Facebook Metaverse Horizon Worlds is just the start for the company's massive Metaverse plans. In its launch form, the virtual reality experience is designed to be a taste of what virtual reality will be able to offer users in the future.
However, the proto-Metaverse has consistently suffered with a massive problem since its inception: sexual harassment. Despite a niche audience, and the fact that avatars don't even have legs, gropers are running wild in Horizon Worlds, but there’s a plan to stop it.
Facebook Metaverse forces everyone apart
Reported by Ars Technica, Horizon Worlds has an answer to its rampant groping issue. After previously blaming harassed victims for not using a hidden protective bubble feature, the Facebook Metaverse has a new idea.
Now, avatars in the virtual world will all have an invisible protective cylinder that will limit anyone from getting too close to anyone else. In the new update, the Facebook Metaverse will make it so that no user will ever be able to virtually touch another.
Every avatar now has a set “personal space” boundary, a 4-foot cylindrical space that no one can enter. Meta, previously known as Facebook, claims that this stops “unwanted interactions”, aka virtual groping.
With the new mechanic, Horizon Worlds will “halt... forward movement” as users reach another player’s boundaries. While known firms can reach into each other’s zones for first bumps, strangers can no longer interact in the same way.
Read More: Facebook lost $10 billion on metaverse development in 2021 alone
This is why nobody wants The Metaverse
Sexual harassment has always been an issue with social platforms. Whether it’s unwanted images and comments on Twitter or groping in VR, creepy perverts are always trying to make things worse for everyone else.
However, that's one of the issues with virtual reality interactions on a massive scale. While fiction like Ready Player One shows everyone having fun together, that's simply not how reality works. There's always someone screaming slurs or trying to grope someone; it's why people don't want to spend every waking moment in VR.
The Facebook Metaverse is supposed to be the peak of virtual social interaction. CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants you to play, work and relax in VR, but in a world where you can't even hug your friends. In reality, it's a mirage of social interaction, a fallacy of being with your friends, and the reality simply feels lonely.