The Metaverse (Already) Has a Groping Problem

I wonder if they will pass laws outlawing sexual harassment and assault in the virtual world. And then if people will be hacked and framed for sexual assault.

Why is it that every platform seems to need to rediscover the same problems? It's not 1995. If you open a space, it's going to attract trolls, spammers, hackers, etc. You've known this for a quarter century.

Security people say, over and over, that you have to put security first. You can't layer it on after the fact. You have to make it a fundamental part of every interaction.

It does no good to say "the beta tester should have used a tool called 'Safe Zone'". It shouldn't be up to the beta tester to remember that. If that's the route you want to go, you turn it on by default -- and then start figuring out how people are going to circumvent it.

That sounds like a half-assed non-solution that comes from not taking the problem seriously. There's a million things they should be doing, and doing them from the design stage, rather than treating harassment as an unforeseeable consequence to be sloppily patched. They come with trade-offs, but so does not taking harassment seriously. If people feel uncomfortable they won't go. You can fill the space up with people with thicker skins, and sacrifice a large chunk of your market. Or you can start by looking to design a place where people live together and smoothing the friction between them, and maybe get really rich off of it.