Mother opens up about being ‘virtually gang raped’ in metaverse

nypost.com:

being “groped” in virtual reality late last year has come forward to discuss her horrifying experience.“Within 60 seconds of joining — I was verbally and sexually harassed — 3-4 male avatars, with male voices, essentially, but virtually gang raped my avatar and took photos — as I tried to get away they yelled — ‘don’t pretend you didn’t love it’ and ‘go rub yourself off to the photo,’” Nina Jane Patel, 43, recalled in a Medium post recounting the “nightmare” she experienced as a beta tester on the VR platform Horizon Worlds, created by Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook.“A horrible experience that happened so fast and before I could even think about putting the safety barrier in place,” the London-based mother wrote, referring to Meta’s Safe Zone feature, which allows users to place a block on interaction with other users.

In December, the company revealed that a then-unnamed woman had been virtually “groped” on the platform. While she published her story on Medium at the time to little fanfare, Patel is making her voice louder to publicly discuss her concerns with the platform.“Harassment in the metaverses is a serious issue that the industry needs to come together on to put in place the correct security controls and safety measures,” Patel wrote in an emailed statement to The Post.