New Feature: Scripted Agent Estate Access Discussion

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, xDancingStarx said:

Sorry but I'm not part of BB or alike and I was heavily advocating against this data being published. I've stated this in these forums.

That may be but that seems to have been the motivation for the policy changes and the new settings for bot banning. 

[elleevelyn]

8 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Help me with this thought experiment: If different bot use cases can be solved other ways (primarily by scripting), and one of the key fears of bot "providers" is their loss of bot sales / income, shouldn't the bot "providers" be able to create sellable / L$-generating solutions without using bots (primarily by scripting)?

there are some things that do need a bot as there is no other way to do it. Some are:

Invite a person to a closed group (closed groups are typical in group rentals). New LSL function: llGroupInvite() would help with htis

with moderating group chat. the bot is mostly picking off the low hanging fruit. Like spammers that embed web phishing links into the chat. [ Edit for clarity. This is/was a bot war. Spammer bots vs Group Moderator bots) A war that Group Moderators (both bot and human) have largely won due to the fairly quick response by Linden Support when spambots are reported)] 

another use for a group bot is to auto-assign group roles. And to dispense gifts/stuff to group members based on their roles: Gold Member, Silver, Bronze, etc. Again new LSL functions needed: llGroupAddToRole() and llGroupRemoveFromRole()

another is setting parcel details.  There is no llSetParcelDetails() function. This just came up again earlier in the Scripting forum. The question: How can I limit the number of parcel visitors to 25 at any one time? Answer: have to use a bot 

there are no doubt other things that do require a bot, just that these 3 come up a lot

 

Edited April 3, 2023 by elleevelyn
[Edit]

[Quartz Mole]

22 minutes ago, elleevelyn said:

yes. This is the thing raised earlier by Paul and others. The change means that we now have to pay more than our Premium cost to host our bot

i probably shouldn't but am start to imagine a new Premium benefit  for no extra charge. A car park for our one bot in the Great Linden Bot  Park. Like endless rows and rows of them all parked up waiting to be called into life

 

It strikes me that anything a bot confined to a single region of Bellisseria can do to invade people's privacy can be done just as well by a single script in an ordinary prim sitting on the same parcel.   Bots are useful because they can do things that can be done only by using the viewer -- like managing groups or teleporting round multiple regions, but if a competent scripter wants to grab people's data, they need only a script and a prim, and if they decide to wear the prim as a HUD when they visit busy fairs and events, they can grab a lot more than they can if they leave the prim sitting somewhere.

I've got no strong views either way about scripted agents on Bellisseria or anywhere else, but I don't really see what the objection is to static bots.    

And in general, if people have actual evidence of bots or scripts invading people's privacy, I don't see why they can't take the evidence to LL or even to the appropriate Data Protection Authorities in their home jurisdiction -- way back when I reported Red Zone to the Information Commissioner's Office here in the UK (they told me there was nothing they could do, but that was before GDPR and the equivalent Californian legislation).   

It's not difficult to make a complain if people have a genuine reason to believe that an abuse is actually taking place, as opposed to mere suspicion that something might be happening behind their backs that they don't know about.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, xDancingStarx said:

Of course I'm citing WoW as evidence, why would you even ask that? WoW has been having a bot problem ever since.

WoW bots are nothing like SL bots, and the problem is more complicated that a simple "Blizzard can't get rid of them".

WoW bots are tolerated by blizzard as they serve two functions.

• The are all paying customers who have bought a full copy of the game and a subscription.
• They make up for shortfalls in the gathering economy, players don't like to grind collecting rocks (etc).

Blizzard do routinely purge bots and ban associated accounts (demonstrating they are very able to identify them), this affords them the ability to have their cake and eat it, more income, a better balance to the auction house and the appearance of caring about bots.

WoW bots do not collect user information, spy on players or breach privacy in anyway because there is no facility for that in game. The entire crafting economy in game is built around the assumption that there will be bots to pick up the slack grinding out mats that players need for progression.

SL bots are not at all comparable. There is nothing to grind. They do not contribute finically either to the player economy or LL. They are only interested in data mining or plugging gaps in LSL to generate various forms of spam.

Bots are always trivial to identify given sufficient time. They will always be the top 0.01% for certain tasks, in SL's case, that would be regions visited per time period, hours spent logged in, etc.

 

[M Peccable]

19 minutes ago, Quartz Mole said:

I've got no strong views either way about scripted agents on Bellisseria or anywhere else, but I don't really see what the objection is to static bots.    

Exactly. That is why I advocate for a bot registry system that requires roaming bots to be pre-approved by LL before allowed to roam. For static bots, pre-approval wouldn't be necessary. That will kill the vast majority of roaming bots, and the ones that are approved will have LL's "approval number" in their profile, along with their purpose and owner. If they encounter a roaming bot, residents would be able to look that number up on the SL website to verify their owner and purpose. Having that pre-approval code available to scripts would go a long way towards helping residents identify approved bots.

The pre-approved roaming bots would still be subject to estate, region, and parcel restrictions, of course.

As Quartz said, static bots, whether they are in someone's home, in a club, in a store, etc., poses no more threat than any normal human-controlled scripted avatar.

Edited April 2, 2023 by M Peccable

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, M Peccable said:

As Quartz said, static bots, whether they are in someone's home, in a club, in a store, etc., poses no more threat than any normal human-controlled scripted avatar.

Similar to what I've suggested a few times here: 2 classes of bots, roaming and non-roaming.

[Coffee Pancake]

23 minutes ago, Quartz Mole said:

Bots are useful because they can do things that can be done only by using the viewer -- like managing groups or teleporting round multiple regions

Group management is something we should be able to do from LSL. Bots have stalled development of that functionality for years.

Yes, bots can teleport .. however teleporting is not an end in of itself. Why they need to teleport is important.

Bots being fully fledged agents can also do things that Linden authorized clients are forbidden from doing, like abusing the permission system.

 

If we must have static bots, then we should have dedicated isolated regions for them to operate from. Perhaps repurposing the backend code from the ill fated SL communicator.

I can see no legitimate justification for a static bot to have a presence in world that could/should not be filled by either an actual person or a scripted NPC.

Edited April 2, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[elleevelyn]

15 minutes ago, Quartz Mole said:

It strikes me that anything a bot confined to a single region of Bellisseria can do to invade people's privacy can be done just as well by a single script in an ordinary prim sitting on the same parcel.   Bots are useful because they can do things that can be done only by using the viewer -- like managing groups or teleporting round multiple regions, but if a competent scripter wants to grab people's data, they need only a script and a prim, and if they decide to wear the prim as a HUD when they visit busy fairs and events, they can grab a lot more than they can if they leave the prim sitting somewhere

I have a but

that we we can scrape info on other people's stuff with a script is an argument in favour of deny bot. We don't need a bot to do the scraping as you point out 

[M Peccable]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

Similar to what I've suggested a few times here: 2 classes of bots, roaming and non-roaming.

Yes, exactly. Although I had you associated firmly with the "ban all bots" crowd? That could be just a communication problem, because this form of chatting is full of pitfalls when it comes to misinterpreting someone.

[M Peccable]

2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Bots being fully fledged agents can also do things that Linden authorized clients are forbidden from doing, like abusing the permission system.

Oh? That's news to me. I believe that might have been true in the past, but I think LL has done a good job of plugging those permission system holes. If you know of something specific, by all means report it to LL so they can fix it.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

If we must have static bots, then we should have dedicated isolated regions for them to operate from. Perhaps repurposing the backend code from the ill fated SL communicator.

I can see no legitimate justification for a static bot to have a presence in world that could/should not be filled by either an actual person or a scripted NPC.

I am starting to see the idea of a static bot, more like the old "magic box" you had to keep rezzed out before the Marketplace.

[Sammy Huntsman]

5 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Group management is something we should be able to do from LSL. Bots have stalled development of that functionality for years.

Yes, bots can teleport .. however teleporting is not an end in of itself. Why they need to teleport is important.

Bots being fully fledged agents can also do things that Linden authorized clients are forbidden from doing, like abusing the permission system.

 

If we must have static bots, then we should have dedicated isolated regions for them to operate from. Perhaps repurposing the backend code from the ill fated SL communicator.

I can see no legitimate justification for a static bot to have a presence in world that could/should not be filled by either an actual person or a scripted NPC.

They use bots in stores, especially when an actual person is busy. I honestly don't see a problem wth scripted bots, if they are used in the right situations. 

[xDancingStarx]

12 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

[...] WoW bots are tolerated by blizzard [...]

This is a conspiracy theory that you try to support with arguments that some effects of bots could have useful side impacts and make up for the player outcries in the forums, and those players who try to legitimately gather materials. You may of course propagate it, but I will not leave it undisputed and call it out for what it is.

[Sammy Huntsman]

1 minute ago, xDancingStarx said:

This is a conspiracy theory that you try to support with arguments that some effects of bots could have useful side impacts and make up for the player outcries in the forums, and those players who try to legitimately gather materials. You may of course propagate it, but I will not leave it undisputed and call it out for what it is.

But then again, bots that are literally mining to gain special items or loot in any game is wrong in my eyes. To me that is cheating, i mean just take the time that you put into buying that bot. To actual go out and quest and adventure and get the stuff yourself. 

[Love Zhaoying]

16 minutes ago, M Peccable said:

Yes, exactly. Although I had you associated firmly with the "ban all bots" crowd? That could be just a communication problem, because this form of chatting is full of pitfalls when it comes to misinterpreting someone.

Hmm. My opinion is not very strong. If I have taken the "ban all bots" position on occasion, it is more because a) I personally get / use no benefit from bots (purchasing, teleporting, traveling, etc.), and b) from these discussions, it has become much more clear how bots are abused, and that SOME bot creators do not seem to understand the basic ethical issues.

On the other side: I downplay this, but I am a professional programmer with 36 years of working experience. Plus more than 10 years before that including school and even before computers were in my schools. 

The point of mentioning this (finally) is that I have expertise in programming. And 16 years in Second Life, most of my active time in those years spent scripting.

Bottom line: I know more than most people who are going to discuss this topic, even if I am not and never have been a "bot creator". (I did use some modern "software automation" as part of my job, which ironically even a year ago was called "bots".)

The ChatGPT / AI situation has me in the mindset of, "bots are going to be abused a lot more in the future".

Edited April 2, 2023 by Love Zhaoying
It feels odd to tell you "how I really feel and why"!

[Coffee Pancake]

19 minutes ago, M Peccable said:

Oh? That's news to me. I believe that might have been true in the past, but I think LL has done a good job of plugging those permission system holes. If you know of something specific, by all means report it to LL so they can fix it.

Viewer permissions are client side, meaning code has to be in the client to enforce it. 

EG, if I give you a texture thats not full permission, the only thing that stops you saving it to disk (like you can with any FP image) is some code in the viewer that checks permissions and says no.

LL can not fix this as the assets must be given to the viewer in order to render them on your screen. SL does not treat different clients differently in this regard, nor could they hope to enforce it.

[EliseAnne85]

32 minutes ago, M Peccable said:

Yes, exactly. Although I had you associated firmly with the "ban all bots" crowd? That could be just a communication problem, because this form of chatting is full of pitfalls when it comes to misinterpreting someone.

There isn't really a "ban all bots" crowd.  

I asked how can one separate the bad bots from the good bots *without deny_bots and received no answer.

Why no answer, is it a secret?  lol

[M Peccable]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Viewer permissions are client side, meaning code has to be in the client to enforce it. 

EG, if I give you a texture thats not full permission, the only thing that stops you saving it to disk (like you can with any FP image) is some code in the viewer that checks permissions and says no.

LL can not fix this as the assets must be given to the viewer in order to render them on your screen. SL does not treat different clients differently in this regard, nor could they hope to enforce it.

Ok, I see what you mean now, and there is no fix for that at all. If I want to scrape that texture, I can load different software and do it without the aid of a bot. So I don't really see that as something only a bot can do and therefore a reason to ban them

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

There isn't really a "ban all bots" crowd.  

I asked how can one separate the bad bots from the good bots *without deny_bots and received no answer.

Why no answer, is it a secret?  lol

I'm pretty sure I gave an answer, and there are very good reasons why LL would want to keep it secret - so people don't make use of any "loopholes"! Same as why you don't talk about Forum moderation, etc. 

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, M Peccable said:

Ok, I see what you mean now, and there is no fix for that at all. If I want to scrape that texture, I can load different software and do it without the aid of a bot. So I don't really see that as something only a bot can do and therefore a reason to ban them

..or just go find the file in your texture cache..!

[xDancingStarx]

8 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

There isn't really a "ban all bots" crowd.  

10 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

[...]Ban them all. Write code to detect bot like activity. Ban them too. Job done. Good day.

Alone this post had one like and one thanks, so I'm not sure what number would qualify for a "crowd" and I also didn't look farther.

[M Peccable]

3 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

There isn't really a "ban all bots" crowd.  

I asked how can one separate the bad bots from the good bots *without deny_bots and received no answer.

Why no answer, is it a secret?  lol

Well, there is at one poster here that believes banning all of them now would actually be good for SL. I also think the majority of those that don't partake in threads like this feels the same way. To me that's a crowd.

But I still think requiring roaming bots to be pre-approved would go a long way towards separating the good from bad.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, M Peccable said:

Ok, I see what you mean now, and there is no fix for that at all. If I want to scrape that texture, I can load different software and do it without the aid of a bot. So I don't really see that as something only a bot can do and therefore a reason to ban them

You're not appreciating the difference in scale.

A bot can outperform you, by several orders of magnitude, all day every day, in all tasks.

A bot net can perform feats indistinguishable from magic.

 

Simple case .. you want to see if someone you saw the other day is online at one of their usual spots, so you tp around and look. It's a slow and cumbersome experience, tps are slow, things have to load, you get distracted by shiny and will give up after a few places.

A bot or a bot net can check every region for every avatar and either tell you exactly where they are, or present a statistical model that predicts their likely movement, online times and list potential alt accounts.

[M Peccable]

7 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

A bot or a bot net can check every region for every avatar and either tell you exactly where they are, or present a statistical model that predicts their likely movement, online times and list potential alt accounts.

Yes, they can do that, but as an approved roaming bot they would not be allowed to do that.

LL reviewing code would be part of that process, subject to inspection at any time. If the code is sending anything other than what it has been approved for, it loses its approval and can no longer roam (meaning teleporting would be throttled to a very low number per hour).

That seems workable to me without too much extra workload on LL.

[EliseAnne85]

23 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm pretty sure I gave an answer, and there are very good reasons why LL would want to keep it secret - so people don't make use of any "loopholes"! Same as why you don't talk about Forum moderation, etc. 

I didn't see that you gave me an answer but I suspect if there is a work-around, it's currently a secret.  I was just wondering why it wasn't addressed as saying something like "there may be a workaround" rather than deny_bots.