While proponents of metaverse tech claim that their platforms will be built on the pillars of transparency, accessibility, and equality, the metaverses already exhibit the same old biases related to money and power. Even as women commit to a greater amount of meaningful involvement with metaverse technologies, investors are more likely to invest in metaverse companies run by men, and are more likely to invest larger amounts in them.

Web3, or Web 3.0, is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web. Its defenders insist that it seeks to use technology to incorporate concepts such as decentralization, transparency and fairness into a modern transactional economy. Whether that’s feasible remains a larger question, but at least in the case of Web3, the results so far…