Unashamedly Bots

[Phil Deakins]

13 hours ago, Marigold Devin said:

I would like to see more threads about bots, with photos and examples of how useful and fun they are to use.

Yeah. Let's have more bots threads . My 'good old days' in the forum was  back when I used to use bots, and many people were against them. I thoroughly enjoyed those scraps . Unfortunately, we can't do that any more in this placid forum  but chats on the various uses of bots might be enjoyable. It might even inspire me to create another bots system. I need summat to do.

 

 

 

[belindacarson]

18 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

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?

 

Personally I was, and still am, supportive of the bb bots.  They never were able to obtain personal information (and I'm a big fan of making GDPR complaints). 

For info: I've made GDPR requests to ll on piof and non piof accounts and nothing that is personal information is visible to bots.  (Note to moles before people run reporting: relevant bit as it highlights what can't be collected).

At least they published what they were doing on a website for people to see unlike so many of the anonymous bot services.

 

@Skyler Pancake

[Garnet Psaltery]

I have two further things to say about bots.

1) I don't particularly like being spied on bots but I'm also concerned about their use of region resources.  The number of them visiting is not insignificant, although I haven't the technical knowledge to determine whether that number is significantly detrimental to region performance.

2) I think they're smelly and nasty and should go away.

[Marigold Devin]

11 minutes ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

 

2) I think they're smelly and nasty and should go away.

Ohhhh that truly did make me laugh out loud. Thank you for that.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Marigold Devin

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

It might even inspire me to create another bots system. I need summat to do.

Maybe we need some bots that automatically post in bots threads and a mole bot that automatically closes those threads when they are somewhere between page 6 and 10. And then the creation bot steps in to create another bots thread, randomly using or leaving out the Voldemort name.

 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

I stand corrected.

[Rat Luv]

2 hours ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

2) I think they're smelly and nasty and should go away.

[AmeliaJ08]

The bots largely just seem to be fulfilling a simple purpose of gathering data, the most important task being determining where people actually are on the grid.

This is a feature that is missing from SL, it's hard to find out where is currently populated and the bots largely seem to focus on providing this information. They do other things too but they seem to have primarily appeared so that websites can publish live information on regions.

I've always wondered why LL don't provide this information themselves but they don't, the server is capable of it though and you do get this information for locations featured in the destination guide. A common noobie question is "where is everyone?" and while there are some ways of finding everyone - mainly by looking around the grid map - it's imperfect and I think new people do notice the lack of a simple list of where's hot now.

To this end I'm really not bothered by them.

Edited September 23, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Rat Luv said:

See? CHILDREN ARE EBIL!

[Love Zhaoying]

 

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

The bots largely just seem to be fulfilling a simple purpose of gathering data, the most important task being determining where people actually are on the grid.

There was one Forumite - I am not certain if it was Coffee Pancake - who gave examples where they were clearly being "griefed" by Bots (bots continually gathering at their parcel, etc.).  Whether they had angered the owner of a Bot operator, etc. I do not recall. 

In any case, it was an example where Bots were clearly being used for nefarious reasons.  

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

6 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

The BBs got going when I was out of SL for a couple of years, so I missed the change.

Another change I missed was LL actually wanting us to AR bots. Initially, they specifically said not to report them because they'll keep tabs on things themselves. I learned about that change not long ago

They didn't say not to report them, just that it wasn't necessary.

Having to register bots being mandatory has been around a little longer than the BBs kerfuffle. 

 

It was at the end of the first quarter of THIS year the Scripted Agent Estate Access feature was launched.

Quote

On March 30, 2023, Linden Lab implemented a new feature to address Scripted Agent Estate Access. This decision was made in response to a significant increase in bot activity. As a result, we have decided to activate this feature for all Residential and Farm regions. However, we are currently evaluating the possibility of implementing it on our Commercial regions.

https://support.dreamseekerestates.com/hc/en-us/articles/14118084410139-Bots-in-Second-Life

Edited September 23, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker

[Arwyn Quandry]

Bots gather interesting and useful data that I love going through, especially the BB attachment data. Every time I see one land for a few seconds, I smile. That's my statement, I'll not be taking tinfoil hat speculation at this time, lol.

[Ceka Cianci]

Did they ever implement it on any of the linden homes regions?

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

48 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Did they ever implement it on any of the linden homes regions?

This is in the Belli covenant:

Quote

== Scripted Agents ==

  *Scripted Agents (aka ‘bots’) are not allowed in Linden Homes regions, either as a ‘home’ or canvasing the estate for the purpose of collecting data.

So I suspect they did implement something. It's been ages since I've seen hordes of Tiny Empires bots sitting under the water outside the parcel lines of some poor sufferer's houseboat - so even that seems to be getting handled.

Tiny Empires bots doing that just outside houseboats was one of the triggering things that caused one person I know to leave SL - too late now though as they fully cleaned out when they left (and it was one of multiple triggers).

 

There is no such entry on the covenant of the old linden homes - which might explain why it's easy to come across parcels with a pile of AFK "people" in them on those regions.

Edited September 23, 2023 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Skyler Pancake]

13 hours ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

I have two further things to say about bots.

1) I don't particularly like being spied on bots but I'm also concerned about their use of region resources.  The number of them visiting is not insignificant, although I haven't the technical knowledge to determine whether that number is significantly detrimental to region performance.

2) I think they're smelly and nasty and should go away.

Although it's possible for a bot to briefly(as in 5-30 seconds) cause region performance loss due to the scripts they initiate it's usually extremely minimal and as mentioned does not last long. The real region resource abuse that happens is with AFK accounts, such as AFK sex places and Tiny Empire, who will leave accounts idling on regions. This limits the availability for other accounts to access those regions as well as degrades the region performance. Most of the time these aren't actually bot accounts though, just alt accounts logged in to regular viewers on a secondary computer.

10 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

The bots largely just seem to be fulfilling a simple purpose of gathering data, the most important task being determining where people actually are on the grid.

This is a feature that is missing from SL, it's hard to find out where is currently populated and the bots largely seem to focus on providing this information. They do other things too but they seem to have primarily appeared so that websites can publish live information on regions.

I've always wondered why LL don't provide this information themselves but they don't, the server is capable of it though and you do get this information for locations featured in the destination guide. A common noobie question is "where is everyone?" and while there are some ways of finding everyone - mainly by looking around the grid map - it's imperfect and I think new people do notice the lack of a simple list of where's hot now.

To this end I'm really not bothered by them.

LL has a longstanding history of relying on users to provide services. After all, why pay to create and maintain a service that you can get someone else to provide for you?

9 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

 

There was one Forumite - I am not certain if it was Coffee Pancake - who gave examples where they were clearly being "griefed" by Bots (bots continually gathering at their parcel, etc.).  Whether they had angered the owner of a Bot operator, etc. I do not recall. 

In any case, it was an example where Bots were clearly being used for nefarious reasons. 

These weren't bots. They were alt accounts being used to "troll" her. She posted a picture of a "Bonnie" visiting her, which was clearly an imposter and the picture looked incredibly staged. Considering some of the other claims made, I'm skeptical of much Coffee states regarding bots. That said, Coffee does seem to be coming from good intentions and does make some awesome contributions to SL.

2 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Did they ever implement it on any of the linden homes regions?

All registered scripted agents are banned from Bellisseria. This ban does not include the original Linden Home regions. We were unfortunately forced to remove all of our features involving the Linden Homes, despite our partnership with the BBB and the content being extremely helpful for residents looking for a new home. This decision is honestly the one I disagree with and regret the most from the outcomes this last spring.

[Paul Hexem]

4 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Did they ever implement it on any of the linden homes regions?

All the Belli regions have registered scripted agents banned at the estate level.

[Love Zhaoying]

56 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

All the Belli regions have registered scripted agents banned at the estate level.

Nice, innit? Now if we could only ban registered bots at the parcel level.

[Love Zhaoying]

9 hours ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

Every time I see one land for a few seconds, I smile.

Does the bot smile back?

[Rowan Amore]

They really ought to do something about the bots at the Welcome hub although I'm pretty sure these aren't registered as such.  They were all in a changing room.  4 of them were there yesterday as well. 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

They really ought to do something about the bots at the Welcome hub although I'm pretty sure these aren't registered as such.  They were all in a changing room.  4 of them were there yesterday as well. 

 

Nice that they are welcomed!

[Sid Nagy]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

They really ought to do something about the bots at the Welcome hub although I'm pretty sure these aren't registered as such.  They were all in a changing room.  4 of them were there yesterday as well. 

 

Maybe LL is upping their traffic.

[Silent Mistwalker]

41 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Maybe LL is upping their traffic.

It wouldn't surprise me if LL used bots to monitor the Welcome Area. Makes sense to me.

[ArtCurator]

On 9/24/2023 at 9:22 AM, Rowan Amore said:

They really ought to do something about the bots at the Welcome hub although I'm pretty sure these aren't registered as such.  They were all in a changing room.  4 of them were there yesterday as well. 

 

What makes you sense that these are bots and not actually new accounts since their age is also very young? Why is it so unbelieveable to many sl residents that *gasp* a new user with a low age isn't truly actually new to sl? And especially why wouldn't genuinely new users be in a welcome hub?

Edited September 26, 2023 by ArtCurator

[Rowan Amore]

8 hours ago, ArtCurator said:

What makes you sense that these are bots and not actually new accounts since their age is also very young? Why is it so unbelieveable to many sl residents that *gasp* a new user with a low age isn't truly actually new to sl? And especially why wouldn't genuinely new users be in a welcome hub?

Because they were all invisible and in a changing room for 2 days.  

[ArtCurator]

40 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Because they were all invisible and in a changing room for 2 days.  

Perhaps they're new users trying to figure out how to change their avatar look? Trying to change the senra look? Other than to be mentors to new users, I don't know why "bots" in a welcome hub would benefit anyone other than maybe making the welcome hub looking "busier" than it really is? Do welcome hubs even show up in traffic counters? I don't think I've seen welcome hubs in any top parcel searches...