The Meta game Horizon Worlds has reportedly been the site of several sexual assaults. A police investigator told the Daily Mail that the metaverse is already “rife” with sexual offenses. If gone unchecked, sex crimes in the developing world of the metaverse, against both children and adults, will become more common. In October of last year, a bipartisan coalition of 33 attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Meta in California, alleging that Facebook and Instagram are responsible for a “national youth mental health crisis”. In 2021, the whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that Facebook’s own internal research showed how using Instagram (which the company owns) adversely affects teen girls’ confidence and body image. For instance, Meta has a notoriously bad record when it comes to protecting children and teenagers. Their track record in regular online social media is questionable, however.

So while it is necessary for the police to investigate this case – with the courts to decide on the appropriate punishment for the alleged offenders – it is equally important for companies behind games in the metaverse to be held accountable for bad actors. Meta has a notoriously bad track record when it comes to protecting children and teenagersĪs did the girl whose avatar was attacked in the metaverse, according to a senior police officer familiar with the case he told the Daily Mail: “There is an emotional and psychological impact on the victim that is longer-term than any physical injuries.” In addition, the immersive quality of the metaverse experience makes it all the more difficult for a child, especially, to distinguish between what’s real and what is make-believe. Dibbell’s piece reported on how the people behind avatars that were sexually assaulted in a virtual community felt emotions similar to those of victims of physical rape. The question of whether virtual rape is “really rape” goes back to at least 1993, when the Village Voice published an article by Julian Dibbell about “a rape in cyberspace”. The fact that they are able to in the metaverse is the issue at the heart of this case, which has attracted international attention. It isn’t yet known what game she was playing when the alleged assault occurred, but obviously there isn’t an online game where the goal for adult players is to rape children.

The difference, of course, is that while Call of Duty players can expect to be virtually killed sometimes as part of the game, the girl had no reason to expect that she might be raped.

The comments on an Instagram post for a story about the case in the New York Post were characteristically skeptical: “Couldn’t she have just turned it off?” “Can we focus on real-life crime please?” “I was killed in ,” one person said sarcastically: “Been waiting for my killer to be brought to justice.”

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