Metaverse Sexual Assault

About

Metaverse Sexual Assault, also known as the Metaverse Groping Problem, refers to a controversy regarding Facebook's parent company Meta and its Metaverse virtual reality space Horizon Worlds, which started receiving user complaints in late 2021 regarding in-game sexual harassment in the form of groping. The story was covered by several news outlets in late 2021 but became more widespread in early 2022 when CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the problem with the addition of a four-foot "Personal Boundary" setting.

Background

On December 9th, 2021, The Verge^[1] published an article about the Metaverse and its umbrella platform Horizon Worlds. Within the article, they relayed a female user's account of being groped that was posted to the Facebook group of Horizon Worlds beta testing on November 26th, 2021. In the post, the woman stated, "Sexual harassment is no joke on the regular internet, but being in VR adds another layer that makes the event more intense. Not only was I groped last night, but there were other people there who supported this behavior which made me feel isolated in the Plaza."

According to The Verge, Meta's VP of Horizon Vivek Sharma released a blog post on December 1st, officially highlighting the complaint to a broader audience. He was quoted saying the incident was "absolutely unfortunate" but cited a privacy feature within the Metaverse related to blocking someone from interacting with you, saying that the user could have used this feature to prevent it. He continued and said, "that’s good feedback still for us because I want to make [the blocking feature] trivially easy and findable."

Developments

Other news outlets covered the story in the following weeks, such as Technology Review,^[2] which released an article on December 16th, 2021, that further highlighted the Metaverse groping problem. Its article, unlike The Verge, focused specifically on the incident of sexual harassment, as well as cited previous incidents of VR sexual harassment dating back to 2016. They specifically cited an apology^[3] written by the creator of the VR game Quivr, Aaron Stanton, whose platform endured a precursor controversy in regards to in-game groping. They used his apology and how he handled it as an example for Meta executives going forward. Technology Review's article would go on to be the primary article shared online.

Online Reactions

Over the following days, articles on the topic were shared to various subs on Reddit, such as one on /r/technology^[4] on December 16th, 2021, by Redditor nexusloops whose post received roughly 22,100 upvotes over the course of two months.

The concept of Metaverse groping started receiving attention in memes going into the rest of December 2021. For instance, on December 18th, Twitter ^[5] user phagridphagrid posted a tweet reading, "im groping e-girls in the metaverse," earning 35 likes in two months (shown below).

Memes were also shared on Instagram in relation to the controversy. On December 22nd, Instagram^[6] page dark_iron_gains posted a video meme that referenced Metaverse groping, earning roughly 19,000 likes over the course of two months (shown below).

Metaverse "Gang Rape"

On February 2nd, 2022, the Independent^[9] published an article titled "Woman reveals ‘nightmare’ of being ‘gang raped’ in virtual reality" that detailed a story from psychotherapist Nina Jane Patel, who had been conducting research on the Metaverse, of her being sexually attacked by four avatars. The article directly cited a Medium^[10] blog post from Patel that she posted on December 21st, where she was quoted as saying, "I was verbally and sexually harassed -- 3–4 male avatars, with male voices, essentially, but virtually gang raped my avatar and took photos -- as I tried to get away they yelled -- 'don’t pretend you didn’t love it' and 'go rub yourself off to the photo'" (photo shown below via Men's Day Out).

Addition Of "Personal Boundary" Setting

On February 4th, 2022, Vivek Sharma published a Facebook^[7] blog post regarding the addition of a new Personal Boundary setting. The safety feature allows Horizon World users to set a desired distance between them and other users, with a default setting of 4 feet. This is also a default setting that is switched on the moment one enters the Metaverse for the first time. Sharma continued in the blog post to say, "Virtual reality can and should be for everyone. And we’re constantly working to improve people’s experience in VR, gathering feedback from the community to inform our work as we continue to iterate and make improvements," likely in response to the accounts of sexual harassment (photo shown below via Facebook blog post).

Online Reactions

Multiple news outlets like The Daily Mail^[8] reported on the incident going into the remainder of February 2022. Users on platforms like Twitter also reacted. For instance, the Twitter account of the podcast The Recount posted a video that they captioned, "How it started vs. How it's going," earning over 130 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below).

How it started vs. How it's going pic.twitter.com/XUJX97HBMb

— The Recount (@therecount) February 7, 2022

SomeOfUs Metaverse Sexual Assault Video

On May 24th, 2022, a self-proclaimed "nonprofit advocacy organization," called SumOfUs^[11] which describes itself as being, "committed to curbing the growing power of corporations," released a report^[12] titled, "Metaverse: another cesspool of toxic content." Within the report, they took a deep dive into some accounts of sexual assault and hate speech from users. One woman, who remained anonymous, works as a researcher for the group and was led into a private room at a party in the Metaverse. In the room, she claimed her avatar was raped by a user while another watched and passed around a virtual bottle of vodka. SomeOfUs even released a video of it accessible via a Google Drive^[13] link (screenshots of the video shown below).

News outlets started writing their own articles related to SomeOfUs' report and video like BBC^[14] and the New York Post.^[15] Additionally, on May 27th, 2022, the Twitter page NextNewsNetwork reposted the Google Drive assault video to the platform (shown below).

An unnamed researcher for SumOfUs was digitally raped in Zuckerberg's metaverse while an accomplice "watched and passed around a bottle of vodka." pic.twitter.com/xXBZfOPGuR

— Next News Network (@NextNewsNetwork) May 27, 2022

Search Interest

External References