California, Europe Brief News – Nina Jane Patel, one of the new users of Facebook’s virtual universe claimed to be raped as soon as she made an appearance in the program.
This incident raises questions about the security of individual users in the virtual universe program.
On Friday, the Meta platform announced that it is launching a tool for its virtual reality social platform users.
This new tool will help maintain personal space boundaries to stay protected from any unethical move like sexual harassment.
Its new “personal boundary” tool will allow users to feel the 1.2 meters distance between their avatar and others when they access the immersive horizon worlds.
The company mentioned in the blog post that this new feature will be helpful to prevent any unwanted interactions.
The change appears after certain cases recorded of virtual groping and abusive behaviour from the users of VR platforms including horizon worlds.
This change will be supportive for the current and future users but considered to be a tad too late for users like Patel whose experience has promoted change.
“A Dreadful Experience”
Nina Patel shared her experience of being groped using a social medium in December.
She said, “It was a horrible experience that happened so swiftly and before I could even think of putting a safety barrier in place, I froze”.
Patel said that the virtual environment offers a distress experience even for the test users.
Patel said that just when she entered the Meta, for the first 60 seconds she experienced everything from verbal abuse to gang-raped by other avatars.
She further added “When I asked to take a break, they shouted, ‘Don’t act like you don’t love it.
This shows the inability of the mind to judge the difference between reality and virtual experience.
Meta has been under the observation of lawmakers over its control on problematic content on its existing platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook Adding new features
Meta shares value significantly dropped in the share market by 26 per cent on Thursday.
Meta stated that the new tool has been come into existence to cater for its current hand harassment issue.
This tool will automatically disappear the hand of an avatar if they try to invade someone’s personal space.
It also has a safe zone feature that a user can apply to create a bubble around if they feel threatened.
