Open letter to Linden Lab: Enforcing policies?

[Andred Darwin]

2 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

The bots aren't getting the info from the web profiles, they get it from in world Legacy profiles.

 

Either way, if a profile area privacy is set to Friends only and still showing to anyone, all it would take is to open a JIRA, and everyone make a comment, follow, etc... I'm sure LL would respond in some way... 

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Andred Darwin said:

Well... in this case, anyone have to agree with you... if yours was set to Friends only... shame on LL, the system is not working as designed. (Friends only has to mean Friends only! Do you know if there is a Jira for it already? )

It actually never worked and only applied to web profiles .. which didn't see wide spread use as Firestorm refused to implement them, choosing instead to stick with the classic profile interface. So rather than extend the privacy options to the classic profile data, LL chose to do .. nothing .. in a "not our problem" sort of way.

However, the Linden's own KB articles does state there is privacy control for your data, and that you and a lot of others are under the impression that those settings were actually being honored, is important.

The expectation of privacy has been set, the ball dropped, and it's only becoming apparent to people now someone else picked the ball up and walked off with it.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, Andred Darwin said:

Either way, if a profile area privacy is set to Friends only and still showing to anyone, all it would take is to open a JIRA, and everyone make a comment, follow, etc... I'm sure LL would respond in some way... 

You will get a technical response saying that web profiles are considered depreciated. Thanks for reminding us to update our documentation, honestly no one here even knew we had any. Have a nice day.

[Andred Darwin]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

It actually never worked and only applied to web profiles .. which didn't see wide spread use as Firestorm refused to implement them, choosing instead to stick with the classic profile interface. So rather than extend the privacy options to the classic profile data, LL chose to do .. nothing .. in a "not our problem" sort of way.

However, the Linden's own KB articles does state there is privacy control for your data, and that you and a lot of others are under the impression that those settings were actually being honored, is important.

The expectation of privacy has been set, the ball dropped, and it's only becoming apparent to people now someone else picked the ball up and walked off with it.

 

Makes sense, let's move the ball then... let's open a JIRA ticket to fix privacy at profiles...  (mine is completely open, would be great to provide examples.... )

Edited January 24, 2023 by Andred Darwin

[Ceka Cianci]

5 minutes ago, Andred Darwin said:

Either way, if a profile area privacy is set to Friends only and still showing to anyone, all it would take is to open a JIRA, and everyone make a comment, follow, etc... I'm sure LL would respond in some way... 

But in world profiles don't have those filter settings.. Those are online profile settings..

If I look at your profile while I am in world, about the only thing you are hiding is groups and what information you decide not to put on it..

If they are using the in world browser and looking at online profiles then ya, those filters would work, but not the one I get from right clicking on you and getting your profile.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[Silent Mistwalker]

48 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

I'm not sure but I think all agents in Second Life are user accounts. I don't think the servers really have a way of telling if any given account is run by a human or a Nefarious Bot. That's why "scripted agent" is a flag that has to be set manually.

They are. That's part of the problem. They can also be considered scripted objects since an avatar is an object. 

Most people think of bots as an object that has been scripted to do certain tasks or things. Bots can come in the form of an object or the form of an avatar. It's not the form that makes a bot, it's the scripting.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Andred Darwin said:

Makes sense, let's move the ball them... let's open a JIRA ticket to fix privacy at profiles...  (mine is completely open, would be great to provide examples.... )

The JIRA is, sadly, the long grass where good intentions go to die.

If you want to engage with LL on this issue then user groups is probably the best place too start.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[Nalates Urriah]

19 hours ago, Tommy Linden said:

Hey Everyone,

I am sure it comes as no surprise to see me commenting in this thread. As you are all aware, there have been multiple other threads closed on the topic of a very specific group of bots. We are not trying to prevent you from discussing the bot policy in general, which is why we chose to leave this thread open for discussion. 

As we previously mentioned, all of the information that is currently being displayed on a third party website, is all accessible via lsl script call, and is considered to be public information. I understand there are some of you that don't agree with that decision, but at this time that information is considered public.

I will however say that information such as your real name, your email address, etc. that are considered to be Personal Identifying Information (PII) is not made public, and we would never make that information public. If however you put that type of public information in your profile, that is a choice that you are making.

I would also like to note, that there seems to be a lot of speculation about what gets actioned vs. what doesn't, and that I can understand why it seems we are enforcing the rules on the forum more strictly than we do in world. A locking of a thread, is quite visible, the suspension of an account is far less visible (and before anyone asks, no, we won't be sharing when we suspend another Residents account), just something to think about.

So if you can not keep it on topic, we will close this thread as well. I don't want to do that though, and would much rather see the conversation continue, as I am following along. 

While posting specific enforcement actions is not a good thing, you might want to consider posting some general stats on enforcement. This month 666 bans and 7 perma-bans and 42 Bad AV reprimands...

It might shift people's thinking and would be a counter to "the Lindens never do anything..." claims.

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, Nalates Urriah said:

It might shift people's thinking and would be a counter to "the Lindens never do anything..." claims.

We had the police blotter, it was broadly useless and tended to reinforce the claim that abuse reports just went to /dev/null

[Ceka Cianci]

8 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

 

They get it from Profiles - period. The Web Profiles are being phased out (even the most recent LL Official Viewer no longer uses them - at least not as a default).

Those Web Profile settings are meaningless and have been since their inception.

I'm aware of that, but was showing that isn't the only place to access profiles from in world..  They aren't filtered in world, unless they are using the browser to look at online profiles.

[belindacarson]

10 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

It actually never worked and only applied to web profiles .. which didn't see wide spread use as Firestorm refused to implement them, choosing instead to stick with the classic profile interface. So rather than extend the privacy options to the classic profile data, LL chose to do .. nothing .. in a "not our problem" sort of way.

However, the Linden's own KB articles does state there is privacy control for your data, and that you and a lot of others are under the impression that those settings were actually being honored, is important.

The expectation of privacy has been set, the ball dropped, and it's only becoming apparent to people now someone else picked the ball up and walked off with it.

 

it also tells you that it appliesto inworld search only, and that your profile is visible via an external search engine.

 

so it's always been like that.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

We had the police blotter, it was broadly useless and tended to reinforce the claim that abuse reports just went to /dev/null

A "Second Life Police Blotter" would increase sales of "eye bleach"!

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

A "Second Life Police Blotter" would increase sales of "eye bleach"!

It was always trivial stuff .. returned some random prims. blah blah blah.

The only thing it really communicated was the whole operation was one person primarily engaged with other duties.

6 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

But in world profiles don't have those filter settings.. Those are online profile settings..

How things work, how they should work, and how people expect them to work are very different things.

I would argue that the privacy settings should extend to all your profile data everywhere you put it.

It seems somewhat pointless to restrict method A of getting the data only to have method B without any restrictions.

[Andred Darwin]

28 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

 

They get it from Profiles - period. The Web Profiles are being phased out (even the most recent LL Official Viewer no longer uses them - at least not as a default).

Those Web Profile settings are meaningless and have been since their inception.

I think the biggest issue was that they were too slow to load.

@Tommy Linden  @Reed Linden ... would you be able to get more info and clarify Privacy permissions on the web and in-world profiles after the new update?  Are they linked, do they supposed to work, do they actually mean anything?

Also about websites scrapping profiles:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Residents'_privacy_rights

Specially the line: ( Question is in relation to privacy settings and how they can still get that data ) 

• Provided via systems not controlled by Linden Lab; such systems are beyond the scope of the Second Life Terms of Service. For example, "Someone's posting Bob Avatar's address and photograph on their web page."

Edited January 24, 2023 by Andred Darwin

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Andred Darwin said:

I think the biggest issue was that they were too slow to load.

@Tommy Linden  @Reed Linden ... would you be able to get more info and clarify Privacy permissions on the web and in-world profiles after the new update?  Are they linked, do they supposed to work, do they actually mean anything?

and if they don't apply to the new profiles, can that be corrected so they actually do.

[Innula Zenovka]

1 hour ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I would expect scripters to disagree. I'm not the one that defined bots as scripted agents. We all know what a scripted object is, but how is agent defined? Is it restricted to just avatars or is it also applied to objects? 

In AW the Xelagot bots could terraform whole regions without anyone being inworld or online. It was not an account. It was a scripted agent that followed a set of instructions, the same as Tyche's bots. The set of instructions is the script or at least, contained within the script. Yes, the bots had to be logged in but they were not user accounts.

http://www.imatowns.com/xelagot/index.html

I don't know about AW, but in SL, we know that, as far as LL are concerned, 

Quote

Bots, or scripted agents, are avatars controlled by computer programs rather than people. For more information, see What is a bot?.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Bot_policy

 

[Ceka Cianci]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

How things work, how they should work, and how people expect them to work are very different things.

I would argue that the privacy settings should extend to all your profile data everywhere you put it.

It seems somewhat pointless to restrict method A of getting the data only to have method B without any restrictions.

That wasn't defending how they work, that was saying how they work..

Also, I would disagree that in world profiles should be filtered in world  like online profiles are  outside of it..

Now we are going to start looking at cutting and chopping out in world socializing things because of this?

Why not just eliminate profiles altogether  to make sure everyone feels safe, rather than just making sure to not put something on there you don't want getting out there.. Because that was always a risk anyways from anyone that felt like grabbing it and running with it..

Chop away, I'll probably be out of here in a year or two anyways.. This is getting silly now.

 

 

 

 

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

31 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I don't know about AW, but in SL, we know that, as far as LL are concerned, 

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Bot_policy

 

Quote

avatar

Representation of a Resident or bot in the Second Life virtual world.

It isn't the representation that makes the bot, it's the scripts.

[Phil Deakins]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

We all know what a scripted object is, but how is agent defined? Is it restricted to just avatars or is it also applied to objects? 

Just avatars. LL refers to avatars as agents. 'Agent' never means 'object'. In LSL an object is sometimes an agent, as we have seen, but never the other way round.

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Just avatars. LL refers to avatars as agents. 'Agent' never means 'object'. In LSL an object is sometimes an agent, as we have seen, but never the other way round.

It's still a bot. The agent is scripted. Again, my point has been it is not the form it takes that determines if something is or isn't a bot, it's the scripts/scripting.

[Paul Hexem]

6 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

It's still a bot. The agent is scripted. Again, my point has been it is not the form it takes that determines if something is or isn't a bot, it's the scripts/scripting.

Based on the definitions in SL, a bot will only ever be an agent. A scripted object will never be a bot.

[CaithLynnSayes]

So, We're 16 pages in now. Can anyone point to a specific case where a bot has exposed someone's real life information?

This isn't a gotcha. I'm actually really curious. Aside from RedZone obviously, i mean recently, perhaps the BBots...

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

So, We're 16 pages in now. Can anyone point to a specific case where a bot has exposed someone's real life information?

This isn't a gotcha. I'm actually really curious. Aside from RedZone obviously, i mean recently, perhaps the BBots...

That wasn't the question in the OP, just checking..you're asking separately from the question in the Original Post. 

Correct?

[CaithLynnSayes]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

That wasn't the question in the OP, just checking..you're asking separately from the question in the Original Post. 

Correct?

Yes.

[Innula Zenovka]

3 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

It's still a bot. The agent is scripted. Again, my point has been it is not the form it takes that determines if something is or isn't a bot, it's the scripts/scripting.

To expand on Phil's point,  the function llGetObjectDetails returns data on both objects and agents, and includes particular flags that are valid for one but not the other (OBJECT_ACCOUNT_LEVEL applies only to agents, for example, .  However, there are agent-specific functions like llGetAgentSize(), llRequestAgentData(), or llGetAgentList(), which return data on avatars and bots, but not objects, scripted or otherwise.