Enabling Developers, Protecting Users: Investigating Harassment and Safety in VR

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: B., Abhinaya S., Sabir, Aafaq, Das, Anupam
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author B., Abhinaya S.
Sabir, Aafaq
Das, Anupam
author_facet B., Abhinaya S.
Sabir, Aafaq
Das, Anupam
contents Virtual Reality (VR) has witnessed a rising issue of harassment, prompting the integration of safety controls like muting and blocking in VR applications. However, the lack of standardized safety measures across VR applications hinders their universal effectiveness, especially across contexts like socializing, gaming, and streaming. While prior research has studied safety controls in social VR applications, our user study (n = 27) takes a multi-perspective approach, examining both users' perceptions of safety control usability and effectiveness as well as the challenges that developers face in designing and deploying VR safety controls. We identify challenges VR users face while employing safety controls, such as finding users in crowded virtual spaces to block them. VR users also find controls ineffective in addressing harassment; for instance, they fail to eliminate the harassers' presence from the environment. Further, VR users find the current methods of submitting evidence for reports time-consuming and cumbersome. Improvements desired by users include live moderation and behavior tracking across VR apps; however, developers cite technological, financial, and legal obstacles to implementing such solutions, often due to a lack of awareness and high development costs. We emphasize the importance of establishing technical and legal guidelines to enhance user safety in virtual environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_05499
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enabling Developers, Protecting Users: Investigating Harassment and Safety in VR
B., Abhinaya S.
Sabir, Aafaq
Das, Anupam
Human-Computer Interaction
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
Emerging Technologies
Virtual Reality (VR) has witnessed a rising issue of harassment, prompting the integration of safety controls like muting and blocking in VR applications. However, the lack of standardized safety measures across VR applications hinders their universal effectiveness, especially across contexts like socializing, gaming, and streaming. While prior research has studied safety controls in social VR applications, our user study (n = 27) takes a multi-perspective approach, examining both users' perceptions of safety control usability and effectiveness as well as the challenges that developers face in designing and deploying VR safety controls. We identify challenges VR users face while employing safety controls, such as finding users in crowded virtual spaces to block them. VR users also find controls ineffective in addressing harassment; for instance, they fail to eliminate the harassers' presence from the environment. Further, VR users find the current methods of submitting evidence for reports time-consuming and cumbersome. Improvements desired by users include live moderation and behavior tracking across VR apps; however, developers cite technological, financial, and legal obstacles to implementing such solutions, often due to a lack of awareness and high development costs. We emphasize the importance of establishing technical and legal guidelines to enhance user safety in virtual environments.
title Enabling Developers, Protecting Users: Investigating Harassment and Safety in VR
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
Emerging Technologies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05499