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Omfg this is so absurdly stupid. What a waste of time for the police who have actual issues to be concerned with.

The article seems a bit silly, but online harassment is an actual issue and can have a big impact, especially for minors. The way it's presented, especially the Daily Mail article (“British police probe VIRTUAL rape in metaverse” and the mentioning of AI) is a significant (perhaps deliberate) misunderstanding of the problem for the sake of clicks. In reality, this situation isn't that different compared to Omgele back in the day, but instead it's compared to physical SA. I think this kind of clickbait reporting does not contribute to bringing awareness to the issue of digital harassment, nor to a greater understanding required to solve it. It's presented as a new threat (like DM likes to do), but in fact this is simply a new form of online harassment, like we've been seeing for years.

Kids as young as 8 years old are being given unsupervised access to the internet. This alone seems very unhealthy, but it also means that other individuals get access to them. Grooming and online harassment have been an issue since SMS, and probably will be. The police does not have the expertise and capacity (or perhaps motivation) required to deal with these situations. The online platforms fail at moderation, some allow users to send death threats while using some bot to block swearwords. Malicious actors rarely face any consequences online. The parents also usually don't have a clue about what their kids are doing, nor how the platforms their kids use work, which means they are unable to teach their kids what to avoid.

I believe to solve these issues, this kind of behavior should come with actual consequences. However, I don't have high hopes this will help soon. I therefore believe education also plays a role, both for the parent and their children. Kids should learn about social norms for the internet and what to do when people disregard them, and parents should have the knowledge to help them. The platforms themselves should also take action, the amount of moderators on social media is pathetic. Facebook has millions of users but only has 54 moderators (spanning all their services including Instagram) to moderate posts in my country's language. Current social media is a breeding ground for disinformation, rage, and harassment, not because it's impossible not to, but because all major platforms have switched to an engagement based algorithm.

It's harassment. The game or platform should ban or punish the user. This should be protected under free speech. It's still disgusting though.

I grabbed mossmans boobas in hl2 gmod vr the fbi are at my door help

I'm not in the metaverse and wouldn't be in VR because of cost even if I were. So, question: what exactly is supposed to have happened here? Someone's avatar pushed someone else's avatar into a virtual corner?

Remember when the Internet was new? Know how kids still get pedo'd now?

Setting precedent early is important. There will be billions of people in this soon enough and without regulation, it's Westworld.

Tax dollars hard at work.

Everyone is focused on if there should be legal repercussions for this, and while that's valid, there's another point to make.

It's that sexual assault, rape, sexual harassment, etc. is so heinously awful, that even in this watered down, synthetic, polygon avatar VR version of it is enough to seriously harm someone.

Being made to feel as if you're worthless, and just a piece of meat to be ogled and used for others perverted pleasure, is so fucking terribly awful, that the Nintendo 64 version will leave you forever changed for the worse.

So I guess the meta verse finally got around to adding legs to the avatars?