Parental Guidance for the Metaverse

by Lance Powell

I started researching harassment in Social VR in 2017 (pre-Quest) when there were significantly fewer users, and this work became my M.A. thesis, called: A Framework for Understanding and Detecting Harassment in Social VR. As part of my research, I would spend hours in the big three platforms: Altspace, Rec Room, and VRChat, watching and recording instances of harassment but intervening as little as possible since I was meant to be an observer.

The userbase then was a small fraction of the audience now, so I couldn’t enter in…