The bot war is over and the bot farmers have won :-(

[Silent Mistwalker]

41 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

A worthwhile point to make is that discussions we have here about, well, pretty much anything, can have an impact on LL's perception of how its policies are perceived. I can think of perhaps a half dozen instances at least where the SL forums became the focal point of discussion and/or protest over something, RedZone being a really salient example. And I do think that the clamour here (and probably on Twitter) did push LL to move, or at least hastened their response. The fact that LL has been so anxious to shut down certain discussions here suggests that they at least understand the influence of the forum.

Between the SL forum and SLU, you are correct.

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Silent Mistwalker said:

I have seen, in the past, where (on VS aka SLSecrets) people have been tracked down in RL. Or rather, their information. That info was used to threaten and, if I'm not mistaken, got at least one person fired from their RL job.

There are always consequences to our actions. It's the ones that we don't see that do the most damage.

 

I am looking forward to RL "retirement", when I can share my videos here and (if I can by then) do live music and share it here. 

Otherwise in general, I'm probably mostly afraid of being "ridiculed", not "outed" for anything in particular.

[EliseAnne85]

4 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Yes, I agree that "there is a bit of a panic now that is not entirely rational always."    It's fanned, to my mind, by  speculation in these forums about hypothetical wrongs hypothetical bots may or may not be committing, whether now or at some hypothetical point in the future.  

Not really using your post to quote you exactly but to find something to base my post off of.  

In regards to panic or paranoia about bots, I don't see it that way.  SL has always been a courteous world in that you opt in to whatever it may be.  Even with Bloodlines you had to accept the offer to be bitten.  At least that's the way I remember it.  But, aside from griefers, SL has always allowed US to choose what we opt in to and what we don't want to opt in to. 

I object to some things about a certain particular bots on principle not paranoia.  I just got to thinking that just lumping us all together as some paranoid old userbase is a bit of gaslighting and it's purpose may just be to get us to shut up.  Which, is one reason it's an unlevel playing field in that we are partly silenced about it.  And, two it's an unlevel playing field in that we didn't have much to guard against bots.  We had a few like checking PIOF needed and going and finding out all the names and putting those names on our security orbs list.  I felt we needed more fair tools and I think SL needs to remain opt in like it always has been.

I've brought up bots of the future because they do seem to get more intelligent as time goes by and was just wondering what sites in general are going to do.

Heck, even ChatGPT is opt in.  

(My post was not directed at Innula specifically).  

Edited March 28, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Zalificent Corvinus]

14 minutes ago, Count Burks said:

Count Burks did say 

What did the Count say?

1 hour ago, Count Burks said:

Also I encourage you to calm down in your speaking, all the aggression would make one think you have some personal agenda in all of this. Why are you so concerned? You are not running bots or spying on others are you? So why are you concerned bots are getting locked? You have nothing to gain from all of this correct?

Before you get on your horse again I encourage you to read section 6.2 of the Linden Lab TOS.

I will put this here for you directly from the TOS.

Oh yes, that's what the Count said... Blatantly suggesting I'm a Bot Farmer, because I disagree with worthless ideas to fix the non-urgent un-problem, ideas that WILL be WORSE than the thing they are supposed to "Fix". The spamming of the ToS as if to warn me to cease my alledged illegal bot farmer behaviour, was a nice touch.

Jog on.

 

[Count Burks]

2 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

What did the Count say?

Oh yes, that's what the Count said... Blatantly suggesting I'm a Bot Farmer, because I disagree with worthless ideas to fix the non-urgent un-problem, ideas that WILL be WORSE than the thing they are supposed to "Fix". The spamming of the ToS as if to warn me to cease my alledged illegal bot farmer behaviour, was a nice touch.

Jog on.

 

You appear to be suffering from an issue where you perceive everything as a personal attack on yourself and need to constantly defend yourself even when you have no reason to do so.

I make a reference to the TOS to show you that collecting and harvesting data on Second Life users was never allowed in the first place and you call this spamming.

Anger management is a beautiful thing, let me round up the conversation with you like that.

[Istelathis]

17 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

There's this nice little thing, usually called a skip button, that allows you to continue registering without entering a phone number. Some platforms finally figured out that not everyone has a cell phone and not everyone wants or needs one. Or qualifies for a free government phone you have to use at least once a month to call your own landline because there isn't anyone to call. Seems rather pointless to me when I don't do business online (banking, buying products/services etc.). The only way to keep my info safe.

There was no skip button, but it now asks for phone number or email address when I try to create an account.  Facebook suspended my new account immediately when I register with a new email account created to test it out, and then proceeded to require a phone number for verification to revoke the suspension.  

😨They knew I was not genuinely the person I was creating the account for, I should have used the same name in Outlook as I did for Facebook.  Bleh... my test to see if I could register for facebook via email was a failure, due to my own foolishness.  I wanted to see if there were any limitations without providing a phone number.  I'm too lazy to try again.

To top it all off, now I feel dirty.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

7 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

It is a discussion thread, not a "these are the new rules" thread. There is a difference for those who understand the difference. The heavy sarcasm isn't actually contributing anything of real value.

A discussion thread where certain people, are SUGGESTING their ideas for what the "new rules" should be. Many of the suggestions are technically inept, some are downright awful. 

That's why we "discuss"  the bloody awful ideas rather than letting them stand unchallenged, you know, that old adage about how if "Good" keeps it's mouth shut and does nothing, then "Evil" wins.

 

Awful ideas that do more harm to SL than good, MUST be challenged, less the Powers that Be, assume we all support that rubbish and implement it.

 

What's that thing you often put in your posts, about challenging "Group Think"?

The Group Think here is "bots are evil and must be stopped, especially all the bots we don't actually have any evidence of, that probably don't exist"

 

Remember the threads where idiots claimed that over half the concurrency figures were "obviously bots" because they compared the concurrency figures from a mid Tuesday grid roll, that were 3.5k down on usual, with the concurrency for peak time at the weekend, and falsely concluded that there were 30,000 bots knocked off the grid that day instead of about 3500, not all of whom were bots at all, as the viewer that failed is also used by real people with low end mobile laptops.

 

Group Think...

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

There was no skip button, but it now asks for phone number or email address when I try to create an account.  Facebook suspended my new account immediately when I register with a new email account created to test it out, and then proceeded to require a phone number for verification to revoke the suspension.  

😨They knew I was not genuinely the person I was creating the account for, I should have used the same name in Outlook as I did for Facebook.  Bleh... my test to see if I could register for facebook via email was a failure, due to my own foolishness.  I wanted to see if there were any limitations without providing a phone number.  I'm too lazy to try again.

To top it all off, now I feel dirty.

Sorry for giggling.

You said it yourself:

Quote

it now asks for phone number or email address

I never use a phone number, only an email address.

[Rowan Amore]

4 minutes ago, Count Burks said:

You appear to be suffering from an issue where you perceive everything as a personal attack on yourself and need to constantly defend yourself even when you have no reason to do so.

I make a reference to the TOS to show you that collecting and harvesting data on Second Life users was never allowed in the first place and you call this spamming.

Anger management is a beautiful thing, let me round up the conversation with you like that.

Just since you're the one quoting the ToS, I found this tidbit interesting and if enforced, would leave quite a large group of SL residents also open to ARs.  I suppose we can allow LL to pick and choose which parts of the ToS we feel should be enforced based on our own preferences.

(vi) Post, display or transmit any Content or conduct or host any activity that is sexually explicit, or intensely violent.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

Just since you're the one quoting the ToS, I found this tidbit interesting and if enforced, would leave quite a large group of SL residents also open to ARs.  I suppose we can allow LL to pick and choose which parts of the ToS we feel should be enforced based on our own preferences.

(vi) Post, display or transmit any Content or conduct or host any activity that is sexually explicit, or intensely violent.

Noooooo! Some of those people might be tenants of his, that would adversely affect his earnings! We cant ban paying customers for that, just the filthy bots right?

How many of these filthy bots are out there right now, hooking up with other bots for obscene 3-somes, 4-somes and more-somes with other filthy bots, on sex beds they don't own in other peoples parcels?

 

Something MUST be done to FIX this URGENT PROBLEM!

[Ardy Lay]

Do bots buy shoes?  How much money does a typical bot spend in Second Life?  Linden Lab knows how much money each Second Life account has "spent".  Linden Lab has transaction records that tell many things about transactions.  I doubt that your typical Second Life Resident has a transaction history that could be mistaken for the typical bot.  Oh no!  Now that it's been mentioned, will bots start buying things in Second Life?

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

that is sexually explicit, or intensely violent.

I guess "both" is ok!

[Ardy Lay]

Oh, I just remembered the "report" I got from Linden Lab telling how many kilometers I have traveled, how many times I have teleported, how many regions I have visited, how much time I spent logged in, and a list of the parcels I spent the most of that time on.  It was weird yet comforting at the same time.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

Do bots buy shoes?  How much money does a typical bot spend in Second Life?  Linden Lab knows how much money each Second Life account has "spent".  Linden Lab has transaction records that tell many things about transactions.  I doubt that your typical Second Life Resident has a transaction history that could be mistaken for the typical bot.  Oh no!  Now that it's been mentioned, will bots start buying things in Second Life?

Apparently, they are ahead of you... All those filthy bots that TP around the weekend sales visiting more than 8 regions in an hour hunting cheap shoes!

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

hunting cheap shoes!

They're just doing their part. "Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead!"

 

[Ceka Cianci]

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

A worthwhile point to make is that discussions we have here about, well, pretty much anything, can have an impact on LL's perception of how its policies are perceived. I can think of perhaps a half dozen instances at least where the SL forums became the focal point of discussion and/or protest over something, RedZone being a really salient example. And I do think that the clamour here (and probably on Twitter) did push LL to move, or at least hastened their response. The fact that LL has been so anxious to shut down certain discussions here suggests that they at least understand the influence of the forum.

ETA: I have to fix something in this because I brain farted and used the wrong term for kind of information that was getting gathered.. It was Personal information and not Private information that was gathered..So I fixed it to where it correctly now says personal information rather than Private information.. I knew there was something bothering me about it after I was finished, then it came to me.. Sorry about that..

Personal information is information that cannot identify you the RL user, where Private information can identify the real you..

The thing with RedZone is, it's different than what was being presented on that bot site..

RZ was removed because it was gathering  personal information on its database and then sharing that personal information with it's clients using it's products database.. So if someone was in the database and banned in one parcel they could be banned in the whole network.. Not just them but also any account they had showing up that had matching information used to connect the two accounts or more..

Connecting those two accounts together and then sharing that information with their clients/SL users is what got them removed. Because they were sharing personal user information with other users in second life without the consent of the user being violated.

Personal information sharing is what did them in, not public..

Here is the scary part that I don't want to see showing up again because of roamer bots getting open SL information..

Those sploder protections and scanners from RZ and also voodoo and all the others making those kinds of protections, were forms of ways users were finding  to deal with bots and copybotters of stores and so on..

They were users finding ways to deal with bots.

I don't have the energy for another RZ war.. hehehe

Edited March 28, 2023 by Ceka Cianci
Replaced Private information with, Personal information.

[EliseAnne85]

35 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Just since you're the one quoting the ToS, I found this tidbit interesting and if enforced, would leave quite a large group of SL residents also open to ARs.  I suppose we can allow LL to pick and choose which parts of the ToS we feel should be enforced based on our own preferences.

(vi) Post, display or transmit any Content or conduct or host any activity that is sexually explicit, or intensely violent.

That TOS number VI isn't the whole term.  That one you posted above might have been written for the forum maybe?  Or where did you get it from?

This is what the TOS regarding Adult Content says:

(iv) Post, display or transmit any Content that is explicitly sexual, intensely violent or otherwise designated as Adult under our Maturity ratings, except as set forth in those ratings.

[benchthis]

[Dorientje Woller]

2 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Noooooo! Some of those people might be tenants of his, that would adversely affect his earnings! We cant ban paying customers for that, just the filthy bots right?

How many of these filthy bots are out there right now, hooking up with other bots for obscene 3-somes, 4-somes and more-somes with other filthy bots, on sex beds they don't own in other peoples parcels?

 

Something MUST be done to FIX this URGENT PROBLEM!

Oh, please, keep on going to pull everything into the sillyness of it. If you see how easy the YouTube account of Linus Tech Tips got hacked and how much damage there has been done, it isn't a far stretch to imaging what scripted bots might do to Linden Labs and its residents in Second Life. But fine, put your head in the sand, keep on mocking the possible dangers. But don't start whining the moment Linden Labs or yourself become victim of it, because you won't get any symphaty.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 minute ago, Dorientje Woller said:

Oh, please, keep on going to pull everything into the sillyness of it. If you see how easy the YouTube account of Linus Tech Tips got hacked and how much damage there has been done, it isn't a far stretch to imaging what scripted bots might do to Linden Labs and its residents in Second Life. But fine, put your head in the sand, keep on mocking the possible dangers. But don't start whining the moment Linden Labs or yourself become victim of it, because you won't get any symphaty.

There is NO connection between an in-world bot recording what mesh body you wear, or what region you are on, and ACTUAL HUMAN HACKERS, cracking a web service customer database.

NONE.

Oh, please keep on spreading deliberately dis-informational,  panic inducing, fear mongering, technically incorrect, BS propaganda.

I certainly don't give you any sympathy, nor would I want any from you.

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, EliseAnne85 said:

That TOS number VI isn't the whole term.  That one you posted above might have been written for the forum maybe?  Or where did you get it from?

This is what the TOS regarding Adult Content says:

(iv) Post, display or transmit any Content that is explicitly sexual, intensely violent or otherwise designated as Adult under our Maturity ratings, except as set forth in those ratings.

It's from the linden lab TOS  section 6.1.

 

 

 

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

That TOS number VI isn't the whole term.  That one you posted above might have been written for the forum maybe?  Or where did you get it from?

This is what the TOS regarding Adult Content says:

(iv) Post, display or transmit any Content that is explicitly sexual, intensely violent or otherwise designated as Adult under our Maturity ratings, except as set forth in those ratings.

It's under 6.1 of the LL ToS...

Right above the 6.2 clause that Count posted.

 

6.1 You will not post or transmit prohibited Content, including any Content that is illegal, harassing or violates any person's rights.

You agree that you will not:

(i) Post, display, or transmit Content that violates any law or the rights of any third party, including without limitation Intellectual Property Rights. We reserve the right to request at any time proof of permissions in a form acceptable to us. Failure to provide such proof may lead to, among other things, removal of such Content from the Service;

(ii) Impersonate any person or entity without their consent, or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation, or if you are an adult, impersonate a minor for the purpose of interacting with a minor using the Service;

(iii) Stalk, harass, or engage in any sexual, suggestive, lewd, lascivious, or otherwise inappropriate conduct with minors on the Service;

(iv) Post, display, or transmit Content (including any communication(s) with employees of Linden Lab) that is harmful, threatening or harassing, defamatory, libelous, false, inaccurate, misleading, or invades another person's privacy;

(v) Post, display, or transmit Content that is obscene, hateful, involves terrorism, or is racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; or

(vi) Post, display or transmit any Content or conduct or host any activity that is sexually explicit, or intensely violent.

Any violation by you of the terms of this Section may result in immediate termination of your Accounts without any refund or other compensation.

 

 

Edited March 28, 2023 by Rowan Amore

[Love Zhaoying]

I like how there are (apparently) different versions of the TOS!!

Edited March 28, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Rowan Amore]

5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I like how there are (apparently) different versions of the TOS!!

You should also check out the Content Guidelines which are linked at the bottom of the ToS.  

My point was...there are things in the ToS that are, in my opinion, blatantly disregarded by residents AND LL employees.  We/They pick and choose what's allowed based on what impact it has on SL.  Sex sells!  Random bit of useless info posted on an obscure website doesn't.  Which would you get rid of?

[Ceka Cianci]

10 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I like how there are (apparently) different versions of the TOS!!

I think the linden lab one came around when they were expanding and doing all those other games and things..

Each platform having it's own and then the main one for everything..