Meta still and always seems to take seriously the possible drifts that can occur in its metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg’s firm got off to a strong start last February with social distancing (see article), now it is preparing to blur the voices of strangers and unwanted people in Horizon Worlds.
The idea of blurring the voices of people who bother us is not new. If you are a fan of the series black-mirror, you can see a world in which we have the possibility, in addition to the voice, to mask the person physically. To return to what interests us here, know that a similar function is already activated by default in the game Half + Half. Finally, Meta explains in his blog all the interest of this jamming:
When this feature starts rolling out in the coming weeks, it will let you choose how you hear people who aren’t on your friends list, including the option to not hear unwanted conversations at all. By default, you will hear all nearby users at the same volume, but with voice mode you can easily switch to scrambled voices, in which the voices of people who are not your friends are perceived as unintelligible.
You will have seized it, if the feature is deployed in the next few weeks, it will have to wait until this summer (according to rumours) for us French people to take advantage of it.
If you enable distorted voices, strangers will see an indication that you can’t hear them, so they don’t feel like you’re ignoring them. But if you want to hear what they’re saying, just raise a hand from the controller to your ear to temporarily unblock them without having to add them as a friend.
What set things on fire was a recent criticism from a grown woman who didn’t appreciate being insulted all the time by a child who seemed to be 5 years old. Meta reacts quickly and strongly, concerned about its image, the fact of having mentioned this feature when announcing the availability ofHorizon Worlds in European territory, via the United Kingdom, is therefore not insignificant.
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