Facebook’s parent company, Meta, opened the doors to the virtual world of Horizon Worlds to the public before Christmas.

Use VR Glasses You can move in a digitally created environment and meet other people. Sort of Facebook for advanced. you make it yourself avatar who interact or play games with other users.

Moved and deceived

But when people enter a new world, they often bring with them the habits of the real world as well.

A few days before the opening, a woman said beta test that she had been sexually assaulted by a male user in the Horizon world.

– Sexual harassment is no ordinary web joke, but in virtual reality it takes a new level that makes it even more intense, the woman wrote in a group for beta testers on Facebook.

– Not only was I groped yesterday, but there were other people there who supported the behavior and made me follow myself, the woman wrote, according to The Verge.

Nina Jane Patel from England told last month Daily mail about his experience at Horizon Worlds.

– I entered the lobby with an avatar that looks exactly like me. Middle-aged, blonde and wearing jeans and a long-sleeved top.

– Within a minute I was surrounded by three male avatars who came towards me and felt me.

The men allegedly made sexual comments and took screenshots of the abuse as she tried to escape. He ended up ripping off the VR glasses.

Although Patel didn’t feel any progress physically, the experience left him reeling. She worries about what her three daughters and other women might be exposed to in what she describes as a “lawless cyberspace”.

Come closer

Bloomberg technology journalist Parmy Olson says BBC that he too had an unpleasant experience in Horizon Worlds.

– I soon discovered that I was the only woman there. A group of men came towards me and looked at me without saying anything. Then they started taking pictures of me and a guy came up to me and said something.

– When someone is close to you in virtual reality and talks to you, it’s really like they are speaking directly into your ear. It got me going, Olson said.

He said that he had a similar experience on Microsoft’s virtual platform.

– I was talking to another woman, and after a few minutes a man came and spoke to us. He followed us and said inappropriate things, so we ended up having to block him, he said.

Olson wouldn’t describe the experience as harassment, but it was disgusting and uncomfortable,

Setting intimate boundaries

Prior to the weekend, Horizon deputy head Vivek Sharma announced in a blog post that they are now taking action to prevent invasive behavior.

The company is now implementing a default setting in its Horizon software that prevents people from getting close to each other inappropriately.

The intimate limit is set at four feet, over 1.2 meters. If someone tried to get close, it would stop suddenly.

You also won’t see any movement in the VR glasses, even if an intruder is standing in your personal bubble. Previously, the company launched a function to prevent hand abuse, in which the animation would break when the hands were too close.

– We intentionally introduced this as a standard because we believed it would have an educational effect, which is important in a relatively new medium like virtual reality, Sharma wrote.

In future updates, users will have the opportunity to expand and narrow intimate boundaries according to their own preferences.

Meta Norden: – Must be safe

NRK asked Meta Norden what they thought about the issue of some avatars molesting others.

In an email, the company replied that they wanted everyone at Horizon Venues to have a positive experience. (Horizon Worlds is part of the Horizon Venues platform red.anm)

“They should easily find security tools that can help in such situations – which in turn helps us to investigate and take action. Horizon Venues must be secure,” wrote communications manager for Meta Norden Lukasz Lindell.

He added that they will continue to make improvements as they learn more about how people interact.

“Especially when it comes to helping people report things in an easy and reliable way.”