A British woman says that she was “virtually gang-raped” in Facebook’s metaverse, just seconds after she stepped into the new virtual world.
In a December Medium post, the 43-year-old woman wrote that within 60 seconds of joining 3-4 male avatars, with male voices, virtually gang-raped her avatar and took photos.
Calling it a nightmare, the London-based woman said in the post that as she tried to get away, the male avatars yelled, ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t love it’.
The woman who is a, a vice president of research for another metaverse company, said in her Medium post that she didn’t use any safety features because the whole experience happened so quickly. And, after she shared her experience, she said she was met with some unsympathetic commentators, who told her, “Don’t choose a female avatar, it’s a simple fix” and dismissed her as making “a pathetic cry for attention.”
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Reports of sexual violence are already proving to be a problem in the metaverse. In early December, Verge reported that a beta tester had alleged that a stranger had groped her avatar.