Human trafficking in the metaverse? How to make virtual reality a safe space
- To women on social media it won’t come as a surprise that sexual harassment occurs in the metaverse. Groups who fight it in the real world are concerned
Nina Jane Patel entered Horizon Venues late last year, to see what all the growing fuss was about the metaverse.
Once her head was inside the helmet, looking through the viewfinder, she was quickly surrounded by male avatars, some offering sexually suggestive gestures, and some actually – well, technically, virtually – groping her.
“Not only was I groped last night, but there were other people there who supported this behaviour, which made me feel isolated […].”
This technology’s predecessors – think early computer games such as 1989’s SimCity – have been around for decades, with periodic leaps in complexity.
Facebook’s announcement on October 29, 2021, that it would invest billions into its own metaverse technology – and change its company name to Meta in the process – has pre-emptively mainstreamed the idea of virtual reality as part of our daily lives.