"Share" is taken out of the viewer completely?

[Prokofy Neva]

So I noticed these liner notes that said "share removed from viewer" but I didn't grasp the ramifications until I tried to blog to Flickr while flying around sales and...it's gone. There doesn't seem to be any more option to post to Twitter or Flickr or anything.

I was surprised to see that the Grid Status had a note about fixing the Twitter function, which I haven't gotten to work since the summer when they reported it. I thought this was an issue with the Twitter API and how it stops working in various ways in general. Some third-party merchants who made inworld post-to-Twitter devices also stopped working. It seems odd that they would post an emergency and imply they were going to fix Twitter, then take all sharing out of the viewer in a new patch the next day. 

?

(PS: it occurs to me that this was marked "resolved" simply because they removed the share function entirely from the viewer.)

So I guess you have to "save to disk" and post from there. But the chances of that are reduced because it's a chore, for one, but more to the point, you have to hunt around and copy and save the SLURL as well, in order to post later. The beauty of the "share" from the viewer is that the SLURL was added automatically, even to Flickr.

I realize that the aspiration of connecting avatars to social media was over-reach (except for perhaps Plurk) because people don't like to link their real life and SL identities. So it was a non-starter. But a lot of people have social media accounts with their avatar names. So now blogging to them is hobbled. Maybe it wasn't used much?

Some time ago I was able to use the email photo function from the viewer to post to my blog on Typepad, because Typepad has a system of micro-posts from an email rather than navigating to the site and uploading. But then this stopped working completely (it always had its troubles) and Typepad said they couldn't see anything on their end. That is, it worked, but the pictures stripped out and you had only the text, which meant having to manually fix it but at least the SLURL was there. So that's why I changed to Twitter; when Twitter stopped functioning I changed to Flickr, which I don't really like and now I guess it's face the chores or do nothing (probably the latter).

We've come a long way since the days when the Lab let one of its favoured sons with a huge screenshot-sharing site to use its mechanism to post directly to the secondlife.com front page -- can you imagine?! Naturally, it ended in tears, not even so much due to porn, but zillions of store and real estate ads posing as exploration photos. I also pointed out at the time that the third-party site could harvest people's RL emails. The host claimed these were dumped. Whatever. LL now combs through submissions rigorously to put one "photo of the day".

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Prokofy Neva

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

I didn't even know you could do this to begin with. Hope they bring it back if it's gone.

[Prokofy Neva]

Just now, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I didn't even know you could do this to begin with. Hope they bring it back if it's gone.

I would think that if something is entirely removed from the viewer so that the user interface no longer has it, they won't put it back. And if they marked the Twitter malfunction as "fixed" not by being fixed but evidently by being removed. Well, that's a great idea, that works for kidneys, too, remove it entirely, you know? 

[Fauve Aeon]

Has anyone asked why? I’m not complaining, I’m looking at the future of social networks and 3rd party websites. I’ve automated most of my social sharing already and decided to make the move to get my web content moved onto my own dotcoms in 2020 and then share everything from those more secure home base repositories...so I will not feel this loss but I’m wondering how many others will? 
 

[Prokofy Neva]

5 minutes ago, Fauve Aeon said:

Has anyone asked why? I’m not complaining, I’m looking at the future of social networks and 3rd party websites. I’ve automated most of my social sharing already and decided to make the move to get my web content moved onto my own dotcoms in 2020 and then share everything from those more secure home base repositories...so I will not feel this loss but I’m wondering how many others will? 
 

Well, the Lindens could explain but maybe simply because it kept breaking down? And wasn't used enough to bother spending resources on fixing it? It feels like an executive decision.

Here are the release notes.

It references SL-11984 which I can't see because I'm banned from the JIRA.

So maybe someone can read it and see why someone would propose this.

 https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SL-11984

Edited December 13, 2019 by Prokofy Neva

[Lindal Kidd]

"You can't view this issue.  It may have been deleted or you don't have permission to view it."

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I can't open that Jira either, insufficent permissions or possibly deleted, but I remember that LL were going to stop supporting things that were constantly changing their APIs because it was a losing game trying to keep up with them all?

[Prokofy Neva]

27 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I can't open that Jira either, insufficent permissions or possibly deleted, but I remember that LL were going to stop supporting things that were constantly changing their APIs because it was a losing game trying to keep up with them all?

Don't use that link, sorry, that's the link FOR ME to keep me out, so get there from your view of the page.

[Desiree Moonwinder]

""Share" is taken out of the viewer completely?"

 

Yay!  Posting SL stuff outside always struck me as unethical

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

41 minutes ago, Desiree Moonwinder said:

Yay!  Posting SL stuff outside always struck me as unethical

I have to agree, although there are some bloggers who I would be very sad to not be able to read.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

44 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Don't use that link, sorry, that's the link FOR ME to keep me out, so get there from your view of the page.

The first one is yours, the second (Jira) link is the general one, I suspect LL have turned it off as it's internal comments rather than public stuff for all to see.

[Syo Emerald]

53 minutes ago, Desiree Moonwinder said:

""Share" is taken out of the viewer completely?"

 

Yay!  Posting SL stuff outside always struck me as unethical

Whats unethical about the share function Prokofy mentioned? (I had never paid attention to it, as I don't use twitter or flickr etc.)

[Oz Linden]

The services we were providing interfaces to via SLShare (Facebook, Twitter, Flicker) have not maintained stable interfaces; each of them has repeatedly changed the interface in an incompatible way (sometimes with very little notice). None has been used very heavily by the user base as a whole, and because of the interface instability we have decided that they are not worth the high maintenance cost so we're removing those features from the viewer code and shutting down the backend service.

We're very sorry that this will inconvenience those who were successfully using the service.

[TVTuner]

Hmm, share to profile feed is still in there.  I suppose that doesn't change without notice.  😉  I'll try it out.  Thanks for the information, Oz.

[Maitimo]

Thanks Oz. I have to say, even though I am a regular poster of SL pics in Flickr, I never used the share feature, mainly because I like to crop and edit my snapshots before posting them.

[animats]

41 minutes ago, Oz Linden said:

The services we were providing interfaces to via SLShare (Facebook, Twitter, Flicker) have not maintained stable interfaces; each of them has repeatedly changed the interface in an incompatible way (sometimes with very little notice).

Yes. All the big web services want their own walled garden now, and the walls are getting higher. Gyazo no longer seems to accept uploads from the web; they want people to use their client program. Reddit just started requiring logins to read comments. Google just started blocking GMail logins from "nonstandard browsers". More web sites, especially news sites, are ad blocker and tracker blocker hostile. Even a small part of SL's own web sites, the Tilia identity validator, does that.

The web has more big, beautiful-to-the-service-provider walls than it did two years ago.

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, Desiree Moonwinder said:

""Share" is taken out of the viewer completely?"

 

Yay!  Posting SL stuff outside always struck me as unethical

There is absolutely NOTHING "unethical" about posting outside SL.

Linden Lab itself recognizes this and put share in the viewer. Taking it out is a technical matter, not a finding that it is "unethical".

LL's jurisdiction does not extend past its servers and it can't police speech or images and how they are posted.

As in real life, if you are in a public square, you mind wind up in a photograph; deal with it. No lawsuits have successfully been brought on the grounds of people being photographed in public spaces, although there are always some who try.

The exception is if you photograph a person or place to use it for a *commercial* purpose, i.e. if they are trademarked or you exploit their IP in some way. But not the mere fact of them being in a photo. Another exception is the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004 which prohibits filming people in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, their home, a gym dressing room, and notably casinos that have this as a rule on their premises. Then you can fined.

No one has pressed a successful lawsuit invoking the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act for a virtual world, involving their avatar.

Sure, it's a courtesy to ask people before you film them.

But if I am snapping shots of an event, I will include random people who pass by. Don't tell me that they get all dressed up in their finest costumes and holdable dogs to hide and not be photographed. Ridiculous. SL is all about photographs as Flickr will tell you.

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Oz Linden said:

The services we were providing interfaces to via SLShare (Facebook, Twitter, Flicker) have not maintained stable interfaces; each of them has repeatedly changed the interface in an incompatible way (sometimes with very little notice). None has been used very heavily by the user base as a whole, and because of the interface instability we have decided that they are not worth the high maintenance cost so we're removing those features from the viewer code and shutting down the backend service.

We're very sorry that this will inconvenience those who were successfully using the service.

I could point out that they received less use....because they were broken lol. Either totally broken, as Twitter became, or sporadically broken (like the email to Typepad posting) such as to discourage people.

I don't know why these platforms keep changing their interfaces, but it may be like Internet radio stations who constantly change their URLS, baffling and maddening those trying to make SL radios out of them: they want to drive people back to their properties so users click on their own ads or availing themselves to be data-scraped; they don't want to be accessed by someone else's property clicking on that owner's ads and being scraped by another party.

 

[Desiree Moonwinder]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

No one has pressed a successful lawsuit invoking the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act for a virtual world, involving their avatar.

Sure, it's a courtesy to ask people before you film them.

But if I am snapping shots of an event, I will include random people who pass by. Don't tell me that they get all dressed up in their finest costumes and holdable dogs to hide and not be photographed. Ridiculous. SL is all about photographs as Flickr will tell you.

SL's snapshot and machimina policy is here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Snapshot_and_machinima_policy

After reviewing it, I agree that yes, snapshots are allowed, unless the landowner forbids in covenants (which is uncommon), but machinima requires consent for "avatars whose names are legible," in addition to a few other special cases .  

Quote

License Conditions

The Licenses are subject to the following conditions:

(a) Land Owner Consent for Snapshots and Machinima

If you wish to take a snapshot or capture machinima of content on another Resident’s land, then:

1. For Snapshots, check whether the covenant for the land prohibits snapshots. If it does, then you need special permission from the land owner to take the snapshot. If it allows snapshots or doesn’t address them, then you do not need special permission from the land owner as long as you comply with any terms that may be in the covenant.
2. For Machinima, check whether the covenant for the land allows machinima. If it does not or doesn’t address machinima, then you need special permission from the land owner to capture machinima. If it allows machinima, then you do not need special permission from the land owner as long as you comply with any terms that may be in the covenant.

For Mainland or Linden Homes parcels where Linden Lab is the estate owner, you do not need land owner consent to take snapshots, but you do need special permission from the land owner to capture machinima. The “land owner” is not the estate owner, but the Resident identified as the land owner in the “General” tab under “About Land.” For private islands where Residents are estate owners, you must check the covenant for the private island as provided above.

(b) Avatar Consent for Machinima

For machinima, you must have the consent of all Residents whose avatars or Second Life names are featured or recognizable in the machinima. This includes avatars who are featured in a shot, avatars whose names are legible, and avatars whose appearance is sufficiently distinctive that they are recognizable by members of the Second Life community. Consent is not required if an avatar is not recognizable and is merely part of a crowd scene or shown in a fleeting background. Consent is not required for any snapshots.

(c) Other Intellectual Property Licenses

It’s important to remember that the Licenses are only copyright licenses for the 3D content we created that is displayed in-world. They do not include any permission to use the trademarks of Linden Lab or Residents, and they do not give any copyright permission to use music or sound recordings that may be performed in-world. They also do not give any copyright permission to use any website or video content that may be streamed from outside the Second Life virtual world environment.

If the content that you capture is subject to any trademark, service mark, trade dress, publicity rights, or other intellectual property or proprietary rights, you must obtain the necessary licenses and permissions to use the content, and you use it at your own risk.

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Desiree Moonwinder

[Ardy Lay]

4 hours ago, animats said:

Reddit just started requiring logins to read comments. 

Change their named to "Ignored It" or some permutation.  As walls go up on a site I stay away.  I am only there because somebody sent me a link.  I don't shovel that stuff.

[Jules Catlyn]

Maybe playing a bit of a devils advocate here but i don't think LL is to sad to see less snapshots outside of SL because most of them are not too good in quality graphically and really are not a good advertisement. Just like a polaroid of the Eiffel tower is not really flattering. I think they rather see good quality pictures posted on the internet.

[Fauve Aeon]

I don’t think it has anything to do with people posting SL snapshots (good or otherwise) on the internet. A lesser used feature that requires constant staff attention is simply a drain on resources. 
 

my own feelings on the quality of cartoon snapshots in a video game is that I love seeing people having fun and caught up in the moment and many of the more staged and fussed-over shots are stale and overworked, they don’t represent what I see in the world...so that’s all definitely subjective. Historically LL reception of most of the creative output of residents is positive and most of the more judgmental opinions in that arena seem to come from other residents. First day of my photography class and my current favorite class teacher both said the same thing, ‘have fun, enjoy yourself and your subject and ultimately your viewer will feel that enjoyment too’. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

48 minutes ago, Jules Catlyn said:

Maybe playing a bit of a devils advocate here but i don't think LL is to sad to see less snapshots outside of SL because most of them are not too good in quality graphically and really are not a good advertisement. Just like a polaroid of the Eiffel tower is not really flattering. I think they rather see good quality pictures posted on the internet.

There are some astonishingly good photographs of SL on Flickr. I mean, actual, real "art." And of course, there is a larger volume of crap, including straight-up porn.

I don't know if this shift in policy reflects, at least in part, an attempt to reduce the volume of the crap, but I have often wondered why LL doesn't make better PR use of the real talent that the platform also features.

[Qie Niangao]

I've never taken seriously the role of shared snapshots in social discovery of Second Life.

Dunno if it's effective at that, but something needs to be.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Social media keeps building their walls so they can get their own analytics data and user information without losing or sharing that data with others outside of their control.

A thing to remember about service that is free is that the real product is you...

Maybe a little more wall between that and here is a good thing?

 

Part of me likes this change, part of me doesn't.