Latest news with #metaverse
The Guardian
15 hours ago
- The Guardian
The misogyny of the metaverse: is Mark Zuckerberg's dream world a no-go area for women?
Everybody knows that young women are not safe. They are not safe in the street, where 86% of those aged 18 to 24 have experienced sexual harassment. They are not safe at school, where 79% of young people told Ofsted that sexual assault was common in their friendship groups and almost a third of 16- to 18-year-old girls report experiencing 'unwanted sexual touching'. They are not safe in swimming pools or parks, or at the beach. They are not even safe online, with the children's safety charity the NSPCC reporting that social media sites are 'failing to protect girls from harm at every stage'. This will come as no surprise to any woman who has ever used social media. But it is particularly relevant as Meta, the operator of some of the biggest social platforms on the internet, is busily engaged in constructing a whole new world. The company is pumping billions of dollars a year into building its metaverse, a virtual world that it hopes will become the future not just of socialising, but of education, business, shopping and live events. This raises a simple question: if Meta has utterly failed to keep women and girls safe in its existing online spaces, why should we trust it with the future? Mark Zuckerberg has grandly promised: 'In the metaverse, you'll be able to do almost anything you can imagine.' It's the sort of promise that might sound intensely appealing to some men and terrifying to most women. Indeed, the deeply immersive nature of the metaverse will make the harassment and abuse so many of us endure daily in text-based form on social media feel 100 times more real and will simultaneously make moderation 100 times more difficult. The result is a perfect storm. And I am speaking from experience, not idly speculating: I spent days in the metaverse researching my book, The New Age of Sexism. There is no single definition of the metaverse, but most people use the term to describe a shared world in which virtual and augmented technologies allow users (represented by avatars) to interact with people, objects and environments. Most of Meta's virtual world is accessible only to those who pay for the company's Quest headsets, but a limited number of metaverse spaces can be accessed by any device connected to the internet. Advanced technology such as 3D positional audio, hand tracking and haptic feedback (when controllers use various vibrations to coincide with actions you take) combine to make virtual worlds feel real. Your avatar moves, speaks and gestures when you do, allowing users to interact verbally and physically. Less than two hours after I first entered the metaverse, I saw a woman's avatar being sexually assaulted. When I approached her to ask her about the experience, she confirmed: 'He came up to me and grabbed my ass.' 'Does that happen a lot?' I asked. 'All the time,' she replied, wearily. I used my haptic controller to 'pick up' a bright-yellow marker and moved towards a giant blackboard. 'HAVE YOU BEEN ASSAULTED IN THE METAVERSE?' I wrote. The response was near instantaneous. 'Yeah, many times,' someone shouted. 'I think everybody's been assaulted in the damn metaverse,' one woman replied immediately, in a US accent. 'Unfortunately, it is too common,' a British woman added, nodding. Both women told me they had been assaulted multiple times. During my time in the metaverse, sexual harassment and unwanted sexual comments were almost constant. I heard one player shout: 'I'm dragging my balls all over your mother's face,' to another and witnessed male players making claims about 'beating off', as well as comments about 'gang bangs'. My virtual breasts were commented on repeatedly. I did not witness any action taken in response – whether by a moderator or by another player. A damning TechCrunch report from 2022 found that human moderators were available only in the main plaza of Meta's metaverse game Horizon Worlds – and that they seemed more engaged in giving information on how to take a selfie than moderating user behaviour. More worryingly still, I visited worlds where I saw what appeared to be young children frequently experiencing attention from adult men they did not know. In one virtual karaoke-style club, the bodies of the singers on stage were those of young women in their early 20s. But based on their voices, I would estimate that many of the girls behind the avatars were perhaps nine or 10 years old. Conversely, the voices of the men commenting on them from the audience, shouting out to them and following them offstage were often unmistakably those of adults. It is particularly incumbent on Meta to solve this problem. Of course, there are other companies, from Roblox to Microsoft, building user-generated virtual-reality gaming platforms and virtual co-working spaces. But, according to NSPCC research, while 150 apps, games and websites were used to groom children online between 2017 and 2023, where the means of communication was known, 47% of online grooming offences took place on products owned by Meta. These are not isolated incidents or cherry-picked horror stories. Research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that users were exposed to abusive behaviour every seven minutes in the metaverse. During 11 and a half hours recording user behaviour, the report identified 100 potential violations of Meta's policies. This included graphic sexual content, bullying, abuse, grooming and threats of violence. In a separate report, the CCDH found repeated instances of children being subjected to sexually explicit abuse and harassment, including an adult asking a young user: 'Do you have a cock in your mouth?' and another adult shouting: 'I don't want to cum on you,' to a group of underage girls who explicitly told him they were minors. Since its inception, Meta's virtual world has been plagued with reports of abuse. Users have reported being virtually groped, assaulted and raped. Researchers have also described being virtually stalked in the metaverse by other players, who tail them insistently, refuse to leave them alone and even follow them into different rooms or worlds. In December 2021, a beta tester of the metaverse wrote in the official Facebook group of the Horizon platform: 'Not only was I groped last night, but there were other people there who supported this behaviour.' What was even more revealing than the virtual assault itself was Meta's response. Vivek Sharma, then vice-president of Horizon at Meta, responded to the incident by telling the Verge it was 'absolutely unfortunate'. After Meta reviewed the incident, he claimed, it determined that the beta tester didn't use the safety features built into Horizon Worlds, including the ability to block someone from interacting with you. 'That's good feedback still for us because I want to make [the blocking feature] trivially easy and findable,' he continued. This response was revealing. First, the euphemistic description of the event as 'unfortunate', which made it sound on a par with poor sound quality. Second, the immediate shifting of the blame and responsibility on to the person who experienced the abuse – 'she should have been using certain tools to prevent it' – rather than an acknowledgment that it should have been prevented from happening in the first place. And, finally, most importantly, the description of a woman being abused online as 'good feedback'. Much subsequent discourse has focused on the question of whether or not a sexual assault or rape carried out in virtual reality should be described as such; whether it might have an impact on the victims similar to a real‑life assault. But this misses the point. First, it is worth noting that the experience of being sexually harassed, assaulted or raped in the metaverse has had a profound and distressing impact on many victims. When it was revealed in 2024 that British police were investigating the virtual gang-rape of a girl below the age of 16 in the metaverse, a senior officer familiar with the case told the media: 'This child experienced psychological trauma similar to that of someone who has been physically raped'. Second, technology to make the metaverse feel physically real is developing at pace. You can already buy full-body suits that promise to 'enhance your VR experience with elaborate haptic sensations'. They have sleeves, gloves and vests with dozens of different feedback points. Wearable haptic technology will bring the experience of being virtually assaulted much closer to the physical sensation of real-life victimisation. All the more reason to tackle it now, regardless of how 'realistic' it is or isn't, rather than waiting for things to get worse. But most importantly, regardless of how similar to or different from physical offline harms these forms of abuse are, what matters is that they are abusive, distressing, intimidating, degrading and offensive and that they negatively affect victims. And, as we have already seen with social media, the proliferation of such abuse will prevent women and girls from being able to fully use and benefit from new forms of technology. If Zuckerberg's vision comes to fruition and the boardrooms, classrooms, operating theatres, lecture halls and meeting spaces of tomorrow exist in virtual reality, then closing those spaces off from women, girls and other marginalised groups, because of the tolerance of various forms of prejudice and abuse in the metaverse, will be devastating. If we allow this now, when the metaverse is (relatively speaking) in its infancy, we are baking inequality into the building blocks of this new world. At the time of the aforementioned virtual-reality rape of an underage girl, Meta said in a statement: 'The kind of behaviour described has no place on our platform, which is why for all users we have an automatic protection called personal boundary, which keeps people you don't know a few feet away from you.' In another incident, when a researcher experienced a virtual assault, Meta's comment to the press was: 'We want everyone using our services to have a good experience and easily find the tools that can help prevent situations like these and so we can investigate and take action.' The focus always seems to be on users finding and switching on tools to prevent harassment or reporting abuse when it does happen. It is not on preventing abuse and taking serious action against abusers. But in the CCDH research that identified 100 potential violations of Meta's VR policies, just 51 of the incidents could be reported to Meta using a web form created by the platform for this purpose, because the platform refuses to examine policy violations if it cannot match them to a predefined category or username in its database. Worse, not one of those 51 reports of policy violation (including sexual harassment and grooming of minors) was acknowledged by Meta and as a result no action was taken. It's not much good pointing to your complaints system as the solution to abuse if you don't respond to complaints. Meta's safety features will no doubt continue to evolve and adapt – but, once again, in a repeat of what we have already seen happen on social media, women and girls will be the canaries in the coalmines, their abuse and suffering providing companies with useful data points with which to tweak their products and increase their profits. Teenage girls' trauma: a convenient building material. There is something incredibly depressing about all this. If we are really talking about reinventing the world here, couldn't we push the boat out a little? Couldn't we dare to dream of a virtual world in which those who so often face abuse are safe by design – with the prevention and eradication of abuse built in – instead of being tasked with the responsibility of protecting themselves when the abuse inevitably arises? None of this is whining or asking too much. Don't be fooled into thinking that we are all lucky to be using Meta's tools for nothing. We are paying for them in the tracking and harvesting of our data, our content, our photographs, our ideas and, as the metaverse develops, our hand and even eye movements. All of it can be scraped and used to train enormously powerful AI tools and predictive behavioural algorithms, access to which can then be sold to companies at gargantuan prices to help them forecast how we as consumers behave. It is not an exaggeration to say that we already pay Meta a very high price for using its platforms. And if the metaverse really does become as widely adopted and as ubiquitous in the fundamental operation of our day-to-day lives as Zuckerberg hopes, there won't be an easy way to opt out. We can't let tech companies off the hook because they claim the problem is too big or too unwieldy to tackle. We wouldn't accept similar excuses for dodging regulation from international food companies, or real-life venues. And the government should be prepared to act in similar ways here, introducing regulation to require proved safety standards at the design stage, before products are rolled out to the public. 'Hold on, just building the future here,' Horizon Worlds tells me as I wait to access the metaverse. As we battle to eradicate the endemic harassment and abuse that women and girls face in real-world settings, the metaverse presents a risk of slipping backwards. We are sleepwalking into virtual spaces where men's entitlement to women's bodies is once again widespread and normalised with near total impunity. The Guardian invited Meta to reply to this article, but the company did not respond. The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution Is Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates is published by Simon & Schuster (£20). To support the Guardian, buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply
Coin Geek
a day ago
- Business
- Coin Geek
African telco regulator launches metaverse adoption framework
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The African Telecommunications Union (ATU) has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote the adoption and regulation of metaverse technologies across the continent. ATU signed the MoU with the Metaverse Institute, a London-based organization that supports the development of the metaverse for positive global impact. The MoU commits the two partners to a continental framework for the adoption and governance of the metaverse. The agreement is 'a historic step in our digital journey that positions Africa to lead in the next generation of internet platforms,' noted John Omo, the ATU Secretary-General. Africa's youth is marching toward a new world of digital opportunities, and 'we must act now to build safe, inclusive virtual economies and communities,' he added. The metaverse was the hottest buzzword in the tech world a few years ago, with billions of dollars invested in the technology as tech giants and startups raced to be the trailblazers. Mark Zuckerberg even changed Facebook's name to Meta (NASDAQ: META) to match the company's bold ambitions in the space. However, the technology's time at the top was short-lived, with artificial intelligence (AI) dislodging it a few years later. Today, many companies that were initially focused on the metaverse are shifting their course, and with each passing year, fewer billions are being invested in the virtual world. But despite the reduced spotlight, metaverse technologies still hold great promise. The Metaverse Institute notes that over $5 trillion will flow toward training humanoid robots in safe metaverse-based virtual environments alone. Beyond training, the metaverse offers a risk-free environment to explore solutions that would be too expensive in the physical world, such as the iterative development of smart cities. They also allow users to experiment with solutions requiring excessive trials before being released into the real world, such as medical simulations and risk-free surgical training. The MoU will also cater to metaverse regulation, which has been neglected for years. Most governments are racing to police stablecoins, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, and AI, with the metaverse receiving little attention, which limits its growth. 'We are honoured to comprehensively evaluate the impact of emerging technologies and the virtual worlds ecosystem on the continent, delivering pragmatic recommendations to maximize Africa's global competitiveness. Together, we envision a digitally empowered Africa by 2063, a global leader in the digital revolution, where innovation serves humanity to forge a prosperous, inclusive and sustainable future for all,' commented Christina Yan Zhang, the Metaverse Institute CEO. While the metaverse may not have the allure it had five years ago, several global giants have deployed pilots on these virtual environments to better interact with their consumers and optimize manufacturing, ranging from Nike (NASDAQ: NKE) and Christie's to Walmart (NASDAQ: WMT) and H&M. However, a new report from the University of Stirling has warned that integrating the metaverse doesn't always translate to a sales bump. The university's research found that having a digital twin of a physical product dilutes the digital product. And yet, as the consumer metaverse dips, the technology's biggest market could be in manufacturing. Major global brands like German auto giant BMW and American retail company Lowe's (NASDAQ: LOW) are using industrial metaverse to run simulations with digital 3D models to spot imperfections and improve their products, saving billions in manhours and resources. Malawi sets 2026 deadline for digital IDs In Malawi, the government has set a 2026 deadline for the issuance of digital IDs, leveraging emerging technologies like blockchain and AI. Speaking at the ID4Africa 2025 AGM in Ethiopia, Malawi's National Registration Bureau (NRB) principal secretary, Mphatso Sambo, revealed that the country has conducted a successful pilot program for the digital ID. It intends to fully roll out the service next year to enhance access to government services. The new digital ID is anchored on a strong national ID uptake in the southeastern African nation, where almost 100% of all citizens aged 16 and above now possess an ID. The digital version will be directly linked to 33 private and public institutions, 'unlocking access to finance, social protection, and essential services.' 'Through innovation and emerging technologies like AI and blockchain, Malawi has planned for a digital ID wallet,' Sambo stated. In neighboring Tanzania, the government has set aside 11 billion Tanzanian Shillings ($4.5 million) to issue digital IDs to 300,000 minors. Watch: Tech redefines how things are done—Africa is here for it title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="">
TechCrunch
4 days ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
2025 will be a ‘pivotal year' for Meta's augmented and virtual reality, says CTO
Meta CTO Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth, who was one of the company's first 15 engineers, published a memo earlier this year forecasting that 2025 could be the year of greatness for Reality Labs, the company's augmented and virtual reality unit. Or, it would be the year when the metaverse goes down as a 'legendary misadventure.' These days, Boz appears to be leaning towards its potential for greatness. But, the market will be the final determinant. 'We'll judge at the end of the decade, but this does feel like the pivotal year,' Boz said Thursday during a Bloomberg Technology interview. Boz noted that Meta's Ray Ban AI glasses had been a breakthrough that excited both consumers and competitors. As of February, Meta has sold more than 2 million pairs since their October 2023 debut. Last fall, they outsold traditional Ray Bans, even before Meta rolled out AI features. Meanwhile, Google last month announced partnerships with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to create smart glasses based on Android XR. Apple is also reportedly making a push to release smart glasses in 2026. 'Suddenly, we go from toiling in the realms of obscurity to being very much in the world with a product that is very attractive to consumers, and thus competitors,' Boz said. 'The clock has started on competition coming, and that just means that the progress we make in this year is of disproportionate value to any year before or after it closes.' Still, competition among other incumbents means nothing if the market doesn't adopt Meta's AR and VR products, which is what would drive the industry to standardize the technology. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW 'The market is actually, especially when it comes to hardware, a trailing indicator,' Boz said. 'So you look for early indicators. To some degree, you do have to have a level of confidence and taste in-house.' He said this was something he learned from Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer at Meta. 'Sheryl used to always talk about how most companies don't fail because they got beaten by a competitor,' Boz said. 'Most companies fail because they didn't execute their own plan correctly. And so what I try to do with the team is really focus us, not so much on the competitive landscape as on [whether] we're executing to our standards.' The Meta CTO said the company has 'a set of ambitious plans for the year' that it is on track for. 'What we'll know by the end of the year is whether we executed on our plan or not,' said Boz. 'What we'll know in five years time is whether that was enough.'
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
This Might Be the ‘Biggest Year' in Tech: Bosworth
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth speaks at Bloomberg Tech San Francisco 2025 about why this year could be pivotal for the development of the metaverse, highlighting unique opportunities emerging for engineers across the tech industry. (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Meta (Facebook) shocks retail world with unexpected news
Meta (Facebook) shocks retail world with unexpected news originally appeared on TheStreet. Meta Platforms () has been in full focus recently after an internal communication revealed something shocking. After becoming the market's first social media giant, the company has shifted its focus to expanding into the artificial intelligence (AI) field. As this new frontier of the tech sector has continued to grow rapidly, Meta has maneuvered to compete with its Magnificent 7 peers, a group of market leaders responsible for much of the industry's growth. 💵💰💰💵 Last week (the final week of May), Meta reported strong Q1 earnings and high capital expenditure plans, indicating that it intends to continue scaling its AI efforts. However, that's not the only noteworthy thing Meta has revealed recently. According to reports, the company is planning on expanding into another area, one that many people likely didn't see coming. This news has left both investors and consumers with pressing questions. In March 2016, long before the launch of ChatGPT kicked off the current AI revolution, Meta captured many people's attention when it released the Oculus Rift, its first virtual reality (VR) headset. This device marked the company's foray into consumer products. Since then, Meta has expanded its VR lineup, cashing in on the growing interest in both VR and metaverse gaming. Its products can be found in stores such as Best Buy, Walmart, and Target. But now Meta plans on taking its consumer tech expansion a step further, in the form of retail stores. Per Business Insider:'The company has a project to expand its retail footprint, which is not broadly known internally yet, according to an internal communication seen by Business Insider. The communication also said Meta planned to hire retail employees.' Meta already has one retail store, which is located on its campus in Burlingame, California. Opened in 2022, the Meta Store allows visitors to sample the company's hardware products, similar in both strategy and appearance to the typical Apple store. Additionally, last year, Meta hinted at a retail expansion when it debuted a pop-up shop in Los Angeles to sell its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. CTO Andrew Bosworth has described 2025 as the company's 'most critical' year, adding that it plans to significantly expand its AI-powered wearables lineup. Now it seems that Meta is delivering on that promise, threatening to rival Apple as it expands into the physical retail space. While the number of stores Meta plans on opening has not yet been revealed, some experts believe this step is necessary for Meta's growth to continue. More Consumer Tech News: Analyst has blunt words on Trump's iPhone tariff plansBest Buy CEO raises red flag about startling customer behaviorApple users will hate the latest news from Capitol Hill 'They aren't opening stores because they want to—they're doing it because they have to,' states technology founder and strategist Jared Navarre. 'Because the technology they're building can't be sold through a screen. It has to be experienced. It's like trying to describe childbirth to someone who's never felt it—words will never be enough.' Meta's decision makes sense, as it looks to cement its reputation not just as a social media company but as a consumer tech producer that makes wearable AI-powered devices. However, it comes at a time when Jonny Ive, the former Apple leader credited with designing the iPod and iPhone, has joined forces with partnership with the maker of ChatGPT is poised to make the consumer tech market even more competitive. And as Reilly Newman, founder of Motif Brands, tells TheStreet, it isn't the only risk Meta is facing. 'The desired behavior of shoppers is likely to be uphill for Meta because the brand isn't associated with a 'physical' brand in the minds of consumers,' he speculates.'The brand's position as a social media and advertising empire frames it not as a product brand. Overcoming this perception will be challenging because it involves rewiring how people view Meta, which must be accomplished through reassigning new meanings via associations.' Even so, other experts feel that Meta may benefit from a shift in the industry if it can correctly execute this transition. Felix Hartmann, Managing Partner at Hartmann Capital, predicts that the consumer tech market is entering a 'story over storefront' era. 'In a world flooded with digital noise, the companies that win will be the ones who can create visceral, in-person magic,' he (Facebook) shocks retail world with unexpected news first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 2, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 2, 2025, where it first appeared. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
