Well, wasn't the Metaverse meant to take us into the virtual world? Away from reality, nasty and loathsome ones nonetheless? The naïve me believed this until I figured that some despicable human beings have found a way to ruin the virtual world for us (read: women) too. Out of all the problems in the world, who thought something as ghastly as harassment will be the chosen one to ruin our lives virtually? I apologize if I sound too bitter but hang on until you hear and see the events that have occurred with the woman out there and I promise, you'd be mortified too.
A well-known actress had flown into Miami 2022 Bitcoin conference. She makes a living from trading cryptocurrencies and has a modest online following. She was quoted saying how she was having the time of her life until she realized that her Twitter mentions were blowing up, (no) thanks to some '@bitcoin_fu**boi' who posted a photo that featured an unflattering view of her backside. Hundreds of people had replied to the tweet and written disturbing things about her body. Between graphic insults, some men made sexual bids. “I’d still smash,” one wrote. “Would pound,” wrote another. She reported the harassment to the Bitcoin conference using an online contact form, but no one replied.
It appals me to imagine that if someone as popular as an actress pleas were turned a blind eye to, what is a mediocre working-class supposed to do? Officially, the Bitcoin conference has an anti-harassment policy, which forbids “offensive verbal comments about personal appearance,” among other things. But several women said the conference doesn’t go far enough to enforce its policies and proactively protect women’s safety.
In case you are wondering it is only the 'well-known' people this harassment is targeted towards, I sadly have to pronounce you incorrect. A man groped at the breasts of a woman at a private party during the week of the Bitcoin conference. Another woman attended an after-party at the home of a prominent crypto investor and later discovered that someone had slipped an AirTag into her bag at the party. Both women were disturbed, but neither reported the incidents to the conference or the police since they didn’t expect it would resolve anything. Such is the faith a common man has in the system of justice! To top it all off, they also asked that their names not be used for fear of retaliation within the Bitcoin community!
Just how flawed is our concept of egalitarianism?
One British woman has alleged that she was groped in the virtual world by male avatars in horizon venues of meta. Some reports also claim she was raped. Plenty of women claim to have been sexually harassed and verbally abused by male avatars. A woman, also a mother of two stated that she was so shocked and the incident took place so fast, that she had 'no time to consider safety issues.' We cannot even begin to comprehend the psychological impact it would have on the victims.
Unscrupulous characters have always found a way to violate people within our society.
One key question we must ask ourselves is will the virtual world become free of sexual harassment? In March, Andrew Bosworth, a Meta executive wrote in an employee memo that moderating what people say and how they act in the metaverse "at any meaningful scale is practically impossible." Simply put, the reality is that it may not be possible to eradicate it completely but we can definitely work to mitigate it.
There must be safeguards within algorithmic codes that will limit or eradicate forms of harassment. Specific identifiers must connect the user to their avatars. This will bring together the need for accountability in the virtual space. After the reporting of several harassment incidents, Meta created a personal border for their system that will ensure the distance between users. This unique barrier will prevent other avatars from being too close to another avatar. These are indeed great inclusions and should be applauded.
However, we still stand far away from the problem being resolved entirely. Issues of verbal abuse and hate speech are still left hanging mid-air. We are definitely at a stage where formulating an approach for governance of these online spaces cannot be further delayed. Every user deserves to enter the virtual world without the fear of being abused, groped or exposed to anything they are not comfortable with.
The metaverse has so much to offer and can be more good than bad provided we have proper guidelines, and ethical considerations to combat the bad. Laws should be implemented to regulate these spaces before it is too late and there is no coming back.
When Mark Zuckerberg described the Metaverse, he conjured an image of harmonious social connections in an immersive virtual world. After all, who needs a new world with its old problems?
Until a structured and systematized solution to protecting users from VR harassment is achieved, the only course of action is to appeal to the authorities in respect of this particular cause to discipline the assailants so they can face charges of committing this kind of crime.
Until there, we hope (and pray to The Almighty) that these monsters with face punishment.
Kinjal is Female Tech Leaders Marketing and Content Intern.
Important topic, and I agree 100% that we need to implement safeguards and make it easy to to appeal to the authorities, but the “British woman who was groped in Horizon Venues” is Nina Jane Patel, and she‘s a VR company founder (Kabuni) and wrote about the incident on her blog, from where the Daily Mail and every other media outlet picked it up and added stuff she never mentioned. She was not raped (although of course it feels like being raped), and she is the same person as the “woman, also a mother of two“, who “had 'no time to consider safety issues.'. It’s bad that incidents like those happen, but please do not invent more than there are…