I started this thread hoping to get some basic answers, but I'm glad it's sparking further conversation.
I've already said this in the brief guide I made, but I'll say it again here: I'm a researcher who's looking at a number of applications of XR technology. I decided early into my use of VAM that I wouldn't publish on it by name because it was more fun to not make it part of my work. But I can tell you, other researchers are also aware of this application. There are at least two scholarly papers that have been written that reference VAM with at least 10 other papers referencing them. Most of them are conference papers right now, so not in journals, but it's a foundation to build on. Scholarly research ideally should be a good thing because of the massive power and potential of VAM above and beyond sex, but the tone of those papers is mixed. Journalistic coverage has likewise been mixed, with the overwhelming majority of it in the porn press being positive while the few pieces of what we might call mainstream press coverage has been more sensational and negative. So far, neither scholarly or journalistic press have devoted a significant amount of coverage to this app. Most online VR headset owners are not aware of it, based on what I can tell in the groups I study. My scans of social media (Twitter and Reddit) indicate a very small network posting and interacting with posts about VAM by name. So I can reasonably say that by every available metric, VAM has not meaningfully entered the public consciousness in English language media at least.
I do also know a bit about policy and have worked with many people who develop digital policy. There are several misconceptions in this thread about content hosting and the legal rights and responsibilities of website owners. To put it simply, it is not as simple as saying "we only host" as sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and myriad others have found out when being dragged in front of regulators. In the US there is more latitude to be absolved of responsibility because corporate interests dominate the political and legal system. But increasingly there is bipartisan support to possibly shift some of this legal framework. The current head of the Federal Trade Commission is leading one part of this charge, but currently is mostly focused on breaking up monopolies like Facebook because that's where her primary politics lie. Europe tends to be a lot more hands on with their regulation by comparison, but can also be more permissive about things like pornography due to longstanding legal and social precedent. EU regulators seem more interested in taking their cut of things than necessarily stopping them. Paid content providers are far more likely to get hit with a tax or fine than anyone else, but that includes website owners. They also have worked to develop their own public VR solutions (to so far minimal success). China is following a similar course and are certainly known for being very hands on when it comes to regulating just about anything, but most people in China are also among the most savvy when it comes to circumventing the state to use the internet how they want to. Other parts of the world have their own regulatory peculiarities. Russia comes to mind, but they obviously have other issues going on that take precedence, unfortunately for both our Russian and Ukrainian VAM creators. Wishing for peace and change in the near future.
I mention this global view because this is undeniably a global app. I've been a lot of places on the internet, but I've never belonged to as internationally robust of a community as this one. It's part of the charm of this place, but also part of the reason to expand your view of policy beyond whatever is happening in the west. The internet governance policy world is small. People who do digital policy in Kenya or Brazil often know people who do the work in the US or Korea. A casual conversation is all it takes for a small service like this one to end up on a policy or legal radar.
My suggestion to creators is to brand their work as artistic expression rather than part of a game or as more generic software. As I've mentioned elsewhere, art has a lot more established protection than these other categories. Art is the primary focus of VAM in my view. There is no meaningful difference between a person taking a pencil and paper and drawing someone and using DAZ, Blender and Photoshop to achieve the same result. In countries where freedom of expression in the arts is protected, there are a number of legal ways to defend what VAM creators do, whether the conversation is about decency or likeness rights. Calling it artistic expression rather than an unlimited sexual playground is probably a better long form strategy.
I like VAM. I've spent a ton of time in this app and to be real, it's probably what kept me interested in VR both personally and professionally. VAM is gesturing to what a metaverse SHOULD be, which is getting what you want how and when you want it. Persistent social experiences are also nice, but the real promise of virtual worlds is customizability. In that sense, VAM is leagues ahead of many of its competitors. The ability to take digital assets and remix them to your heart's content is infinitely more interesting than having a fake desk to type emails on or a game where you have to shoot everyone before they kill you. I would be very surprised if several people who work for Meta weren't already on this app because there's much they can learn from it, though right now they seem to be headed mostly in strange and counterintuitive directions. My favorite conspiracy theory is that the reason Zuckerberg has gone so hard on this metaverse stuff is because he's here in VAM every night just like the rest of us. They've already added permissions for adult content in Horizon Worlds because if there's one thing they learned from running Facebook, it's that our basest human instincts are the most profitable.
Steam is what provoked me to start this discussion because it's somewhat more mainstream, but in the vast universe of media, it's still relatively niche, with the users of adult content being even more niche. VAM itself is fairly niche because it's not easy to use and that will likely keep journalists, regulators and researchers away more than anything else. VAMX is much easier to use, but the way it ships doesn't necessarily reveal much about the deeper more powerful VAM unless you get deep into the Hub and follow the breadcrumbs to all the other places where you can acquire VAM content. The probability is low that a critical mass of people will weather the learning curve enough to become a problem. That said, all it really takes is a few annoying influencers on TikTok or somewhere sharing something twisted and then it's a problem, as we all saw recently with the swift action to destroy ZLibrary (RIP
). What Steam does signal is that there are ambitions to make this thing get bigger, which of course is the goal of literally everyone who ever started a website. I don't fault you for it because we all have to survive in the mire of capitalism, but it pays to be prepared for as many eventualities as possible. A better researcher would be writing multiple papers on what this site and its user base have to teach us about VR and its users, but a community of people literally trying to help each other find better ways to jerk off (often for free) was too charming and, dare I say, noble for me to use to pad my CV. I'm not so sure others will be as charitable, but I hope so. I think the VAM team has done an admirable job of trying to moderate this place and the creators continue to churn out amazing art. You all deserve a bigger audience. Let's just hope it's a good one.
You guys scared of steam, meanwhile LOL. Them damn soccer moms creating self lookalikes in sims and getting smashed by robots and getting gangbanged. Vam is a mans game, and that's a female game. Those women aren't scared so we shouldn't be either.
