Technology has its pro’s and its con’s. It is a largely known fact, with any socially-aligned technology is that some people are going to use it to harass and abuse others, in any way that they can.
Most recently, that’s come up in VR, with various incidents of women being attacked in Meta’s evolving VR world, in exceedingly concerning ways.
As reported by Vice, “A woman says that she was ‘virtually gang-raped’ in Facebook’s Metaverse, just seconds after she stepped into the new virtual world. “Within 60 seconds of joining—I was verbally and sexually harassed—3-4 male avatars, with male voices, essentially, but virtually gang-raped my avatar and took photos,” Nina Jane Patel, a 43-year-old London-based mother, wrote in a December Medium post that has only just started to attract online attention. “As I tried to get away, they yelled, ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t love it’ and ‘Go rub yourself off to the photo.’”
HOW IT WORKS
A Personal Boundary prevents anyone from invading your avatar’s personal space. If someone tries to enter your Personal Boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary. You won’t feel it—there is no haptic feedback. This builds upon our existing hand harassment measures that were already in place, where an avatar’s hands would disappear if they encroached upon someone’s personal space.
SETTING NEW NORMS FOR SOCIAL VR
Meta is intentionally rolling out Personal Boundary as always on, by default, because theyt think this will help to set behavioural norms—and that’s important for a relatively new medium like VR. In the future, they’ll explore the possibility of adding in new controls and UI changes, like letting people customize the size of their Personal Boundary.
Note that because Personal Boundary is the default experience, you’ll need to extend your arms to be able to high-five or fist bump other people’s avatars in Horizon Worlds or in Horizon Venues.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Virtual reality can and should be for everyone. And we’re constantly working to improve people’s experience in VR, gathering feedback from the community to inform our work as we continue to iterate and make improvements.
Meta believes ‘Personal Boundary’ is a powerful example of how VR has the potential to help people interact comfortably. It’s an important step, and there’s still much more work to be done. Meta will continue to test and explore new ways to help people feel comfortable in VR.
Follow @itp.live to keep up with what happens in the Metaverse.