A girl was allegedly raped in the metaverse. Is this the beginning of a dark new future?

[Jedi Guy]

59. Oh man. Goldshire Inn. I made a toon on an RP server, went to Goldshire, and logged out traumatized.

You're right, the internet is full of assholes. Johnathan Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory was true when it was first posited twenty years ago and it's even more true now. Immersive VR just lets assholes be assholes in ever more immersive and realistic ways. The net is by no means the Wild West it once was and the bad elements have, for the most part, retreated to the Dark Web. But if you go for a spin down the old information superhighway, you're going to see some shit sooner or later.

Parents most definitely need to be aware of what their kids are doing and who they're doing it with, at least as much as they can. They can't possibly know every random yobbo their kid is playing Call of Duty with, and with people having friends lists in the thousands I don't see how they can realistically oversee that without turning their kids' lives into a digitally-enforced police state.

All the same, parents do have an obligation to talk to their kids, be aware of what's going on in their lives (digital and meatspace), and be willing to set and enforce healthy boundaries. That latter bit especially makes people leery since being your kid's friend is seemingly a lot more popular than being their parent these days, but it's right there on the tin where it says "parenting" not "friending." Parents who blithely assume their kids will be safe on the net are not living in the real (digital) world.

As for this specific incident, unless the law is written to include simulated, virtual sexual assault, I doubt there's much law enforcement can do, so it'd be down to Meta to police the space and ban the shitbirds. I'm sure they'll get right on that.