February 14th — Consent and Safety in VR
This week, we read Metaverse Has a Groping Problem and VR is Full of Assholes.
It’s really no surprise that there is already a groping problem in VR. Really anywhere that creeps can go to they will go to. It’s nice that the developers of the game in which that first incident happened in responded so quickly, though. The gaming industry (and tech industry in general) does not have the best track record for being a safe space for women, but I’ve noticed it getting better in recent years.
I think it’s silly to even have the debate about whether or not VR groping should be considered “real” groping or not. I don’t think it makes much difference. It’s all sexual harassment, and being violated in VR is still being violated either way. Even if it’s just considered a form of online harassment, online harassment is already grossly unregulated, which is really bad. The woman who was groped in Horizon Worlds puts it pretty clearly, stating “Sexual harassment is no joke on the regular internet, but being in VR adds another layer that makes the event more intense.”
However — there is another issue. The fact that this can still happen pretty much no matter what the developers do. Meta, or whoever, can implement safeguards all they want, but in the moment no one is really going to be thinking about navigating menus to fend off some creep. The feature would have to be easy, but not so easy it would be triggered during regular gameplay. Though honestly I think a simple shove button could do the trick. The article suggests moderators, but that can also be hard to enforce. Not only that, but more surveillance in an otherwise social space is never good news.
The other article discusses a similar case. Again, I don’t feel as if this problem is new, and that these are likely just old trolls migrating to new platforms. This article focuses on the idea of community-policing spaces, which I think is an excellent idea. The issue is that it’s hard to really start any community policing. It’s kind of just something that has to happen on its own. The article states that the user base of a lot of these spaces has to change before any real change can happen, which is definitely true, but can’t really be done overnight either. Thus, the problem continues, at least for now.
