Facebook’s Metaverse
One incident of abuse and harassment every 7 minutes
VR Chat—the most reviewed social app in Facebook’s VR Metaverse—is rife with abuse, harassment, racism and pornographic content.
About
VR Chat—the most reviewed social app in Facebook’s VR Metaverse—is rife with abuse, harassment, racism and pornographic content.
Our researchers found that users, including minors, are exposed to abusive behaviour every seven minutes. Such as:
- Minors being exposed to graphic sexual content.
- Bullying, sexual harassment and abuse of other users, including minors.
- Minors being groomed to repeat racist slurs and extremist talking points.
- Threats of violence and content mocking the 9/11 terror attacks.
We reported all of these incidents to Facebook using their web reporting tool when we found them. All of our reports about users who abused and harassed other users went unanswered.
It’s just not good enough. When Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg launched their vision of the Metaverse with great fanfare they said:
“open standards, privacy and safety need to be built into the Metaverse from day one” … “you really want to emphasize these principles from the start”
This was obviously a hollow promise.