Metaverse has a huge ability to create and build new worlds, new ideas, and new experiences, but along with these innovative things, there come risks like cyberbullying, privacy, harassment, safety, and more. This guide talks about how cyberbullying is slowly entering the digital world.
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Numbers talk about the online abuse in the metaverse. 49% of women surveyed reported facing at least one incident of sexual harassment act while using VR products including Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Microsoft Windows Mixed Reality (Extended Mind)
Stranger Simulated Groping
Let’s talk about one incident that happened the last year in December, with Chanelle Siggens. She wanted to play Population One so she strapped on an Oculus Quest virtual reality headset. After turning on the game, she maneuvered her avatar and waited for the action to begin.
But as she was waiting, another player’s avatar tried to approach her avatar. The stranger then started to simulate groping and ejaculating onto her avatar. Shocking? right, she asked the player, to stop. But he didn’t listen to her.
Metaverse interactions as “uncomfortable”
The metaverse is being constructed by different organizations with various prospectives in place to avoid interpersonal victimization, but a set of rules and regulations must be in place – and truly followed – when individuals are targeted and being harmed. Any digital surroundings need to have a dynamic set of Community Guidelines to define behavioral expectations, as well as to declare the existence of disciplinary policies for conduct breaches.
Moderating or monitoring behavior in virtual reality is much harder as many content creators try to misinform, spread hate posts, and many more. So, instead of just scanning through the content or text, we should go for process spoken language, visible gestures, and more.
People are more tolerant when they meet each other face to face and make eye contact or hear someone’s voice. Do you really think the people will just be kind to each other in the metaverse? Do answer in the comments.
