Meta (Facebook) will establish a minimum distance between avatars on Horizon, its social network in virtual reality, after reports of the first incidents of cyber harassment.
Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues allow users of Oculus immersive helmets to find each other, play games, create their own universes or even attend concerts in the form of personalized avatars.
The new feature, dubbed ‘Personal Boundary’, prevents avatars from approaching the equivalent of less than a meter from each other, “to create more personal space for people and more easily avoid unwanted interactions,” he said. Meta, in a statement released on Friday.
The Californian group, which includes Facebook and Instagram networks, messaging services WhatsApp and Messenger and virtual reality brand VR Oculus, notably changed its name in the fall to Meta to mark its orientation towards the ‘metaverse. ‘, a parallel universe accessible in augmented or virtual reality, described as the future of the internet.
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Photo David Esser/Shutterstock.com
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But critics fear that some of the mass phenomena observed online, such as harassment or misinformation, will be reproduced in these ultra-immersive worlds.
Late last year, a user of Horizon Worlds reported that she had been touched, through her avatar. She had not activated an option that allows blocking others, called ‘Safe Zone’.
An incident that Vivek Sharma, vice president of Horizon, called “very regrettable”, in an interview with The Verge in December, adding that he wanted this option to be “very easy to find”.
In the statement, the company explained: “We decided to enable ‘Personal Boundary’ by default, at all times, because we think it will help establish norms of behavior – it’s important for a relatively new medium like VR” (virtual reality ).
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