JAKARTA - The investigation by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has revealed that child abuse perpetrators have taken advantage of virtual reality environments such as the metaverse to exploit children.
The data shows that the police in the UK have recorded eight examples where virtual reality (VR) spaces are used for child sexual abuse images.
The West Midlands police recorded five cases of metaverse harassment and one in badshire, while Surrey police recorded two crimes - including one involving the Oculus Meta headset, now known as Quest.
Reported by the Daily Mail, Metaverse, led by Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, is a virtual set of spaces where users can play games, work, and communicate with others who are not in the same place as them physically. The Facebook founder is the main supporter behind this concept, which is considered the future of the internet and will fade the boundary between physical and digital.
One of the problems with the metaverse and other VR environments is that users interact with other people as avatars, so they never know the true identity of the people they talk to.
NSPCC data reveals that although VR space is used to sexually abuse children, Snapchat is the main social media platform of choice for child abuse perpetrators.
Pada 2021/22, aplikasi yang populer di kalangan remaja tersebut digunakan dalam 4.293 kasus kejahatan gambar pelecehan anak, atau 43 persen dari semua kasus di mana platform tersebut disebutkan oleh polisi.
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, all of which are owned by Meta, were used in 33 percent of cases where the site was reported.
The NSPCC investigation shows that the crime of images of child abuse reported by British police has increased by two-thirds in the past five years.
More than 30,000 crimes involving sharing and having child lewd images occurred in 2021/22, according to requests for information on freedom sent to all 43 police in England and Wales.
Unregulated social media is an unprecedented "scale" driver of child sexual abuse online, the child charity warned that Meta should scrap its plans to introduce built-in end-to-end encryption for Facebook and Instagram messenger services.
The NSPCC said this would make it impossible to identify resources and share images.
The agency also called on the British government to create child safety advocates passed through the Online Security Act to prioritize the problem of child sexual abuse images committed on social media.
The law is currently on the Board of Trustees.
The NSPCC also revealed that cases of online child abuse in the UK hit a record high during the COVID-19 pandemic. The NSPCC calls for the establishment of child safety advocates to act as an early warning system to identify the risk of child abuse emerging and ensure that such risks fall into the attention of companies and regulators Ofcom.
The CEO of the NSPCC, Sir Peter Wanless, said that this new report is very worrying and reflects only the tip of the iceberg of what children are experiencing online.
"These new numbers are very worrying but only reflect the tip of the iceberg of what children experience online," said Wanless, as quoted by the Daily Mail.
"We heard from young people who felt helpless and betrayed because the risk of online sexual harassment became normal for a generation of children," he added.
Wanless emphasized that by creating child safety advocates, the Government can ensure that Online Safety Bill systematically prevents abuse.
"By creating child safety advocates that stand up for children and families, the Government can ensure the Online Safety Act prevents systematic abuse," Wanless said.
"It will be unacceptable if in the next five years we continue to play for crimes that have spread on social media," he said.
Child safety campaign activist and television presenter Carol Vorderman also expressed concern and called for government action to protect users, especially children, across cyberspace.
Vorderman stressed that real-time interactions in the present metaverse are space without regulation and proposed online games bill laws are insufficient to protect individuals from such harm.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
