderate certain communities where crying wolf is a common practice, this is a terrible idea to that end that can and would very easily be exploited and abused endlessly, moreso than it already is.

I'd also ask for further privacy settings including the ability to have your own ID excluded from any picture, including ones others take for this reason. Some people do like their privacy, after all.

Intaro

ReploidSham This isn't to say you're wrong entirely, but the only metadata sent to the file by default is just the picture taker's username and id (both searchable) and the world ID and name (understandable issue for private "teaser" world pics sure. but other than that what is the abusive ability? I checked a picture i took with friends and the only information written to the image was my username and id, not theirs. so that takes out a problem of harassment towards a subject in a picture if its taken by someone else?

posting your own pictures, again, i don't see a real harm to it, but just reading through others comments i'm trying to figure out what the biggest issue is? 3rd party apps may include more info to the metadata than base VRC, but thats on the 3rd party. base game isn't giving out more than your own which is also searchable on on website/platform?

Envy_Wolf

this is just super invasive, this enables stalker behavior and as someone whose been stalked I am officially afraid to take pictures with friends

VRCCuteKit

Welcome to VRChat stalker edition
I wanna hear the entire meeting with the investors and devs on why this was a great Idea?!
Do they not think of what bad actors can do?
Do they think that we are all just happy with their choice of updates?

Based Bass

To keep this thread in the loop as to my post on X: Socials such as X and Bsky scrub the data off the images, but apps like discord and possibly more do not. Mostly understanding this as if you are a social influencer and only share images on those sites you're probably safe. But personally sharing images of yourself or worlds with discord communities which are most of our main communication and sharing arena puts your own privacy and or the world if its a testing world at risk as people can use the worldID to join that said secret testing world.

Emma Torch

Based Bass I thought Discord did get rid of metadata? My own experience currently is there is a group that focuses on games that have character cards that are PNGs, and you could upload the image and it would have all the character's stats and information attached/embedded, but now the community has to put them into an archive(zip, rar, etc) before they upload the image to ensure it's not scrubbed.

Regardless of that, I do agree this is an important detail for VRChat and should be discussed openly and it would be beneficial to be disabled by default and then option to opt-in.

VenomGhost

Emma Torch I went and tested it in a private discord with a tool that allows to see the hidden metadata and, after uploading, and right click saving the uploaded image strait from discord to my desktop, it was still showing the exact same original metadata, Twitter & Bluesky however, do in fact remove the metadata

I'd also read and heard people say Discord did remove metadata, but if it previously did, that appears to have been changed at some point, or something else just isn't adding up

Emma Torch

VenomGhostAh thank you for the updated information. I'll have to keep that in mind.

ZenithVal

Emma Torch I was confused about this too but yeah, PNGs retain metadata on Discord. Looking into it I found that at some point in the past all pngs uploaded to Discord had their metadata wiped but later they stopped deleting it again? EXIF data is still removed. No luck finding any specific patch notes. Maybe those groups just do archives out of fear of the past repeating.

tfmjonny

I can't be the only person who is completely not okay with this. Someone please explain to me why this was needed.
Now I need to double check any and all pictures I take before sharing them because I don't want stalkers getting a hold of my alt account name.
I would just like to voice that I think this should be 100% walked back all the way. I just don't see a use-case for this that makes any sense. I'm sorry.
We really shouldn’t have to beg for our privacy in a canny. This just seems like an accident waiting to happen and will inevitably end in a PR nightmare for VRChat. Most people I’m talking to right now don’t even know there is metadata on images in general.
Someone will use this to exploit someone and the community will come back on the devs for this. Mark my words. This is not a good idea.

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