The Extended Mind has an in-depth survey of harassment in social VR, with 49% of women reporting at least one instance of sexual harassment, and 30% of males taking the survey reported racist or homophobic comments. Report lead Jessica Outlaw tells me she believes the problem is even bigger than those data points suggest, because most VR users who took the survey don't use social VR at all:
"25% of respondents said they were mainly in multi-player/multi-user spaces versus 75% solo [VR]," she says. "Many respondents say that they fear harassment and therefore they avoid social VR spaces entirely." (See above.) "If I had been able to recruit mainly social VR users for this study, I suspect the reported rates of harassment would be higher."
Then there's the challenge of many users not sure what qualifies as harassment:
"There were people who had the attitude that harassment in VR is not actually harassment," as Jessica puts it. “'Kids will be kids'” or 'it’s just pixels on a screen' -- so there are people who look at behavior that others reported as harassment and then categorized it as non-harassment."
I'm fairly sure that problem will persist unless and until VR usage becomes more diverse. Read the full report here.
This is where it would pay them to pay attention to the experience in SL.
Posted by: Amanda | Friday, April 06, 2018 at 05:20 PM