Meta Updates Quest 2 With Social Horizon Home Feature
Meta rolls out the Horizon Home update for Quest 2, allowing users to invite friends into their virtual living spaces. The new feature aims to simplify socializing in VR, though questions about user safety remain.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces that the Horizon Home feature is rolling out to Quest 2 headsets, allowing users to invite friends into their personalized virtual spaces. Previously, socializing on the Quest 2 requires joining specific games or Horizon Worlds, but this update enables friends to simply hang out in immersive environments like a space station or a Japanese inn. Zuckerberg demonstrates the capability by meeting with free climber Alex Honnold in a virtual home before watching a 360-degree climbing video together.
The virtual home environment serves as the starting point whenever users put on their headset, offering impressive pre-made locations and the ability to upload custom spaces through unofficial methods. Meta plans to allow native environment creation in the future, expanding the personalization options for its virtual living spaces. This update represents a step toward Meta's broader vision of building a new, immersive way to socialize online.
As Meta pushes deeper into social VR, concerns about user safety and harassment in immersive digital spaces continue to grow. To address these issues within Horizon Home, Meta implements basic safety tools that allow party leaders to remove guests and give all users the ability to block others or report misconduct. However, given the company's history of prioritizing product launches over safety and the prevalent harassment issues seen in similar platforms like Roblox and Second Life, it remains unclear if these initial measures are comprehensive enough.