A clean break and a rebranding for Linden Lab?

[bigmoe Whitfield]

after 15 years, I can say 100% right now.  that no, I'm not ready for a real SL 2.0,  because we the residents are not involved at the level we need to be involved at,  minus the loud ones, they should be told no, while the ones whom know what works and what will work and how we can make the world to an actual usable state.

[MarketaKurkova]

It would need to have much better systems that SL can't achieve. If something like Ready Player One comes along I'm not going to stick around because I have to start new somewhere else. 

[Persephone Emerald]

16 hours ago, Asadora Summers said:

Just some thoughts after reading the posts...

In Second Life, there are choices. One can choose to have a inventory of 190k or not choose to have that much. 'SL baggage' is not on the user side, it's more on the LL side, for example things on Mainland such as Linden trees not being updated in 20 years, which falls under the LDPW. Instead of concentrating on the newer popular continents, how about going back to the older continents and updating them to where people would use those continents to their fullest potential.
I do not think there is anything wrong in LL using the content of established creators for Linden Events or the like. I actually think it's a good thing because it shows that LL is making the attempt after all these years to keep in touch with those that make SL what it is and what SL is and what we all make it to be.

1. 20 years is a long time to remain a constant for a mass amount of users
2. The users who frequent SL are loyal and have put in time and money, but also creative and established relationships that spill into the physical world.
3. No other virtual world platform can offer the plethora of communities that are formed in SL
4. There is freedom in SL. A freedom that is personalised to each person dependent on what mood they are in for that day. Don't want to socialise for a day? Sure, no problem. No one is going to give you a negative rating for that.
5. In SL there is no actual pressure to conform, if one doesn't want too. If one wants to conform, they can do that too.
6. I agree with a previous poster that SL is not a social media platform. It is a virtual world. A virtual world can't be compared to something which doesn't hold the same amount of personal and emotional investment like how a tik-tok post that isn't more than 30 seconds long fails to offer.
7. Back in the day, we used to have a rating system on our profiles, but LL got rid of that because of not wanting to create a competitive environment. Personally, I'm glad they got rid of the rating system.
8. Back when LL formed SL, the intent was to create a user based content created world with the ability to share it with others. This is what has made SL a very special place for so many of us. 
At the end of the day, those of us that pay to have premium or premium plus or those of us that have a basic account, it is all of us that makes SL what it is. Those that are newer to SL might not know the history of SL, so they do not know that not everything is given to them from the higher ups. Just like the physical world, SL is not a place for expectations, because if you expect to have things provided for you already, or to make your choices easier, one is setting themselves up for failure. I do not mean to sound harsh, so if I come across that way I do apologize. It was not intended.
All in all, whatever changes may come it's the user base that will be paying for it in one way or another. Which will lead to eventually LL having it's own demise handed to them on a prim platter.
If it's not broke, then don't fix it. Sure, there are things in-world that need to be fixed, but someone always manages to find a way around it. That is the glorious beauty of Second Life,  it's full of resources that can be used by people, and people using their own skill-sets in order to fix something for the people, (Kudos to the Furry community!) or to show how to get around a problem. After 20 years, this is the result of Linden Lab's declaration in the beginning 'Second Life is a social experiment.'
We took that experiment over. We pay for that experiment. We are fine the way we are. And thanks for all the prims.

I liked your YouTube video on this subject too.

[Sprout Evergarden]

On 8/2/2022 at 11:16 AM, Love Zhaoying said:

Was watching a video on the history of OpenGL yesterday and started to become frightened (based on how old OpenGL is)!  At least they didn't use DirectX.

I second your vote for "updating it".

open gl is long in the tooth and the standard is all but replaced now by Vulcan dome graphics card makers are even phasing out OpenGL support

[Sorina Garrigus]

On 8/2/2022 at 8:52 AM, Bree Giffen said:

What if LL made a completely new client and server with a small continent, new avatars, a new prim building system, new engine and physics, but kept the exact same SL style where the residents make everything. Then they named it a completely new name like 'whatever life'. If you logged into it you'd feel right at home in the virtual world but it would be all shiny and new.  This would not be like Sansar which was made very differently from SL. It would be  hard reset and a starting point but SL would still exist as well. Do you think this would make people think about joining because it is simply not SL with all it's baggage? Maybe new creators would come in knowing they don't have to compete with the established ones. LL would also be able to regain it's control over the base avatars and not be dependent on resident made avatars. This wouldn't destroy SL. It would be like taking a seed from a plant and making a whole new plant. 

They did try to make Sansar ... it didn't do so well for them. And from a business point of view without it being significantly different offering something very different ... they would be competing with themselves  hurting both platforms. 

In theory they could make a new platform but make it so the viewers can switch between the two seemlessly but with different inventory systems ... maybe there is a way to share some inventory I dunno. But they could have an advantage of building from the ground up but still allow switching between the two as if it as almost one in the same. 
Years ago there was a competitor to SL starting to form and it looked pretty promising. It was called Blue Mars ... but not sure why but it basically failed before a full launch. This is my Avatar when I was trying the beta

 

Edited August 4, 2022 by Sorina Garrigus

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Sorina Garrigus said:

It was called Blue Mars ... but not sure why but it basically failed before a full launch. 

Blue Mars was based on the crysis game engine and as such, no one could run it, no one used it, no one found out what it could be used for, it ended up being little more than investor hype bait that pinned everything on streamed cloud rendering coming in to save the day .. and in a spectacular coop, LL produced a demo of SL being rendered in the cloud before BM did and they were out of business shortly after.

The SL cloud render demo might not have had anything to do with it, but the timing was just too perfect, even though that demo was then shelved and the project abandoned.

I tried BM a few times over the years .. it was about what you would expect, walk about, see no one, nothing to do, leave. Probably represents more of a Sansar precursor than SL.

[Sorina Garrigus]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Blue Mars was based on the crysis game engine and as such, no one could run it, no one used it, no one found out what it could be used for, it ended up being little more than investor hype bait that pinned everything on streamed cloud rendering coming in to save the day .. and in a spectacular coop, LL produced a demo of SL being rendered in the cloud before BM did and they were out of business shortly after.

The SL cloud render demo might not have had anything to do with it, but the timing was just too perfect, even though that demo was then shelved and the project abandoned.

I tried BM a few times over the years .. it was about what you would expect, walk about, see no one, nothing to do, leave. Probably represents more of a Sansar precursor than SL.

Initially they did have a number of impressive builds. Some people were building, there were stores and content was being built. There were a couple simple games like bowling for example. I actually invited the CEO to my game store in SL and had a conversation on the potential of games within Blue Mars. At the time skill games did not hit the drama and the huge changes yet but he said they would not go down that path to allow them.  The builds were impressive and creators were growing. The graphics had an edge over SL etc. But it seemed their business model was more banking on bigger names coming in to create content ... it didn't happen from what I can tell with only a few examples. Where SL was built on creating the tools, and allowing the populace to create the content. And early on LL had incentives for people to create content and rewarded the most popular content with prize money. Creaton early on had a lower bar of access. Best I can tell that is where Blue Mars went wrong. It looked to the big bucks to bite and they didn't but content creators from SL were ready to go. I guess there is a reason why after all these years SL still doesn't have a direct competitor. 

I also check open sims as well .. they suffer from not growing content ... but some ruin the in world economy giving away some high quality items as freebies ... thus gutting incentive for content creators to put their time into them. Any competitor really needs to understand SL's history if they have a chance to compete. 

[Finite]

I think it would be possible for SL to maintain their current code and all our goods while also producing an updated engine. If they were to convert SL to purely an editor (which is basically what it is already) and have a converter program to an entirely closed game. Basically we’d use SL to change our avatars and lands and what not then upload them. Then upon logging into the new program you would be locked in to whatever you uploaded from the editor. At the cost of instant edit ability we would have a far more functioning end result and not have to slosh through constantly loading, rezzing and derezzing sims. We could also have the option of preloading zones and avatars we regularly visit and interact with.

[Bree Giffen]

1 hour ago, Finite said:

I think it would be possible for SL to maintain their current code and all our goods while also producing an updated engine. If they were to convert SL to purely an editor (which is basically what it is already) and have a converter program to an entirely closed game. Basically we’d use SL to change our avatars and lands and what not then upload them. Then upon logging into the new program you would be locked in to whatever you uploaded from the editor. At the cost of instant edit ability we would have a far more functioning end result and not have to slosh through constantly loading, rezzing and derezzing sims. We could also have the option of preloading zones and avatars we regularly visit and interact with.

Wow. I was actually thinking the exact same thing about composing an avatar in SL and bringing it to a newer world as an answer to all those who say they'd rather stay in SL than start over from scratch. I didn't post because it seemed that this would be too difficult to create. It is so strange that we had the same idea.

[MoiraKathleen]

3 hours ago, Finite said:

I think it would be possible for SL to maintain their current code and all our goods while also producing an updated engine. If they were to convert SL to purely an editor (which is basically what it is already) and have a converter program to an entirely closed game. Basically we’d use SL to change our avatars and lands and what not then upload them. Then upon logging into the new program you would be locked in to whatever you uploaded from the editor. At the cost of instant edit ability we would have a far more functioning end result and not have to slosh through constantly loading, rezzing and derezzing sims. We could also have the option of preloading zones and avatars we regularly visit and interact with.

This would not appeal to me at all.  If I had to leave the new program to go back to the "SL editor" everytime I wanted to change my look or change furnishings or change landscaping and then re-upload and go back to the new program, I would quickly tire of that and probably decide to just forget the whole thing.   

[Finite]

2 hours ago, MoiraKathleen said:

This would not appeal to me at all.  If I had to leave the new program to go back to the "SL editor" everytime I wanted to change my look or change furnishings or change landscaping and then re-upload and go back to the new program, I would quickly tire of that and probably decide to just forget the whole thing.   

Ya I know it is a tough sell for sure. But if SL were to make an entirely new game we'd literally lose everything. For me thats roughly 15 or so years worth of inventory. So just trying to meet in the middle here. New players are not going to understand why SL runs so poorly. After 15 years of upgrading PC after PC I've come to conclusion that SL will never run smoothly in it's current state. Seriously its 2022 and I've probably spent more time waiting for jpegs to load than any other activity. jpegs...

[Finite]

3 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

Wow. I was actually thinking the exact same thing about composing an avatar in SL and bringing it to a newer world as an answer to all those who say they'd rather stay in SL than start over from scratch. I didn't post because it seemed that this would be too difficult to create. It is so strange that we had the same idea.

It's just an idea. I am not sure how hard it would be. But at least we know SL will at least listen to ideas.

On 2/2/2022 at 5:51 PM, Finite said:

I’d like to see sim instances for events that can sometimes take days to get into. When demand is high a temporary copy or copies of the sim would appear to accommodate overhead. Something like this could be subsidized by and only accessible to premium+ members and not affect the tier of whoever is hosting the event. 

 

[AnthonyJoanne]

It won't work. I hate to be negative, but it just has zero chance of working for the same reason that Meta is never going to create a fully realised Metaverse.

At this time in the world, there are far too many constraints being enforced by a small minority who have artificially amplified their voices through the use of bots/sockpuppets and a rampantly biased legacy media who are willing to lie and expect no repercussions.

Remember that we've already SEEN activists go to Meta, disable all the safety mechanisms, and deliberately PURSUE sexual harassment so they could then claim to have been raped. This from a 'researcher' for an organisation with a deeply vested interest in pushing a very specific narrative. In other words, not a reliable source by ANY metric. The result has been countless clickbait articles loudly proclaiming that the metaverse is a hotbed of sexual violence.

I'll offer you an example to illustrate:

Second Life has succeeded to the extent that it has through user created content. If you were restricted to the stuff that LL provides, everyone would look the same, dress the same, and move the same. Variety is expensive ... LL has neither the resources nor the creativity in-house to provide the diverse range of goods available in world. It has taken many many years for motivated individuals to create all the stuff we have available to us.

Now consider this new Whatever Life. LL would create the infrastructure (ie the land, the base avatars, the mechanisms to 'do things' like walking, the scripting engine, and the mechanisms for building/importing stuff, etc) and that's about it. They would then want the users to create the content. But remember that we're talking about creating content NOW ... in a social matrix where the twitter mob WILL descend on you like rabid ferrets for any perceived infraction.

So picture, if you will, someone deciding to introduce something innocuous into Whatever Life. Let's say high heels, which are a pretty good seller in SL.

Now imagine a small bunch of 'activists' deciding that LL are facilitating the exploitation of women by encouraging them to put their bodies on display for the male gaze by wearing high heels which are clearly dangerously unhealthy and are meant only to objectify women ... endless ad-nauseum. If you can't find a suitable screed saying exactly that on the internet you aren't looking. Said small bunch of activists will then use their twitter bots to repost the same tweet over and over (word for word the same, mind you ... they don't even TRY to mask it) and get articles published on the web and scream like demented banshees.

It doesn't MATTER if women WANT to buy and wear high heels because THEY like them ... such 'activists' will trot out their 'internalised misogyny' and their 'patriarchal oppression' and deny those women any agency for daring to disagree. Same way that so-called 'anti-racists' will attack any black person for daring to disagree ... and trot out such lovely terms as <censored> and <deleted>. If you can't find exactly that on the internet, you aren't looking. The very fact that I have to censor myself rather than quote those terms which you can find on plenty of tweets is indicative that the terms themselves are racist.

Now remember that LL is not an organisation with anything like the fortitude to tell those people to sod off.

How motivated is a creator going to be if suddenly they are being harassed by 'activists' and are getting zero support from LL?

Not going to work. Not in this current social matrix.

[Finite]

What’s truly amazing is someone actually “thanked” that wall of WTH are you talking about…

[Love Zhaoying]

57 minutes ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

It won't work. I hate to be negative, but it just has zero chance of working for the same reason that Meta is never going to create a fully realised Metaverse.

At this time in the world, there are far too many constraints being enforced by a small minority who have artificially amplified their voices through the use of bots/sockpuppets and a rampantly biased legacy media who are willing to lie and expect no repercussions.

Remember that we've already SEEN activists go to Meta, disable all the safety mechanisms, and deliberately PURSUE sexual harassment so they could then claim to have been raped. This from a 'researcher' for an organisation with a deeply vested interest in pushing a very specific narrative. In other words, not a reliable source by ANY metric. The result has been countless clickbait articles loudly proclaiming that the metaverse is a hotbed of sexual violence.

I'll offer you an example to illustrate:

Second Life has succeeded to the extent that it has through user created content. If you were restricted to the stuff that LL provides, everyone would look the same, dress the same, and move the same. Variety is expensive ... LL has neither the resources nor the creativity in-house to provide the diverse range of goods available in world. It has taken many many years for motivated individuals to create all the stuff we have available to us.

Now consider this new Whatever Life. LL would create the infrastructure (ie the land, the base avatars, the mechanisms to 'do things' like walking, the scripting engine, and the mechanisms for building/importing stuff, etc) and that's about it. They would then want the users to create the content. But remember that we're talking about creating content NOW ... in a social matrix where the twitter mob WILL descend on you like rabid ferrets for any perceived infraction.

So picture, if you will, someone deciding to introduce something innocuous into Whatever Life. Let's say high heels, which are a pretty good seller in SL.

Now imagine a small bunch of 'activists' deciding that LL are facilitating the exploitation of women by encouraging them to put their bodies on display for the male gaze by wearing high heels which are clearly dangerously unhealthy and are meant only to objectify women ... endless ad-nauseum. If you can't find a suitable screed saying exactly that on the internet you aren't looking. Said small bunch of activists will then use their twitter bots to repost the same tweet over and over (word for word the same, mind you ... they don't even TRY to mask it) and get articles published on the web and scream like demented banshees.

It doesn't MATTER if women WANT to buy and wear high heels because THEY like them ... such 'activists' will trot out their 'internalised misogyny' and their 'patriarchal oppression' and deny those women any agency for daring to disagree. Same way that so-called 'anti-racists' will attack any black person for daring to disagree ... and trot out such lovely terms as <censored> and <deleted>. If you can't find exactly that on the internet, you aren't looking. The very fact that I have to censor myself rather than quote those terms which you can find on plenty of tweets is indicative that the terms themselves are racist.

Now remember that LL is not an organisation with anything like the fortitude to tell those people to sod off.

How motivated is a creator going to be if suddenly they are being harassed by 'activists' and are getting zero support from LL?

Not going to work. Not in this current social matrix.

So, we put you on the list as a "maybe"?

Edited August 5, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Cinos Field]

1 hour ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

At this time in the world, there are far too many constraints being enforced by a small minority who have artificially amplified their voices through the use of bots/sockpuppets and a rampantly biased legacy media who are willing to lie and expect no repercussions.

Amen, comrade. I also do not approve of our current paradigm of unfettered capitalism.

*reads the rest of the post* ...wait, that's not... oh well.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Cinos Field

[AnthonyJoanne]

41 minutes ago, Finite said:

What’s truly amazing is someone actually “thanked” that wall of WTH are you talking about…

Don't blame me if it's over your head.

[Finite]

Yup. Over under around and every which way 

[Coffee Pancake]

11 hours ago, Finite said:

I think it would be possible for SL to maintain their current code and all our goods while also producing an updated engine. If they were to convert SL to purely an editor (which is basically what it is already) and have a converter program to an entirely closed game. Basically we’d use SL to change our avatars and lands and what not then upload them. Then upon logging into the new program you would be locked in to whatever you uploaded from the editor. At the cost of instant edit ability we would have a far more functioning end result and not have to slosh through constantly loading, rezzing and derezzing sims. We could also have the option of preloading zones and avatars we regularly visit and interact with.

The issue with this kind of platform is that it's fundamentally at odds with how SL content works.

Every object in SL is (or has the potential to be) dynamic in a very broad range of ways.

Take your average home grown prim, it has a whole mountain of values and properties associated with it and all/any of those can be changed by a script in said prim, every single frame. This is used extensively to create everything from simple doorways to cool fun toys and vehicles. 

SL is 100% server side and fundamentally works on a system of object related broadcast messages. The region tells your viewer what objects there are, what happens should one change in some way, and when to forget about them.

The rub ... you can't bake an SL object into a level as it has to retain the potential to change, and that change could easily affect the bake. It's like wanting to add a bit more egg to a cake after it's in the oven.

The entire point of doing a bake is performance and optimization. This is normal for games and game engines, and why game engines have a separate editor. This is why Sansar had a separate editor.

You may rightly be thinking, hey, but I can get new stuff out in games and add assets to the scene, lots of games have building. But there is a big difference between being given a static world and allowing the user to mess it up from a selection of carefully chosen lego bricks, and a having a box of Turing complete infinity cubes and then building the entire world from them.

Does everything in SL need to be so crazy dynamic, hell no. 99% of the stuff does nothing. But the fact that it could both hurts and enables everything that makes SL unique.

 

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 hours ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

It won't work. I hate to be negative, but it just has zero chance of working for the same reason that Meta is never going to create a fully realised Metaverse.

At this time in the world, there are far too many constraints being enforced by a small minority who have artificially amplified their voices through the use of bots/sockpuppets and a rampantly biased legacy media who are willing to lie and expect no repercussions.

Remember that we've already SEEN activists go to Meta, disable all the safety mechanisms, and deliberately PURSUE sexual harassment so they could then claim to have been raped. This from a 'researcher' for an organisation with a deeply vested interest in pushing a very specific narrative. In other words, not a reliable source by ANY metric. The result has been countless clickbait articles loudly proclaiming that the metaverse is a hotbed of sexual violence.

I'll offer you an example to illustrate:

Second Life has succeeded to the extent that it has through user created content. If you were restricted to the stuff that LL provides, everyone would look the same, dress the same, and move the same. Variety is expensive ... LL has neither the resources nor the creativity in-house to provide the diverse range of goods available in world. It has taken many many years for motivated individuals to create all the stuff we have available to us.

Now consider this new Whatever Life. LL would create the infrastructure (ie the land, the base avatars, the mechanisms to 'do things' like walking, the scripting engine, and the mechanisms for building/importing stuff, etc) and that's about it. They would then want the users to create the content. But remember that we're talking about creating content NOW ... in a social matrix where the twitter mob WILL descend on you like rabid ferrets for any perceived infraction.

So picture, if you will, someone deciding to introduce something innocuous into Whatever Life. Let's say high heels, which are a pretty good seller in SL.

Now imagine a small bunch of 'activists' deciding that LL are facilitating the exploitation of women by encouraging them to put their bodies on display for the male gaze by wearing high heels which are clearly dangerously unhealthy and are meant only to objectify women ... endless ad-nauseum. If you can't find a suitable screed saying exactly that on the internet you aren't looking. Said small bunch of activists will then use their twitter bots to repost the same tweet over and over (word for word the same, mind you ... they don't even TRY to mask it) and get articles published on the web and scream like demented banshees.

It doesn't MATTER if women WANT to buy and wear high heels because THEY like them ... such 'activists' will trot out their 'internalised misogyny' and their 'patriarchal oppression' and deny those women any agency for daring to disagree. Same way that so-called 'anti-racists' will attack any black person for daring to disagree ... and trot out such lovely terms as <censored> and <deleted>. If you can't find exactly that on the internet, you aren't looking. The very fact that I have to censor myself rather than quote those terms which you can find on plenty of tweets is indicative that the terms themselves are racist.

Now remember that LL is not an organisation with anything like the fortitude to tell those people to sod off.

How motivated is a creator going to be if suddenly they are being harassed by 'activists' and are getting zero support from LL?

Not going to work. Not in this current social matrix.

Gosh, what an "interesting" take.

I'm so glad we're not allowed to be "political" here anymore, aren't you?

[Kiera Clutterbuck]

6 hours ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

It won't work. I hate to be negative, but it just has zero chance of working for the same reason that Meta is never going to create a fully realised Metaverse.

At this time in the world, there are far too many constraints being enforced by a small minority who have artificially amplified their voices through the use of bots/sockpuppets and a rampantly biased legacy media who are willing to lie and expect no repercussions.

Remember that we've already SEEN activists go to Meta, disable all the safety mechanisms, and deliberately PURSUE sexual harassment so they could then claim to have been raped. This from a 'researcher' for an organisation with a deeply vested interest in pushing a very specific narrative. In other words, not a reliable source by ANY metric. The result has been countless clickbait articles loudly proclaiming that the metaverse is a hotbed of sexual violence.

I'll offer you an example to illustrate:

Second Life has succeeded to the extent that it has through user created content. If you were restricted to the stuff that LL provides, everyone would look the same, dress the same, and move the same. Variety is expensive ... LL has neither the resources nor the creativity in-house to provide the diverse range of goods available in world. It has taken many many years for motivated individuals to create all the stuff we have available to us.

Now consider this new Whatever Life. LL would create the infrastructure (ie the land, the base avatars, the mechanisms to 'do things' like walking, the scripting engine, and the mechanisms for building/importing stuff, etc) and that's about it. They would then want the users to create the content. But remember that we're talking about creating content NOW ... in a social matrix where the twitter mob WILL descend on you like rabid ferrets for any perceived infraction.

So picture, if you will, someone deciding to introduce something innocuous into Whatever Life. Let's say high heels, which are a pretty good seller in SL.

Now imagine a small bunch of 'activists' deciding that LL are facilitating the exploitation of women by encouraging them to put their bodies on display for the male gaze by wearing high heels which are clearly dangerously unhealthy and are meant only to objectify women ... endless ad-nauseum. If you can't find a suitable screed saying exactly that on the internet you aren't looking. Said small bunch of activists will then use their twitter bots to repost the same tweet over and over (word for word the same, mind you ... they don't even TRY to mask it) and get articles published on the web and scream like demented banshees.

It doesn't MATTER if women WANT to buy and wear high heels because THEY like them ... such 'activists' will trot out their 'internalised misogyny' and their 'patriarchal oppression' and deny those women any agency for daring to disagree. Same way that so-called 'anti-racists' will attack any black person for daring to disagree ... and trot out such lovely terms as <censored> and <deleted>. If you can't find exactly that on the internet, you aren't looking. The very fact that I have to censor myself rather than quote those terms which you can find on plenty of tweets is indicative that the terms themselves are racist.

Now remember that LL is not an organisation with anything like the fortitude to tell those people to sod off.

How motivated is a creator going to be if suddenly they are being harassed by 'activists' and are getting zero support from LL?

Not going to work. Not in this current social matrix.

I have major concern for you, Anthony, and I can't see how activists would prevent a reputable new virtual world. From this post and a couple others I've seen it seems you fear "activists are after me" a lot. I understand, as I've gotten paranoid myself at times, what with climate change, Coronavirus, restrictions for women and other minorities, and what seems to be a negative change in how we might be governed into the future. Now we add on these forum restrictions adding more uncertainty and fears on top of what we already deal with.

It's just too too much, and fears can easily start to govern our lives. Please step away from Twitter as it's not good for anyone in these stressful times.

It is interesting to ponder whether another SL could work though. I don't think it would work because you need a rather large base to get a momentum going. This is SL's main advantage and possibly why it continues. A new game wouldn't have this advantage and as someone pointed out it's just as likely people would just choose one of the other shiny new games, and one with the established community connections already in place many seek when joining a new game.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Kiera Clutterbuck

[Persephone Emerald]

14 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

Wow. I was actually thinking the exact same thing about composing an avatar in SL and bringing it to a newer world as an answer to all those who say they'd rather stay in SL than start over from scratch. I didn't post because it seemed that this would be too difficult to create. It is so strange that we had the same idea.

I made Inworldz versions of my avatars just in case SL might close down. Look how that worked out.

At least Evan got his current name by him going over there, and I was able to upload and make mesh stuff without paying for it there.

[AnthonyJoanne]

10 hours ago, Kiera Clutterbuck said:

I have major concern for you, Anthony, and I can't see how activists would prevent a reputable new virtual world.

That's a fair enough question. I'll answer it for you.

Let's take one issue: Are you concerned that the metaverse is facilitating rape and sexual violence?

Most of the claims are based on a report released by SumOfUs. The title of the report was Metaverse: another cesspool of toxic content.

That's a pretty emotive title for a report masking itself as research. SO let's consider the source.

From Wikipedia: SumOfUs is a global non-profit advocacy organization. That seems fair enough ... until you notice that there's organisation with the same name which is (in their own words) the leading producers of socially conscious seminars in North America. But the two organisations so named are entirely separate ... financially. Even though the work of the 'non profit' directly and indisputably emphasises the need to hire the profit organisation. I'm sure it's just a coincidence /s

But regardless of the source, let's consider their methodology. The report is loaded down with references. That makes it look very professional and well researched  ... unfortunately many of them are literally worthless.

For example SumOfUs quotes a report by CNN which details toxic activity in Meta. The only problem is that if you drill down (I took the time to do so) the 'reports' by organisations such as the Center for Countering Digital Hate make claims like "Our researchers found that users, including minors, are exposed to abusive behaviour every seven minutes." but offer ZERO proof or backing for these claims. They offer no evidence whatsoever to prove ANYTHING. That makes their claims worthless. Which means that CNN ... the most trusted name in news according to them, reported that the metaverse is a haven for toxic behavior without evidence ... and SumOfUs used that as evidence. Notice the problem there? I'll spell it out. A claim by an organisation with zero evidence is then used by a 'reputable source', and is then used to substantiate another report.

Speaking of drilling down: To follow the chain of the above reference I had to

•  Go to the CNN article
• Then follow to an article on a webpage called counterhate
• Then follow that to the the twitter account of the Center for Countering Digital Hate ... not a specific tweet mind you, but just the account
• So I had to look up the Center for Countering Digital Hate and go to their web page and then scroll through their site to find the report ...

Only to discover that it's NOT a report ... it's literally SIXTEEN lines of text and two of those lines are a quote from Zuckerberg. It's not surprising that the 'report' was hidden, given that it was an unsubstantiated claim which offered no evidence. Even more bizarre is that the counterhate website I was directed to from the CNN article is the SAME organistation as the Center for Countering Digital Hate ... but they didn't link directly to the 'report' ... instead they obfuscated by linking to their twitter account and only through manual effort could someone actually find the report. Because a report which offers no evidence is, I'm sure you will agree, is without any value.

Back to the SumOfUs report:

"About an hour into using the platform, a SumOfUs researcher was lead into a private room at a party where she was raped by a user ..."

And the evidence of this is a 28 second clip with no context, and no explanation why the researcher didn't just press the OFF button. No explanation why we didn't see any of the events leading up to this 'rape'. No evidence to support the claim that the 'researcher' was pressured to disabling the safety mechanisms.

Let's be entirely a completely clear about this: That claim is worthless. It is unsubstantiated. It is made by an organisation which has a clear vested interest in finding evidence of sexual violence in the metaverse, and the supporting 'evidence' was frankly ridiculous.

Yet as a result of this claim ...  a single search on google found articles on the web from: independent.co.uk, businessinsider.com, vice.com, refinery.com, nypost.com, wionews.com, cnet.com, dailymail.co.uk, usatoday.com, coindesk.com, vogue.co.uk, indiatimes.com, metro.co.uk, news.com.au, cnbctv18.com, fastcompany.com, albawaba.com, screenshot-media.com, timesnownews.com, thedailybeast.com, latestly.com, techstory.in, dailystar.co.uk, news18.com, dailypioneer.com, techgig.com, theguardian.com, yahoo.com, sbs.com.au, thestar.com.my, digitnews.in, torontosun.com, nationalpost.com, insidehook.com, lexology.com, morningbrew.com, newshub.co.nz, groundreport.in, stealthoptional.com, theidependent.sg, lemonde.fr, gizmodo.com, bbc.com, mixedmartialarts.com, madamnoire.com, mirror.co.uk, economictimes.com, thesource.com, indiatoday.in, techxplore.com, rt.com, hourstv.com, newsleaflets.com, nzherald.co.nz, newsrebeat.com, michigansportszone.com, hardware.com.sg, dailydot.com, zipe-education.com, kqeducationgroup.com, chicagotoday.news, metaversezeus.com, nixolympia.com, himalsanchar.com, leofinance.io, medium.com, california18.com, nationaltribune.com.au, spamchronicals.com, sfist.com, indialegallive.com, sportsgaming.win, thesun.co.uk, tatvabodhini.com, newhemitech.com, zee5.com, currency.com, unherd.com, onindia.com, euronews.com, prindleinstitute.com, naeww.com, unlad.com, izzso.com, breadnews.com, newsweek.com, hindustantimes.com, valuewalk.com, newlanes.com, ycombinator.com, newsbeezer.com, zeehindustanlive.com, lifestyle.ng, cybernews.com, urbanspotlite.com, nepwave.com, thejerseytomatopress.com, theconversation.com, newser.com, wired.com, balleralert.com, othernews.pk, lipstickalley.com, kiddaan.com, eurweb.com, ladbible.com, nairaland.com, studyiq.com, longhaircareforum.com, immersivelearning.news, newsfounded.com, dnindia.com, flipboard.com, latestfinance.news, legaldesire.com, glamormagazine.co.uk, thenextadvisor.com, hayti.com, offtopic.com, recentlyheard.com, parisbeacon.com, mondialnews.com, freepressjournal.in, livemint.com, virtualrealitytimes.com, monash.edu (A UNIVERSITY) ... and there are countless more pages of hits.

So one 'report' by an 'organisation' which might be no more than a handful of people, which has made a demonstrably unsubstantiated claim that one of their 'researchers' was raped in the metaverse has spawned countless articles about the subject. The overwhelming majority of those articles cite the SumOfUs report as if it were on the same level as the research carried out at CERN when they were seeking the Higgs Boson. Based on unsubtatiated claims, and a 28 second clip with zero context.

Now consider that people all over the planet have been told, by organisations that are supposed to be reputable sources, that the metaverse is a hotbed of sexual violence, racist activity, etc. Based on claims by faceless people with no evidence to support those claims.

Starting to wonder if perhaps your concerns about being raped in the metaverse might not be so realistic yet?

And to point out just how rife social media is to such manipulation. On the 19th of November 2020 there was a coordinated campaign of over 300 tweets ... all of which said EXACTLY the same thing ... a call for censorship:

 

That's a pretty good example of someone using the system to amplify their voice, would you not agree?

Now go to your search engine of choice and search for "high heels male gaze objectification of women"

I did and found articles from: fastcompany.com, thewomens.network, utexas.edu (a UNIVERSITY), bengalspurr.com, bodypositivealliance.org, westmont.edu (A COLLEGE), hercampus.com, atlantis-press.com, dailymail.co.uk, lizfelifestyle.com, thesoutherneronline.com, pyschologytoday.com, feminismindia.com, sayitloudspace.com,  verywellmind.com, anewseducation.com, oxfordfeministssociety.uk, wiley.com, nih.gov, sciencedirect.com ... I won't continue as there are, again, countless hits on the topic.

And remember that Meta is a huge organisation compared to LL ... Meta are able to withstand pressure that would cause LL to buckle and fold in seconds.

That's how activists can pressure a company ... without any real evidence to back up their claims, and without the actual numbers that they claim to represent.

So while I appreciate your concern - I am quite sure that I'm not paranoid. :)

 

[AnthonyJoanne]

11 hours ago, Kiera Clutterbuck said:

I have major concern for you, Anthony, and I can't see how activists would prevent a reputable new virtual world.

I responded ... it's quite a detailed and comprehensive response which should reassure you that I'm not paranoid, and which details exactly how that stuff is happening as we speak.

Unfortunately the forum has hidden the post saying that it needs to be approved by a moderator. I've reported the post asking that it be unhidden ... but whether or not it will be made available is not up to me.

Given that I spent a couple of hours on the post ... digging out details and listing steps to debunk claims in detail so as to provide you with serious evidence, and providing a screenshot of twitterbots in action ... I'm not really inclined to try to figure out what it was that the software decided was problematic.

Suffice to say that I proved my assertions to my satisfaction, and as a person with many years in academia, I have high standards in substantiating claims. :)

So while I appreciate your concern ... it is misplaced and you might want to look more closely at just how realistic are the claims that have you scared.

 

[Persephone Emerald]

18 hours ago, AnthonyJoanne said:

[snip]

Now imagine a small bunch of 'activists' deciding that LL are facilitating the exploitation of women by encouraging them to put their bodies on display for the male gaze by wearing high heels which are clearly dangerously unhealthy and are meant only to objectify women ... endless ad-nauseum. If you can't find a suitable screed saying exactly that on the internet you aren't looking. Said small bunch of activists will then use their twitter bots to repost the same tweet over and over (word for word the same, mind you ... they don't even TRY to mask it) and get articles published on the web and scream like demented banshees.

It doesn't MATTER if women WANT to buy and wear high heels because THEY like them ... such 'activists' will trot out their 'internalised misogyny' and their 'patriarchal oppression' and deny those women any agency for daring to disagree. Same way that so-called 'anti-racists' will attack any black person for daring to disagree ... and trot out such lovely terms as <censored> and <deleted>. If you can't find exactly that on the internet, you aren't looking. The very fact that I have to censor myself rather than quote those terms which you can find on plenty of tweets is indicative that the terms themselves are racist.

[snip

No problem. Just make high heels for the male avatars too. 😉