Protecting Second Life From Hate Groups Hiding & Organizing Here

[Kenai Harbour]

I certainly hope with all the other social media outlets that are banning hate groups, Trump, and their speech in light of the attack on our nation's capital that Second Life is not becoming a haven for them. What is Linden Lab doing to make sure they don't hide here?

Edited January 12, 2021 by Kenai Harbour

[Rowan Amore]

13 minutes ago, Kenai Harbour said:

I certainly hope with all the other social media outlets that are banning hate groups, Trump, and their speech in light of the attack on our nation's capital that Second Life is not becoming a haven for them. What is Linden Lab doing to make sure they don't hide here?

They've been hiding here for years.

[Vivienne Schell]

26 minutes ago, Kenai Harbour said:

I certainly hope with all the other social media outlets that are banning hate groups, Trump, and their speech in light of the attack on our nation's capital that Second Life is not becoming a haven for them. What is Linden Lab doing to make sure they don't hide here?

Did you miss all the overdimensioned "Trump 2020" posters and entire Trumpist sim setups all over the place? There are plenty of hate groups active in SL, ever were.

[PermaRuthed]

13 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Did you miss all the overdimensioned "Trump 2020" posters and entire Trumpist sim setups all over the place? There are plenty of hate groups active in SL, ever were.

To be fair, those threads got removed.  One poster was like, "WAAAAH, why they AR my trump signs on my microparcels?! Mah freedums!"

Edited January 12, 2021 by PermaRuthed

[Vivienne Schell]

5 minutes ago, PermaRuthed said:

To be fair, those threads got removed.  One poster was like, "WAAAAH, why they AR my trump signs on my microparcels?! Mah freedums!"

Right, and they popped up elsewhere as soon as they were removed, haha. Looked like some "catch the thief" game.

[Rowan Amore]

53 minutes ago, Kenai Harbour said:

What is Linden Lab doing to make sure they don't hide here?

What exactly do you expect them to do?  As with most things that are against the ToS, they will act appropriately when and if it is brought to their attention.  They have given us, the residents, the power in the form of abuse reports.  If you see something, say something.  

However, there are much better platforms for those groups to disseminate their hate that would reach a wider audience than SL.

[Alwin Alcott]

3 hours ago, Kenai Harbour said:

I certainly hope with all the other social media outlets that are banning ...Trump, and their speech .... that Second Life is not becoming a haven for them. What is Linden Lab doing to make sure they don't hide here?

.. can you control minds? What's there to ban here?
To be honest quite shocking you ask this here. Tells a lot about the tools you want to use for your own little safe bubble.
A majority on SL isn't american, lets ban all ideas that we don't like?

People seem to forget that everything you declare illegal and forbidden, goes underground, where it is a lot more dangerous. This will become a real danger for the States. I'm affraid new IRA/ETA/RAF type of organisations will be born when this witchhunt goes on.
Connect and "together" were the messages by the elects... i don't see it  yet.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[Jordyn McGregor]

When did have a political opinion become "hate speech"?

[Orwar]

   Oh, look - another thread about these political shenanigans. 

   Seriously, if you're terrified of the risk of being exposed to a Trump 2020 sign, you probably shouldn't be online at all. 

[Syo Emerald]

The good thing about Second Life is, that for most people in the world, its an obscure niche thing with a significant learning curve. For that reason I do not think that a noticeable number of far right groups will move to SL. 

That being said: Over 70 milion people in the USA (or thats the the numbers ball park I read about) voted for Donald Trump. He managed to become president in 2016. People with shocking viewpoints are talking to a mainstream audiance on social media. So the fear of some "hate groups" seeking cover in SL is absurd. If anything the "hate" is among the general population and has been for years. If you encounter Trump supporters or similar people, its not because some "hate group" secretly set up camp in SL, its because this has become a mainstream political view in the US. 
 

[Qie Niangao]

3 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

People seem to forget that everything you declare illegal and forbidden, goes underground, where it is a lot more dangerous. This will become a real danger for the States. I'm affraid new IRA/ETA/RAF type of organisations will be born when this witchhunt goes on.

Except terror groups only communicate "real" planning over end-to-end encryption, so nobody could ever see what the actual plans are anyway. On social media, though, there may be a "public" version to recruit a mob. So far we know the US Capitol event included a van of explosives and numerous caches of automatic weapons that were not discussed online (and somehow weren't used), while the rabble publicly concocted a vague intent to assassinate legislators to draw the eight thousand misfit mob.

Point is, Second Life is useless for either of these purposes. Neither enough people to bother with public recruitment, nor encryption to keep the actual planning secret. (In theory, SL could be a low-level medium for externally-encrypted communications, but why would anybody choose it?)

There's another whole level of what happens in public on social media, though, that needs addressing. It's still irrelevant here because SL is far too small, but the spreading and amplification of propaganda (e.g., all the "election integrity" lies) are not in the public interest. In the States there are freedoms of Speech and the Press that apply in specific, circumscribed conditions -- with liability attached to the speaker and publisher. For example, the US Constitution says nothing about anonymous speech and propaganda. Platforms that provide (or can't prevent) anonymity have problems -- as we see on the tiny scale of SL griefers, and the huge, democracy-threatening dezinformatsia storms on Twitter and Facebook.

That's what came with raw CDA section 230. Unrevised, it's a self-imposed vulnerability that the US cannot survive, accelerated by social media platforms that reward participants as propagandists, amateur or professional, domestic or foreign.

[Theresa Tennyson]

7 hours ago, Kenai Harbour said:

I certainly hope with all the other social media outlets that are banning hate groups, Trump, and their speech in light of the attack on our nation's capital that Second Life is not becoming a haven for them. What is Linden Lab doing to make sure they don't hide here?

Making the environment so arcane and unreliable that it's more efficient to organize just about anywhere else.

[Ren Toxx]

7 hours ago, Kenai Harbour said:

What is Linden Lab doing to make sure they don't hide here?

“Ask not what Linden Lab can do for you—ask what you can do for Linden Lab.”

In other words, Abuse Report what you believe is clearly against Second Life Terms Of Service, either hate speech or anything else, and then pay no further attention to it.

[Cinos Field]

I've been doing my part in getting fascist sympathizers thrown out of all the communities I'm part of. I'd expect the Lindens will handle any larger groups, but I do rather doubt that they'd be planning any RL violence on this platform. Or if they are, they're even dumber than usual. There's no real encryption or privacy.

[Burper Tilling]

The natural assumption would be that macho ultra right-wing people would be the last to come to SL. I've seen the suggestion that people like terrorists could use SL as a secret means of communication specially if they use notecards to communicate. LL might have access to everybody's notecards.  I don't know but the chances of any secret communications ever being found or understood would be infinitesimal.

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Burper Tilling

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

8 hours ago, Kenai Harbour said:

I certainly hope [...] that Second Life is not becoming a haven for [hate groups].

You overestimate these people. Twitter, Parler and Gab are so -called one-dimensional media. I.e. you go from top to bottom to take in the content- -just one direction. Second Life is a so-called three-dimensional medium. The speed by which information can be processed in a thee-dimensional environment is proportional to the brain radius to the power of three times the Goulash constant (v = G ∙ r³). It would take them centuries to agree upon any tangible plan for insurrection in here. The problems start with finding a suitable freenis first. And things only gets harder from there.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Jordyn McGregor]

26 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

I've been doing my part in getting fascist sympathizers thrown out of all the communities I'm part of. 

^^^This^^^ is what scares me.  The belief that people are no longer allowed to have their own opinions, their own thoughts and have to fall in line with one narrative, one ideology.  

Newsflash, people are ALLOWED to believe in what they believe in.  They are ALLOWED to have differing views from you.  They are ALLOWED to exist in the same world you exist in. 

Adults know this and can agree to disagree. 

As Judge Judy said in one of her cases, you do not have to like what someone says, but you are not allowed to hurt them or destroy their property just because you don't like it.

 

[Cinos Field]

3 minutes ago, Jordan Whitt said:

^^^This^^^ is what scares me.  The belief that people are no longer allowed to have their own opinions, their own thoughts and have to fall in line with one narrative, one ideology.  

Newsflash, people are ALLOWED to believe in what they believe in.  They are ALLOWED to have differing views from you.  They are ALLOWED to exist in the same world you exist in. 

Adults know this and can agree to disagree. 

As Judge Judy said in one of her cases, you do not have to like what someone says, but you are not allowed to hurt them or destroy their property just because you don't like it.

 

Their rights end where mine begin, as the saying goes. Fascism is always about taking away someone else's rights, and as such we can't really allow it.

[Jordyn McGregor]

7 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

Their rights end where mine begin, as the saying goes. Fascism is always about taking away someone else's rights, and as such we can't really allow it.

The only one taking away rights in this scenario was you proudly stating YOU are taking away THEIR rights to be in the same groups you are.

[Cinos Field]

Just now, Jordan Whitt said:

The only one taking away rights in this scenario was you proudly stating YOU are taking away THEIR rights to be in the same groups you are.

Being in any specific private groups is hardly a right, and certainly not on the same level as "being regarded as a human being" or "being allowed to live" which are typically what fascists seek to deprive selected groups of people of. And so they're removed from social groups to stop them from propagating those ideologies.

Sure, someone's allowed to have those opinions. But expressing them in public and trying to put them into practice? Well, there's the bit about "where my rights begin", again.

[Jordyn McGregor]

3 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

Being in any specific private groups is hardly a right, and certainly not on the same level as "being regarded as a human being" or "being allowed to live" which are typically what fascists seek to deprive selected groups of people of. And so they're removed from social groups to stop them from propagating those ideologies.

Sure, someone's allowed to have those opinions. But expressing them in public and trying to put them into practice? Well, there's the bit about "where my rights begin", again.

It is their right to belong to a group they choose to join.  They may have paid a fee to join, been a productive member of the group or just someone who sits quietly just wanting to follow notices.

I fail to see how someone belonging to a group in SL can deprive you of anything, beyond watching font you disagree with on a screen that is...cos after all, you can always hit the block button to ignore them, you can choose to ignore group chat and/or notices, and you can click the X and leave the group. 

I shall pot, kettle, black you here because here you are IN PUBLIC expressing YOUR opinion about how you PUT INTO PRACTICE the action of DEPRIVING them of THEIR RIGHT to belong to a group in a virtual world.  Where is their rights beginning?

[Alwin Alcott]

17 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

 Sure, someone's allowed to have those opinions. But expressing them in public and trying to put them into practice? Well, there's the bit about "where my rights begin", again.

In my opinion the violation is done by you. Limiting others to express themself in public is a stage already after the start of oppression. Scary.

[Ati Thei]

9 hours ago, Kenai Harbour said:

I certainly hope with all the other social media outlets that are banning hate groups, Trump, and their speech in light of the attack on our nation's capital that Second Life is not becoming a haven for them. What is Linden Lab doing to make sure they don't hide here?

What about that group of people who burned government buildings and private properties during the summer? Occupied police stations, occupied part of a city as "autonomous zone". I see their flags around SL quite often.

 

31 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

Being in any specific private groups is hardly a right, and certainly not on the same level as "being regarded as a human being" or "being allowed to live" which are typically what fascists seek to deprive selected groups of people of. And so they're removed from social groups to stop them from propagating those ideologies.

Sure, someone's allowed to have those opinions. But expressing them in public and trying to put them into practice? Well, there's the bit about "where my rights begin", again.

Always the fascists....but never a word about the communists who are doing the same... right now...with the help of Big Tech who take advantage of this moment to grab even more power. Having useful idiots sure is great. But they are going to be the next on the list. 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Ati Thei

[foneco Zuzu]

This topic just shows how much hate and prejudice still exists here as in RL.

And that the neo fascists voices can still echo here as much as on there.

There is no right to freedom of speech for those that their only goal is to impose their way of thinking over the rest by any means!

And no True Democracy can allow the existence of any movements that has as the ultimate goal to replace it by a dictatorship.

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by foneco Zuzu

[Talon Brown]

13 minutes ago, foneco Zuzu said:

This topic just shows how much hate and prejudice still exists here as in RL.

And that the neo fascists voices can still echo here as much as on there.

There is no right to freedom of speech for those that their only goal is to impose their way of thinking over the rest by any means!

And no True Democracy can allow the existence of any movements that has as the ultimate goal to replace it by a dictatorship.

 

The irony of your statements is off the *****ing chart.  Go read 1984 again.  This time remember it wasn't intended as an instruction manual.