Parcel level bot detection

[Prokofy Neva]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I want to highlight this because it has a lot to do with the outcry against bots -- probably much more than privacy concerns, to be honest.

The enormous and very visible upsurge in bots -- registered or unregistered -- has demonstrably impacted on some people's SL in negative ways. Here's Lou Netizen's figures on (registered) bots on the grid (which includes only those belonging to "cohorts" he follows). I was in error when I said May was the busiest month, but it's still up there. Interesting to note that the numbers are trending downwards, but they are still much higher than they used to be:

If you are unfortunate enough to live on a mainland parcel where these bots tend to spawn, you're going to be flooded with them. Personally, I don't much care how many appear in my parcel, but I don't get that many, and my parcel is public anyway. But given that we do in SL tend to value "privacy" and property ownership, it would be odd argue that landowners should have control over entry onto their property but not give them tools to prevent them from being swarmed by random bots.

Qie has argued that this new script is simply going to mean that more bots go unregistered, and he's undoubtedly correct. I wonder if a better solution, in some regards, might have been to restrict spawning points to public land -- highways, or maybe abandoned land.

 

Mainland needs to have the option of allowing bots or not as well. Let the Lindens then uncheck the box banning them on their public highways, welcome areas, parks, etc. Since they never met a script they didn't like. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Prokofy Neva said:

Mainland needs to have the option of allowing bots or not as well. Let the Lindens then uncheck the box banning them on their public highways, welcome areas, parks, etc. Since they never met a script they didn't like. 

This is in effect exactly what I'm suggesting. It wouldn't impact very much on bot operations because they can perform those from anywhere withing a region, but it would mean that you wouldn't have to deal with a zombie assault on your personal holdings.

It doesn't, of course, deal with unregistered bots, but, until someone can definitely tell me that these are easily detectable by LL via viewer credentialing, I don't know that there IS much that can be done about them. Including, obviously, traffic bots.

[Rowan Amore]

32 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I want to highlight this because it has a lot to do with the outcry against bots -- probably much more than privacy concerns, to be honest.

The enormous and very visible upsurge in bots -- registered or unregistered -- has demonstrably impacted on some people's SL in negative ways. Here's Lou Netizen's figures on (registered) bots on the grid (which includes only those belonging to "cohorts" he follows). I was in error when I said May was the busiest month, but it's still up there. Interesting to note that the numbers are trending downwards, but they are still much higher than they used to be:

If you are unfortunate enough to live on a mainland parcel where these bots tend to spawn, you're going to be flooded with them. Personally, I don't much care how many appear in my parcel, but I don't get that many, and my parcel is public anyway. But given that we do in SL tend to value "privacy" and property ownership, it would be odd argue that landowners should have control over entry onto their property but not give them tools to prevent them from being swarmed by random bots.

Qie has argued that this new script is simply going to mean that more bots go unregistered, and he's undoubtedly correct. I wonder if a better solution, in some regards, might have been to restrict spawning points to public land -- highways, or maybe abandoned land.

 

There has been a definite increase in the amount of bots that populate the hubs in Horizons.  4 hubs with at the least, 30 bots each.  That is more than double what it was a couple of months ago.

[Coffee Pancake]

27 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

This is in effect exactly what I'm suggesting. It wouldn't impact very much on bot operations because they can perform those from anywhere withing a region, but it would mean that you wouldn't have to deal with a zombie assault on your personal holdings.

 

I find it really amusing that we both lobbied against bots here and on Twitter and now have a bot problem on our home parcels.

It's almost like some kind of low key harassment.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

There has been a definite increase in the amount of bots that populate the hubs in Horizons.  4 hubs with at the least, 30 bots each.  That is more than double what it was a couple of months ago.

Ironically, that may be because they've been booted from estates that ban bots. But the problem is real.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra
Typo

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

There has been a definite increase in the amount of bots that populate the hubs in Horizons.  4 hubs with at the least, 30 bots each.  That is more than double what it was a couple of months ago.

What in the world? Are they just hanging out, smoking cigarettes, and generally being a bad influence?

[Rowan Amore]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

What in the world? Are they just hanging out, smoking cigarettes, and generally being a bad influence?

Yes

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But the problem is real.

You know how people try Second Life and have a general complaint that rises to the top of the "Everyone says" stack?

Once Mobile is released, I bet the complaint becomes, "I visited Second Life but all I saw were Bots."

In case you didn't know:  Bots are a REAL problem on dating sites. (They chat you up, then when you respond a human takes over to try and convince you to do different things.)  If the Bot situation isn't handled in Second Life, I think that will happen here a lot more, too.  Because "bots used for nefarious purposes make money".

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

You know how people try Second Life and have a general complaint that rises to the top of the "Everyone says" stack?

Once Mobile is released, I bet the complaint becomes, "I visited Second Life but all I saw were Bots."

In case you didn't know:  Bots are a REAL problem on dating sites. (They chat you up, then when you respond a human takes over to try and convince you to do different things.)  If the Bot situation isn't handled in Second Life, I think that will happen here a lot more, too.  Because "bots used for nefarious purposes make money".

The convergence of AI and bots in SL could definitely lead to some issues, although at a fairly low level I suspect: no one who wants to scam large numbers of people is going to use SL.

But it's why claims that people have integrated ChatGPT into NPCs in SL actually makes me a bit nervous.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

 

I find it really amusing that we both lobbied against bots here and on Twitter and now have a bot problem on our home parcels.

It's almost like some kind of low key harassment.

It gets better:  Anyone who tries to convince you the Bots are NOT a problem, is literally gaslighting you.

I don't think the Bots are on Maslow's Hierarchy of Human needs (note that it is HUMAN needs not avatar not furry etc.), unless you are using Bots to make money, or to fulfill your *cough* "other" needs.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

no one who wants to scam large numbers of people is going to use SL.

I never knew you were an optimist!

[Paul Hexem]

41 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

someone can definitely tell me that these are easily detectable by LL via viewer credentialing

Any RLV capable viewer (Firestorm, Catznip, etc) can have an unregistered bot teleport around automatically and collect data by script. Literally no way to detect them.

LL has to get their thumbs out of their butts and police the problem behavior. Anything else is just trying to appease people that don't understand how it all works. 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Paul Hexem

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Any RLV capable viewer (Firestorm, Catznip, etc) can have an unregistered bot teleport around automatically and collect data by script. Literally no way to detect them.

Ok, can it be automated though? Is RLV enough to send them out on long excursions around the grid, automatically scooping and downloading data?

11 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

LL has to get their thumbs out of their butts and police the problem behavior. Anything else is just trying to appease people that don't understand how it all works.

Well, yes. This is a problem I've identified before: the idea that for every problem there is a "solution" that can be scripted. And that just ain't so, and often causes more problems than it solves.

The problem is that policing behaviour is highly time intensive and so expensive. Essentially though the new(ish) rules on the use of data harvested in-world represents this kind of solution: it can't be scripted or automated, but will necessitate actual human engagement. And I'd argue that the wholesale changes to the BB web site since that rule was instituted are evidence that it works, at least where an operation is registered and above-board.

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Scripted agents ARE bots. Bots ARE scripted agents.

Almost all scripted agents are bots but there are many bots that break the rules and are not registered as scripted agents. That's why the new function does not detect bots, and can't be thought of as a bot detector. It can only be thought of as a scripted agent detector. It simply doesn't detect bots. It detects most scripted agents, and that's all it does.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Phil Deakins

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Almost all scripted agents are bots but there are many bots that break the rules and are not registered as scripted agents. That's why the new function does not detect bots, and can't be thought of as a bot detector. It can only be thought of as a scripted agent detector. It simply doesn't detect bots. It detects most scripted agents, and that's all it does.

Words!! All of the above is words!!

[Prokofy Neva]

7 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Almost all scripted agents are bots but there are many bots that break the rules and are not registered as scripted agents. That's why the new function does not detect bots, and can't be thought of as a bot detector. It can only be thought of as a scripted agent detector. It simply doesn't detect bots. It detects most scripted agents, and that's all it does.

Let me break it down to you, comrade. When I deployed this script on 4 characters drifting aimlessly at the Moth Temple infohub just now, two of them reported out as scripted agents. I'm human, last time I checked. So no. 4, with even a bot-like name, gets an AR from me which might stick. 

[Paul Hexem]

12 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Ok, can it be automated though? Is RLV enough to send them out on long excursions around the grid, automatically scooping and downloading data?

Yes. RLV has the force teleport function. You'd just write a script to force teleport down a list on a short timer. 

[Phil Deakins]

1 minute ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Let me break it down to you, comrade. When I deployed this script on 4 characters drifting aimlessly at the Moth Temple infohub just now, two of them reported out as scripted agents. I'm human, last time I checked. So no. 4, with even a bot-like name, gets an AR from me which might stick. 

You can break it down as much as you like but it doesn't change the fact that the new LSL function can only detect scripted agents, and doesn't detect bots. I.e. it cannot determine that bots that aren't registered as scripted agents are actually bots. It only detects avatars that are registered as scripted agents. It simply doesn't detect bots.

[Rowan Amore]

So basically, aside from being a placebo to the actual scripted agent issue, this will be able to tell if that skybox full of 30 day old avatars in that top of the list escort place are NOT listed as scripted agents and are simply there to inflate traffic?

[Phil Deakins]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

So basically, aside from being a placebo to the actual scripted agent issue, this will be able to tell if that skybox full of 30 day old avatars in that top of the list escort place are NOT listed as scripted agents and are simply there to inflate traffic?

Yes.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Rowan Amore said:

So basically, aside from being a placebo to the actual scripted agent issue, this will be able to tell if that skybox full of 30 day old avatars in that top of the list escort place are NOT listed as scripted agents and are simply there to inflate traffic?

Yes, although they aren't permitted to be there for the purposes of traffic even if they are registered agents.

[Coffee Pancake]

7 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Yes. RLV has the force teleport function. You'd just write a script to force teleport down a list on a short timer. 

The reason this isn't done .. is it's actually harder than using open source SL libs and a real programming language that aren't so limited or quirky.

It could be done .. but anyone doing it with RLV is nuts.

[Phil Deakins]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yes, although they aren't permitted to be there for the purposes of traffic even if they are registered agents.

If they are registered as scripted agents, they are allowed to be there, because they don't affect the traffic count  There isn't a rule about not logging in avatars simply for their green dots.

 

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yes, although they aren't permitted to be there for the purposes of traffic even if they are registered agents.

Yes, I know and the knowledge base article has it written quite differently.  It says scripted agents used to inflate traffic are not allowed.  Yet, scripted agents don't effect traffic.  There is nothing there about people creating 30+ avatars and using them to inflate traffic.

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Let me break it down to you, comrade. When I deployed this script on 4 characters drifting aimlessly at the Moth Temple infohub just now, two of them reported out as scripted agents. I'm human, last time I checked. So no. 4, with even a bot-like name, gets an AR from me which might stick. 

Now I'm lost. 

If they are "Registered Scripted Agents", then what rules are they breaking, that you are reporting?