The Darkside of Web 3.0: Crimes in the Metaverse
Within 60 seconds of entering Horizon Worlds, Meta’s (previously known as Facebook) new metaverse platform, Nina Patel was verbally and sexually harassed by four male avatars. The users took screenshots of the attack for several minutes as Patel tried to flee. During the assault, the users hurled vile obscenities at her including “don’t pretend you didn’t love it” and “go rub yourself off to the photo.” She was mortified.
Patel shared her experience in a post on Medium but was met with much backlash. Readers from all perspectives struggled with understanding her experience given the virtual context in which it occurred. Katherine Cross, a researcher of online harassment at the University of Washington, remarked on this matter saying, “At the end of the day, the nature of virtual-reality spaces is such that it is designed to trick the user into thinking they are physically in a certain space, that their every bodily action is occurring in a 3D environment.” Virtual reality is all-encompassing and real, Cross claims, so the toxic behavior that occurs in virtual reality is real as well.
The metaverse, an online virtual world that incorporates virtual and augmented reality for people to interact and coexist in a hyper-real online world, promises the creation of a world where our digital and physical lives overlap in socialization, wealth, entertainment, productivity, and consumption. At its core, the metaverse is the evolution of our current Internet. But, the problems that plague our current Internet are seeping into the metaverse; these problems are magnified due to the visceral nature of virtual reality platforms.
Toxic behavior in the metaverse can be more harmful to victims than online harassment and cyberbullying. Virtual reality transports users to an immersive digital environment so any unwanted touches in the digital world can be made to feel real as the sensory experience for users is heightened. Chanelle Siggens, a victim of simulated groping and ejaculation while in a virtual reality game, states, “When something bad happens, when someone comes up and gropes you, your mind is tricking you into thinking it’s happening in the real world. With the full metaverse, it’s going to be so much more intense.”
This harmful behavior is not limited to sexual harassment — assault, bullying, pedophilia, and hate speech are also common occurrences on virtual reality platforms in the metaverse. A group of researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate spent 11 hours on VR Chat — the most popular app in Meta’s VR Metaverse. The group found 100 instances of behavior that was a “clear breach” of platform expectations.
“One example was a group of adults circling around a teenager and asking them to say, the N-word and saying, if you say the N-word, this girl will give you a virtual kiss. Eventually, the young kid, and it’s pretty chilling the raw video, shows clearly a child’s voice saying the N-word. That is not a place that you would send kids to on their own,” recounted Irman Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. He claims that the metaverse is a haven for hate, pornography, and child grooming.
Even worse, there are very few mechanisms to easily report the misbehavior. Of the 100 incidents found by the group, only 51 met Meta’s criteria for reporting offending content, as the platform rejects reports if it cannot match them to a username in its database.
Further, when an incident is reported, it is hard to determine who is at fault. A beta tester of Meta’s Horizon Worlds had her avatar groped by a stranger. When she reported her sexual harassment experience to Meta, the company discounted her experience stating that she “didn’t utilize the safety features built into Horizon Worlds” including turning on her Personal Boundary to implement a 4-foot boundary around her avatar and using the Safe Zone function to escape from the situation. The statement from Meta claims that the beta tester was at fault for the obscene behavior she was subjected to, not her harasser and definitely not Meta.
While it is true that many virtual reality platforms like Horizon Worlds have protections in place to decrease negative interactions between users, like the Safe Zone function, such procedures are not enough. Nina Patel recounted that her horrible experience “happened so fast and before I could even think about putting the safety barrier in place. I froze.” The fact that Patel did not think to use Safe Zone or other safety features, is precisely the problem. “Generally speaking, when companies address online abuse, their solution is to outsource it to the user and say, ‘Here, we give you the power to take care of yourselves’” claims Cross. Not only is this solution not fair, it doesn’t work: safety should be straightforward and accessible.
This is especially true for the young and susceptible youth on these virtual reality platforms. Titania Jordan, the chief marketing officer at Bark, a parental control app that helps keep kids safer online, said she was particularly concerned about what harmful conduct children might encounter in the metaverse. Abusers could target children through chat messages or by speaking to them through headsets, Titania remarked. These actions are difficult to record, making it easy for abusers to escape accountability.
Titania Jordan’s fears are not unwarranted. A BBC reporter, Jess Sherwood, posed as a 13-year-old girl and entered the virtual reality platform, VRChat. What she encountered was alarming; she witnessed grooming, sexual material, racist insults, and a rape threat in the virtual-reality world. Jess was able to visit VR rooms where avatars were simulating sex and was shown sex toys and condoms. She was approached by numerous adult men with one man talking to her about “erotic role-play” and another telling her that avatars can “get naked and do unspeakable things.”
“VRChat is unsafe because its developers and Facebook [Meta] have failed to put basic measures in place to ensure abusive users cannot access its services. They have created a safe haven for abusive users at the same time as inviting minors to enter the metaverse,” states Callum Hood, the head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Abusive users currently have free rein on these virtual reality platforms, with little fear of repercussions. When Chanelle Siggens’ avatar was inappropriately touched by a user in the virtual reality game, Population One, she begged the user to stop his actions. The user just shrugged “as if to say: ‘I don’t know what to tell you. It’s the metaverse — I’ll do what I want,’” said Siggens.
Avatars on these virtual reality platforms give users a level of anonymity not seen before in the online world. “Decentralisation ensures that essentially no one is held accountable. So, who do you report crimes to?” asks Shuchi Nagpal, chief education officer at the Asian School of Cyber Laws. “With the deletion of an account being the simplest way to make an avatar vanish, how will criminals be brought to justice?” continues Nagpal. Abusive users in the metaverse may easily bounce from one virtual reality platform to another to escape accountability — and the “decentralized nature of virtual worlds might embolden malicious actors” (Sephton).
“V.R. is a whole other world of complexity,” states Titania Jordan. “Just the ability to pinpoint somebody who is a bad actor and block them indefinitely or have ramifications so they can’t just get back on, those are still being developed.”
Currently, none of the metaverse companies are held accountable when the rights and safety of users in the virtual world are threatened. Instead of evading responsibility for the actions of malicious users, virtual realitycompanies must be required to develop their own safety protocols and be held accountable for meeting those standards in order for the metaverse to not remain a dangerous and problematic space.
Fortunately, there is precedent for holding companies to this standard. In 2020, the British government introduced a plan that would appoint an internet regulator to oversee companies online. The regulator would be responsible for monitoring internet content and issuing penalties against companies that do not firmly combat dangerous and illegal terrorist and child abuse content.
In an extensive outline for regulating the metaverse, Bradley Tusk, the co-founder of Tusk Venture Partners, declared that our government must ditch its own timid, wait-and-see approach and proactively guide the expansion of the metaverse. This means potentially creating a regulatory body in the United States to oversee virtual reality companies. However, the feasibility of this solution being implemented is up for debate.
There is also the issue of punishing users who exhibit harmful behavior. As the metaverse gets closer to imitating the real world, the psychological, emotional, and even physical damages faced by users are becoming more and more real (Beschea & Stenner). Crimes that occur in virtual worlds such as harassment and sexual assault affect real people and are real crimes. David Chalmers, the author of Reality+, The Conscious Mind, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World, states that “to fully recognize this, we will need to treat virtual realities as genuine realities.” This includes outlining punishments for malicious behavior in virtual worlds and creating legal structures to carry out these punishments. It is still unknown whether these legal structures will mirror those in the real world, or be fundamentally different.
The metaverse will usher in a new era of the Internet (also known as web 3.0). By donning a virtual reality headset, you will be able to socialize with your friends, shop for products, work, and even enter places of worship in environments where the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds are permeable. It’s happening — it’s inescapable — and just like the real world, we have to work at making the metaverse a safe space for all users. Maybe that means creating a new legal structure or implementing a regulatory body, or maybe, the safety of metaverse users depends on something that we haven’t even imagined yet.
Citations
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