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

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

LL could easily clean up the platform per their own ToS so the only question would be why they don't.  Money.

 

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Idea: If a massive cleanup were needed, LL could have "AR Parties" with "finders fees" in L$! (Bounties)

Think there might be any truth to:

Edited August 2, 2022 by Arielle Popstar
Changed to less political

[Jennifer Boyle]

7 hours ago, animats said:

SL's reputation in mainstream media is more of a problem than what actually happens in SL.

Yep.

[Love Zhaoying]

7 hours ago, animats said:

I'm more worried about moderators with ban hammers and immunity for their actions. Roblox and Facebook/Meta have huge numbers of outsourced moderators, and it doesn't help all that much. Second Life spreads out the moderation task to landowners, and this works better than giving low-paid employees police powers.

I've been writing a paper on how SL got sex in the metaverse right. Haven't yet decided if I want to publish it. Creating adult areas moves most of the sex-related activity there. That solves most of the problem. Visibly having sex in non-adult areas is frowned upon by SL's users. That solves most of the remaining problem. The remainder is people being jerks, and that can be treated as ordinary griefing.

SL's reputation in mainstream media is more of a problem than what actually happens in SL. SL really needs to get out from under the Twitch ban. Not by caving in to Twitch, but by pointing out that Horizons and Roblox have worse problems. They don't have adult areas to which sexual activity is contained. So there's no easy way to sort the videos by rating.

“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” - H. L. Menckin.

 

 

Maybe if we can get SL in the news, like in the good old days, it will help!

[Rowan Amore]

11 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

That is a political cartoon, so I'm going to ask you to remove it. I won't AR you as you admittedly did to me recently, as I don't believe in AR'ing people unless they do something extremely destructive to the forum.

But I will ask you to remove a political cartoon about being "woke".

I'm not even sure how that cartoon even applies to what I quoted from LL's own ToS.  If it were outside influences determining if LL removed content, then sure, it MIGHT apply.  My post noted that LL already has the restrictions in place.  Whether they choose to use them to restrict content is and always has been up to their own discretion.  AFAIK, that particular part has been in the ToS for years and years.

[kali Wylder]

I made a child avatar with my first av once upon a time.  This was in the pre-mesh era and the mechanics of making a realistic looking child av were somewhat primitive.  After I made the look I wandered around that way for a bit.  Learned that I was not really welcome in blues clubs because they didn't think it was appropriate.  I may have been wearing a child av but I still wanted to hear the music that me, the adult wanted.  Went to a few playgrounds.  Didn't meet any perverts.  Met a strange woman who wanted to adopt me. Not sure why she wanted that particular RP, but there was nothing sexual about it.   I learned that I didn't particularly enjoy that kind of RP. Got bored. Told the woman that regretfully, I didn't want to RP with her any more.  Changed back to my adult look.  That was the end of my experiment.  I've also met a few adults who like to pretend they are children.  They weren't perverts either. 

I've little patience for baby talk, especially from people who are not babies. 

As for the ability or desire of the management to "clean up", I think they do the best they can under trying circumstances.  There are lots of people in this world who dearly love to control what other people can say and do.  They are not the ones in charge in SL thank goodness.  LL just tries to manage this herd of cats enough to keep them from annihilating each other or the virtual space we all live in.

[Arielle Popstar]

7 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I'm not even sure how that cartoon even applies to what I quoted from LL's own ToS.  If it were outside influences determining if LL removed content, then sure, it MIGHT apply.  My post noted that LL already has the restrictions in place.  Whether they choose to use them to restrict content is and always has been up to their own discretion.  AFAIK, that particular part has been in the ToS for years and years.

Because it is in the interpretation of those restrictions. In the hands of some people, almost anything could be fodder for being any Content that is illegal, harassing or violates any person's rights.

[Theresa Tennyson]

36 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

 

Think there might be any truth to:

Haven't you said that your opinions are usually in the minority on the forums?

[Arielle Popstar]

31 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

That is a political cartoon, so I'm going to ask you to remove it. I won't AR you as you admittedly did to me recently, as I don't believe in AR'ing people unless they do something extremely destructive to the forum.

But I will ask you to remove a political cartoon about being "woke".

Not that you would remove a post and that in my view, wokeness is not so much a political movement as it is a cultural one and therefore not against the guidelines, I replaced it with something that conveys the same sentiment but does not include what you find to be offensive.

[Innula Zenovka]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Idea: If a massive cleanup were needed, LL could have "AR Parties" with "finders fees" in L$! (Bounties)

Thus giving a literal example of a perverse incentive.

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Thus giving a literal example of a perverse incentive.

  I assume the old "Crime Tips Hotline" (i.e., "222-TIPS") and "Reward" systems for helping find literal RL criminals, falls in the same category. Versus, "Report your neighbor today!"

  Second Life is complicated! We think it "should" work "this way" vs. Real Life, but the same rules don't always apply.

  I'm confused a lot sometimes!  And sometimes it's just being "comprehension-challenged". 

  Maybe after another 10-15 years, I will begin to understand Second Life better.  As it is, sometimes it is hard to keep the two separate. (When you literally "dream" about SL, find yourself trying to "camera zoom" into Web pages on your PC, etc. etc.)

[Rowan Amore]

Highly doubt LL will be catering to a small group to abolish anything from SL.  All they would have to do is decide to follow their own ToS.  

Not sure why that's even being brought up at all aside from trying to invoke the attention of the mods by using 'woke'.  

If that were the case, I'm sure a lot of content some have found offensive and ARed would already have been removed.  YEARS ago.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

 

Think there might be any truth to:

 

Interesting!  Surprisingly mainstream.

Thank you for posting this updated meme. (While it may have the same or similar "issues", I won't complain about it.)

Good job, thank you very much for your thought-provoking posts.

[Love Zhaoying]

10 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The only hands that matter are LL's.  

Now I've got the Barry Manilow song stuck in my head!

"Hands, touching hands
Reaching out, touching me, touching you"

[Innula Zenovka]

26 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

  I assume the old "Crime Tips Hotline" (i.e., "222-TIPS") and "Reward" systems for helping find literal RL criminals, falls in the same category. Versus, "Report your neighbor today!"

  Second Life is complicated! We think it "should" work "this way" vs. Real Life, but the same rules don't always apply.

  I'm confused a lot sometimes!  And sometimes it's just being "comprehension-challenged". 

  Maybe after another 10-15 years, I will begin to understand Second Life better.  As it is, sometimes it is hard to keep the two separate. (When you literally "dream" about SL, find yourself trying to "camera zoom" into Web pages on your PC, etc. etc.)

Based on my experience of SL, if there's free L$s involved and there's a way to script bots to game it, then gamed it will inevitably be.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

I guess, but graphic violence is a category of content you find off-putting. My revulsion at vanilla heterosexual intercourse may not be as strong as your reaction of graphic violence, but how do we know that? We'd need Criteria of Squick to decide which things need special labelling.

(Although, if such labelling makes it easier to find the sim for savage skull-penetration of the Supreme Court justice from Gilead, that's a win.)

Well, sort of. I don't think it's a question of "off-putting": I see it as more descriptive. I used to bash away at scripted zombie hordes from atop a car -- that too would come under the rubric of "extreme violence."

How we choose to slice the cake is always going to be somewhat arbitrary. While I'm uninterested in sex here, I'm also largely unphased by it, and I'll quite nonchalantly step over the couple rutting away on the forest path in order to continue exploring the sim. (For that, matter, casually-encountered representations of violence also don't bother me all that much: I've seen a lot here.) But violence (and for that matter, sex) are demonstrably things that can "trigger" or at least cause concern in a great many people. To include "violence" as a separate category is really just incorporating something that is already well-established in movies, videos, books, and news reports.

There's also always going to be some fuzziness about what is "extreme" and what is not. Same with sex, actually. I've seen naked couples using "cuddle" poses in M rated areas that were . . . well, not casual hugs. Equally, for that matter, I have a piece on display in an M-rated gallery, a sort of take on Gustave Courbet's "The Origin of the World," that gave the gallery owner some pause. It's hardly "porn" -- unless one chooses to read it that way. And I'm sure there are some who would.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

gave the gallery owner some pause

Everyone should have paws!

(Not cursed monkey paws.  Or lion or bear paws, that's just wrong.)

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Everyone should have paws!

Only if the claws are trimmed waaaaaaaay back. I am a very delicate flower, ya know.

[Love Zhaoying]

8 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, sort of. I don't think it's a question of "off-putting": I see it as more descriptive. I used to bash away at scripted zombie hordes from atop a car -- that too would come under the rubric of "extreme violence."

Zombies are just living their best Second Life (literally), and trying to guide you to their Path. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Zombies are just living their best Second Life (literally), and trying to guide you to their Path. 

Well, honestly, I've tried reasoning with them when they came knocking at the door. They don't seem to be susceptible.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, honestly, I've tried reasoning with them when they came knocking at the door. They don't seem to be susceptible.

Try reading to them from the Necronomicon.  It has the word "Nom" in it, and zombies are usually hangry.

[NevaehHeartstrings]

Where are you seeing these things at?  Every place I find myself at seems to have rules 5x tougher then the lab's while being enforced. this includes adult clubs and many deep doughty places. I rarely see any avatar's that remotely look like children while finding most are over developed (giant watermelon sized boobs & butts). if anything all i see are 9foot tall women that are over sexualized while running around with little T-Rex arms.

to answer your question they cannot clean up what you think is going on, you or I can report what we see that we think violates the rules and that's mostly it. 

[Aethelwine]

14 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, sort of. I don't think it's a question of "off-putting": I see it as more descriptive. I used to bash away at scripted zombie hordes from atop a car -- that too would come under the rubric of "extreme violence."

 

I can't find your quote now where you mentioned a rating for extreme violence, but I have to say I am sympathetic to that, but not entirely convinced.

Whilst I really don't want to encounter a graphic GIF of an execution playing on a billboard next to a Zindra road, i have never encountered one... nor can I think of a framing of such a rule that also wouldn't endanger the sharing of images like the iconic Vietnam picture of the child running away from a napalm bomb.

I think allowing Governance some discretion that they may already have even in Zindra sufficient, if they don't have that discretion I would advocate for a change specifically for execution\violence graphics.

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Aethelwine

[Chaser Zaks]

This thread seems to have diverted into discussion on politics, so I am going to attempt to try and get that back on track with my opinion on OP's subject matter.

Should LL try to "Clean up" SL? Absolutely not. For two reasons:

1. First reason, and probably the most important:

All this will do is cause the existing user base to get upset, and have absolutely no impact on the "potential" user base.
When I say "potential" user base, I mean those who have heard of or seen SL, or tried it before, and have left because they felt it wasn't the platform for them.
Here are some examples:
 

1. Tumblr had a massive adult content user base. No one wanted it banned, but they banned it to "clean up their image" in attempts to sale Tumblr. This killed a major portion of the user base and devalued it as a asset.
2. VRChat had user mods, a majority of people used mods, but they introduced a anti-cheat resulting in a huge backlash, resulting in lots of users moving to NeosVR or other platforms. (As of this post, it is still going on)
3. YouTube removed dislikes, resulting in millions of people getting upset. People are still upset about this to this day, but YouTube is so big that they are able to take this blow(because "Where else you going to go? We have all the content!")

Don't upset the existing user base in hopes to gain a non-existent user base. Because the existing user base is guaranteed, the "potential" user base is not.

2. Second reason, what should be cleaned up?

There is a lot of stuff in Second Life, which personally I like because it means there is something for everyone.
There is however stuff I do not like, such as "race play" or "racial payback"(as it is called) because thats kinda oof in my book. But there are people who like this stuff, and as long as it stays in RP(despite it sometimes not looking like it is RP exclusive), it isn't hurting anyone and I just choose to turn the other way.
I like some things, as some members of the forums will unfortunately know, that I guarantee you that plentiful of people do not support. But people more often than not, will choose to just to turn the other way if they don't like it.

This brings into question: What *should* be removed? If we remove one thing that one person doesn't like, why not remove another thing that someone else doesn't like? Take a moment and think of the most extreme thing you like and something you do not like, and consider "What if LL banned the thing I like? How would I feel? How would I feel if they didn't ban the thing I didn't like even if they banned the thing I liked?"

Say LL wants to clean it up, could they?

Probably, first and foremost they'd remove any banned content that is publicly visible, such as items on the marketplace, groups, and regions/parcels that advertise as such. This would get rid of a vast majority of content.
Sure there would still be people who do this stuff in secrecy, but they will eventually get caught, and it'll provide LL with a source to nuke more assets.
There would still be the small remnants of it though, or people uploading new content. Take VRChat for example, NSFW is banned, but people do it anyway, and no one gets banned unless someone reports it because they don't spy on their users.

What I think LL should do:

Stick to what they do best, provide a (mostly) open platform for people to do what they want. Sure there are things that are kinda oof, but someone is enjoying it, and as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process, what's the harm in that?

LL should only ban stuff if laws require them to do so, and so far that seems to have worked.

If you are ever in doubt that someone is doing something they shouldn't, it doesn't hurt to file an abuse report. LL rather people file good faith incorrect reports than people not file correct reports. You won't be reprimanded for filing incorrect reports in good faith.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

28 minutes ago, Chaser Zaks said:

This thread seems to have diverted into discussion on politics, so I am going to attempt to try and get that back on track with my opinion on OP's subject matter.

Should LL try to "Clean up" SL? Absolutely not. For two reasons:

1. First reason, and probably the most important:

All this will do is cause the existing user base to get upset, and have absolutely no impact on the "potential" user base.
When I say "potential" user base, I mean those who have heard of or seen SL, or tried it before, and have left because they felt it wasn't the platform for them.
Here are some examples:
 

1. Tumblr had a massive adult content user base. No one wanted it banned, but they banned it to "clean up their image" in attempts to sale Tumblr. This killed a major portion of the user base and devalued it as a asset.
2. VRChat had user mods, a majority of people used mods, but they introduced a anti-cheat resulting in a huge backlash, resulting in lots of users moving to NeosVR or other platforms. (As of this post, it is still going on)
3. YouTube removed dislikes, resulting in millions of people getting upset. People are still upset about this to this day, but YouTube is so big that they are able to take this blow(because "Where else you going to go? We have all the content!")

Don't upset the existing user base in hopes to gain a non-existent user base. Because the existing user base is guaranteed, the "potential" user base is not.

2. Second reason, what should be cleaned up?

There is a lot of stuff in Second Life, which personally I like because it means there is something for everyone.
There is however stuff I do not like, such as "race play" or "racial payback"(as it is called) because thats kinda oof in my book. But there are people who like this stuff, and as long as it stays in RP(despite it sometimes not looking like it is RP exclusive), it isn't hurting anyone and I just choose to turn the other way.
I like some things, as some members of the forums will unfortunately know, that I guarantee you that plentiful of people do not support. But people more often than not, will choose to just to turn the other way if they don't like it.

This brings into question: What *should* be removed? If we remove one thing that one person doesn't like, why not remove another thing that someone else doesn't like? Take a moment and think of the most extreme thing you like and something you do not like, and consider "What if LL banned the thing I like? How would I feel? How would I feel if they didn't ban the thing I didn't like even if they banned the thing I liked?"

Say LL wants to clean it up, could they?

Probably, first and foremost they'd remove any banned content that is publicly visible, such as items on the marketplace, groups, and regions/parcels that advertise as such. This would get rid of a vast majority of content.
Sure there would still be people who do this stuff in secrecy, but they will eventually get caught, and it'll provide LL with a source to nuke more assets.
There would still be the small remnants of it though, or people uploading new content. Take VRChat for example, NSFW is banned, but people do it anyway, and no one gets banned unless someone reports it because they don't spy on their users.

What I think LL should do:

Stick to what they do best, provide a (mostly) open platform for people to do what they want. Sure there are things that are kinda oof, but someone is enjoying it, and as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process, what's the harm in that?

LL should only ban stuff if laws require them to do so, and so far that seems to have worked.

If you are ever in doubt that someone is doing something they shouldn't, it doesn't hurt to file an abuse report. LL rather people file good faith incorrect reports than people not file correct reports. You won't be reprimanded for filing incorrect reports in good faith.

Maybe I've missed it -- but has anyone in this thread actually argued that SL should be "cleaned up"???? I.e., that it should have content removed or existing behaviours banned and restricted?

Even the OP, as I understand it, was just asking for an end to "discrimination" against certain kinds of avatars -- not the banning of anything.

I think a few people here are tackling a strawman of their own making, perhaps?

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Even the OP, as I understand it, was just asking for an end to "discrimination" against certain kinds of avatars -- not the banning of anything.

I didn't see anything about "discrimination" in the Original Post, perhaps that was some other thread?

13 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I think a few people here are tackling a strawman of their own making, perhaps?

Yeah, a lot of the "let's talk about [thing]" threads draw various veering off-topic arguments ("straw man" or otherwise) as people interpret the topic during drift. Not that we need to police every thread, of course!