George V. Alexeyev

The concept of the metaverse, as a strategic vision for the development prospects of cyberspace, reflects the ambitious claims of virtual communities to establish a global digital rule based order. Global Digital Compact of 2024 demonstrates the UN's commitment to overcoming digital inequality and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by involving multiple stakeholders in Internet governance. Non-governmental organizations and virtual communities are actively implementing emergent digital solutions and putting a wide range of human rights issues on the agenda of the world community. States, in turn, seek to protect their digital sovereignty, ensure legislative recognition and judicial protection of the digital rights of citizens. Constructive human rights discourse in cyberspace is developing thanks to the interaction of states and non-governmental organizations towards the universal recognition of digital rights. Calls by virtual communities for complete freedom of the Network from state institutions have gradually given way to declarations of the need for freedom from cybercrime and freedom to exercise intellectual and digital rights. Digital freedom, as a legal condition, requires the implementation of legal guarantees of fair competition in virtual markets, which at the level of transnational law is expressed in the recognition of special principles of cyber interaction. The UN assumes that many stakeholders in the digital environment strategically manage artificial intelligence there, but from the standpoint of transnational law, the formats of interaction between states and non-governmental organizations lead to the opposite: an increase in the influence of transnational corporations and the implementation of the extraterritorial jurisdiction of developed states in cyberspace.