21 year old girl ‘virtual raped’ in Meta’s Metaverse app, no one helped

Crimes against women are coming to light even in the virtual world. The latest incident is shocking. A woman was ‘virtually raped’ by a stranger in Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse app, a report has claimed. According to the report, another user was also present there during this time. Non-profit organization SumOfUs had sent one of its 21-year-old researchers to the virtual world. It has been claimed that after about an hour on the platform, their researcher had a ‘disorienting and confusing experience’. During this time his ‘avatar’ was sexually harassed.

What happened to the researcher?

SumOfUs has shared this incident in its new report – Metaverse: ‘Another Spool of Toxic Content’. It is told what happened when a young researcher tested the app. The researcher entered the app with a female avatar and was sexually harassed within about an hour. It has been told in the report that the researcher’s personal boundary feature was on, which he had turned off. He was encouraged to do so by other users.

According to the report, the researcher was taken to a party going on in a private room, where a user raped her. According to the report, the researcher was being asked to turn so that the user could approach from behind and the user outside the window could see all this. According to the report, there was another user in the room where all this was happening, who was passing a bottle of vodka.

Due to the personal boundary feature being disabled, other avatars on the app were able to touch the researcher virtually, due to which the researcher’s hands started vibrating and she was feeling very bad physically.

Meta clarification on the matter

About this from Mail Online Conversation A Meta spokesperson said that the researcher had not turned on the personal boundary feature. This is a kind of safety tool, which is on by default and blocks unknown people within a radius of four feet of your avatar. A company spokesperson says, ‘At Horizon Worlds, strangers stay 4 feet apart. This makes it easier to avoid their unnecessary conversations. Among such people, we do not recommend turning off this feature.

Meta highlights in its app that users are offered many tools to stay safe in the virtual world. It also includes a ‘Safe Zoom Button’. It allows you to block people who are harassing you and also complain about such people and content. However, experts have already criticized Meta on safety related issues.

After a similar incident in December last year, Katherine Cross, a researcher related to online harassment at Washington University, said that usually when companies talk about online abuse, they put the problem on the users as a solution. Gives. She says that we have given the users the power to take care of themselves.

What is Horizon Worlds?

Meta released Horizon Worlds in December last year. In this app, users can gather with other people and play games and create their own virtual world.