Ethics Workshop: Fighting Harassment in Social Virtual Reality

20 Apr 2026

Ethics Workshop: Fighting Harassment in Social Virtual Reality

The META-TOO Research Project funded by the EU organized a workshop in the Faculty of Medicine in Barcelona on the topic of “Fighting Harassment in Social VR” from 20.04. to 21.04.2026. The XR Hub Würzburg and the Group of Psychology of Intelligent Interactive Systems were invited to share their expertise on this research topic.

Over the course of two days, the participants including Mel Slater (University of Barcelona) discussed an ethical matrix on the mitigation of harassment in social VR under the lens of the Self-Determination Theory postulated by Deci and Ryan (2012).

David Obremski contributed to the workshop with a talk of his own on “Embodied AI in Social VR in Mental Health Settings - Ethics and User Concerns” and presented the importance of involving users’ perspectives in the discussion of ethics in social VR.

We want to thank Michèle Barbier (Ethics Expert, EU Comission) for her work in organizing and leading the workshop and INRIA and IDIBAPS for the interesting discussions. We look forward to a continued exchange of ideas with the group in the upcoming months.

Impressions