"It's really, really hard to build a world" - Philip on Civility

[Love Zhaoying]

I hope future moderation is better than Facebook's is today, I have RL FB friends who've been given temporary "bans" because someone didn't like their posts - which were probably political and pretty tame in the scheme of things, these friends being mostly ultra-liberal types. In other words, someone got "butthurt", reported their posts, and got them "banned". 

[cunomar]

The world over moral and legal obligation to civility is enforced by isolation (prison) . Avatars are ghosts so walls can't hold them , but block/derender ultimately results in the online isolation .

The worst offenders the nihilists generally have their own little cult of followers so remain toxic and unaffected while they seek out their next unwitting victim .

RL for better or for worse we have reputations that follow or haunt us , a virtual serial killer could wander with impunity forever just changing his/her appearance and name .

Anonymity brings with it great freedom - but there is always a flip side of every coin .

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, Anaiya Ahren said:

How do you imagine that's a practical solution for social media?  How many instances of publication do you think are taking place on Facebook per minute on average?  How many hours per day do you think Hobby fan101 has to devote to policing their hobby forum or the comment section of their blog? 

As I already noted, it starts with requiring real ID to register to post. Real ID doesn't mean you can't have a pseudonym on top of it. That isn't a complete cure-all, but it's a start. When social media platforms bear liability for posts they will find ways to get the job done, believe me. They're businesses, remember? There also has to be moral leadership, which few people find compelling as a plan. It's great that thousands of school children are now staging walk-outs; they also need to stop exchanging memes that humiliate others. Everybody says you can't ban 4chan. But of course its owners can moderate it. And anyone can cease to use it and read it and encourage others to stop as it is indeed connected.

[Pixieplumb Flanagan]

10 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 

We have school shooters because no one ever dares to admit that violent video games could be at issue, and much more to the point, that 4chan and 8chan web sites are implicated, obviously in at least 3 cases and related in others.

 

LOL, no. You have school shootings  because of a desperately stupid misinterpretation of your 2nd amendment  and insufficient politicians to challenge it.   The pro-gun lobby are rich,  and money matters more than lives.

[Prokofy Neva]

6 hours ago, animats said:

"It's really, really hard to build a world". But SL is close to having it right.

The key to the "civility" problem is keeping jerks local. As I've said before, jerks in SL have an annoyance radius of about 100 meters (the "shout" distance), and Second Life is about the size of Los Angeles. Right now, there's probably someone, somewhere in SL, being a jerk. And very few users are aware they even exist. That's a really good feature.

SL does not have a broadcast medium. There are groups, but nobody can add you to their group without you taking action. So spam is not much of a problem. Group owners can stop spam within their groups, and if the group owner spams, people leave the group.

This both keeps the jerk problem under control and makes advertising difficult. There's no way to blast ads at large numbers of people within SL. Most of the people pontificating about the metaverse in the mainstream media do not get this at all. They think of it as a broadcast ad-supported medium, like Facebook or Twitter, where "followers" and "influencers" have large audiences.

The features needed for advertising create the "civility" problem. Which is why ad-supported social media systems end up with an army of outsourced censors armed with ban hammers.

LL has it more right than Meta, certainly, but it wasn't always the case it came about as the results of nearly two decades of protests by citizens in SL, and that's important to remember!

It took four years to get regulations about ad farms, and all through that time, the cynical "Bush Guy" posted "Impeach Bush" signs right in the view everywhere on land he set to sale at an extortionate price so you would "buy back the view," confident that the leftist Lindens and their fanboyz wouldn't dare move against such signage. (PS Democrat here, not a Bush or GOP voter).

Same with the guy with the smiley face. Even antisemitic, racist, and anti-gay particle pictures, storming sims and making them crash, weren't enough to get the Lindens to ban a notorious university, until they did, actually 4-6 times again and again because of alts and enablers.

So you couldn't be more wrong about your claims -- but it must be due to sheer lack of real experience and the confidence of your own spurious ARs and that they don't replicate.

SL does have a broadcast system. It's called "griefing". Hundreds of thousands of prims with horrific pictures, swear words, noises, etc. broadcast to you and your neighbours on your sims. No-show neighbours leave on auto-return -- the Lindens could fix this the way the state of Maine does, that if you don't care for your land and occupy it for X number of months -- years even --  the state and others can claim it (and of course remove nuisances under local ordnances) -- in SL, untended land should revert to autoreturn, full stop. That would help a lot. 

Recently I, my tenants, and neighbours and I repeatedly filed ARs -- starting in October 2021 !!! -- to get rid of piles of watermelon coloured grief prims on physics piled all over sims, remaining on a no-show neighbour's lots among others. We can get rid of our own because we show up -- but we can't even try to push the prims off the no-show neighbours land on no-access or group-only. That's SEVEN MONTHS of repeated, exasperated ARs, watching all the time as similar activities produced instant Mole action in Bellisseria. I was finally able to get these removed (after land near it not always renting unless someone sat with de-render for some time). That's because of the following:

o I raised it at the MonCierge meeting, and not for the first time

o Finally a Governance Linden (not the same as Governor Linden) present at the meeting took pity on me and came out to the grief site.

o She instantly removed the multi-coloured large prims (degrading sim performance and the view) and noted the following:

 - yes, file reports weekly if you need to, and by multiple people -- sure, but after a few months, you get tired. Even so, I had filed many times including last month.

- while this is not recommended and doesn't work often, she said to file a ticket to Support, which will merely forward it to Governance and won't act, but it's something. But no, that seldom works -- my solution is to get the Support Lindens to give up their refusal to handle what they consider "abuse" tickets which they insist the dozen Lindens on that task (not enough even for 30,000 concurrency). Once they accept tickets for grief prims or security orbs reaching Linden land or water or encroachment you can't return or on Linden land as a mere garbage problem, a mere problem like a stray Linden tree on your land or waving into your land that you can't remove -- we will have significant progress. They acknowledge this but won't change.

- make sure to put the miscreant's name - yeah, that's not hard to do, although with huge particle etc. showers you can't always find the author easily (turn off particles in "preferences/graphics" -- put the slider to 0 -- and they are more easily found. Sometimes they are already gone from the people list and you can't pull up a name -- then use the name "Governor Linden" (as we were told many years ago

- Be as detailed as  possible, file more than one AR to explain if you must and put the exact location -- which is sometimes hard to do on no-access neighbour's land. Did any Linden come out to the site I had to put in the AR on my own land and conclude that it's my problem, I can return prims? Or not look up and see the nearby grief prims?

OK, sure. I do those things. Sometimes I post an urgent message in my groups to come and have an AR party.

As for groups, again, you simply have no experience. A common method of griefing to which I have been subjected numerous times is that someone makes an alt account with the name of my business, although no one working for my business has an avatar with the company name (in part for that reason and the extortion problem). Sometimes they even call themselves bots. They then join a group that is open to join -- and why shouldn't groups be open to join? Don't let the terrorists win. Or they may even take a low-cost rental and join a large rentals group via bot invitation or real-time personal invitation. Then they spam the group with a message that sounds like they are a Trump supporter gone wild, with racist and antisemitic insanity, making it sounds like my low-cost rentals are the place to go if you have those beliefs.

Ninety percent of the people getting that messages with an obvious day-old spam from an obvious griefer account blame ME -- that's why the technique is done. They shower ME with hate messages, bans, and harassment, including in my groups. That's why it's used as a technique, people are effective. People who really ought to know better imagine that a rentals agent in business for 18 years is going to join other groups and promote racism, hatred and havoc as a business tool? Really? When it is explained to them that they need to AR not me, but those "bots" (who aren't bots), and use their heads and look at the profiles, only another 10% go, oh, sorry, I see. The rest continue to harass and demean me for years on end. 

Recently I went to a fancy ball at an elite sim and found the partner of a prominent personage showed "blocked" to me. How could this possibly be? Sometimes you block things or people by accident. But no, I checked past chat and found this person had refused to believe me when I explained that these hate incidents in groups were not at all connected to me but by griefers, because in her view, I should still be held responsible or I "had it coming".

So it's the equivalent of a short skirt or naming names in #MeToo. 

I strongly believe you should not be driven to creating a closed society, and a key way to fight crime and terrorism -- griefing -- is by a free media and free news and commentary. I don't think silence cures this and the notion of "not feeding the trolls" doesn't work anyway. And that's why I'm griefed. I should have more company with this view, and there will be less griefing.

Of course they invade my open groups and I get refunds and lose customers. I'm not going to be closing them because most tenants like to invite friends over and have them join the group to rez prims to show things or do things in their rentals. And why not?!

Again, I think it's important to remember that most of the griefing I have experienced in SL is because I insist on publicizing griefers and I insist on keeping the land open and not being driven off by the small percent who do this. Most people are decent and don't grief. Most people don't even overprim and most people pay their rent. There is still decency but it needs support and leadership. I have had to put my groups to $1 membership which at least deters some day-olds who can't manage to get Lindens, yet some do. I am not going to close groups, for the convenience of the customers, because if you are forced to do so, you cannot have a civil society and then you shouldn't waste time in SL or any virtual world, like you shouldn't waste time on, oh, Redditt. I believe strongly that if you *make a rental payment* and join a group on open or for a very low cost, you should be able immediately to rez a prim That's the bedrock of civil virtual society and I stand by it.

It doesn't take broadcast media in the traditional sense to create mass harassment. There was a time when one Linden favourite created a ban system where various merchants and "thought leaders" could share ban lists, so that all kinds of spurious bans proliferated. I'm glad the person who invented this based on experience running a newbie center is out of business on all fronts because I think it's a pernicious concept. Bans should be made by conscious human beings reviewing a set of open criteria. 

So there was avid sharing and that mean that anyone who didn't like me or my blog could put me on their ban list, although I have never griefed or used the tactics of griefers like crashing sims, I don't even know how to do that.

Then I would find I was banned from entire rental sims or stores. One monopolist thought it was cute to my name as a "sample griefer" in the ban list of all his teleporter products, to "show how it is done". This merchant had ample ability to broadcast all over SL into virtually every store and event. That meant that even stores I had patronized for years buying tens of thousands of Linden dollars' worth of products, or certain event sims, would have me banned from floors and sections of their stores or sims because they used that popular system. I would have to call and have them take it out, and most would be shocked but it didn't stop them from buying from that merchant.

The capacities for broadcasting in SL are endless because the criminal and the powerful easily invent them. T-shirts and rings that everyone buys or gets for free because they think they are edgy and cool. Hand puppets and grisly scenes on all perms with my RL effigy put into all kinds of freebie dumpsters. Giant prims with my RL picture even on infohubs that are Linden Land, because you can always find land on zero autoreturn nearby. 

The merciless god Autoreturn is supposed to cure all unwanted prims and griefing prims, yet some rogue viewers can override these, and the bug that returns not their prims or group-set prims last, but first, kicks in now and then.

Many things have been created over the centuries to restrain the evil of human  nature, whether courts of law, the media, schools, religious institutions, or political parties. Much of these we do not have and cannot have in SL or other less free virtual worlds. 

Eventually, as Edward Castronova predicted 15 years ago, although not from my perspective, virtuality will be so ubiquitous that real-life laws and constraints will be found to contain the perniciousness of online life.

[Mollymews]

55 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I hope future moderation is better than Facebook's is today, I have RL FB friends who've been given temporary "bans" because someone didn't like their posts - which were probably political and pretty tame in the scheme of things, these friends being mostly ultra-liberal types. In other words, someone got "butthurt", reported their posts, and got them "banned". 

when a post  is run thru a moderation algorithm before it is posted then the users are no longer cast in the role of police by the hosting owner/corporation. The policing is in the domain of the host

corporations do respond when they are required to police their own premises

[Prokofy Neva]

2 minutes ago, Pixieplumb Flanagan said:

LOL, no. You have school shootings  because of a desperately stupid misinterpretation of your 2nd amendment  and insufficient politicians to challenge it.   The pro-gun lobby are rich,  and money matters more than lives.

So I'll note again that the people who have griefed me for two decades in SL come from the same 4chan websites now frequented by certain school shooters, and this isn't an accident.

Yes, owner of the liberal site "The Hill," certainly anti-gun and a leftist Democrat should not have bankrolled Christopher Poole, owner of 4chan. I protested this loudly and still do. Yes, money and power. 

As  a registered Democrat I vote for any and all gun control and more is needed, raising the age, making universal background checks, etc. It's not enough by itself or we wouldn't have dozens of shooting deaths every weekend in NYC.

[Prokofy Neva]

10 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Why would you like neoliberalism?

"Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers".

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

So as I noted before, I refuse to be drawn into cultic language and ideologically weighted language, which is what ideologues always hope you to do. Why, if you can just accept that a thing is so because you say it's so, you win. I don't believe in the term "Neoliberal" -- a marker for certain belief systems always. I find that  all the ideologies associated with them are invalid, and the term is applied "neoliberally" to all kinds of phenomenon as a curse word, so that by a mere label, an individual or policy or government can be anaethematized and end any nuanced discussion. I refuse.

It's not a matter of "hate or not hate". It's a matter of *not accepting a limited and crippling ideology* that imagines structuralism where it does not exist and vast evil forces that in fact begin at home with the use of ideological memes. I don't share your religion. Full stop.

So as noted, I don't think the forums, with their restrictions, are the place for these debates. So I encourage people to come to my weekly discussion groups on SL, often on the virtual economy and society. Oh, except I canceled those years ago due to relentless griefing, especially from "safe places" on nearby Linden land. Perhaps I'll start them again. Perhaps not.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Love Zhaoying]

19 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So as I noted before, I refuse to be drawn into cultic language and ideologically weighted language, which is what ideologues always hope you to do. Why, if you can just accept that a thing is so because you say it's so, you win. I don't believe in the term "Neoliberal" -- a marker for certain belief systems always. I find that  all the ideologies associated with them are invalid, and the term is applied "neoliberally" to all kinds of phenomenon as a curse word, so that by a mere label, an individual or policy or government can be anaethematized and end any nuanced discussion. I refuse.

It's not a matter of "hate or not hate". It's a matter of *not accepting a limited and crippling ideology* that imagines structuralism where it does not exist and vast evil forces that in fact begin at home with the use of ideological memes. I don't share your religion. Full stop.

So as noted, I don't think the forums, with their restrictions, are the place for these debates. So I encourage people to come to my weekly discussion groups on SL, often on the virtual economy and society. Oh, except I canceled those years ago due to relentless griefing, especially from "safe places" on nearby Linden land. Perhaps I'll start them again. Perhaps not.

I'm gaining a lot of new-found respect for you with this thread! 

[Prokofy Neva]

10 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

That would effectively kill the forums. Do you have any idea what it would be like here if anyone with a gripe against a merchant, customer, renter, etc., could simply air their grievances here? And part of the problem is that, again, there would be no mechanisms to prevent malicious attacks on people. The forums would become like Virtual Secrets without the stupid memes.

No, what kills the forums is this:

*Some* people can come on and air a grievance against a merchant -- or let's say a belief about a certain Linden policy that they imagine or in fact know they can get to benefit themselves.

THEIR posts remain up for hours -- days -- months. Everyone else's are removed; not theirs.

Those trying to object and bring counter-factuals about the prejudices against some landlord or the belief that the Lindens will bend a policy their way are the ones then told that they can't air personal grievances on the forums. This happens over, and over and over again and surely you see it.

So the answer is to allow WHAT IS ALREADY ALLOWED but make it possible for EVERYONE, even in a special section for that purpose.

And to allow those against whom crimes are made to bring other information, and for their supporters to do the same. This is known as *adversarial defense* which is the hallmark of the US justice system and the bedrock for public interest law, but it's a concept weakly disseminated in say, Russia but even European countries.

ADVERSARIAL defense means yes, topics grow "hot" and voices are raised. 

The Lindens feel like they can't police the truth of the claims and can't risk libel lawsuits involving them, so they remove entire threads. Wrong.

In real life, you bring a complain, it is heard, the media covers it, and why, you might get a jury decision saying that both parties in fact are abusers and defamers, imagine that!

The Lindens don't have the bandwidth and staff to find facts but residents do, and should be allowed to do so. In many instances, once the counterfactuals are brought forward revealing the original poster's financial or reputational interests that enabled them to "take it to the forums," such allegations wither away. Others are more complex, such as happen nightly in my rentals, but they boil down to "I wuz robbed," and  can be solved with diligent invocation of the facts.

It's not true AT ALL that this becomes "Virtual Secrets" because of anonymous and malicious attacks. Because it makes it possible to ANSWER them with facts or at least another version of the story so that the public can see the complexities, e.g. on certain hated landlord stories, or even on claims of copyright theft which don't hold up to scrutiny. Publicity is the best weapon.

The Lindens can make the section open only to premium accounts that give a real name, a valid form of payment or ID with presumably a real ID. They may remain anonymous, but that still ensures more responsibility. The reason such resident sites don't work is because they instantly ban anyone with a counter version of the claims made. 

This would bring the forums at least to the level of, say, the Taliban's community shariah courts. I'm not kidding. The reason the Taliban succeeds isn't just through force, but because people need just force applied to the many cases of justice in their village; they need a judge to rule. It may be harsh and the principles unfair, but at least there is some kind of public hearing.

Then you evolve from there with other principles like "the right to face your accusers," "the right to know the offense against you," "the right to defense," etc.  And before you know it, you have a functioning civil society at least as far as post-Magna Carta England. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Anaiya Ahren]

Quote

As I already noted, it starts with requiring real ID to register to post.

That's a big fat "nope" for me.  I'm deeply disturbed with how much information is being sucked up and traded on through peoples' internet use.  They don't need my ID or anyone's.  Internet information trackers and traders already know far too much. 

Public "anonymity" isn't actually very helpful if I've given my ID to the very companies whose monetization models rely on selling information about their users to whoever will pay.

[Kathlen Onyx]

44 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So I'll note again that the people who have griefed me for two decades in SL come from the same 4chan websites now frequented by certain school shooters, and this isn't an accident.

Yes, owner of the liberal site "The Hill," certainly anti-gun and a leftist Democrat should not have bankrolled Christopher Poole, owner of 4chan. I protested this loudly and still do. Yes, money and power. 

As  a registered Democrat I vote for any and all gun control and more is needed, raising the age, making universal background checks, etc. It's not enough by itself or we wouldn't have dozens of shooting deaths every weekend in NYC.

If RL ID is required how long do you think it would take these "griefers" to figure out your RL information, including your address where they can come and harrass (or worse) you IN PERSON.  

School shootings happen because there are people in our world that have severe mental health issues or are just plain evil.  They will find the means to carry out whatever evil they choose and will find the necessary weapons to do so.  

As a registered Republican I will vote for any and all laws that protect the 2nd Amendment.  

[Prokofy Neva]

Just now, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

If RL ID is required how long do you think it would take these "griefers" to figure out your RL information, including your address where they can come and harrass (or worse) you IN PERSON.  

School shootings happen because there are people in our world that have severe mental health issues or are just plain evil.  They will find the means to carry out whatever evil they choose and will find the necessary weapons to do so.  

As a registered Republican I will vote for any and all laws that protect the 2nd Amendment.  

I didn't address that point as I knew someone would come along with this whataboutism.

And the answer is: what kind of world is SL when the Lindens cannot secure their servers from griefers who hack into their data bases and steal personal data?

In fact, that hasn't happened in SL on any kind of destructive scale. Either they salted their hashes or whatever, or the griefers weren't that smart. 

Griefers ALREADY harass you in person. Why do I get phone calls in the middle of the night playing the Soviet anthem? This isn't the GRU. Why does my 90-year-old mother-in-law get pizzas delivered? 

I don't find it effective to debate school shootings on the unfree SL forums, but I will note again that regardless of laws and policies and mental health, the people who have griefed me in SL for years come from 4chan and that is the site (and *not* merely 8chan) associated with school shootings. It's a culture; it can be defeated in a variety of ways.

[Love Zhaoying]

36 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

ADVERSARIAL defense means yes, topics grow "hot" and voices are raised. 

The Lindens feel like they can't police the truth of the claims and can't risk libel lawsuits involving them, so they remove entire threads. Wrong.

In real life, you bring a complain, it is heard, the media covers it, and why, you might get a jury decision saying that both parties in fact are abusers and defamers, imagine that!

This reminds me of a RL trend:  people go to local meetings (City Council, etc.) and shout, literally curse, make a fuss until they are removed.  I shall refer to those as "griefers". 

One difference is - those meetings, being RL, are "single-threaded".  No business can get done - no one else can get "heard" until the "griefers" are dealt with.

I guess that can't happen here. Unless literal SPAM (ads and random garbage) takes over every thread, for instance.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

moderation queue. A post has to be moderated before it is published. Not withdrawn/deleted/edited/removed by the moderator after it has been published

Right .. So, are LL going to hire a team of legally qualified moderators to inspect every single post before publishing it, or are they just going to close the forum.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So I'll note again that the people who have griefed me for two decades in SL come from the same 4chan websites now frequented by certain school shooters, and this isn't an accident.

School shootings. Griefing Prok in SL. 4Chan.

The trifecta of evil that will surely bring down the free internet.

[Love Zhaoying]

8 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

moderation queue. A post has to be moderated before it is published. Not withdrawn/deleted/edited/removed by the moderator after it has been published

Right .. So, are LL going to hire a team of legally qualified moderators to inspect every single post before publishing it, or are they just going to close the forum.

How about "option C", "D", "E"..? 🙂

Option C - increase use of better and better AI

Option D - "Super-Forumites" become first-line moderators ("helpers") for sub-forums

Option E - use your imagination! 

If our current moderation "isn't working", and the internet (let alone SL) is getting pretty old, there are other options.

Sometimes I am surprised that certain FaceBook groups have mods - who review posts before allowing, then I wait and wait for my pretty picture of food to get approved.  So, yeah.

[Mollymews]

Just now, Coffee Pancake said:

Right .. So, are LL going to hire a team of legally qualified moderators to inspect every single post before publishing it, or are they just going to close the forum.

 

this is a business decision all corporations have to decide for themselves

the decision isn't only tho: pre-moderate or close. There is a 3rd path. Which is don't publish the contents of this forum publicly. Have to login to read the posts. A requirement to login makes it a private space and not a public space

just the other day the US Supreme Court ruled on the Texas non-censorship law. The Court said that the State can't prevent a corporation from censoring their own private space. That any attempt to regulate free speech in a private space is unconstitutional, abridging the 1st Amendment rights of private space/property owners 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

School shootings. Griefing Prok in SL. 4Chan.

The trifecta of evil that will surely bring down the free internet.

Definitely, grouping unlike things has a trivializing effect.  Like in the Sesame Street bit, "One of these things is not like the others, One of these things doesn't belong.."

But the general topic is interesting, and has a direct or indirect impact on most of us who use the innerwebs.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

As a registered Republican I will vote for any and all laws that protect the 2nd Amendment.  

I have a new-found respect for you, because you admitted this.  "Putting it all out there" isn't something everyone can do.

(So, out of this new-found respect, I won't judge you for it.)

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

If RL ID is required how long do you think it would take these "griefers" to figure out your RL information, including your address where they can come and harrass (or worse) you IN PERSON.  

School shootings happen because there are people in our world that have severe mental health issues or are just plain evil.  They will find the means to carry out whatever evil they choose and will find the necessary weapons to do so.  

As a registered Republican I will vote for any and all laws that protect the 2nd Amendment.  

 

[Coffee Pancake]

13 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

this is a business decision all corporations have to decide for themselves

the decision isn't only tho: pre-moderate or close. There is a 3rd path. Which is don't publish the contents of this forum publicly. Have to login to read the posts. A requirement to login makes it a private space and not a public space

just the other day the US Supreme Court ruled on the Texas non-censorship law. The Court said that the State can't prevent a corporation from censoring their own private space. That any attempt to regulate free speech in a private space is unconstitutional, abridging the 1st Amendment rights of private space/property owners 

A login requirement is not a shield from litigation, that's what 230 provides.

230 is the linchpin that all social media is built upon, remove that and it all collapses, this is why it's been made a target. The point of going after 230 is to destroy the town square.

User generated content falls at the very first hurdle because there will never be enough lawyers to sign off on it all. This wipes out "big tech" as intended, but it also wipes out the small tech too. Everything from twitter, facebook and google, all the way down to yelp and amazon reviews. SL would not be immune.

[Quartz Mole]

Gun control and school shootings are, I think, well off-topic for this thread.

Can we please try to stick to the topic of virtual worlds and social media?   

[Love Zhaoying]

Sorry @Quartz Mole, posted before I saw your post.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Codex Alpha]

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There is absolutely no reason not to require real identity on any forums or virtual world. You can always layer a pseudonym over this RL name which makes you responsible for what you post. A car on the highway has a license and is identifiable when it violates traffic rules, and the Internet of people should be no different. The question is first to identify the limits of speech and the second is to invest in moderation. But most important is to set the tone and show leadership. The Lindens or any platform owner can editorialize. They can comment on the issues of the day and opine on what is right and wrong. They already do this on some issues, but not all. 

As a person who expresses many views and opinions for many years participating on the internet, and experiencing the most mundane of disagreements to the largest - to the point that in 2022 I know have to compartmentalize and protect myself from others who stalk me across internet platforms to dislike, thumbs-down, 1 star rate and purposefully destroy my reputation and in some cases where they had personal details - dox me to unsavory types - it is most certainly important to protect one's real identity.

Of course this is not always the case, as some places it is fine - but with the growth of ease on finding people through search now with many methods, and connected databases (and even motivated employees of companies with access - yes it's happened who have relationships with users) can be an Achille's Heel should you 'offend' someone because you said in chat "Warehouse jobs should be automated because they are soulless, mind-numbing jobs. Human beings aren't meant to do boring repetitive tasks like stacking boxes - so robotics is the answer and we could get retrained into something more meaningful" and now they hate your guts because you allegedly "Insulted my living/job".

Yes. Something that little can quickly snowball, and especially in 2022 - to quickly make you a target and the Devil after one incident through the 'telephone' psychology sounds worse and worse each time it's told until its "oh he said warehouse workers are numb-brains and that they should be replaced by robots - he's insulting the job I have been doing for 10 years" - then turns into a campaign to ostracize you, or the hatred they now feel for you over one incident grows into "let's ostracize this guy", or other malicious things.

I've had to remove all my friends of friends list because otherwise they would be caught up in all of this themselves, and have been in the past. "Yep, sorry about that. They probably banned you cuz you were on my friends list, for a social or political view I expressed inworld or on a forum."

If these same people had access to my personal details, place of work, etc - and as we have seen from RL incidences about how hard and how far some groups will go to censor, silence, ban, and ultimately the big prize - destroy their reputation and livelihood - yeah there is good reason.

If people were civil then we wouldn't need to.

Also consider too that even if we use a nickname for ourselves, especially us current and former hardcore gamers :D, that our nick becomes our identity - and it becomes very personal - and even under that nick we can gain or lose reputation - and can feel the same as if our real life persona is being attacked.

Civility is first taught by Mom and Dad, and other adults we grow up with. Then if that's not enough, or there was a shortage of parenting and teaching that that person still is not civil and respectful of others - then we have the guns of the State to enforce their civility.

Personally, I like to debate and discuss the IDEAS a person may present - as it wouldn't matter what their name is or whether they are private or public in their speech - and thats we should all stick to - Civil discussion. As soon as someone goes beyond that and want to destroy someone else in any way - then the need for anonymity and compartmentalization is made clear.

Also, if you apply a Social Credit type status to people (Bansar (typo but lol is that funny gonna leave it in :D)  loves to do this - everything you say or do is on record to forever  judge you with - right or wrong) - you effectively chill conversations and free expression - because others see what can happen to others that fall afoul of a ruling party/government/majority's preferences at the time - they don't want to be treated like that either. Wield a banhammer big enough and terrible enough and without mercy or arbitration - and apply it unevenly and erratically and hitting innocent people in the process - very much creates a chilling and fearful attitude. "I don't want to say something that will get me in trouble or banned. I don't want to be  seen agreeing with or associating with that person, etc","I don't want to forfeit all my creations, world and hard work over this". This is the kind of existence Facebook and other 'metaverse' companies want to run - the promise of fun and opportunity - with the reality of lording over you, monitoring your behaviour and speech, and holding your purchases, worlds, creations and investments hostage to control you.

I would also argue that if the goal is to be civil, there is a strange phenomena that was observed on YouTube and the comment sections:

When there was a move to promote the use of real names - there was a time where it was civil - until people became even so emboldened in their positions - and with the rise of virtue signaling type of behavour - they PROUDLY stated their full names. Of course they only do that when they're in the majority and relatively safe from being mobbed, censored and banned by others - and they forget that should the tide shift that they would then be subject to the same measures against them.

Even if their names were 'exposed', they didn't need or care for 'civility' nor did it shame them into 'good behaviour'. All most people need is to be in the majority, then they cannot be shamed or otherwise motivated to be 'civil' anyway.

But yeah, arguing with others that "The rights you deny others can and will be denied you" is completely fruitless, because as humans I guess most of us simply do not care until we are personally affected.

Of course there will always be an element of people who will use anonymity to do malice in the world - but taking away the anonymity from legitimate, law-abiding, productive people will only allow the malicious more weapons against them.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Codex Alpha