SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Facebook
parent
Meta began rolling out Friday a minimum distance between users’ avatars
in its virtual reality Horizon network after reports of harassment, one of the
thorny issues for its metaverse vision.
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The “personal
boundary” function in the immersive platform, where people can socialize
virtually, puts a ring of space around users’ digital proxies.
“A personal
boundary prevents anyone from invading your avatar’s personal space,” Horizon
vice president
Vivek Sharma wrote.
“If someone tries
to enter your personal boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as
they reach the boundary,” Sharma added.
The new function
comes after complaints have emerged in press reports and in social media or
blog posts of incidents of harassment.
“Within 60 seconds
of joining — I was verbally and sexually harassed,” one user wrote in a blog of
her experience.
“A horrible
experience that happened so fast and before I could even think about putting
the safety barrier in place. I froze,” she added.
The boundary
function is turned on by default, said Sharma, who added users will still be
able to bump fists or give one another high-fives.
Horizon already
has an anti-harassment feature that makes an avatar’s hands vanish if it tries
to inappropriately touch another virtual character, according to its creator.
Meta opened its
Horizon Worlds virtual reality platform to the public in
North America in December,
in a step toward building its metaverse vision for the future.
Facebook rebranded
itself Meta last year to move past being a scandal-plagued social network and
toward its plans to build a virtual universe blurring the lines between the
physical world and the digital one.
But critics of the
social networking giant fear that certain mass phenomena observed online, such
as harassment or misinformation, will be reproduced in these ultra-immersive
worlds.
Horizon Worlds is
far from a fully realized metaverse, which even Meta concedes will require
years of work and significant technological advances.
But
headset-wearing users in the US and
Canada can now gather with friends or
others, play games, and build their own virtual worlds on Horizon as long as
they are 18 years old and have the proper equipment.
“It’s an important
step, and there’s still much more work to be done,” Sharma wrote of the new
safety feature.
Options being explored
include letting people adjust the distance for their personal boundaries, he
added.
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