Metaverse Gives Digital Avatars Four Foot Barrier To Prevent Virtual Groping

After months of controversy, Meta developers have now implemented a new four-foot barrier around all of the VR platform's digital avatars to "[create] more personal space for people and [make] it easier to avoid unwanted interactions," addressing a long-standing issue around sexual harassment and groping in the Metaverse.

In a blog posted last Friday, Oculus announced the "Personal Boundary" feature for Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, essentially the Oculus versions of VR life sims a la Second Life.

"A Personal Boundary prevents anyone from invading your avatar’s personal space. If someone tries to enter your Personal Boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary," the post read. "We are intentionally rolling out Personal Boundary as always on, by default, because we think this will help to set behavioral norms--and that’s important for a relatively new medium like VR."

Virtual groping has long been a problem in the VR space. In December last year, a woman reported she was allegedly gang-raped in a virtual reality space. Days later, The New York Times reported on the virtual harassment and assaults taking place in the Metaverse. Similar incidents have been reported on as far back as 2016 when one woman reported that a man supposedly chased her around HTC Vive and grabbed at her virtual breasts as she yelled for him to stop.

While the Personal Boundary measure attempts to solve the problem of unwanted virtual touching, it remains to be seen how Meta will address harassment in the virtual space. ArsTechnica reported that Meta's Andrew Bosworth is on the record stating "moderating the 'toxic environment' in virtual reality at any meaningful scale is practically impossible."