Why Do The Lindens Tolerate This Kind of Griefing?

[ChinRey]

Two questions:

Am I the only one who only feels sad reading this thread?

And is it actually going to lead anywhere?

[Pixieplumb Flanagan]

14 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Two questions:

Am I the only one who only feels sad reading this thread?

And is it actually going to lead anywhere?

1.  Probably not

2.  No

[Qie Niangao]

3 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Am I the only one who only feels sad reading this thread?

Vaguely, but I found the linked blog post genuinely tragic. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion, you know what's going to happen, all the damage unfolds perfectly predictably, and there's no way to prevent the inevitable loss.

Is there any prospect of change? It seems to me that there are such large forces underlying events that improvement can be only incremental. Even investing more-than-practical resources into enforcement can only buy partial and mostly temporary relief. Even changing land/group management practices in unwelcome ways could only have other partial and mostly temporary effect. And even the best public relations "attitude", consistently applied, simply will not deter the griefers who have made a (pathetic, basement-dwellling) life goal of tormenting certain SL residents.

The timing is such that I can't avoid an analogy to the wishful thinking of anti-Net Neutrality folks such as our current FCC chair, former Verizon flunky, and unspeakable sleazeball, Ajit Pai. They make all the standard arguments about how unregulated infrastructure technology will foster broad telecom competition, obviating the need for Net Neutrality rules. And it all sounds perfectly reasonable if one knows nothing of the overwhelming economic force of the "network effect" that inevitably pushes the market towards a natural monopoly -- even with infinite, zero-cost infrastructure.

Yeah, that's a tangent. The point is just to illustrate that partial, conceptually unpalatable measures -- even including regulation and enforcement that "doesn't scale" -- may be all that's available to stave-off bad outcomes.

[Dakota Linden]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

While we encourage users to engage in discussions, including discussions that can become heated, attacks against each other are not permitted.

 

 

Edited July 17, 2017 by Dakota Linden

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Is there any prospect of change? It seems to me that there are such large forces underlying events that improvement can be only incremental

We're essentially asking LL to put the genie back in the bottle, aren't we? That's always difficult and they shouldn't have let it out in the first place of course.

I was away from SL when this all started but I did some research after my own land had been hit by griefers a couple of times. If I understand correctly, it went something like this:

About ten eyars ago there was this university campus in SL with leaders who sincerely believed that Everybody Have The Right To Do Whatever They Please. Such naivity is of course bound to attract people who like to play it rough just for the sake of playing it rough and the campus soon became a haven for ... ummm... practical jokers is perhaps the most diplomatic description.

At about the same time a bunch of righteous (at least in their own minds) residents decided it was their Sacred Duty to fight a Holy War against all socially unaccpetable behavior in SL so they formed a miltia and targetted this campus of naivity. Such a miltia is of course bound to attract people who like to play it rough just for the sake of playing it rough and ...

I suppose everybody get the point. It escalated into a full scale war and since neither side could care less about what happened to innocent bystanders, whatever moral high ground either may once have had was soon lost from the collateral damage they caused.

Linden Lab followed their usual routine for crisis handling back then: close their eyes and pretend it doesn't exist. Eventually it got so bad LL panicked, stepped in and made matters even worse and then finally managed to put a lid on it all. By then nobody had much respect for the rules LL had written down but proven themselves unwilling and/or unable to enforce, many of the Defenders of Truth and Justice failed to notice the war was over and started lashing out at random people since they couldn't find an actual enemy to fight and there's so much bad blood that even today some participants go out of their way to harm prominent members of the opposite side.

Did I get this about right?

Edited July 13, 2017 by ChinRey

[ChinRey]

It's no good, I have to risk the wrath of both Prokofy and Dakota here. Fingers crossed.

 

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Vaguely, but I found the linked blog post genuinely tragic. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion, you know what's going to happen, all the damage unfolds perfectly predictably, and there's no way to prevent the inevitable loss.

That's spot on.

Prokofy, are you really unable to see Theresa's point? You posted that transcript on your own blog and it's a perfect example how to put your foot in your mouth and drive away a potential helper through sheer rudeness. Face it: the vast majority of Second Life users have no interest or no part in your problems whatsoever. When one of them still is willing to make an effort helping you, the least you owe them is to show a little bit of gratitude and respect. If you loose your temper during a chat, stand up, step away from your computer, take a deep breath and return when you've regained self-control. One of the many nice things about text chat is that you can do that without anybody noticing. Can you try it? Please?

 

With that being said, how about going back to the start? What can be done to reduce griefing in SL? No matter how we look at it, Prokofy certainly doesn't deserve to be treated this way and besides, the people who are after him don't care if they hurt other people too.

 

Edited July 13, 2017 by ChinRey
Typos

[ChinRey]

On 11.7.2017 at 5:01 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

Furthermore, griefers are often on rogue viewers where they can override group permissions and land settings. I've seen them litter on land that has every box unchecked, even though they are banned from the group. So it kind of makes that whole debate moot.

Here's one important trick, please tell all landowners: Never switch autoreturn off unless it can't possibly be avoided and especially if you have every box unchecked. Objects can sometimes enter the parcel regardless of those settings. You don't even need a special viewer for it and it can easily happen by accident. A minute or five of autoreturn takes care of that problem and it doesn't affect objects set to group.

Edited July 13, 2017 by ChinRey

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

It's no good, I have to risk the wrath of both Prokofy and Dakota here. Fingers crossed.

 

That's spot on.

Prokofy, are you really unable to see Theresa's point? You posted that transcript on your own blog and it's a perfect example how to put your foot in your mouth and drive away a potential helper through sheer rudeness. Face it: the vast majority of Second Life users have no interest or no part in your problems whatsoever. When one of them still is willing to make an effort helping you, the least you owe them is to show a little bit of gratitude and respect. If you loose your temper during a chat, stand up, step away from your computer, take a deep breath and return when you've regained self-control. One of the many nice things about text chat is that you can do that without anybody noticing. Can you try it? Please?

 

With that being said, how about going back to the start? What can be done to reduce griefing in SL? No matter how we look at it, Prokofy certainly doesn't deserve to be treated this way and besides, the people who are after him don't care if they hurt other people too.

 

I don't know what you're going on about, ChinRey. I'm not the problem. The griefers are. I'm sorry you're buying into the user base culture of blame-the-victim and try to find fault with someone who is an outspoken critic, as if they "bring their problems on themselves". The rules are for everybody, critics or conformists. The end.

 

I have plenty of self control. Do you? What you're saying makes no sense. I'd urge *you* to stop being so conformist to the user culture online and try to see the standards that apply in fact in real life.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 7/12/2017 at 4:30 AM, AmandaKeen said:

From one perspective, this is hugely impacted by the ease with which Alts can be created and used for Bad Behavior.

I'm guessing that this is related to $ in two ways;

01..LL sees a financial benefit to the inworld economy by keeping "easy Alts" a going concern. Probably by keeping them available for people who want to sample "adult" areas (funded by their Premium avatar) or in the hope that this will lead them to -make- a premium avatar and spend $.

02..LL lacks the finances to procure the technology and staff to adequately police this issue.

I feel your pain. I was driven OFF my original avatar by griefers and LLs response was underwhelming.

I don't know if the solution to the problem of griefing is to ban alts. I think each alt should be tied to a payment form, even if they opt not to get a premium or buy Lindens. Then they are free to make whatever persona they wish, but it is tied to some form of valid ID for law-enforcement purposes.

Lindens have a lighter regime than this, and I guess the good of alts outweights the bad, and I can't really disagree with them. I've known hard-core griefers whose RL names were known, with forms of payment tied to their accounts, who heedlessly griefed. So it isn't necessarily a deterrent.

[Prokofy Neva]

10 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

 

Meanwhile, if you go to Mr. Neva's blog at 3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts you can read a live example of how he manages to change an initially sympathetic person to an enemy through his reaction to this.

There's a realization you need to reach in situations like this, and until you come to that realization you'll never leave Margaritaville.

When you deal with people who fail to "get it" AND disparage your good name, publicity is the best weapon. Most people reading this get it. Some who don't are part of a culture of blame-the-victim which plagues SL.

[Phil Deakins]

Just out of interest, Prokofy. There is no "blame the victim" culture in this forum. In fact, nobody has put the blame on you. All that any of us have said is that you put yourself out there in a very negative way, which makes you a target for anyone who is looking for one. Your own word about yourself is "outspoken", and we all know that you are very outspoken and very critical. That's why you are a target.

People shouldn't aim at targets but some do, and you have made yourself a good target.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Prokofy Neva]

On 7/12/2017 at 7:09 AM, Pamela Galli said:

This is not unlike all the people that come here demanding LL punish some evildoer that IMs mean things and writes untruths -- or even worse, truths -- about them in their profile. They are not interested in the standard advice how to handle it themselves with the tools available to them. No, they don't care about solving the problem but about LL punishing their enemy. They want justice, not solutions. 

What are the tools you think "aren't being used"?

Group bans are instantly installed.

"Everyone" and even "Group" build is turned off on the parcels.

These are the standard things every group rentals has.

If your suggestion is that group membership is locked, that's not a tool, that's a policy.

And the Lindens have never said "We won't enforce the TOS for those who refuse to lock their groups". Indeed, they *do* enforce the TOS in these cases, though it may take awhile.

In any event, if both "everyone" and "group" build and even object insertion is turned off, then what more can you do? Yes, rogue viewers override that, but it works in most cases.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

18 hours ago, Dillon Levenque said:

I don't know nearly as much about the inside nuts, bolts, and bits (as in ones and zeroes) of SL as the bulk of people in this thread. I have, however, been reading the various forae (I get all proper Latin now and then; usually I just call 'em forums) for about nine years. So I've read a great deal, from many sides, about the discussion at hand.

I find I am in the VERY uncomfortable position of saying something that conflicts with something Innula said above. Having read a great many of Innula's posts both here and elsewhere, I suspect I'm probably wrong. Nevertheless, I want to say this. Of all the comments about this I've seen, a single line from a post by Pixieplumb goes straight to the heart of the matter.

"I'm absolutely sure that until you change something that you do this isn't going away."

I've read lots of posts in which Prok's tenants past and present have praised his behavior as a landlord. Unfortunately, being a great landlord is never going to deter griefers. BTW I know you've all been referencing Prok in the feminine and apparently she's made it RL clear that she's female, but unless things have changed the SL avatar is male. Hence, I use the masculine. I am of course RL male but in SL I greatly prefer the feminine pronouns.

Pixieplumb's right. Until Prok changes something he does, it won't change. I do not know what that is, but then I am not involved.

Again, prim littering, harassment with RL information, spamming, etc. are all against the TOS.

So it's not about me having to "change" something I do.

Vague notions of changing behavior not related to technical matters like "Don't criticize" or "don't have a blog" or some subjective matter like that aren't relevant.

Because the TOS is the TOS. You can't prim litter, have "targeted behavior meant to harass" like constant TP, friendship requests, etc. These are all true facts and conditions of the AR panel. They are available as options to check and AR.

So it's not about me changing something but about enforcing the TOS.

If you mean only "have closed groups," then I refer you back to the beginning of my statement, that enforcement of the TOS is not contingent on whether your group is open or not.

[Prokofy Neva]

11 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

 

Meanwhile, if you go to Mr. Neva's blog at 3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts you can read a live example of how he manages to change an initially sympathetic person to an enemy through his reaction to this.

There's a realization you need to reach in situations like this, and until you come to that realization you'll never leave Margaritaville.

 

12 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

They're also impervious to the methods you're proposing that Linden Lab uses on them.

Again, to take your points in reverse order:

1) I've proposed a) that the Lindens eliminate from the asset server any object used to grief -- a 63-prim real-life effigy would fall in that category. So far, I haven't heard of any technical reason why this is *not* possible; b) and that the Lindens more swiftly ban alts so that there is less ability to pass on griefer objects -- if they won't remove them. Sure, griefers can re-build a 63 or 126 or whatever prim grief object -- but they aren't likely to bother. Sure, griefers can keep making alts beyond this and make new things -- but the Lindens also have hash bans, which they can and do use. So far, I haven't said anything that anyone has shown is "impossible" for the Lindens to do nor have they indicated that griefers are "impervious".

2) Let's say you run a rentals company. Someone comes up to a prospective tenant and tells that person that the landlord doesn't rent to Jews or Muslims. Shocked, the prospective tenant flees. He doesn't seem to inquire why a day-old alt with that same landlord's picture (!) would be telling him such nonsense -- but understood, it's shocking enough. You as the landlord -- with your profile showing 12 years in SL -- contact the abused prospective tenant and explain to him that the statement is false, he is welcome to rent, there's no such bar on anybody. Furthermore, you explain that it was a griefer who told him this, and it's false, and you'd appreciate it if he could help by abuse-reporting this griefer.

So the tenant says, sure, and appears to "get it". All seems ok.

But next, what happens, is instead of the tenant renting, or simply saying, thanks, and moving on his way, that tenant comes back to you and says "But I can't trust you because that alt who told me that racist thing has your picture".

Surely you can see the problem here. If someone can't figure out that a day-old alt is not trustworthy, and a 12-year-old avatar is, and also can't figure out that a landlord wouldn't have an actual alt of his spout nonsense -- then contact people to tell them otherwise -- what can you do? Most people would realize this was a hoax. They wouldn't start doubting.

That is, not in most reasonable circumstances. But in SL, given the attitude toward landlords and facts in general, the story takes a bizarre twist, and the prospective tenant suddenly decides that this is *a form of entertainment* for the landlord -- that he likes making alts who say awful things, then pretending they aren't his alts.

Now try to stick to these facts of the story, and let us know what you would do. 

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 

Again, to take your points in reverse order:

1) I've proposed a) that the Lindens eliminate from the asset server any object used to grief -- a 63-prim real-life effigy would fall in that category. So far, I haven't heard of any technical reason why this is *not* possible; b) and that the Lindens more swiftly ban alts so that there is less ability to pass on griefer objects -- if they won't remove them. Sure, griefers can re-build a 63 or 126 or whatever prim grief object -- but they aren't likely to bother. Sure, griefers can keep making alts beyond this and make new things -- but the Lindens also have hash bans, which they can and do use. So far, I haven't said anything that anyone has shown is "impossible" for the Lindens to do nor have they indicated that griefers are "impervious".

 

1) Any time you modify an object it creates a new asset. Easy enough to create new, anonymous versions of the effigy to stock up on and they can create new ones as the old ones are purged. All this of course doesn't even take into account that they can just copybot it anyway. You seem to have a consistent problem with grasping the idea that malicious things in Second Life are built out of non-malicious components so there's no real way to ban something like an object or (especially) a script.

2) Hash bans are only effective if they're using their own hardware (and they can't spoof the information). Accounts aren't tied to machines so they could jump on any computer. It just makes the challenge more interesting.

If someone wants to do something badly enough, they'll find a way to do it. The only real way to stop them is to make them not want to do it in the first place.

[Klytyna]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Surely you can see the problem here. If someone can't figure out that a day-old alt is not trustworthy, and a 12-year-old avatar is,

Erm... Just for the record, there are 12 year accounts in SL you can't trust further than you can spit a fully grown 7 ton African Bull Elephant, and 1 day old noobs who are sweetness and light.

Remember how the griefers are 'alts' of old old Prim Warriors still fighting the Parcel Wars.

Assuming somebody is 'trustworthy' based on SL account age is ALMOST as stupid as that once ubiquitous belief that a persons SL-IQ score was their account age measured in weeks, or that all people called Resident are criminals...
 

[ChinRey]

7 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't know what you're going on about, ChinRey.

If you don't grasp it, perhaps it's too sophisticated.

---

That's the key. How do you like having that remark thrown into your face? It's almost a direct quote of what you said to somebody who agreed to help you but wanted some additional information first.

Just to clear up a possible misunderstanding: if you think most people in Second Life know who Prokofy Neva is, think again. Nobody is that famous, there's not a single person in Second Life who is well enough known that one percent of the residents recognize their name. So when you wannabe helper asked for some confirmation about who you were before they committed themselves, that was very much a reasonable and legitimate request.

As to judging somebody's character by their avatar's age, Klytyna already answered that.

---

Now, in addition to bringing our attention to that blog post, Theresa has also provided some information about the technical side of griefing prevention. But to make that absolutely clear, it is not possible for the Second Life software to identify the person behind an avatar. Your connection has an IP address. That is easy to identify but also easy to change, usually all you have to do is switch off your router for a few minutes and when you reconnect you're likely to have been assigned a new IP address. You computer has a MAC address but that too is easily changed. Some mobile devices even have MAC address randomization as a standard feature these days. And of course, even if the system is able to identify the computer, there is absolutely no way for it to know who is behind the keyboard. Some people do log on to SL from public computers.

The only relatively reliable way to establish an avatar's RL identity would be, as you suggested, to require confirmed payment information from everybody. If LL chose to do it that way, you should expect half of your tenants to leave SL for good, probably more. Do you really want that?

---

Second Life does not have a good way to identify the origin or the creator of an object or a script. That is a serious hole in the security system and something LL should have fixed very early. They didn't and it's probably too late now. It would require some drastic changes in the assets handling and by now we're talking about a database with billions, probably even trillions, of entries.

---

The best way to prevent unacceptable behaviour is to kill it before it grows. That's what Linden Lab should have done ten years ago. But they didn't and unless somebody can lend them a time machine, there's nothing to do about that blunder now. You can't even blame the current Lindens for it. Most of them didn't work for LL back then and the few who did, were not in positions where they could do anything about it.

---

There is one more method, it's one of the standard answers and the one you hate to hear: ignore them. The one thing all griefers want, is attention. Deny them that and they will eventually grow tired of their silly games. No, this is not about accepting unacceptable behavior, it's all about raising above such foolishness.

---

No matter how you look at it, there is no "magic bullet" to kill all griefing once and for all. There never was.

Edited July 14, 2017 by ChinRey

[Phil Deakins]

@Prokofy Neva

Try this then. When you leave your RL house empty, do you lock the doors? If you do, why do you lock them? People shouldn't enter other people's homes and steal stuff because it's against the law. So why bother locking the doors?

It would be incredibly stupid to leave the house unlocked simply because stealing stuff from it isn't allowed, wouldn't it? But that's what you're doing in SL. You can't totally secure things but you do have ways of making things more secure. Unfortunately for you, it's not your "preferred method". I'm sure that's fine with most people here, it certainly is with me, but don't look for mass sympathy when you won't lift a finger to help yourself, simply because you prefer not to, and you believe that the law-makers should do it all for you.

If your RL house gets robbed when you go out and leave it unlocked, you tell the police and they advise you to lock your doors and windows when you go out. That's what you should do here. You don't tell the police that it's their job to ensure than nobody steals from the house when you're out with the doors unlocked, because your preferred method is not to lock them.

We live in a world where we have to take precautions for ourselves. SL is a very similar world. If there is something you can do to improve your security, do it, even though, as in RL, you shouldn't have to.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Phil Deakins]

Now to the question of why you started this thread. Why did you start it? What did you hope to gain from it?

Were you hoping to pour some hot coals on LL because you believe they let you down in this regard? Merely the newest shot in your years of finding fault with LL.

Or were you hoping that LL would read it and sort it all out for you?

Or were you just wanting to let off steam against LL in as public a place as you could, in the hope that LL would see it and feel guilty?

Or were you hoping that it would generate a groundswell of user opinion, in the hope that LL would take notice and do something?

I can't readily come up with any other possible reasons than those above.

I suspect that it's either the first (hot coals) or the third (steam), or both. Am I right?

Edited July 14, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Amanda Crisp]

I guess I'm the blue-bird of happiness this morning.

Based on my own experiences with LL and Griefers, I think it would be overly optimistic to expect relief from LL. 

That leaves you with the "life is tough, wear a helmet" fallback. Or perhaps to quote Sun Tuzla; "When a battle cannot be won, do not fight one".

 I finally opted to give up an (based on today's date) 11 year old Avatar just because that made more sense than fighting a hopeless battle with no effective assistance from the owners of the virtual world I was in. I gave up a huge Inventory but I did gain some insight;

#1- The internet sometimes attracts socially Mal-adapted people because here (and only here) they can be powerful if they have the correct technical ability and lack of ethical foundation.

#2- You are only vulnerable to those people if you are tied to something that they can track you down with, or if you insist in sticking in a losing fight with no hope of effective intervention by the owners.

#3- Griefers can re spawn on endless Alts thanks to LLs policies on alt-crontrol; but so can you. Make sure you know how to reach the people you care about outside of a particular alt - and Griefers have no power to separate you from the people you love.

#4-I had to decide which goal to serve; Pursuing "Justice" against people who can hide like Ninjas and who are defacto protected by the structure of the virtual world I was in - or to pursue "Fun". I opted for fun and to deprive the folks from item #1 of THEIR fun.

#5- The option to walk away is always mine. There are other online environs and if it reaches the point I can't stomach SL I will take the cash I spend here elsewhere. Bad on LL for setting themselves up to take a business-hit for failure to maintain user-confidence in their product. 

I don't hate LL, but I also have no high expectations for their ability to take the time and expense to police the Mean Girls of SL. They are handcuffed by an architecture, a financial situation and a culture that minimizes their ability to intervene. In light of that reality - I work within "what remains possible"

And I have a pretty darn good time :-)

[Prokofy Neva]

3 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Now, in addition to bringing our attention to that blog post, Theresa has also provided some information about the technical side of griefing prevention. But to make that absolutely clear, it is not possible for the Second Life software to identify the person behind an avatar. Your connection has an IP address. That is easy to identify but also easy to change, usually all you have to do is switch off your router for a few minutes and when you reconnect you're likely to have been assigned a new IP address. You computer has a MAC address but that too is easily changed. Some mobile devices even have MAC address randomization as a standard feature these days. And of course, even if the system is able to identify the computer, there is absolutely no way for it to know who is behind the keyboard. Some people do log on to SL from public computers.

Also @Theresa Tennyson

In fact, the Lindens use hash marks to ban avatars. This used to be discussed much more in the old days when Philip Linden himself experienced constant crashes of the sims he was giving talks on. The Lindens and and do use hash marks and MAC addresses to make bans. Sure, you can "whatboutit" to death and say that IP addresses randomize (they actually don't as much as this is often claimed in these debates; I've seen my own stay static, for example); or that griefers can hop from laptop to laptop (but like most people, they tend to use their own machines or the same machines). Sure, the person at the computer can change. But the reality is, the Lindens make effective bans all the time. They have banned me and my alts from the JIRA for years, for example, and it doesn't matter if something changes in my computer or Internet service, I remain banned. When motivated, they get it to stick. It's not 100% perfect, but it doesn't need to be, it can be 80% perfect and still deter a lot of griefing. And that is indeed what the Lindens do.

Your notion that griefers go away if they don't get attention is blessed, but as I've already explained, in the years of dealing with this, I've tried different things. In the last few rounds in the last year, I haven't publicized the incidents nor posted them on my blog or anything. That didn't get rid of them. I often log off as soon as they appear to harass, that can break their attention, but not forever, they often have the ability to be in "god mode" and stalk you from sim to sim. I don't think I've ever put a substantive post on the forums before, and I have to say that has worked, as now every single one of them in this latest round is finally gone from the people list -- and this, when previous rounds of the last year still remain. So when you yourself have dealt with sustained griefing like this for years and tried different methods, ignore, don't ignore, publicize, don't publicize, call me, and I'll be happy to exchange more tips. BTW, I personally can and do ignore effigies of myself til the cows come home, but my tenants have less success doing that.

As for new assets, I'm familiar with this feature of SL having asked about this issue in the technical sections awhile ago on another matter. Each time you rez out an object of any kind, it has a new UUID. Yet objects also have a set of characteristics they retain. Obviously the permissions systems create objects that can be copied by the maker but not the user, and then there are thousands of identical single copies out there, all able to be identified as "a thing" with specific characteristics. So that makes me wonder if there is some other UR identifier involved. Object names can be changed obviously. But in this case, they never are, they are passed with the same name from one alt to the other. The griefers have sympathetic landlords or sandbox owners who look the other way while they put out boxes of griefer objects on copy. Sure, they can and do copybot things -- which is how they behaved, copybotting at times my builders' objects or other people's items and put them in their "scenes". But there isn't an infinite number of objects. A Linden governance staff person can look at the chat and the movements of a griefer, see that he goes to that same "latest island" of certain groups or that "sympathetic landlord" and remove the stash box. And all alts involved and disclipline or even more the main for this enabling of griefers. In fact, when Lindens made mass bans of certain coherent griefer groups in the early days, and some howled that they "never griefed," it was because the Lindens were on to their little act and found that they enabled; they held the cloak, as it were. 

So this is a definable job that can be done, and again I pose (as I did with the inventory loss problem) the issue of searching for assets and removing them (or restoring them). It's doable, even if a big job. But a more definable job is removing obvious stashes from connected sandboxes/parcels so that it is that much harder to respawn. 

The reason I hammer on this point is that we know the Lindens CAN AND DO REMOVE ASSETS permanently. There are copybotted items, or items that crash sims, that can go missing from your inventory and you will get a notice even that something has been removed. So while there are all these issues with name changing or copybotting or whatever, the Lindens still FIND A WAY to remove assets of other types -- copyright violations, sim crashers -- that they don't want in their game. It's not too hard to then envisage them removing the RL effigy of someone routinely harassed. This is a matter of time and political will.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

5 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Erm... Just for the record, there are 12 year accounts in SL you can't trust further than you can spit a fully grown 7 ton African Bull Elephant, and 1 day old noobs who are sweetness and light.

Remember how the griefers are 'alts' of old old Prim Warriors still fighting the Parcel Wars.

Assuming somebody is 'trustworthy' based on SL account age is ALMOST as stupid as that once ubiquitous belief that a persons SL-IQ score was their account age measured in weeks, or that all people called Resident are criminals...
 

Generally, people who have old accounts and are content creators or service providers aren't in that category of the 12-year griefer accounts. There are far more trustworthy old accounts -- if they still log on -- because they have business reputations or social reputations -- than not. There is a tendency among techies to say that if some tiny percent of a general statement is not true, then the entire proposition is false or invalid. But in real life, if something is true most of the time, it's workable. And that's why any trust of a day-old alt *misbeaving* and not projecting sweetness and life (your qualifier) would not be in order. If you had the word of a day-old saying something wild, and a 12-year-old saying they are spouting nonsense, it is *reasonable* to assume the old avatar is trustworthy. That you set up a proposition that it might not be is one of the examples of endless edge-casing in SL that undermines social cohesion, but I think people still import from RL these basic norms that they use most of the time. There's nothing "stupid" about trusting an old public figure in business with a reputation to uphold whose name is tied to their RL name, and not trust an anonymous day-old alt. Indeed, it is quite sensible. It's what is called "common sense" which can seem elusive only in an overly technologized environment.

[ChinRey]

37 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There's nothing "stupid" about trusting an old public figure in business with a reputation to uphold

I have to repeat what I said earlier. You are not a public figure and you do not have a reputation. Not as far as the average SL user is concerned that is. He/she has never ever heard of you and has no idea what your background is. They can read your profile, yes, but as you said yourself, profiles can lie.

That's not about you btw. There is no such thing as a public figure in Second Life. Every single avatar and every single alt is a complete unknown to the vast majority of SL users.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 But there isn't an infinite number of objects.

Yes. There. Is.

Prims are created by the viewer. It can't stop creating them. That's what it's designed to do. That's what it has to do. And if you're in a hurry and the viewer has the appropriate code you can use an XML file (which is stored completely offline) to tell it to create a certain combination of prims instantly and once those prims are created somewhere that allows the creation of prims, everyone else can see them too.

What you said is the exact equivalent of saying, "But there isn't an infinite number of words in a language." If the word "banana" somehow became so repellent that you struck every existing instance of it from the world lexicon someone could still string a combination of b's, a's and n's together to make new ones instantly. If you went to the extent of breaking your alphabet to remove those letters, people could still use their mouths and lungs to produce "buhs," "aaaas" and "nnnns" because as humans we're physically able to do that.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Theresa Tennyson

[Innula Zenovka]

@Phil Deakins   You draw an analogy with people who are negligent in securing their houses and then complain about being burgled.   I can think of far better analogies, though -- someone who gets involved in a political argument (or one about computer games) on Twitter or Facebook, for example, and then finds herself harassed by armies of online trolls.   I've often seen comments to the effect that people in those circumstances should simply stay off Twitter and Facebook, or avoid attracting the attention of trolls by avoiding contentious topics, but I've never thought that excuses either the trolls' misbehaviour or Twitter and Facebook not doing more to stop it, if it's within their power so to.   

In general, while certainly it's only common sense to be careful in various circumstances, the fact someone seems to lack caution (or, at times, common sense) doesn't excuse her being attacked by trolls and greifers.    We're so often told not to blame the victim, after all, and to my mind that applies here, too.

Having said that, I would point out to @Prokofy Nevathat some of her presuppositions about what steps LL may easily take are, simply, mistaken.    If someone uses Firestorm it's simple enough to export a multi-prim/sculpt object they've made themselves and store it on their PC (or email it to a friend) and re-import it later.    Firestorm checks that you've made all the components yourself, I think,but I bet ripper viewers have similar capabilities but neglect to check who the creator is.  

Furthermore, even without such technology anyone with some scripting knowledge and access to the wiki can reasonably easily put together a script that reads the properties of a multi-prim object (even a huge effigy of Prok) and use that to generate a script that re-creates the object.     My point is that the fact complex griefing objects keep re-appearing does not necessarily suggest LL are neglecting to remove them from the inventory server.   It could equally well mean that they exist as off-world files that can easily be re-imported or that scripts are in circulation that simply require you to rez and link the requisite number of prims and then drop the script in to recreate the item.   Such files and scripts are, moreover, easily shared by email or pastebin.

Similarly, though I've never tried it, 5 minutes with Google was enough to tell me how to spoof my MAC address should I want to,  and even if you do have a static IP address (I do -- it depends on the technology your ISP uses) access to Virtual Private Networks is readily available and inexpensive.   All LL can do, I think, is try to make it difficult for banned users to log in on new accounts, but I don't think that banned users keep returning with new alts can be taken to imply that LL don't even try to keep them out.