Unashamedly Bots

[Phil Deakins]

I merely thought a few people would be interested to know how many unique ones visit sims each day. That's all

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I am increasingly convinced LL is using bots to stabilize the concurrency numbers so that early morning in the americas never drops much below the 29,000 minimum that seems to be a standard. Concurrency later in the day can vary from 40k-50k but the mornings never varies from the 29k other than +/- 500.

 

 

29 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Do they? I was under the impression that SL does not provide official numbers and the concurrencies are done by Tyche Shepherd @gridsurvey.com. The wiki for Grid statistics even says SL does not publish any of the metrics:

None of the metrics below are currently being published, and many external links are either broken or redirected to the current Community Pages. Please do not update information on this page, it's kept only for historical purposes.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Metrics_Glossary

If they don't publish the official numbers, what would be the point of using bots to inflate a number they don't publish?

[Arielle Popstar]

18 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

LL still doesn't need to manipulate those 3d party numbers with bots.   
Why would they?  They simply can deny that the given numbers are accurate if needed.

By the way: I bought recently new glasses, so no need to enlarge the text or mark them with extra colors.

Well whether LL manipulates the numbers or just residents sending out more data harvesting bots, Phil is pointing out there seems to be an increasing amount of them online begging the question whether there is a corresponding drop in active residents since the concurrency numbers are roughly the same as they been the last few years. I've seen some posts in past that guestimate that already a few years ago, that upwards of 15,000 inworld residents were bots as noticed during grid outages.

• Quote

   

  • The number of real people online varies daily between 28K and 52K - this are true people.
  • When there is a long major grid problem the number of avatars remaining online sits at 15K - Many or Most of these will be bots
  •  

   

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/421643-sl-usage-statistics/?do=findComment&comment=1744897

Quote

By the way: I bought recently new glasses, so no need to enlarge the text or mark them with extra colors.

No worries, I just copy/pasted that line from the wiki and left it as is to show it was a quote rather then my own words.

 

[Arielle Popstar]

7 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

 

If they don't publish the official numbers, what would be the point of using bots to inflate a number they don't publish?

So that those who do gather those metrics and publish them would see more active residents then there really are....unless you consider data harvesting bots as legit active residents.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well whether LL manipulates the numbers or just residents sending out more data harvesting bots, Phil is pointing out there seems to be an increasing amount of them online begging the question whether there is a corresponding drop in active residents since the concurrency numbers are roughly the same as they been the last few years. I've seen some posts in past that guestimate that already a few years ago, that upwards of 15,000 inworld residents were bots as noticed during grid outages.

Since by definition, a "bot" is a "Registered Agent"..(otherwise Phil wouldn't know for his numbers in the OP)..

..if the companies / individuals who post "Concurrency numbers" would split out "Bots" (Registered Agents) from the total..since then CAN now..

..then you would have a more clear picture of whether Bots make up a disproportionate percentage of "concurrent users", etc.

[Theresa Tennyson]

27 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well whether LL manipulates the numbers or just residents sending out more data harvesting bots, Phil is pointing out there seems to be an increasing amount of them online begging the question whether there is a corresponding drop in active residents since the concurrency numbers are roughly the same as they been the last few years. I've seen some posts in past that guestimate that already a few years ago, that upwards of 15,000 inworld residents were bots as noticed during grid outages.

Where did Phil say the number of bots is increasing?

[Paul Hexem]

4 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

"Unashamedly" because I like talking about about bots

I've been waiting for a while for this topic to come up again in a thread, because I didn't want to start a thread for it. But it hasn't reappeared yet, so I decided to post it anyway. It's a just an 'out of interest' thing.

Having monitored the bots that appear in the sim where I have a small piece of land, I've found that around 50 unique avatars, that are identified as scripted agents, appear every day without fail. I was surprised at the number of them, and some people have been interested, so I thought I'd post it.

 

44 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

I merely thought a few people would be interested to know how many unique ones visit sims each day. That's all

I'm a little surprised that many actually have their scripted status set.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

 

I'm a little surprised that many actually have their scripted status set.

I suspect they fall into 2 categories:

- Reputable Bot operators for grid surveys, etc.

- Companies like BB who most likely feel pressure to comply due to all the negative publicity.

Anyone else, why bother?

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Agreed but that doesn't explain the lack of concurrency variance early morning. If as an example weekends draw 5000-10000 more online later at 2 PM SLT, why isn't there the same sort of variance at 4 AM SLT? Weekends show the same 29K as weekdays at 4 AM SLT.

A good portion of that 29k is likely people who stay logged into SL 24/7. Most of them probably rarely reboot.

No, not bots, regular accounts that people use every day.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

A good portion of that 29k is likely people who stay logged into SL 24/7. Most of them probably rarely reboot.

No, not bots, regular accounts that people use every day.

Yah, no, the OP himself states he has counted 50 unique scripted bots visit his region alone.

That and then there are multiple people mentioning pockets of standing avatars for camping and other uses. We don't know how many are bots but it is obviously way more than nil.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Arielle Popstar

[Bree Giffen]

The only real thing of value would have to be land. So the only thing the bots would monitor is the status of land in every region and if they are not for sale or for sale. Maybe the frequency of land sales being done within a region. I don't buy and sell land but I think if someone were to make a database and tie that into some kind of automated buying and selling they could constantly raise prices on a particular set of parcels. 

If the bots monitor places like water adjacent land that all sell for around the same price and find that it is a hot market, they could buy all or most that land and raise the prices because the customer is manually going around and finding all these parcels are now all selling for higher prices.

I know that people use data analytics these days to comb through huge amounts of data given out freely and then use that information to make money because no one else can see the patterns they discover.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

I merely thought a few people would be interested to know how many unique ones visit sims each day. That's all

Then, I hope you update this thread on occasion with new observations of your numbers.  Because as you can tell, people ARE interested.

[Rat Luv]

I think bots are cool  I had a script genius friend who rezzed a few, one just ran around in circles

I think when AI gets really good, we'll have bot DJs and hosts on SL (then people can say "Oh good, we don't have to tip them" ). If I was a cleverclogs, I would start my own business where people who want to go to SL clubs but don't like dancing alone, and don't want to log an alt on too, can hire a 'bot friend' to go with them - as long as it's actually vaguely passable as a human-run avatar (would be a bit cringe otherwise )

Unashamedly Bots would be a good name for a business 

Edited September 22, 2023 by Rat Luv

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Yah, no, the OP himself states he has counted 50 unique scripted bots visit his region alone.

That and then there are multiple people mentioning pockets of standing avatars for camping and other uses. We don't know how many are bots but it is obviously way more than nil.

One more time. Registered bots are not part of the traffic figure. Unless you have sources for facts/stats you aren't doing anything more than assuming.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker

[Sid Nagy]

32 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Then, I hope you update this thread on occasion with new observations of your numbers.  Because as you can tell, people ARE interested.

Maybe I should start a thread about how many trees I can see when I look out of the windows of my Linden home.
No further intentions.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Sid Nagy

[Rowan Amore]

I don't think you'll find documentation as to whether scripted agents are counted in LL's count of accounts logged in.  What they don't count them for is traffic on a parcel.  

If anyone can show where they aren't counted as logged in avatars, please direct me to that.

[Marigold Devin]

33 minutes ago, Rat Luv said:

I think bots are cool  I had a script genius friend who rezzed a few, one just ran around in circles

I think when AI gets really good, we'll have bot DJs and hosts on SL (then people can say "Oh good, we don't have to tip them" ). If I was a cleverclogs, I would start my own business where people who want to go to SL clubs but don't like dancing alone, and don't want to log an alt on too, can hire a 'bot friend' to go with them - as long as it's actually vaguely passable as a human-run avatar (would be a bit cringe otherwise )

Unashamedly Bots would be a good name for a business 

Did you happen to see last week's Jane McDonald: Lost in Japan? She went into a restaurant and her table companion was an AI bot. It seemed to be a popular thing, so I can see you would have a successful business with this in SL  

Edited to add: 

Zabaware bots used to (and may still) wander around Second Life, and if you sent them an IM they would send you a teleport request to their location. They would visit different regions, but would be carrying a flag that said they were AI bots and to talk to them you said "Hello, Hal", and I had some pretty good conversations with them.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Marigold Devin

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Yah, no, the OP himself states he has counted 50 unique scripted bots visit his region alone.

That and then there are multiple people mentioning pockets of standing avatars for camping and other uses. We don't know how many are bots but it is obviously way more than nil.

Also have to take in to account the avatars not registered as scripted agents that people park in the skybox to boost numbers.  That's probably a good portion of concurrency.

[Sid Nagy]

13 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I don't think you'll find documentation as to whether scripted agents are counted in LL's count of accounts logged in.  What they don't count them for is traffic on a parcel.  

If anyone can show where they aren't counted as logged in avatars, please direct me to that.

LL doesn't count anymore for the public. So it is really up to the 3d party counters what they count, how they count, if they manipulate the count, if they count all at once or sim after sim with a chance of counting continuously moving bots or avatars several times (if they count them at all).
I would not count on the fact that the figures are actually very precise and I think that is why LL gave up to publicize them.

The number of regions going up or down is IMHO far more telling about the state of SL, than the counted or not counted users and bots online.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Sid Nagy

[Rat Luv]

19 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

Did you happen to see last week's Jane McDonald: Lost in Japan? She went into a restaurant and her table companion was an AI bot. 

No!  I must look that up...I know they have robot servers, but not table companions  I'd love to have a curry and just talk rubbish with a bot all night 

[Silent Mistwalker]

Ask Tyche Shepard.

https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2021/10/second-life-median-user-concurrency.html

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Sid Nagy said:

LL doesn't count anymore for the public. So it is really up to the 3d party counters what they count, how they count, if they manipulate the count, if they count all at once or sim after sim with a chance of counting continuously moving bots or avatars several times (if they count them at all).
I would not count on the fact that the figures are actually very precise and I think that is why LL gave up to publicize them.

The number of regions going up or down is IMHO far more telling about the state of SL, than the counted or not counted users and bots online.

You played on my curiosity and made me count how many times  the word count showed up..

You did that on purpose! \o/

 

[janetheslot]

Is there a link to the report where current active users are shown?

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

5 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Some shop owners still do. The person next to my land has constantly the same 10 avatars up and running (or better standing) somewhere in the sky above his shop. Most likely there will be a lot more shop keepers still trying this traffic trick.

Funny thing is half the time I TP out of a shop, or won't TP into it in the first place - if anyone else is already there.

 

[Phil Deakins]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Then, I hope you update this thread on occasion with new observations of your numbers.

I monitored scripted agents for a while out of curiosity, and the number of uniques per day was more or less constant. I can still monitor them, but I'm not doing. The people who were interested in a previous thread now know that there are probably far more than they thought. That's all I wanted to do, and I got a bit fed up of waiting for the topic to come up again. I may turn the monitor on again sometime, just to see if there's an increase or decrease.

I doubt that there are many unregistered bots popping in and out of sims, because there would be no point in not registering them.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Phil Deakins