Traffic manipulation, does LL care?

[bobsknief Orsini]

Especial on Mondays most high traffic places in search have huge empty platforms filled with avatars. Why these are there should be obvious. At least i cant think of any other good reason then to manipulate the traffic.

The reason for this title is, it takes me literally 5 minutes to find 10 sims like this. And all one has to do is look at the mini map, right click & Cam.
Wouldn't it be relatively easy for LL to check the IP addresses of these avatars and other other metric data?

This is not really a rand post, al do i think people should be aware and definitively avoid such places when its about thinks like add boards or other services that cost L$.

Maybe LL cares, maybe there understaffed, maybe there are other reasons. But i guess a question remains. Does it help when people report them?

[RunawayBunny]

Not all bots traffic oriented some of them just for decoration (but not marked as scripted agent and contribute traffic.) It is discussed before but short version LL have a policy but they don't apply it (no one banned because of bots). I guess you can report them but probably they don't take any action.

 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

I think a single Bitcoin mining farm causes more harm to the environment by wasting energy than the SL grid wastes energy through bot-generated visitor stats, More by at least a 100,000 times. I suspect that 'the bot problem' is just not very high on Linden Lab's priority list in terms of waste of energy, resources and financial loss through customer dissatisfaction. Just as a common cold, or dog poo on the sidewalk isn't high on the national security list.

Have you noticed too? Vehicles cross sims regions a lot smoother, lately.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Arduenn Schwartzman
Yes, yes, r e g i o n s

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

6 hours ago, bobsknief Orsini said:

Especial on Mondays most high traffic places in search have huge empty platforms filled with avatars. Why these are there should be obvious. At least i cant think of any other good reason then to manipulate the traffic.

The reason for this title is, it takes me literally 5 minutes to find 10 sims like this. And all one has to do is look at the mini map, right click & Cam.
Wouldn't it be relatively easy for LL to check the IP addresses of these avatars and other other metric data?

This is not really a rand post, al do i think people should be aware and definitively avoid such places when its about thinks like add boards or other services that cost L$.

Maybe LL cares, maybe there understaffed, maybe there are other reasons. But i guess a question remains. Does it help when people report them?

I think it is all about who pays the most dollars anymore, not so much traffic.

[Solar Legion]

Why should they care? Traffic has not been a truly relevant Search metric in quite some time, despite what some may want you to believe.

An individual user may (foolishly) pay attention to the traffic metric but the actual Search algorithm? Not so much.

Being brutally honest? No one should be caring about the Traffic metric.

Edited April 6, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Blaise Glendevon]

Or you could just tend to your own knitting?

[bigmoe Whitfield]

8 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

I think a single Bitcoin mining farm causes more harm to the environment by wasting energy than the SL grid wastes energy through bot-generated visitor stats, More by at least a 100,000 times. I suspect that 'the bot problem' is just not very high on Linden Lab's priority list in terms of waste of energy, resources and financial loss through customer dissatisfaction. Just as a common cold, or dog poo on the sidewalk isn't high on the national security list.

Have you noticed too? Vehicles cross sims regions a lot smoother, lately.

LL uses aws now, so it's very energy friendly,  before with the data center, that would of been sucking up power and no.. before anybody goes "well costs"  it's not coming down, oz linden explained that.  it costs more to host aws,  but with aws, the equipment is not 10 to 12 years old.

[Phil Deakins]

"Traffic manipulation, does LL care?"

Imo:-

No. Not even maybe not. It's a straight no. They didn't even care when traffic was the only ranking factor. It took ages of customers complaining for LL to do anything about its manipulation. And when they finally did something, they told us not to report infringements of the new rules.

Now, of course, there is a much better search, which, if it uses traffic at all, it is only in a small way. So, if I were LL, I would think along the lines of, we've given you a good search system. If you choose to use the old 'traffic' one, and you get traffic-manipulated rankings, it's your own choice, so don't complain. If I were LL, I certainly wouldn't bother about it.

That said, I do think that LL will smack the occasional hand if they see traffic bots in place, but, on the whole, they don't care one way or the other.

All of that is merely my opinion.

Edited April 7, 2021 by Phil Deakins

[Sid Nagy]

What about all the scripted dogs, cats, tigers, horses, lions, elephants, unicorns and what not that walk, crawl and use resources with no owner in sight?
A few heavily dressed up avatars can be resource slurping as well. 
It is all part of SL. Get used to it.

Edited April 6, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Solar Legion]

Oh they do actually go through Abuse Reports. The trouble there is that not all of them are properly/accurately filled out/filed nor is the action taken visible to the one who filed the Report in most circumstances.

[Phil Deakins]

19 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

[...] nor is the action taken visible to the one who filed the Report in most circumstances.

I came across something recently that I've never heard of before, and my conclusion about it may be entirely wrong. Someone I know used to use 5 avatars 24/7 to boost her traffic, but the daily traffic figures indicated that they weren't being counted at all. I explained about the scripted agent setting, so she checked, but none of them were registered as scripted agents. So there were 5 avatars on the parcel, none registered as a scripted agent, and none counting for traffic.

The only thing I could come up with is that LL has another flag for each avatar that we haven't been told about - don't count for traffic when set (or vice versa). If it exists, and we have been told about it, I missed it.

My thinking is that, if a Linden suspends unregistered avatars that are clearly used for traffic, the owner can use them again later. Also, if the Linden resisters them as scripted agents, the owner can change the setting back. But a flag to not count the avatar for traffic can't be changed by the owner. It would make sense to me.

The reason for the quote is because nothing would change from the reporter's point of view. The avatars would stay just where they are, and yet they would have been dealt with.

Edited April 7, 2021 by Phil Deakins

[ChinRey]

On 4/6/2021 at 3:13 AM, Solar Legion said:

Why should they care?

Because it affects their revenue in at least three different ways, one in a positive and two in a negative direction.

The positive (for LL) side of it is that those traffic bots show up on their statistics too, making SL seem more popular than it really is.

The downsides for them are that the bots do take up some computer and human resources but genrate little or no direct income and that they divert genuine users from the things they would have enjoyed in SL, making it seem less interesting than it really is.

I think the best strategy from their point of view is to have very strict rules about traffic bots but not enforce them very strictly and that's exactly what they do.

Edited April 13, 2021 by ChinRey

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

The positive (for LL) side of it is that those traffic bots show up on their statistics too, making SL seem more popular than it really is.

That's a detriment, IMO.

Skewed stats lead to equally skewed business decisions.