🔔 LindenLab 🔔 : The Strong Need For Differentiation Between Actual Residents Versus Bots, Scripted Agents And NPC's In Second Life

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Not to talk to much of the argument the OP  makes, but I have no idea what he's referring to in Chapter 2.

There are certainly "popular" clubs where 50% of the "people" there are just standing around (maybe chatting to each other?), for example that has always been my experience at Exhale. There are other clubs where they are always busy with real people who engage and are friendly. Many of the PG-13 rock places, others like Fogbound, Muddies, Club 511, Hotwife Hotel (okay, there are a few bots here for sure from time to time).

I can always find popular music places to hang out with real people I can chat and have fun with. No idea why people think it's all bots, based on the places I go at least.

So, anecdotal and "my experience" is not a strong argument for major changes. There are much more important user experience things to fix if LL wants to focus on growth, retention, and engagement. I'd love to see a CXO talking about what LL is doing and researching to increase those three things.

The one place I do see an overabundance of bots (unregistered) is escort clubs.  Stop by any of the top escort clubs in search and see for yourself.  I did see a large group on dance pads at a country/western club recently, too.   That club is closed now.  Go figure.

[AmeliaJ08]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

The one place I do see an overabundance of bots (unregistered) is escort clubs.  Stop by any of the top escort clubs in search and see for yourself.  I did see a large group on dance pads at a country/western club recently, too.   That club is closed now.  Go figure.

There's a ballroom I see that pretty much always sits near the top group of the traffic listings that is nothing but bots, has been like that for many months. They're all seated in the same positions and as far as I know are not registered scripted agents.

See this stuff all over the grid, it seems accepted. Kinda ruins the search though...

 

[Rowan Amore]

17 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

There's a ballroom I see that pretty much always sits near the top group of the traffic listings that is nothing but bots, has been like that for many months. They're all seated in the same positions and as far as I know are not registered scripted agents.

See this stuff all over the grid, it seems accepted. Kinda ruins the search though...

 

If it's the place I'm thinking of, it's been like that since they opened back in 2012?    They do seem to have a lot of them tucked away now.  A lot have dessert sounding names.

 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

What if I make 10 accounts (alts) and log in 10 times on my computer (on most modern computers that's easy as pie). And then I walk away and do other things. But if one of my alts gets an IM from someone, I check it out and respond, if I feel like it.

Are all these accounts bots? Or are they all real people (me)?

How is Linden Lab supposed to distinguish between a 'normal' user and a 'bot-like' user? How do you even begin to define these things?

Edited October 31, 2023 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

Bots are cool and I fully support their rights to do whatever the heck they want. 

(This message brought to you by my desire to live through the robot uprising) 

Thank you for supporting the forth-coming Bot Uprising, here is the free Bribe-Pizza you were promised, enjoy!

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

People who are in SL don't focus on it like they used to. They log in, make their AV look good, then go do something else while they wait for an IM. As others noted it's difficult to tell who is a bot and who is just AFK. And most people are just chatting in Discord now. Heck there's even a thread about wanting SL group chat to show up in Discord. Why? Because they're using Discord as their main chat program.

That said, there are lots of places that fill their sims with bots and TPing there with aspirations of exploring and meeting people is massively disappointing.

SL has definitely changed in the last few years, it's not what it used to be, at all. The scene of meeting people at random hangouts and just searching for interests and being social is more or less over.

SL also feels completely empty because the hardcore users just want to make stuff, either content to upload or to make hang outs and in world builds. The ratio of content creator to user in SL skews heavily towards content creators. Usually social internet things are backwards, not enough content creators. But the whole bot thing and faking traffic is a common problem with starting social things on the internet. No one wants to show up if there's no content and people, and there's no content or people without people showing up in the first place.

I think the real sad pill for you will be realizing a lot of the internet is fake, AI articles, posts, etc. Admins using multiple accounts pretending to be different users. Reddit jump started itself this way, they even had a way for admins to toggle multiple accounts when making comments, and then they'd have conversations with themselves. I think it's just very obvious in SL, but if you look hard you will find a lot of the internet is fake. Fake votes, fake comments, fake articles, etc.

I really hope the SL mobile client is successful because all the phone users are a bunch of people who are only going to be able to consume content, it's going to be horrible to create anything for SL on a phone, and phones aren't very good at multi-tasking.

My hope is that something changes soon, because it definitely needs to. People are slowly trickling away from SL and they have been for a while.

[Count Burks]

5 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

People who are in SL don't focus on it like they used to. They log in, make their AV look good, then go do something else while they wait for an IM. As others noted it's difficult to tell who is a bot and who is just AFK. And most people are just chatting in Discord now. Heck there's even a thread about wanting SL group chat to show up in Discord. Why? Because they're using Discord as their main chat program.

That said, there are lots of places that fill their sims with bots and TPing there with aspirations of exploring and meeting people is massively disappointing.

SL has definitely changed in the last few years, it's not what it used to be, at all. The scene of meeting people at random hangouts and just searching for interests and being social is more or less over.

SL also feels completely empty because the hardcore users just want to make stuff, either content to upload or to make hang outs and in world builds. The ratio of content creator to user in SL skews heavily towards content creators. Usually social internet things are backwards, not enough content creators. But the whole bot thing and faking traffic is a common problem with starting social things on the internet. No one wants to show up if there's no content and people, and there's no content or people without people showing up in the first place.

I think the real sad pill for you will be realizing a lot of the internet is fake, AI articles, posts, etc. Admins using multiple accounts pretending to be different users. Reddit jump started itself this way, they even had a way for admins to toggle multiple accounts when making comments, and then they'd have conversations with themselves. I think it's just very obvious in SL, but if you look hard you will find a lot of the internet is fake. Fake votes, fake comments, fake articles, etc.

I really hope the SL mobile client is successful because all the phone users are a bunch of people who are only going to be able to consume content, it's going to be horrible to create anything for SL on a phone, and phones aren't very good at multi-tasking.

My hope is that something changes soon, because it definitely needs to. People are slowly trickling away from SL and they have been for a while.

Thanks for your post. The general consensus amongst people seems to shift towards agreement regarding erosion of the userbase and growth in fake avatars aka NPC's.

For a long time I am aware that bots, scripted agents etc.... were making up a certain percentage of the userbase. After recent attempts to explore and look what people are doing and into these days, the results were so underwhelming, I had a hard time to find the people and distinguish them from the NPC's.

I speak to many people in world every day, people enjoy being in world so there is an actual userbase in Second Life. However this is not taking anything away from the fact there is a massive growth in NPC usage to the point where this is frustrating current users and makes a really poor impression to new users who join the platform.

When I did join Second Life in 2007 there were real users everywhere engaging with each other. This gave a good impression to me. If I would join today and would see this mess of empty places populated by bots mostly without even being pointed or guided to where the actual people are I would not be likely to participate.

I am also very much aware how many people like to have their scripted agents for their games, roleplay or just to populate their sims. People can do that but filters must be put in place.

And user numbers need to be correct instead of being inflated by 100% at certain points during the day.

On a personal level I have little to gain from posting this, however without new people joining and sticking around and an increase in user retention the userbase erosion will continue because certain people are not doing their job.

How can Linden Lab keep proper track of their userbase numbers and platform health if they do not even control the difference between an NPC and an actual user?

 

[elleevelyn]

1 hour ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

How is Linden Lab supposed to distinguish between a 'normal' user and a 'bot-like' user? How do you even begin to define these things?

how Linden determine who is a bot is unclear, but they do make this kind of determination. Is a chat about it here:

 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

4 minutes ago, Count Burks said:

erosion of the userbase [...] hard time [...] massive growth in NPC [...] When I did join Second Life in 2007 there were real users [...] populate [...] filters must be put in place. [...] user numbers need to be correct [...] certain people are not doing their job. [...] keep proper track [...] platform health [...] control

Finally some strong talk!

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Finally some strong talk!

Omg!! So..it's a fascist political rant?!

[Zalificent Corvinus]

50 minutes ago, Count Burks said:

The general consensus amongst people seems to shift towards agreement regarding erosion of the userbase and growth in fake avatars aka NPC's.

I haven't seen that "consensus" in-world, at all, most people never even bother to think about bots, let alone rant on about them "taking our jobs". You statement appears to be yet another baseless assumption.

 

52 minutes ago, Count Burks said:

I had a hard time to find the people and distinguish them from the NPC's.

And this is why your over the top "guestimates" of the number of bots, are, basically, wildly inaccurate and utterly useless.

 

54 minutes ago, Count Burks said:

How can Linden Lab keep proper track of their userbase numbers and platform health if they do not even control the difference between an NPC and an actual user?

They can't, which is why your suggestion is, once again, basically, utterly useless.

 

If you cannot reliably tell somebody who fell asleep at the keyboard, or somebody who leaves their avatar logged in, when they go to bed, or work, or somebody who is in the kitchen making something to eat, from an unregistered bot, and cannot reliably identify an unregistered bot and auto-register it, then some lame "name and shame the registered bots" nonsense will not have any significant effect except to punish legitimate bot users with "Tin Foil Hat Club Conspiracy Paranoia".

 

Implementing this change means changing the server code to send the bot-shaming-data and changing EVERY SINGLE VIEWER to use the bot-shaming-data. That's a much bigger task than you imagine, and won't reach all users anyway. 

 

Complete waste of time, effort, and money, that could be better spent elsewhere fixing REAL problems.

 

Or would you like to see your "land trader" business hit by higher Lindex Sell transaction charges, and higher cashout fees, and your customers discouraged from buying by higher Lindex Buy transaction charges, and higher Marketplace Sales Tax on Home and Garden purchases?

Willing to see Lindex Buy Fees raised to 15%? MP Sales Tax raised to 15%?

Then waste Dev Budget money on nonsense that serves no real purpose.

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

SL has definitely changed in the last few years, it's not what it used to be, at all. The scene of meeting people at random hangouts and just searching for interests and being social is more or less over.

That isn't my experience at all, I still meet people. I'm 2017 intake though, I don't know what it was like but I meet people every time I go looking for them.

Not everywhere is social but the places that are seem full of interesting characters.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 minute ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Not everywhere is social but the places that are seem full of interesting characters.

That's the REAL cause of Social-Fossil Ranting.

Way back in 2006/7/8, the Grid was a LOT smaller, private estates were new, and not that numerous, and the Grid was infested with wannabe speculators, who had heard about getting rich without doing real work, in some game ( a pre cursor to the Crypto-Crap Craze ), who swarmed across the Grid like lice, engaging in "buy a micro parcel for more than it's worth and flip it for 100% mark-up" because they seriously believed that "there's always a bigger sucker than your self"

 

So yeah, concurrency 80k, on a lot fewer regions, imagine 80,000 logged in on 10,000 regions? Average 8 per region, compared to today's less than 2, but 6 of those were failed amateur hobbyist land flipper wannabes who would lie to your face, so yeah SL seems emptier to them, but realistically, most of those 80k, weren't WORTH talking to, they were just proto-crypto-crappers trying to scam a fast buck.

Back in the so-called "Golden Age of SL" when you could make L$2000 an hour standing on a street corner holding a non functional "toddler build" grade primcrap guitar lookalike in glorious "default plywood" and spamming a gesture saying "Linden love for a starving busker?"

 

We "filthy noobs under a decade old" didn't actually miss much. Nothing worth trying to reclaim, certainly.

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

31 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

That isn't my experience at all, I still meet people. I'm 2017 intake though, I don't know what it was like but I meet people every time I go looking for them.

Not everywhere is social but the places that are seem full of interesting characters.

 

17 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

That's the REAL cause of Social-Fossil Ranting.

Way back in 2006/7/8, the Grid was a LOT smaller, private estates were new, and not that numerous, and the Grid was infested with wannabe speculators, who had heard about getting rich without doing real work, in some game ( a pre cursor to the Crypto-Crap Craze ), who swarmed across the Grid like lice, engaging in "buy a micro parcel for more than it's worth and flip it for 100% mark-up" because they seriously believed that "there's always a bigger sucker than your self"

 

So yeah, concurrency 80k, on a lot fewer regions, imagine 80,000 logged in on 10,000 regions? Average 8 per region, compared to today's less than 2, but 6 of those were failed amateur hobbyist land flipper wannabes who would lie to your face, so yeah SL seems emptier to them, but realistically, most of those 80k, weren't WORTH talking to, they were just proto-crypto-crappers trying to scam a fast buck.

Back in the so-called "Golden Age of SL" when you could make L$2000 an hour standing on a street corner holding a non functional "toddler build" grade primcrap guitar lookalike in glorious "default plywood" and spamming a gesture saying "Linden love for a starving busker?"

 

We "filthy noobs under a decade old" didn't actually miss much. Nothing worth trying to reclaim, certainly.

 

I've been here for 15+ years, and yeah, that describes it very well. It was a lot more dense before. Which is what's wrong with SL right now, too much land and builds and not enough people to go there.

It was also a lot more unique. A lot of us old timers came from AIM, AOL, Yahoo or MSN Chat, etc. We were used to nothing more than text based pop up windows, and SL at the time was absolutely mind blowing. Right now, it's not. It's just another drop in the virtual world ecosystem.

I don't want to sound salty and old, wasn't my intention. But SL has definitely changed and it needs more density, which is what I'm hoping the mobile client can bring. Right now current SL is vastly a "I'm going to sit around AFK and show off my AV and hope someone cool IMs me." That doesn't mean that's all SL is. But it's the majority. There are still awesome people in SL, just as there were in the past. Land owners using bots are just trying to fake having density that's lacking. SL has intense competition now. 15 years ago, first signing on was one of the coolest experiences I ever had using a computer. Today SL isn't close to that.

And back then, it was nearly impossible to make an SL bot. And this is someone who was very familiar with chatbots on other platforms. Now it's pretty darn easy if you just have basic coding skills since there's libraries that do all the hard work for you.

I know as long as I've been here there's been people who think SL is going to die next year. I've been hearing it for 15 years. I don't think SL is going to die. I think it has some problems they can somewhat easily fix and make SL a major player. I want this place to do well. I have a lot of memories here, live with someone I met in SL. For all it's problems it's still amazing. But it needs growth and it's been on a slow trend downwards. Nothing wrong with that, it can be fixed, which is what I'm suggesting and I'm just trying to point out why SL might feel a bit different for us old farts.

[Ceka Cianci]

I need to to keep from 😭 sometimes.

[AmeliaJ08]

What competition does SL have? I know of nothing like it, I saw @Katherine Heartsong mention a specifically adult focused competitor recently but really... VRChat etc are not competitors in any real sense, SL killed every other virtual world and the concept itself is a relic of the 90s/early 00's.

I come from the same sort of background as you, I just never really discovered SL until 2017 despite knowing about it, to be honest I didn't know the possibilities of it which kept me away. I'm not young, if anything my experience of 'modern' SL has actually reminded me a lot of the fun I had on IRC etc back in the 90s, it has a very old internet feel about it which I love.

I did find that nothing came to me though, the people I have met and the fun I have had all had to be initiated and I was entirely too shy at first. Maybe this was different in the past though? I don't know but I definitely had to get over my shyness and unwillingness to reach out at first, whenever I meet noobie people now I always try and encourage this from them.

It's definitely a big world and it's definitely sparsely populated but the fun and sociability is still there IMO, at least it is for me. I can still drop by Social island etc and find it entirely too busy and sociable even.

 

 

Edited October 31, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Caitlin Tobias]

2 hours ago, Count Burks said:

[..]The general consensus amongst people seems to shift towards agreement regarding erosion of the userbase and growth in fake avatars aka NPC's. [...]

 

 

I've not seen a consensus like this. Or do you only read your own posts?

[Zalificent Corvinus]

27 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

I'm just trying to point out why SL might feel a bit different for us old farts.

That's fine, that's not the problem.

Problem is the "old farts" who rant about how they don't get the "social activity" they deserve, then blame that on "a vast army of evil bots!" that simply does NOT exist.

====================

Captain Olbie, the Grid Explorer, randomly tp's to a nude orgy beach, and claims all the people there are "filthy bots" because they'd rather carry on shagging, than chat about the weather in Buttwipe Wisconsin with Captain Oldbie.

Captain Oldbie randomly teleports to a road in Zindra, he notices 20 dots on the map of the region next door, all 1620 m up in the air, all within a 20m circle, and like a total idiot, ASSUMES they are all "filthy bots", when in fact its myself, and 19 other real people, all having a Halloween party on a Saturday night.

Captain Oldbie randomly tp's to "BritZone Hangout" at 8pm Pretentious Californian Time, then complains that "SL seems empty" because all the Brits in BritZone are logged out and asleep in bed,  because its 4 am in the morning on a weekday where they live.

 

Captain Olbie starts a thread on the forum, complaining that SL is empty, and most people are "filthy bots", and demanding that some impractical, time consuming, and expensive nonsense MUST be implemented AT ONCE, and making empty promises that if their demands are met, there will be a magical increase in retention due to a "vast, silent, unseen, invisible, and completely undetectable new market, of imaginary hypothetical users".

Captain Oldbie then systematically ignores any attempt to explain harsh reality, and fraudulently claims that a "vast, silent, unseen, invisible, and undetectable majority" all agree with him 100% and want him to be the new Supreme Leader!.

Captain Oldbie announces that posting replies that do not agree with his demands or support his claim to be the new Supreme Leader, are STRICLY FORBIDDEN, also, no smiling allowed, BY ORDER of the new Supreme Leader!

====================

Meh.

 

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Captain Oldbie randomly teleports to a road in Zindra, he notices 20 dots on the map of the region next door, all 1620 m up in the air, all within a 20m circle, and like a total idiot, ASSUMES they are all "filthy bots", when in fact its myself, and 19 other real people, all having a Halloween party on a Saturday night.

There been enough people even in the forums pointing out groups of 20 dots that are week old basic avatars, called Hey Me1, Hey Me2, Hey Me3... and all members of the same group. There are also those groups hanging out in the underwater in the sea. Captain Oldbie would likely recognize the difference between an actual party of real avatars all dressed different and years old instead of days and realize it is a club or party of some sort. 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

A lot of us old timers came from AIM, AOL,

AIM was AOL. Unless you mean AOL Instant Messenger vs. the AOL Chatrooms (which were THE BEST).

[Rowan Amore]

People have been walking into busy places and whining about everyone being bots since I started in 2009.  News Flash!!!  People ignore other people.  I ignore people who IM me with an emote.  I ignore people who IM with a rude question.  I ignore the person who has been here 16 years and still wears system hair and a cape.  I'm not a bot but I'm sure the OP would assume I am.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

and all members of the same group

All 20 people at the party were members of the same group, that's how they heard about the party.

 

3 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Captain Oldbie would likely recognize the difference between an actual party of real avatars all dressed different and years old

Only if Captain Oldbie actually bothered to cam 1600 m up into the region next door, and actually LOOK at people, or check profiles, instead of doing the usual oldbie crap "grouped dots in the sky = filthy bots".

 

5 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

and realize it is a club

Captain Oldbie says "it's some filthy club, using filthy bots to game traffic! Ban them ALL"

 

I've had a Captain Oldbie, accuse me to my face of being a bot, while i was wearing $50 worth of mesh avatar, because I was editimg my appearance.  "Not moving around and voice spamming = Filthy Bot".

 

One Captain Oldbie who sometimes spams the forum, claimed that a group of avatars he saw while camming them from 200m away, were all "Obviously Filthy Bots" because they were not "running around" and "were not playing the typing animation" which apparently proves they were not talking in local, despite the fact that practically every avatar I've seen in the last 7 years that was over a week old had disabled the stupid typing animation.

 

I see too many Captain Olbies, who do NOT check their allegations of "filthy bothood" in anyway.

 

[Eddy Vortex]

Gd forbid I need to step away to use a toilet. I'd probably be accused of being a bot because my typist has a urinary system and a colon that needs emptying once in a while.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

10 minutes ago, Eddy Vortex said:

Gd forbid I need to step away to use a toilet. I'd probably be accused of being a bot because my typist has a urinary system and a colon that needs emptying once in a while.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

I ignore the person who has been here 16 years and still wears system hair and a cape.

We can have capes ?!?

Dammit. Just missed Halloween, too.