The sexual harassment lawsuit against UploadVR was reported to be settled via Tech Crunch on September 6th, and a week later the New York Times followed with more details about how Upload had been barely dented. The case was settled without any elaboration about what did or didn’t happen beyond a vague open letter from the founders of UploadVR. This issue has has splintered the VR community into different factions of people who are either actively blacklisting Upload or have written it off as an isolated incident that has resulted in changes and growth.

Executive Editor’s Note: The Voices of VR Podcast is produced independently by host and founder Kent Bye, and syndicated on Road to VR. Though Kent independently produces the podcast, and since UploadVR is a direct competitor to Road to VR, we at Road to VR felt it best to to remove ourselves from decisions involving this episode on ethical grounds. The decision to publish this piece was made by an anonymous board of members of the virtual reality community who collectively voted on the decision.

As the episode was first published directly via the Voices of VR podcast feed and on the Voices of VR website for some time before being syndicated here, we also reached out to both UploadVR and Selena Pinnell, the interviewee in this episode, to offer an opportunity to add a comment to this article. Pinell declined to offer additional comment. UploadVR founder Taylor Freeman issued the following statement:

In response to this recent Voices of VR episode, I want to express that I really respect Selena for the strength it takes to speak about her experiences and appreciate all the work Kent has done for this industry. These conversations are important. I also appreciate that the podcast makes the distinction between Upload’s past behavior and accounts of assault. Given what came out of this podcast and the conversations happening online, it’s clear the community needs more direct communication from us. I am committed to stepping up, learning from my mistakes and working with the industry to address these issues head on. Therefore, I will personally be hosting an open forum discussion at Upload LA on Wednesday, November 8th at 5pm for those interested in attending. I love this industry and community, and I hope that other young companies and founders can learn from our mistakes.

Sincerely,
Taylor Freeman – CEO, Upload

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

Former employee Danny Bittman wrote about his brief time at Upload in a recent Medium post and there were some women who spoke out in a Buzzfeed article in July, but beyond that not many people with first or second-hand knowledge of the lawsuit allegations have made statements on the record. There hasn’t been a lot of people who have been willing to talk about this issue on the record, but this seems to be changing after the latest round of news about the settlement lawsuit that has left segments of the VR community very unsettled.

selena-pinnellOne woman from the VR community who was willing to talk to me about the community fallout from the UploadVR lawsuit was Selena Pinnell, who is the co-founder of Kaleidoscope VR festival and fund. She is also a producer and featured participant within the Testimony VR project. I previously interviewed the director of Testimony VR project about their efforts to use VR to create an immersive context for women and men to share testimony about their experiences of sexual assault so that audiences can bear witness to those direct experiences. Skip Rizzo has said that healing from PTSD involves being able to tell a meaningful narrative about your traumatic experiences while remaining emotionally present, and Testimony VR is trying to create a new form of restorative justice by capturing these stories within VR that viewers can have have an one-on-one level of intimacy while they bear witness. Pinnell talks about how powerful it was to have over 150 co-workers and friends witness her testimony about being a rape survivor within the context of a VR experience.

While VR holds potential for the future of distributing new forms of restorative justice, this issue with Upload feels like it’s a long way from achieving a state of justice and a full accounting of the truth of what happened. Members from the Women in VR communities privately do not feel like justice has currently been served, and Pinnell voices those common concerns as to why she can no longer support Upload as well as why in her assessment the leadership team of Upload never fully accounted for what exactly they did wrong and what they’ve learned.

She also says that it’s hard to trust the leadership after they originally declared that the originally allegations in the lawsuit were “entirely without merit.” Pinnell talks about how crushing it can be to have your testimony of your direct experience be so explicitly denied in this way, especially when it comes to taboo topics like sexual harassment or sexual assault. (Note that the original allegations against Upload were harassment, gender discrimination, hostile work environment, unequal pay, and retaliation, and there weren’t any allegations of sexual assault.) Pinnell emphasizes how important it is to try to listen to women when they are providing testimony about not feeling safe within a work environment, and to try not to go directly towards demanding objective proof from a frame of skeptical disbelief. Learning how to listen, empathize, and reflect the truth of a direct experience is a skillset that is needed here, and it’s something that the unique affordances of the virtual reality community can help to cultivate through projects like Testimony VR. But there’s many more unresolved issues and open questions that Pinnell and I discuss in deep dive into new models of restorative justice and the community fallout surrounding the Upload lawsuit settlement.


This is a listener-supported podcast, consider making a donation to the Voices of VR Podcast Patreon

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

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  • Tymera

    What a mess. Let them eat themselves alive. Glad they are a self solving problem.

  • Get Schwifty!

    I always feel a bit dirty after I check in on UploadVR… thank God for RoadToVR…

    • Ian Hamilton

      I’m an editor with UploadVR and I can totally understand this feeling. Below is a comment I left on one of Kent’s Facebook threads:

      FWIW, I can’t comment on the internal situation. I do, however, want to speak to my personal efforts and the separation of the editorial side of the business from the rest of the company.

      I joined Upload in mid-2015 writing 42 stories for the website per month. I believe I am the most senior employee still working there. I did that volume production for about six months while working other jobs at the same time before Upload got its first significant funding, and the founders had enough money to hire me full time as a reporter covering this industry.

      This was the work I had been looking for since I left the OC Register in 2014, where I had covered the founding of Oculus through to its acquisition by Facebook. I wanted a full time position covering this industry because I believe it is likely to change the world and I wanted to devote my full attention to writing about the creators and ideas that could shape the future. Still today in 2017 there are extremely few places looking to employ full time journalists to cover the rise of this industry.

      This entire time at Upload I’ve worked from home. I’ve gotten to spend the last two years working from home and supporting my family, while covering the rise of the VR industry. In this respect, this is what I wish I could do for the rest of my life. The fellow members of my editorial writing and editing team worked almost entirely from home, too. During major VR events, when I emerged from my VR cave in the mountains, I generally avoided the Upload parties entirely or cut out very early to work on embargoed news stories. I’ve been in the office less than a dozen times to do interviews.

      After more than two years I have no shares in this startup, and as the company built co-working and education spaces in SF and LA I’ve tried my very best to maintain a firm wall between these two sides of the business so that our team covers what is newsworthy, and not which companies are paying for office space. What drives me is ethically and accurately covering the rise of a technology I expect to transform the world, and we’ve done it with a small staff.

      I don’t think many people in the industry have a firm understanding of what this company is or how it is structured, and it’s probably not my place to give that full explanation here. But when people say “Upload” I want it known my team works independently.

    • Ian Hamilton

      I’m an editor and writer at UploadVR and understand that feeling. I left the following comment on one of Kent Bye’s threads on Facebook:

      FWIW, I can’t comment on the internal situation. I do, however, want to speak to my personal efforts and the separation of the editorial side of the business from the rest of the company.

      I joined Upload in mid-2015 writing 42 stories for the website per month. I believe I am the most senior employee still working there. I did that volume production for about six months while working other jobs at the same time before Upload got its first significant funding, and the founders had enough money to hire me full time as a reporter covering this industry.

      This was the work I had been looking for since I left the OC Register in 2014, where I had covered the founding of Oculus through to its acquisition by Facebook. I wanted a full time position covering this industry because I believe it is likely to change the world and I wanted to devote my full attention to writing about the creators and ideas that could shape the future. Still today in 2017 there are extremely few places looking to employ full time journalists to cover the rise of this industry.

      This entire time at Upload I’ve worked from home. I’ve gotten to spend the last two years working from home and supporting my family, while covering the rise of the VR industry. In this respect, this is what I wish I could do for the rest of my life. The fellow members of my editorial writing and editing team worked almost entirely from home, too. During major VR events, when I emerged from my VR cave in the mountains, I generally avoided the Upload parties entirely or cut out very early to work on embargoed news stories. I’ve been in the office less than a dozen times to do interviews.

      After more than two years I have no shares in this startup, and as the company built co-working and education spaces in SF and LA I’ve tried my very best to maintain a firm wall between these two sides of the business so that our team covers what is newsworthy, and not which companies are paying for office space. What drives me is ethically and accurately covering the rise of a technology I expect to transform the world, and we’ve done it with a small staff.

      I don’t think many people in the industry have a firm understanding of what this company is or how it is structured, and it’s probably not my place to give that full explanation here. But when people say “Upload” I want it known my team works independently.

      • Apologies @ianhmltn:disqus – this comment got stuck in our Disqus sync system for whatever reason. Found the issue and fixed it, comment now appears above.

        • Lucidfeuer

          You mean ghost banning? Because I’m starting to suspect R2VR to do it, and I hope this isn’t a place to do it.

          • No, I mean what I said – comment syncing was broken. It was logged in our local WP but not in Disqus. The user was in no way banned / affected.

            And, as far as I know, we haven’t banned anyone from our comments sections in recent times. If anyone has trouble, it may be an auto Disqus-based issue. If you have examples or issues, fire an email to feedback@roadtovr.com and we’ll take a look.

          • GUEST

            At least RtoVR has the decency to allow guest mode on their Disqus, unlike UploadVR that just wants to profile everybody to find who are the young Japanese school-girls they can fondle once they’ve got an HMD strapped on their face, ha ha

          • Get Schwifty!

            I can confirm it was showing, then seemed to disappear then re-appeared, doesn’t feel like Ghost-banning.

      • Will

        I could appreciate that not all employees were involved with this culture, however it’s hard to trust writers that post reach numbers on their posts that are so clearly exaggerated. I’m not sure exactly what shenanigans are in play but when you write about a specific video, which has a couple hundred views while the article implies that a hundred thousand people have read it, well, that’s kind of manipulative. You guys are still worth reading as you cover a lot of interesting stuff but between the boosted numbers and the growing self-reverential attitude in the site overall, I’m inclined to think Upload needs to look a bit deeper.

        • Ian Hamilton

          I understand this criticism as well. The heat score numbers were part of the site since before I was hired and I asked for them to be removed on multiple occasions. They should be gone from the site as of a month or so ago.

          • Will

            Oh you’re right! I remember seeing them disappear, but then I saw them again a couple of days later and then hadn’t noticed since then. Good move. Like so many others I want this industry to do well, and for it to have a press with journalistic integrity.

  • himils bach

    Dear RoadtoVR, I don’t come here to read about any sexual scandals and so on – I’m here to learn about VR tech. Stop using VR excuse to cover your cheap competition foulplay… I don’t want you to get me mixed into this shit and if you continue doing this I will move on to UploadVR for good.

    • El_MUERkO

      lol, jog on saddo

    • NooYawker

      There’s always some jerkoff who makes this comment. Funny that you made this account just to make this post.

    • benz145

      I’d appreciate it if you’d read the Executive Editor’s Note in the article above which provides important context regarding the approach we took to remove our bias (as competitors to Upload) from the equation.

  • NooYawker

    What a mess they’ve made. And they’re just starting out. Companies need to learn that this type of behavior is unacceptable. I stopped using Uber because of it, and I won’t be going back to uploadVR either.

  • Daemon Hunt

    Honestly, I’m a bit shocked by this. I understand that sexual harassment in the workplace is a big “no-no”, I have personally sued someone for this very thing… but what does this have to do with the technology? I doubt everyone at Upload VR was involved, in fact, you have a journalist here in the forum saying he worked from home for years. He’s doing damage control and distancing himself from some really vague, but poisonous, insinuations.

    Sadly this sounds like an Upload smear, and I really don’t care for speculation. I don’t know the facts, so I cannot judge one way or another, and I really don’t care for Kent’s podcast today because after listening to the intro, it doesn’t sound to be about the case anyway.

    When I sued for harassment, it was one or two people responsible – not the entire company. If a journo wants to report on a company that has a culture of harassment, I want to see hard facts… but not really detailed in a forum for xR enthusiasts.

    • NooYawker

      No it’s never “everyone” is involved but obviously the leaders of upload vr created this vile atmosphere. It’s not a smear piece. It’s reporting on what the accusations are. Instead of listening and doing an internal investigation they just denied it and tossed it away. Now that they can’t do that they’re now talking about needing more communication.

      • Get Schwifty!

        Yeah I have to backup NooYawker here… the problem was well known (I hate to bring up Harvey Weinstein, but… similar problem) so its not like two people apart were only involved in an incident in the parking lot. Clearly, there was some kind of attitude problem at UploadVR that is also endemic currently to many tech companies these days and it’s clear people knew what was up. Being “in the business” does not preclude RoadToVR from running a piece by “Drive Bye” Kent as they routinely run his op-ed pieces. While I don’t generally agree with Kent’s hatred towards Oculus and Palmer, he generally covers items worth considering in VR that others ignore including the issues at UploadVR so this piece is inline with his coverage and R2VRs delivery.