Woman experiencing metaverse sexual assault in game

A woman researching the Horizon Worlds a social virtual reality experience by Meta platforms was ” raped” in the virtual world by a random stranger while another watched on and passed around a bottle of vodka.
SumOfUs, a global non-profit advocacy organization and online community that campaigns to hold corporations accountable on issues such as climate change, workers’ rights, discrimination, human rights, animal rights, corruption, and corporate power grab, sent a 21-year-old researcher into the virtual world earlier this month, the Daily Mail reports.
But within an hour of using the platform, the woman’s avatar was sexually assaulted during a “disorientating and confusing experience”. The 21-year-old researcher told the Mail she believed the research was important.
“It happened so fast I kind of disassociated. One part of my brain was like ‘WTF is happening’, the other part was like this isn’t a real body, and another part was like, ‘this is important research’.”
A Meta spokesperson told the Daily Mail that the female researcher did not have the ‘Personal Boundary’ feature on – a safety tool that’s used to prevent non-friends from coming within one meter.
“In Horizon Worlds, Personal Boundary is default on at almost 4ft (1m) for non-friends to make it easier to avoid unwanted interactions,” they said.
“We don’t recommend turning off the safety feature with people you do not know.”
Horizon Worlds is a free virtual reality, online video game with an integrated game creation system developed and published by Meta Platforms for Oculus Rift S and Oculus Quest 2. It was released in the U.S. and Canada to people 18 years or older on December 9, 2021 after an invite-only beta phase
SumOfUs has released a new report this week, titled ‘Metaverse: another cesspool of toxic content’, where it details what happened when a young researcher tested the app using an Oculus headset.