In regards to participating in VR to network and socialize, one software that has done it well enough so far, and done very well for me in comparison to in real life actions or other systems, at least in the past few years til now, is VRChat.

If a time comes where VRC isn't as great as it is now in terms of access and freedom of speech and association, people will create alternative where that will live on.

As there is Bitcoin, Nostr, and a slowly increasing rate of a decentralized and censorship resistany internet access, so will there be digital VR space that has those values at it's base.