Van de fysieke wereld naar een gemedieerde werkelijkheid: de invloed van extended reality op fundamentele rechten

This dissertation investigates how immersive extended reality (IXR)—a spectrum encompassing aspects of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality—impacts fundamental rights and forces us to rethink how we consider fundamental rights in digital settings. As immersive technologies evolve into networked, commercially viable infrastructures, they increasingly function as privatized spaces that mediate users' perceptions, actions, and social relations. The thesis argues that these technologies are not merely new media but constitute fundamentally mediated realities that intensify both the opportunities and the risks associated with the digital age. Adopting a sociotechnical and rights-based approach, the study explores how IXR's distinctive affordances reshape experiences of safety, privacy, and freedoms of assembly and expression. It advances three research questions: how IXR's structure influences user experience; how its affordances affect the exercise of fundamental rights; and how existing EU law addresses—or fails to address—these transformations. Through a combination of philosophical analysis, literature review, and doctrinal examination of the EU's digital governance framework (including the GDPR, Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, AI Act, and product safety legislation), the dissertation identifies gaps in current regulation and conceptualizes a new rights-based governance paradigm for digital environments. The central claim of the latter line of thought is that as the degree of technological embodiment increases, so too should the responsibilities of private platform operators to uphold users' rights. IXR platforms act as reality-mediating infrastructures—spaces where control over embodiment, information flows, and participation effectively constitutes a form of governance. The thesis proposes a novel framework linking the degree of embodiment to a corresponding heightened duty of fair procedure, drawing analogies from public-function doctrines in constitutional and administrative law. This framework enables a proportional allocation of responsibility among state and corporate actors and offers guidance for adapting human rights and EU fundamental rights principles to immersive settings. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that the transition from the physical to the mediated world should not entail a loss of rights. Instead, it demands the deliberate translation of established rights and liberties into the architectures of extended reality. By integrating insights from philosophy of technology, platform governance, and EU law, the thesis contributes both a theoretical account of mediated rights and a practical roadmap for rights-preserving governance in the age of immersion.