Could Linden Lab even clean up Second Life if they wanted to?

[Persephone Emerald]

There is the technical side of course and not wanting to damage existing content. Then there's the often messy laissze faire social side.

LL had to try to stop depictions of sex with child avatars for legal reasons, but even with that being against the TOS, it still has to be reported and proven to be acted upon.

If LL wanted to clean up SL's image by making other depictions against the TOS, would they be able to enforce that? I don't think they let all that go on because they really don't care or because they want the money of those who engage in those particular kinks or questionable roleplay. I think they let it go because trying to stop it would be a task that even Hercules wouldn't be able to tackle,

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Sorciaa]

they could but i think it would cost them more then they may gain. I think they would have to do maybe a more restricted TOS then go after  the violators and maybe even prema banning accounts. enough of that happens and people wont wish to risk their accounts for whatever they were doing that is not in violation.

[PheebyKatz]

In my experience I haven't seen them let that much go... not that I venture far from my little frog ponds of safety anymore.

The fact that longstanding members of creative communities can be assassinated by someone taking dirty pics with them while they're AFK, and their accounts become irretrievable as a result, tells me that there's a hair-trigger on the banhammer, and when it comes to really important legal issues that could ruin our whole community, they do whatever it takes to fix things as quickly as possible, even if they might err on the side of caution and cost an individual their SL.

I met a user once who was 11 years old IRL, and I could tell they weren't pretending, and yes, I reported them. I felt bad for them, but I also knew I was doing the right thing, because all they wanted to know was how to get a boyfriend, and I know how SL can be. In less than 5 minutes their account ceased to exist.

I've never known anyone to get banned for things like heated, nasty, interpersonal disputes or griefing in whatever form it might manifest, but then most people just use the Mute button anyway, once they realize it's been there all along.

I'm sure there are some cesspoolish places in SL, I mean, I've seensome pretty creepy ones before, but I never actually see any of what everyone's supposedly getting away with all the time that makes SL such a nightmare the way it's described to me so often.

People creep on me sometimes, yeah, and I mention it to sim staff, and those people disappear. If I go somewhere else and someone creeps on me, I block them and usually just leave in disgust. But I've never gone exploring and stumbled on some child-trafficking RP community or hate group RP, or sims designed to encourage everyone to violate the TOS.

I'm sure people do skeezy things in IMs, but at least nobody has to see it. We just have to see people standing around like statues instead of interacting like healthy, normal pixel people, and contributing to local chat or something.

[Seicher Rae]

Determined people are always going to find ways to circumvent any situational rules.

And there has been a pretty good whining response (that's not being terribly negatively judgemental, more of a colorful observation) regarding rule changes in the Forum, which might have some "cleaning things up" motivations. 

I think having reasonable guidelines, rules, and corrective measures in place is, well... reasonable.  If the rules become so restrictive as to get everyone in one grand sweep, well, a lot of other things are going to get swept away too. No, I'm not advocating for complete anarchy (which was pretty much SL's original plan). I'm just more of a pragmatist.

Also, who is going to draw the line in the sand between "ok" adult behavior and "unclean!"? Hm. I can see it now, no premarital pose balls (ok ok furniture), and only a man avatar can marry a woman avatar, and they have to be married to use the adult furniture. Ahhhh, paradise....

Edited August 1, 2022 by Seicher Rae
verbal agreement is harrrrrrd

[PheebyKatz]

As far as I can tell, LL isn't in it to control people's lives or dictate morals or anything like that. I know that's a big point brought up when things like rules and such are discussed, but really, it's pretty obvious that they only do what they have to do to keep the place around for all of us. Otherwise, they really would have rules in place like no child avis, etc., because that'd be the quickest way of dealing with the entire issue of creepy people playing with kid avis.

The fact that I can live in SL the way I choose and actually enjoy myself and be who I want to be is proof enough to me that they don't have a hate-on for anyone or want all of us to be 3-meter-tall barbie dolls made of ticky-tacky. SL is in a lot of ways a real triumph in what they set out to do; I know so many people in here whose lives would be boring as hell, and they'd just be off playing WoW or something similar if it wasn't for SL actually giving them something they want, and doing it well enough to keep this many people stuck on it.

I'm just saying I've never seen them actually move on anything unless it was actually potentially harmful, either to the company, the userbase at large, their public image (iunno why so many people think it's wrong somehow to care about their public image as a company), or even what we have to see on the forums, for what it's worth. This thread is still open, for example, and its whole purpose is, as far as I can tell, to get people talking smack about how awful all of this is, so they're obviously not as bad as people like to make them out to be.

My only negative user experiences have generally been of the sort that either didn't really fall into a category that company representatives should have to be bothered with, or were already being dealt with (such as griefer attacks on sims with grey goo and so forth). It's easy to funnel frustrations at faceless authority, plus people get to complain about all sorts of rules (which don't really affect anyone who isn't trying to be a jerk, usually), but really, I see we're all still here, and still using the forums, and still spending more time inworld than is probably healthy for us, so LL must be doing something right.

[Persephone Emerald]

4 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

As far as I can tell, LL isn't in it to control people's lives or dictate morals or anything like that. I know that's a big point brought up when things like rules and such are discussed, but really, it's pretty obvious that they only do what they have to do to keep the place around for all of us. Otherwise, they really would have rules in place like no child avis, etc., because that'd be the quickest way of dealing with the entire issue of creepy people playing with kid avis.

The fact that I can live in SL the way I choose and actually enjoy myself and be who I want to be is proof enough to me that they don't have a hate-on for anyone or want all of us to be 3-meter-tall barbie dolls made of ticky-tacky. SL is in a lot of ways a real triumph in what they set out to do; I know so many people in here whose lives would be boring as hell, and they'd just be off playing WoW or something similar if it wasn't for SL actually giving them something they want, and doing it well enough to keep this many people stuck on it.

I'm just saying I've never seen them actually move on anything unless it was actually potentially harmful, either to the company, the userbase at large, their public image (iunno why so many people think it's wrong somehow to care about their public image as a company), or even what we have to see on the forums, for what it's worth. This thread is still open, for example, and its whole purpose is, as far as I can tell, to get people talking smack about how awful all of this is, so they're obviously not as bad as people like to make them out to be.

My only negative user experiences have generally been of the sort that either didn't really fall into a category that company representatives should have to be bothered with, or were already being dealt with (such as griefer attacks on sims with grey goo and so forth). It's easy to funnel frustrations at faceless authority, plus people get to complain about all sorts of rules (which don't really affect anyone who isn't trying to be a jerk, usually), but really, I see we're all still here, and still using the forums, and still spending more time inworld than is probably healthy for us, so LL must be doing something right.

My purpose in posting this thread is not to get people to talk smack about SL.

There are some behaviors along the line of sex with child avatars that I wish LL could ban, but I don't think they'd be able to enforce it. This is behavior that is illegal in many places, and not in the same way that some consenting adult behaviors are illegal in some places. I think this behavior does hurt their image.

I think specifying which behaviors we might like to see banned is likely more tritylating and funny for some people than helpful, so I just wanted to put the idea out here that maybe LL doesn't do much about it because they really can't do much about it.

 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

The grid to too big for the Lab to police everything. If they were to ramp up resources for that, the Premie subscription would be many times more to afford the extra staff.

But at least we have the AR system to alert the Lab so they can take care of the bad actors.

[PheebyKatz]

Sorry, I forgot who made the thread, I've been here for hours now.

I thought it was one of those people who got disappeared.

Not joking, actual honest mistake.

As for maybe LL not being able to do much about some stuff, I agree, because even dealing with people arguing over land disputes is a lot to deal with, let alone people being gross in public, or tapdancing around legal boundaries or doing things that would get them arrested in Germany. But I do feel that they at least try to, and the worst of it is usually dealt with at least as well as I could do it if I had a team of people trying to keep it all nice, and most likely far better, and thankfully I don't see anything really bad more than once in a blue moon, and then it gets nuked pretty quickly.

One thing I'd consider worth mentioning also is that even if they're probably inundated with reports on a regular basis, and the slush heap of reports clogs things and slows response time in dealing with things of actual relevance, people should still always report something if it looks like it's of a "woah omg that's wrong" nature. If enough people make the same point that something could make their SL illegal, then they'll probably deal with it eventually.

I don't think I've heard of any sexual behaviors with minors that were even suspected that didn't result in people losing their accounts forever, so I'm probably living in a different kind of SL than some people, Iunno... All this time I've been hearing about how awful it is that this or that kid lost their account because someone rezzed something next to them and took a snapshot or whatever just to get them banned.

Edited August 2, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[Coffee Pancake]

Something something .. AI model .. something something .. monitoring messages .. something something ..

[Arielle Popstar]

No doubt S/L could do more by making uploads more restrictive and requiring those who do, to be more responsible for what is uploaded at the expense of their accounts or financial penalties. That is what they they did and do in Imvu which resulted in a large black market and a segment of the community who under the covers are into more kinkiness then is readily seen in s/l.  

On the flip side you have a platform like Opensimulator where again you have a platform where one can create and upload anything and engage in any sort of sexual lifestyle one wishes on one's own region or grid without fear of being AR'ed or reported and yet the first complaint from S/L people trying out Opensimulator is that there isn't enough kink going on there. 

It seems from the 3 examples that the more restrictive one makes it's platform/world, the more there will be those who try to get around it and do it regardless.

[Janet Voxel]

I think they do a good job of walking the line. Pedophilia is against TOS and rightfully so. Residents do a pretty good job of policing it, but even that has its limits. Kind of hard to keep tabs on what Bobby Joeneckbeard and Suzy Skirtjeans are getting up to on a private sim without it turning into something else, no?

Its also hard to stop a wave of 4 Chan trolls from coming over and doing what they do. But again residents do a pretty good job of policing and reporting.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

the first complaint from S/L people trying out Opensimulator is that there isn't enough kink going on there. 

This is not my first complaint about Opensimulator. 😏

[PheebyKatz]

I met a mom and daughter who had migrated from Opensim because the mother had hooked up with a guy from SL, and decided to move to SL to be with him. Both she and her preteen daughter were flabbergasted at how little "potentially offensive and/or illegal" activity they had witnessed in SL in comparison. Apparently, they considered SL to be far cleaner overall, at least compared to where they had been used to hanging out in there.

I've still not even gone and looked at Opensimulator, technerd curiosty notwithstanding, because, well, I'm vain. I wouldn't want to have to start over trying to make the most adorable and fun person in the world all over again in some other world, from scratch, with no money. Besides, I spend all day in SL, I wouldn't have the time for it.

What's the old saying? The grass is always greener over the septic tank?

Edited August 2, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[Codex Alpha]

2 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

There is the technical side of course and not wanting to damage existing content. Then there's the often messy laissze faire social side.

LL had to try to stop depictions of sex with child avatars for legal reasons, but even with that being against the TOS, it still has to be reported and proven to be acted upon.

If LL wanted to clean up SL's image by making other depictions against the TOS, would they be able to enforce that? I don't think they let all that go on because they really don't care or because they want the money of those who engage in those particular kinks or questionable roleplay. I think they let it go because trying to stop it would be a task that even Hercules wouldn't be able to tackle,

 

Could Linden Lab even clean up Second Life if they wanted to?

No, and either than dealing with illegal activity, why would they want to?

Take a look around. The most successful online platforms, VR or otherwise, are those who offer the most freedom with the least limits possible, and other platforms who over-moderate, over-rule and micro-manage are very low number of users or completely empty.

 

[Seicher Rae]

I've been around adult, BDSM sims since early days in SL. That's not ALL I do in SL, by a long shot, but just saying that I have some experience in "adult" areas. More than nude beaches less than... well something really extreme. This is to say: Huh? I've never seen anything close to child TOS stuff. I have seen avatars that claim "adult" that are pretty if-y. Of course you can't swing a mesh cat without hitting a lot of DD/bbg stuff (and that gets into a whole nuther discussion) but that is also "consenting adults" and stuff. 

While child "stuff" (not sure what you can type without getting in trouble) should be ban-able, this has always seemed like a big to-do about something that rarely happens. I'd rather have LL fix other things, like reliable group chats, sim crossings...

Didn't the Forum stuff used to have a spell check? I need a spell check...

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

This is not my first complaint about Opensimulator. 😏

Wouldn't be all the free content and free to cheap regions and grids that makes for an even playing field for rich and poor alike would it? Shouldn't you love it for the absence of greedy corporations sucking up the monies of the little people? 😉

Think too that the more people have to pay for their inworld experience, the more they want those things that some might find objectionable.

[Arielle Popstar]

9 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

I met a mom and daughter who had migrated from Opensim because the mother had hooked up with a guy from SL, and decided to move to SL to be with him. Both she and her preteen daughter were flabbergasted at how little "potentially offensive and/or illegal" activity they had witnessed in SL in comparison. Apparently, they considered SL to be far cleaner overall, at least compared to where they had been used to hanging out in there.

I've still not even gone and looked at Opensimulator, technerd curiosty notwithstanding, because, well, I'm vain. I wouldn't want to have to start over trying to make the most adorable and fun person in the world all over again in some other world, from scratch, with no money. Besides, I spend all day in SL, I wouldn't have the time for it.

What's the old saying? The grass is always greener over the septic tank?

I do find that somewhat surprisin but then if she has a preteen daughter who looks and dresses as such, there is always the potential of being approached/messaged by the wrong people. The one aspect where S/L is good in is the rating system for general, mature and adult, making it easy to weed out places where one shouldn't take their daughter.

[Rowan Amore]

Probably the absence of people more than anything.

[Arielle Popstar]

Just now, Rowan Amore said:

Probably the absence of people more than anything.

Just got to know where to find them, same as in S/L. With Opensim it isn't as easy because of its decentralized nature.

[Coffee Pancake]

36 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Wouldn't be all the free content and free to cheap regions and grids that makes for an even playing field for rich and poor alike would it? Shouldn't you love it for the absence of greedy corporations sucking up the monies of the little people? 😉

You know for corporations to leech money from the little people, the little people have to be present .. 

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You know for corporations to leech money from the little people, the little people have to be present .. 

Nice try but there are companies there who have been in the business of renting land to the little people because they provide a stable environment at a rate which is more then cost but still 1/10th of the cost with what you are familiar with. Even so there is plenty like myself who as well as enjoying the inworld experience, also enjoy configuring and running their own free grid and region servers. 

Some people just get too wound up about numbers and seemingly not aware then in the general scope of things, it is not about how many are inworld but with how many you can actually connect with. When I am up in my skybox in S/L I have the same amount of people I can connect with through IM as I can when i am on my own grid even though some of the one's in my contact list are on a different grid. The only difference between Opensim and S/L in terms of people numbers is how many I will not ever have an opportunity or desire to interact with. 

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Codex Alpha said:

The most successful online platforms, VR or otherwise, are those who offer the most freedom with the least limits possible, and other platforms who over-moderate, over-rule and micro-manage are very low number of users or completely empty.

Totally! Look at how badly over-regulation and censorship have hurt Facebook! They can barely manage 3 billion active users!

Now, 8Chan. Almost no regulation at all! There's an internet giant for you! And what a great model for us all!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Wouldn't be all the free content and free to cheap regions and grids that makes for an even playing field for rich and poor alike would it? Shouldn't you love it for the absence of greedy corporations sucking up the monies of the little people? 😉

Think too that the more people have to pay for their inworld experience, the more they want those things that some might find objectionable.

I think Coffee and Rowan hit the nail on the head. People -- and a thriving, dynamic culture.

Maybe I could accrue as many friends there as I have in SL? What I wouldn't get is the amazing diversity of experience SL has to offer.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I think Coffee and Rowan hit the nail on the head. People -- and a thriving, dynamic culture.

Maybe I could accrue as many friends there as I have in SL? What I wouldn't get is the amazing diversity of experience SL has to offer.

Then you didn't pay attention to my responses to them.

Edit: Not even counting the times you have complained in the forums about that very diversity.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Arielle Popstar

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Not even counting the times you have complained in the forums about that very diversity.

Excuse me?

ETA: Don't bother answering. Or do. Whatever. I'm not getting into a fight with you.

I'm confident that my record here on the importance of diversity of perspective, voice, and experience stands for itself.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra