A researcher entered the metaverse to study users behavior on the platform. She says she was raped within an hour of wearing her virtual reality headset.
A new report published by a nonprofit advocacy group details a researcher's violent encounter in Meta.
Users invited a researcher to a private party on the internet. Users in the same room asked her to turn off the setting that prevented others from getting close to her.
A report linked to a video that the group said shows what happened to the researcher'savatar from her perspective. In the video, a male is getting very close to her, while another male is watching. A bottle of what appears to be alcohol is passed between two people. Two men are making lewd comments in a video.
In a part of the video, the researcher was led into a private room at a party where she was raped by a user who kept telling her to turn around so he could do it from behind.
Even though it happened in virtual reality, the researcher was not happy. The researcher felt a physical sensation when the male avatars touched her, because her controller vibrated when he touched her.
She said in the report that one part of her brain was telling her something was happening, the other part was telling her something was important.
The researchers said they witnessed gun violence on the platform and that they had experienced homophobic and racial slurs.
In the US and Canada, Meta launched a new service last December. The platform had 300,000 users by February.
According to the report, four other users recently claimed that their avatars were sexually assaults or harassed in Meta's virtual reality platforms.
The alpha tester reported in November that she had been groped.
According to the MIT Technology Review at the time, a positive experience with safety tools is easy to find, and it is never a user's fault if they don't use all. To better understand how people use our tools, we will continue to improve ourUI. Our goal is to make the world a better place, and we are committed to doing that.
In a post on Medium, metaverse researcher Nina Jane Patem disclosed that within 60 seconds of joining the game, she was gang-raped by three to four male-looking avatars.
The New York Times reported that a female player was groped on a Meta-owned shooter game. A female player on the sports game said a male player recorded her voice so that he could jerk her off.
Insider did not get a response from the two companies. A Meta spokesman told the Daily Mail that it doesn't recommend turning off the safety feature with people you don't know.
The future of Meta is virtual reality. $10 billion was spent on designing the metaverse. The project could continue to lose money for the next three to five years, according to Insider.
Two major Meta investors were alarmed by the emergence of harassment and abuse on its metaverse platforms.
In December, investors Arjuna Capital and Storebrand Asset Management, together with several other advocacy organizations, co-filed a motion demanding that Meta publish a report that would examine the potential harms users could face on its metaverse platforms, they said in a press release.
"Investors need to understand the scope of these potential harms, and weigh in on whether or not this is a good idea before we throw good money after bad," said the managing partner of Arjuna Capital.
At Meta's May 25 shareholder's meeting, a proposal was introduced to complete a third-party assessment of potential psychological and civil and human rights harms to users that may be caused by the use and abuse of the platform.
The proposal was voted down.
The rules and safety features of the metaverse, regardless of the floor, will not be the same as those currently in place for social, according to a post by the president for global affairs at Meta Platforms. They should not be.
In the physical world, as well as the internet, people shout and swear and do all kinds of unpleasant things that are not forbidden by law, and they harass and attack people in ways that are. The metaverse will be the same. People who want to misuse technologies will find ways to do it.
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