Originally published at: People are already being sexually assaulted in Facebook's Metaverse | Boing Boing
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Entirely unpredictable. /s
Why not make interaction a permission granted?
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My guess: the current block implementation is probably just like a visibility toggle, so a permission system would mean the default metaverse would be an empty ghost town, which isn’t what they want.
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the company determined that the beta tester didn’t utilize the safety features built into Horizon Worlds,
Ah! Blame the victim. Why am I not surprised?
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Ads. With this company the answer is always advertising.
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Ugh. Gross. I have played some VR games at a friends house, but they weren’t multiplayer. When you remember kids play these games too - blech.
For most games couldn’t you have a “personal space” setting, where no one can get within X feet of you to grab/grope you? 
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I’d go so far as to argue that technical features which “prevent” harassment (such as having to grant permission to be interacted with) – and even technical features which allow for blocking after the fact – create a veil of Cover Your Ass for the service provider. It enables the victim blaming.
Virtual assault is still assault. What we really need is accountability and actual consequences. Social solutions for social problems. Technical solutions for technical problems.
Graphical avatar chat has a history back into the 80s, and these harassment problems extend that far back in time as well. There’s a lot of knowledge gained back then that seems to be overlooked now.
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Ugh. Why are we humans so awful?
February 25, 2010
By the end of 2006, he writes, Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, “was receiving close to 2,000 abuse reports a day.”
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It was this gif or the “that escalated quickly” gif.
I wonder how moderators are or will be moderating Meta.
Or if they are going about it at the same level of excellence as they already did or do on Fb.
Ugh.
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No need to go to Texas anymore to be sexually assaulted.
But… you still can’t father an incest r_pe-child in the Metaverse.
Baby steps, there, Demon-Corporation-Formally-Known-As-Facebook.
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Works for me.
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I have played far more multiplayer games with kids that end up in getting teabagged than multiplayer games largely populated by adults that end up with your downed character getting teabagged…
But yeah, a “personal space setting” would be nice. Also I just don’t play anything with a mic. Way too toxic.
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Not shocked.
Still the amount of extra work given that platform your avatar has no legs or bottom that is impressive.
There is already a lot of kinky shit going on in other virtual platforms like VRChat and I can say from experience it can be very intimate and very intense. So I can really see harassment going on and having close to the same effects as it would IRL.
Hell, last night I was at a party in VR (Not in the shitty FB universe) and having a conversation and I realize over in the other side of the room somebody was being fucked hard. (Remote sex toys were in use) We were like, well… damn and had to move to the other side of the room but there were the occasional jokes about how much of a good time that person was having.
In the case of virtual social spaces harassment and other forms of gaslighting are a problem and will continue to be as there is no easy way to moderate that short of blocking people. I’ve dealt with all sorts of horrible emotional problems from people in the past 2 years in VR. Emotional blackmail as somebody fakes a suicide at me is one of those things that are draining at a very primal level.
Also, Fuck facebook’s social VR systems.
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