Facebook’s Horizon Worlds metaverse is forcing users apart to curb virtual harassment

After reports of rampant virtual harassment and groping within Facebook’s Horizon Worlds metaverse, Facebook has decided to just be done with it by putting everyone into their own little bubble. 

As spotted by Ars Technica, users in Meta’s metaverse, called Horizon Worlds, are now being given a 4-foot cylinder of “personal space” which other users won’t be able to get inside of in order to touch your unmentionables. 

According to Oculus, this new feature that “prevents anyone from invading your avatar’s personal space,” will be enabled by default for all users, so upon joining the metaverse you won’t have to worry about being touched ever again. 

Oculus will also be experimenting with the feature in the future, potentially adding controls and UI changes in order to allow users to customise the size of their personal boundary depending on just how close they want people to get. 

While this new feature may help curb some of the problems with harassment in Horizon Worlds, which is a more prevalent problem than you might first think, it seems counterproductive to the whole point of Horizon Worlds which is, first and foremost, a social space for social interaction. 

With avatars are being forced four feet apart from each other, users in search of any form of physical connection in this progressively more dystopian virtual reality will have to settle for just a high five or a fist jump, as Facebook isn’t letting you get away with much else.