Facebook parent company Meta is adding a feature to stop groping in virtual reality amid a string of VR-based sexual harassment incidents.
The feature is called “Personal Boundary,” and it creates an invisible barrier around each user’s avatar, preventing others from getting too close. Starting today, the company is rolling out Personal Boundary to Meta’s VR platforms Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues.
Most notably, the feature will be turned on by default for all users, who won't have the option of turning it off at this time, a Meta spokesperson told PCMag.
“If someone tries to enter your Personal Boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary. You won’t feel it—there is no haptic feedback,” the company’s Oculus division wrote in a blog post on Friday.
The feature was released after some women reported facing sexual harassment in Meta’s VR worlds—other users simulating groping and ejacuating on the victims' avatar, for example. In December, one user named Nina Jane Patel wrote she encountered the abuse within 60 seconds of joining Horizon Venues.
“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,’” she wrote.
The incidents are a bad look for Meta, which is betting big that VR and the metaverse will become the successor to the internet.
Meta said it’s rolling out Personal Boundary by default “because we think this will help to set behavioral norms—and that’s important for a relatively new medium like VR.” The boundary should make it feel like there’s a 4-foot barrier between users and their peers. But Meta notes users can still fist bump or high-five each other so long as they extend their arms out.
“In the future, we’ll explore the possibility of adding in new controls and UI changes, like letting people customize the size of their Personal Boundary,” the company added.
