Sexually harassed woman in Zuckerberg’s “Metaverse”
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is certain: virtual reality worlds, in which people with VR glasses on their heads meet, chat and play with each other, are the next evolutionary stage of the internet. Even Facebook’s name has been changed: Meta does the “Metaverse”. Problems of social networks do not stop at the VR world either: In one part of the “Metaverse” a woman was sexually harassed.
This is what “Technology Review” reports. Specifically, it is about the virtual reality platform “Horizon Worlds” for VR glasses from Meta subsidiary Oculus. It is a game in the “Metaverse”, in which up to 20 people get together as avatars in virtual reality and build worlds together – quasi “Minecraft” as a VR experience. The platform has been beta-tested in North America for a few weeks and has officially opened there for a week. What in the trailer looks like a harmless VR amusement park, however, quickly became a place of discomfort for a beta tester. She reports that she was the victim of sexual harassment while testing “Horizon Worlds” at the end of November. A stranger groped her avatar. She later reported this to the other beta testers as well. Developers have built in a protective shield function Harassment is a problem that the creators of such worlds are also aware of – especially since it was not the first such incident in a VR game world. With “Horizon Worlds” a protective shield function was therefore built into the game, the developers emphasize. At the push of a button, users could create an impenetrable virtual bubble through which other avatars could neither communicate nor interact with them. In the specific case, however, the beta tester was apparently unable to activate the barrier quickly enough when she encountered the monster. A problem that one now wants to address: Compared to “The Verge”, one of the developers of “Horizon Worlds” explained that they would ensure that the protective shield function would be easier to find in the future.
Reference-www.krone.at
I think it’s funny. She was never touched. There is no issue. It’s impossible to be assaulted in any way in a VR environment.