Managing Negative Human-Interactions in the Metaverse.

Name : The Anti-Harassment Toolkit Purpose : Provide users with the tools to avoid, and remove themselves from, distressing social situations. Description : See below

The Problem

The effects of Online Disinhibition have been well-documented and personally experienced by most users of the web; be it in harmless but frustrating trolling, or more serious and damaging harassment, it hampers the ability of users to fully enjoy the web in its current form, and will continue to hamper the enjoyment of users as they move into the metaverse of Decentraland.

The challenge, then, is in finding a solution that can avoid or mitigate the effects of OD, whilst still fully upholding the principles of anti-censorship & freedom that will be coded into the very core of Decentraland. Explicitly forbidding particular actions/activities in public areas is likely to have unintended consequences, be useless on private LAND, where owners would be able to create their own rules, and increase the amount of centralised responsibility.

The Solution

Given the above, I propose that each user in Decentraland is given a core toolkit that cannot be mutated by rules on private LAND, and allows them to control the degree of presence that that have in the metaverse.

Flag

For less serious social offenses - or just for other people that the user finds difficult to cope with - the user can mark other users with a flag visible only to themselves; represented in the worldspace as a vertical beacon of light.

This beacon would be visible from a distance, and allow the user to avoid interacting with someone by adjusting their own behaviour as opposed to directly affecting another user. These flags could also be shareable within the community in order to spread awareness of problematic users and allow potentially dangerous situations to be avoided.

beacon

Bubble

Each user would have a bubble that they are able to activate that does a number of things :

It blocks line-of-sight between themselves and the user harassing them.
It acts as a visual beacon of distress to allow other users to intervene in the situation.
It disables all interaction event-listeners on the user; preventing any further interactions with them until they disable the bubble.

Being ‘bubbled’ could, potentially become a shameful thing to experience due to the fact that other users are able to see it happen, with the goal of encouraging similar social sanctions to real-life and discourage anti-social behaviour as the universe grows, evolves, and develops its own community & social norms.

bubble

Block

Each user would be able to block another user to varying degrees of intensity :

The user can disable any social interactions between themselves and the user they have blocked.
In addition to level 1, the user becomes invisible to to the user that they have blocked.
In addition to level 2, the user denies access to their LAND to the user that they have blocked.

Of these, level 3 could be problematic due to the possibility of a user becoming trapped between plots of LAND that they are blocked from - if they engage in repeated anti-social behaviour with multiple users. An alternative could be that the harassed user’s land is hidden, and a public park is presented to the blocked user to freely navigate instead.

Conclusion

By empowering individual users to control their own personal space, and focusing on social sanctions rather than a centralised crime-and-punishment, we can utilise the power of a digital environment to promote positive interactions within the community, and avoid negative ones altogether.

decentraland / proposals