"I recently shared my experience of sexual harassment in Facebook/Meta’s Venues. Within 60 seconds of joining — 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”.
A horrible experience that happened so fast and before I could even think about putting the safety barrier in place. I froze.
It was surreal. It was a nightmare."
This is a section of a blog named "Reality or Fiction", written by Nina Jane Patel, a Metaverse tester.
Read it here
Yes, You read it right!
It is true!
Nina, 41 year old metaverse tester, in her blog shared her experiences right after logging in to Metaverse and choosing her avatar.
Metaverse, as we all know is a virtual-reality platform by Facebook where people can experience themselves in a 3D Avatar. This is how Facebook describes Metaverse-
The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. It's a collective project that will be created by people all over the world, and open to everyone. You’ll be able to socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what’s possible today. pic.twitter.com/655yFRm8yZ
— Meta (@Meta) October 28, 2021
The twitter account @Meta use #ResponsibleInnovation, but when we read such incidents, like Nina shared, we realize that Mark Zuckerberg shouldn't use people as a guinea pig to understand how they communicate in virtual-reality. The message is loud and clear- You cannot sacrifice the mental health of a user to perfect your platform.
Fake news, hate speech and identity theft is a real problem in the virtual world, and now when we are trying to move towards VR, we can't repeat the same things, which we are experiencing right now in the virtual world of social media.
It also open up another debate about the mentality of people. With fake names and badges, you get access to virtual world but the low framed mentality of teasing, harassing and in Nina'a case rapping someone is worst than one can even think about. To think about rapping someone is wrong. Hiding behind an avatar doesn't mean that you have access to do anything. Being responsible and behaving like a man is embedded in our moral values and ethics. just because you can hide behind a fake name and avatar, no one gives you right to do any unlawful activity.
This also raise another topic of discussion- Will Metaverse also have rule of law? A constitution? A rule book? What is permitted and what is not?
We believe the guidelines must be established first, then only this new universe can function well.
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