New Feature: Scripted Agent Estate Access Discussion

[M Peccable]

8 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

What a good idea! I'll get to work on my next bots system

Hmmm. Seems to me you'd have to get each bot to opt-in to your system in order for your system to be in compliance. Good luck with that!  

Otherwise the bot would AR you, lol. Before you know it, LL would need a team of bots at their headquarters in order to handle all the AR's coming in from in-world bots. Eventually, they would unite and become known as Skynet. Then, as you already know, humanity as we know it would cease to exist.

All because of Phil's bots system!

Edited April 6, 2023 by M Peccable

[Phil Deakins]

2 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

You could program a bot to go visit each parcel and report back which ones and at what height it gets ejected and the manner of the ejection?

You'd need a lot of bots to keep the data up to date, because security devices are sometimes turned on and sometimes turned off. And, if others are anything like mine, different areas would be protected at different times without there being any regularity. I really don't think it would be a realistic venture.

[bunboxmomo]

18 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I think, the fact the discussion has abated, means most on the Forum have moved beyond denial and anger, to some form of acceptance over the change.

I can't speak for those "newcomers" to the Forum who apparently only care about this topic, but they are quiet too.

Conclusion: The new Scripted Agent controls are a qualified success!!

Have been following.
Just burned out of SL over the experience of this thread.

I'm glad voices like Scyllia's exist in this thread which raise the same things being said, and I've been also glad to see Quartz Mole bring some rationality to the discussion, but I feel there were a few individuals who I wont name who's attitudes towards other people I feel does not foster healthy discussion and I'm concerned about the prevelance of those views or attitudes towards fellow residents.

On a personal note, While I am glad to see deny_bots, I am concerend about how a stealth data collection "bot" would be easy to make from a pure LSL approach and used as an attachment and people thinking this needs a bot to work, has resulted in disprotionate targeting of legitimate uses on a speculative nature that "stop the bots and secure my privacy" or as scyllia put it well before a non-human based solution, that ultimately in the context of unauthorised data collection goes missed without changes to LSL and the way data is handled in SL to allow resident more granular control over data exposure from their persons and land, and a hyper-fixation on scripted agents is contributing to a "missing of targets" when it comes the issue of user privacy in my opinion.

I still remain unchanged in my views that residents should be allowed to to choose to deny (or perhaps allow bots onto their land), but should also be able to control "data leakage" via a *true" private parcel settings, with requried changes to LSL and data structures even if a long term project to allow for human solutions rather than a top down approach.

I do also still remain concerned and disheartened about the amount of assumptions of malintent upon fellow residents via justification of speculation as fact that I saw in this thread. I'm in support of the changes in scripted agent access, but it has been disheartening to see rampant assumptions of bad faith in each other.

Edited April 6, 2023 by bunboxmomo

[Silent Mistwalker]

17 hours ago, Istelathis said:

I think mostly everyone has said what they wanted to say, and repeated it as many times as they wanted to repeat it, and well.. that is the end.

From here we just hurl insults at one another, or just repeat ourselves, perhaps we just go off topic.. alternatively, we wait for a new thread and repeat the same things we have said in this thread. 

So anyway, how's 'bout them Braves?

 

 

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

17 hours ago, M Peccable said:

"Protect yourself from what?" would be my question.

Invasive practices.

[Love Zhaoying]

9 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I am finally integrating / synthesizing the different issues with Mainland vs. Private Regions and the new functionality. Let me know if this sounds correct or if I am wrong in some ways.

a) Since there are LSL functions that allow scanning from other parcels and other nearby regions, merely denying entry into a parcel will not prevent scripted agents from scanning data in a parcel.

b) Unless the new "deny Region entry to Scripted Agents" feature also prevents Scripted Agents from using the same  LSL functions from neighboring regions, denying entry to a Region would not prevent Scripted Agents from collecting data on mainland Regions with the new settings.

c) The new "deny access to Scripted Agents" feature works for Private Regions because there is no way to scan / use the LSL functions that collect data from "Neighboring" Regions, because they are "Private".

d) "Modified viewers" / "scraping" directly from viewers is completely outside of this new functionality, and in fact is completely irrelevant to Scripted Agents.

e) The above a),  b) and c) are PART of why "deny entry to Scripted Agents for Estates" only applies to Private Regions and the entirety of Bellisseria: denying entry would not prevent any data collection, at all. Bellisseria, being a collective of Regions as a "continent", assumedly does not include the possibility of using the LSL "scanning" functions from neighboring non-Belliseria Regions.

No replies on the above post, perhaps it was lost in all the noise, or nobody really wants to be "serious" or "on topic".

[M Peccable]

Just now, Silent Mistwalker said:

Invasive practices.

I'm sorry, but wearing a watch that informs you that a registered bot is near you in no way protects you from invasive practices.

[Silent Mistwalker]

14 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

This is not about free scripts.  Free scripts are free scripts one can make all kinds of things with free scripts.  

You are saying free scripts for stuff people don't necessarily need.

Using Bloodlines as my example of the garlic necklace shows that the garlic necklace is a need if you don't want to be bothered by Bloodlines.  It would be the same need for a security orb to protect one's self from bots coming in their home or whatever.  And, then the next bots come along and one needs to buy a security orb to protect one's self from those bots, and so on and so on and so on.  That's a scam.  Creating a nuisance and then making people pay to stop it.

For anyone who wasn't on the grid at the time or maybe you were but never heard about it. What Elise said bout the Bloodlines garlic necklace actually happened. There should never have been a need for the necklace in the first place, much less have to pay for one BEFORE the uproar and he was forced to make his version free. Someone else had created a free one before the Bloodlines creator/owner ever made one.

[Rowan Amore]

3 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

While I disagree that someone could use creating a nuisance and then having to buy protection from said nuisance wouldn't be a scam.  Unsuspecting and naïve people could fall for it.

The thing with unregistered bots though, is they'd have to "out" themselves that they are unregistered if they published the data and want anyone to read or use said data, such as buying the most popular new items.  Plus, sending IM's to sell stuff is spam and against the TOS, so I can't see unregistered bots contacting people about "their data" wherein said unregistered bots want to sell residents 'something'.  They'd have to out themselves they are unregistered and the scraping data seems a complete waste of their time.  

If I were an unscrupulous person scraping data using unregistered agents, I certainly wouldn't post about it with said unregistered accounts.  I'd post anonymously.  You don't need any type of registered or unregistered account to spam people for sales.  That's what people make throw away accounts for.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Rowan Amore

[EliseAnne85]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

If I were an unscrupulous person scraping data using unregistered agents, I certainly wouldn't post about it with said unregistered accounts.  I post anonymously.  You don't need any type of registered or unregistered account to spam people for sales.  That's what people make throw away accounts for.

Yeah, I thought the same thing after I posted.  

[bunboxmomo]

2 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

For anyone who wasn't on the grid at the time or maybe you were but never heard about it. What Elise said bout the Bloodlines garlic necklace actually happened. There should never have been a need for the necklace in the first place, much less have to pay for one BEFORE the uproar and he was forced to make his version free. Someone else had created a free one before the Bloodlines creator/owner ever made one.

Lol I remember this.
In the MLP community we had to outright ban bloodlines, because we had vampires coming to our sims to prey on users who had signed up for SL *exclusively* for our community who didn't know better and would go "Hey do you want some cool free vampire teeth? :D"

I remember scripting a "Surface to Vampire Missile System" that would scan for bloodlines HUD attachments and then fire a novelty missile at the user, executing a ban from estate command after the calculated time to impact had elapsed to make something more comical and fun out of the situation for our sim visitors.

Edited April 6, 2023 by bunboxmomo

[Silent Mistwalker]

10 hours ago, Istelathis said:

What we need is more bots, bots that will scan for unregistered bots and AR them.  They will roam the grid, in pursuit of the renegade bots.  I just hope that the renegade bots do not create more bots to AR the AR bots, for misusing the AR feature.. because then we will need more bots to AR the bots reporting the AR bots.  

I just ARed your butt bot!

🤭

[bunboxmomo]

2 minutes ago, bunboxmomo said:

Lol I remember this.
In the MLP community we had to outright ban bloodlines, because we had vampires coming to our sims to prey on users who had signed up for SL *exclusively* for our community who didn't know better and would go "Hey do you want some cool free vampire teeth? :D"

I remember scripting a "Surface to Vampire Missile System" that would scan for bloodlines HUD attachments and then fire a novelty missile at the user, executing a ban from estate command after the calculated time to impact had elapsed to make something more comical and fun out of the situation for our sim visitors.

I suddenly realise I could modify this script and sell a "Surface to Bot Missile Based Ban System" if we got scripted agent flag access in LSL and probably make a lot of L$. 🤔

[bunboxmomo]

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Absolutely.  The question is:  Can they?

The short answer is no they cannot due to how SL data structures and sim data works for a viable outcome.

The long answer is no they cannot due to how SL data structures and sim data works for a viable outcome, but the limitations that exist that prevent this are because private parcels are not "truly" private, and in the interest of better resident choice over their own land it would be worth a project working on how this data is handled so that "private" parcels are *actually* private on the data level, not just "what is rendered" level.

This is would take some work, but it would be worth, not because of bots, but because a user who clicks "private parcel" pprobably has the mistaken assumption that they can't be seen, and this should be fixed in how data is presetned to viewers and LSL so that the actual result of that tick, reflects what is actually expected when it's clicked.
This would have the side effect of then making parcel level bot restrictions viable.

In the interm, scripted agent visibility via LSL for LSL solutions to this would be good.

So I would like to see an internal team at LL established to produce an internal brief on the viability of the idea of bringing into line that disconnect between UX and actuality, and what challenges would be involved, what limitations, what impact and if this is viable or not, and then if so perhaps implement this.

A team dedicated to evaluating modernisation of parts of code that by their nature present challenges to larger operation if changed, that aims to evaluate potential changes and explore the options of that, would be nice to see at LL, as there are many points of SL's structure and codebase that could benefit from this that are generally left alone because of how deep the code is or how much depends on it and how much would potentially break with changes done without proper planning and these parts of the codebase often present additional obstacles to feature implementation, such as in this case parcel level controls

I know coffee protested quite hard about this, but this is a thing that many production standard projects do and old heavily depended on spaghetti code is often reivewed and changed bit by bit over time to effect change, where changing parts of codebase can be potentially project breaking, such as is the case here.

The concept is not that wild and it'd be nice to see a team exist at LL for this like at other developer teams, and if one already exists, it would be nice to see one address this topic.

Edited April 6, 2023 by bunboxmomo

[EliseAnne85]

4 minutes ago, bunboxmomo said:

The short answer is no they cannot due to how SL data structures and sim data works for a viable outcome.

Okay, I know nothing about how SL data structures and sim data works, but I have a question.  

Is there a possibility of Caspervend being able to do it?  Such as, a part of the Caspervend menu selection could have deny_bot or allow_bot?  Or allow_scripted_agent or deny_scripted_agent.

And, if that would do nothing either for a happy medium to this whole situation, what would?  My main concern is bots popping into people's private homes.  Let's deal with that first as I'd think bots popping into newbies homes could be especially harmful to SL.

Can you imagine a newbie rents their first home and they are all excited and ready to decorate their own first virtual home, and then come in "some bots".  It would be a total turn-off, I'd think.  Just not good for SL.

Data collection leave out for now.  How do we keep them out of parcels and mainland?

[Aethelwine]

36 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

You'd need a lot of bots to keep the data up to date, because security devices are sometimes turned on and sometimes turned off. And, if others are anything like mine, different areas would be protected at different times without there being any regularity. I really don't think it would be a realistic venture.

True if wanting and trying for something complete, but perhaps limited to searching at a particular height like 300m weekly could be sufficient to be of value?

Just mapping parcel settings would be even less intensive, the bot would just need to find somewhere in the region it could sit for length of time it takes to map the region.

I suppose the point I am making with this is that even with my limited imagination and understanding I can see a value from bots scanning regions on mainland that has nothing whatsoever to do with tracking profiles or harvesting profile data. Something I would have thought would be easier to do without sending bots anywhere.

[bunboxmomo]

8 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Okay, I know nothing about how SL data structures and sim data works, but I have a question.  

Is there a possibility of Caspervend being able to do it?  Such as, a part of the Caspervend menu selection could have deny_bot or allow_bot?  Or allow_scripted_agent or deny_scripted_agent.

And, if that would do nothing either for a happy medium to this whole situation, what would?  My main concern is bots popping into people's private homes.  Let's deal with that first as I'd think bots popping into newbies homes could be especially harmful to SL.

Can you imagine a newbie rents their first home and they are all excited and ready to decorate their own first virtual home, and then come in "some bots".  It would be a total turn-off, I'd think.  Just not good for SL.

Data collection leave out for now.  How do we keep them out of parcels and mainland?

Quote

...

In the interm, scripted agent visibility via LSL for LSL solutions to this would be good.

...

So I would like to see an internal team at LL established to produce an internal brief on the viability of the idea of bringing into line that disconnect between UX and actuality, and what challenges would be involved, what limitations, what impact and if this is viable or not, and then if so perhaps implement this.

A team dedicated to evaluating modernisation of parts of code that by their nature present challenges to larger operation if changed, that aims to evaluate potential changes and explore the options of that, would be nice to see at LL, as there are many points of SL's structure and codebase that could benefit from this that are generally left alone because of how deep the code is or how much depends on it and how much would potentially break with changes done without proper planning and these parts of the codebase often present additional obstacles to feature implementation, such as in this case parcel level controls

...

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by bunboxmomo

[Aethelwine]

10 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Can you imagine a newbie rents their first home and they are all excited and ready to decorate their own first virtual home, and then come in "some bots".  It would be a total turn-off, I'd think.  Just not good for SL.

Data collection leave out for now.  How do we keep them out of parcels and mainland?

I imagine their reaction would be no different than if the avatar was using an old landmark or had double clicked the map to travel there. The solution is to set a landing point or add security surely. Bot banning is a distraction not a solution.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Aethelwine

[Silent Mistwalker]

43 minutes ago, M Peccable said:

I'm sorry, but wearing a watch that informs you that a registered bot is near you in no way protects you from invasive practices.

Excuse me? What the heck does a watch have to do with anything I said? Absolutely nothing.

I never mentioned any watch and know there isn't one that would do as you say. The solution shouldn't be implemented by residents. LL needs to step up to the plate.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker

[M Peccable]

18 hours ago, M Peccable said:

18 hours ago, benchthis said:

that would be neat i'd wear a watch to let me know if a bot was near me. 

 

That is the context of the post to which you were replying.

Edited April 6, 2023 by M Peccable

[Silent Mistwalker]

4 minutes ago, M Peccable said:

That is the context of the post to which you were replying.

if you mean me, I didn't reply to that post. I replied to YOURS.

Maybe you should pay a little more attention to who you are replying to.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker

[bunboxmomo]

Just now, Silent Mistwalker said:

if you mean me, I didn't reply to that post. I replied to YOURS.

I think they point they are trying to make is that being aware a bot is near by doesn't actually do anything to prevent LSL from collecting data, or bots that collect data from collecting data, and would only serve to heighten "AAAAAAAAAAAA" while having no real actually benefit other than producing anxiety, so it is better to target actual solutions.

I would say though that if someone wants to know if a user is a bot and we have llGetObjectDetails(...[SCRIPTED_AGENT_STATUS...]) then more power to them if they want a watch that does that imo?;

[bunboxmomo]

Just now, bunboxmomo said:

I would say though that if someone wants to know if a user is a bot and we have llGetObjectDetails(...[SCRIPTED_AGENT_STATUS...]) then more power to them if they want a watch that does that imo?;

DID I SERIOUSLY JUST END MY POST IN A SEMI-COLON OUT OF HABIT BECAUSE I WROTE PSUEDOCODE AND TRIGGERED THAT HABITUAL ENDING OF LINES WITH ;???

God I need to go out and touch some grass.

I could edit that mistake out of the original post, but it's funny enough that I'm going to leave that in.

[M Peccable]

5 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

if you mean me, I didn't reply to that post. I replied to YOURS.

maybe you should pay a little more attention to who you are replying to.

You're still confused.

He said "I'd wear a watch to tell me if a bot was near me".

In my reply I asked "What would knowing if a bot was near you protect him from?"

You then replied "Invasive practices".

I then replied "Wearing a watch to know if a registered bot was near would in no way protect you from invasive practices."

I can't spell it out for you any clearer than that.

Edited April 6, 2023 by M Peccable

[Solar Legion]

Not all responses can be used as jumping points to make one's own observations/comments.

In this instance it would have been far better to type up the response without a direct quote and filling in any needed information piece by piece so as to avoid sounding as though one is weighing in on an existing sub-thread.