Are we ever gonna be able to hide account age?

[Persephone Emerald]

5 hours ago, Midnoot said:

I stopped talking to new accounts like they're new . Found out I was wasting my breath on alts of older users p:

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

if i see a new account, I always welcome them to SL. Doesn’t hurt anyone.

If I see an avatar with a young account age (under 1 month old) that seems like they might need help (eg. wearing a starter avatar), I ask them "Are you new in SL? Do you need help with anything?" (Of course I wouldn't say this at the Welcome Hub central region, because there are usually Mentors there to help them.)

[Innula Zenovka]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

We've been discussing that for 6 pages, apparently the leading answers are:

1) Paranoia of being "attacked" for being old (based on what we were told by the OP)

2) Wanting to hide / lie to meet younger friends without being judged as being "old" (my own guess)

 

Thanks.   But I meant that, since LL aren't going to remove the DATA_BORN flag and break lots of existing scripted content, I don't see the point of removing birth dates from profiles, since the date will still be visible, with the aid of a simple script, to anyone who's interested.    

Edited February 12 by Innula Zenovka

[Silent Mistwalker]

On 2/10/2024 at 10:35 AM, PermaRuthed said:

Clocks in RL do not give a damn about your RL age. There's not a damn thing any one of us can do anything about it. Your RL meatsuit will change accordingly to the chronological clock whether you like it or not. Old age is inevitable regardless how much you want to avoid collecting Social Security. You and the rest of us have no choice but to suck it up.

Bringing your hang ups about aging into SL. What could go wrong?

Damn. Now I don't have anything to talk about.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 hours ago, Midnoot said:

no, with scripts you can see that someone is a premium member.

oic, but i meant is that information listed on the profile?

Whats the point of knowing that information anyway?

[Silent Mistwalker]

On 2/10/2024 at 12:37 PM, Gabriele Graves said:

I wouldn't mind either way if it was hide-able or not but hiding it will make people think that the account is old anyway so it seems a little pointless.

How would hiding it affect the features in SL that deal with keeping griefers on new throw aways out of regions and parcels, I wonder. Presumably it won't but this is LL.

Humans obsess too much over petty things like age.

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, Midnoot said:

You keep demonizing the right to privacy. If I WANT to tell you, I will. I shouldn't be forced to tell you anything.  ( Account age for example.) You keep trying to equate the withholding of information with lying. You keep trying to associate suspicious activity with the request to hide basic information that you claim is irrelevant to you. 

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

No, I'm equating the ability to hide account age to giving someone the ability to lie about something as I see that as the only valid reason one would want to hide it.

It's not personal info. It tells no one anything aside from how old the account is.  Maybe people with original last names could be able.to hide that since that gives a rough idea of account age, too?  

Your account age isn't telling anyone on the internet anything aside from...account age.

You're wrong on this point, @Rowan Amore. 

Not revealing information is not the same as lying about it. You've made the same assertion yourself in regards to a person's RL gender. Not revealing one's RL country or state of residence is not lying about it. Not revealing one's real age is not lying about it. Not revealing one's financial or account status is not lying about it.

Assuming that one has alterior motives for not revealing information is a slippery slope that can lead to people oversharing personal information. It seems akin to me of people wanting RL names on social media or the government being able to listen in on phone calls if they wanted. "If you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about."

The pertinent questions here seems to me to be

1. Is this personal information?

2. Would it be possible for LL to hide this information without breaking functionality.

and

3. Does showing this information serve a purpose that most SL users want.

The avatar name is considered non-personal, identifying information in SL. It can be changed, but the user ID cannot be changed. LL has elected to make it impossible to hide one's avatar name, because being able to hide it makes griefing and misrepresenting one's account being different than it really is too easy.

Account age is considered non-personal, non-identifying information that is necessary for some of the functionality of SL. It allows region and parcel owners to restrict younger accounts and give freebies only to younger accounts. Most users don't seem to care that it can identify them as having been in SL longer, and if they want to appear as someone who has not been in SL that long, they create a younger alt. For the last 20 years, hardly anyone has complained about their account age being visible to other users.

Account status - Basic, Premium, etc. - has only fairly recently been shown in the SL viewer and is not shown in the Firestorm viewer. This would be considered non-personal, non-identifying information from a legal perspective. It is necessary for SL functionality because it determines which accounts can enter some regions and which can obtain certain Linden Homes or Mainland parcels. I don't think showing it on profiles by default serves a good purpose, however. If it were a choice, on the other hand, it could show who likes to display their wealth as a kind of status symbol, which I think could be helpful in deciding who to avoid dating.

[Rowan Amore]

10 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

You're wrong on this point, @Rowan Amore. 

Not revealing information is not the same as lying about it. You've made the same assertion yourself in regards to a person's RL gender. Not revealing one's RL country or state of residence is not lying about it. Not revealing one's real age is not lying about it. Not revealing one's financial or account status is not lying about it.

Assuming that one has alterior motives for not revealing information is a slippery slope that can lead to people oversharing personal information. It seems akin to me of people wanting RL names on social media or the government being able to listen in on phone calls if they wanted. "If you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about."

The pertinent questions here seems to me to be

1. Is this personal information?

2. Would it be possible for LL to hide this information without breaking functionality.

and

3. Does showing this information serve a purpose that most SL users want.

The avatar name is considered non-personal, identifying information in SL. It can be changed, but the user ID cannot be changed. LL has elected to make it impossible to hide one's avatar name, because being able to hide it makes griefing and misrepresenting one's account being different than it really is too easy.

Account age is considered non-personal, non-identifying information that is necessary for some of the functionality of SL. It allows region and parcel owners to restrict younger accounts and give freebies only to younger accounts. Most users don't seem to care that it can identify them as having been in SL longer, and if they want to appear as someone who has not been in SL that long, they create a younger alt. For the last 20 years, hardly anyone has complained about their account age being visible to other users.

Account status - Basic, Premium, etc. - has only fairly recently been shown in the SL viewer and is not shown in the Firestorm viewer. This would be considered non-personal, non-identifying information from a legal perspective. It is necessary for SL functionality because it determines which accounts can enter some regions and which can obtain certain Linden Homes or Mainland parcels. I don't think showing it on profiles by default serves a good purpose, however. If it were a choice, on the other hand, it could show who likes to display their wealth as a kind of status symbol, which I think could be helpful in deciding who to avoid dating.

As I said, it gives them the Ability to lie, instead of saying nothing, by hiding it.  I didn't say they would.  I wouldn't.

Edited February 12 by Rowan Amore
added a phrase to clarify

[Extrude Ragu]

5 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

It allows region and parcel owners to restrict younger accounts and give freebies only to younger accounts.

A simple solution to this would be to make the ability to hide SL Birthday something that is only available to +30 day old accounts.

7 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

necessary for some of the functionality of SL

To avoid breaking scripts, an account with its rez date hidden could simply return something like 0/0/0000 or a predictable constant like SL's own birthdate. Viewers could be programmed to recognize such a date as the 'chose to hide' date whilst scripts will just see you as a particularly old avatar.

 

10 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

For the last 20 years, hardly anyone has complained about their account age being visible to other users.

I don't think using the past as a precedent for the future is good here, because as people get older they are more likely to be conscious of their age and more likely to want to escape it. It's only natural that as a platform like secondlife ages, issues like this will become more common place over time.

[Extrude Ragu]

FWIW I put in a feature req based on this thread:-

https://feedback.secondlife.com/feature-requests/p/make-sharing-account-age-optional

[Silent Mistwalker]

14 hours ago, Midnoot said:

I agree with that, which is why we wouldn't have to "lie" ;p. Account age being hidden allows for "simply not saying anything".. Not that I would have lied to begin with. I would avoid the question awkwardly.

OK. I'm going to lay it on you. You are creating a solution to a problem that DOES NOT EXIST for 99.99% of residents. So maybe you should take a look at your own behavior and figure out what you may have said or done to cause your personal issue.

[Extrude Ragu]

@Solar Legion care to share what's so funny?

[Solar Legion]

Nope. I've made my views on this clear - figure it out.

[Extrude Ragu]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

Nope. I've made my views on this clear - figure it out.

Well, not really. You just react to my posts with laughing emoji's but it doesn't mean an awful lot to me.

In general, I don't mind being laughed at, if the person doing the laughing has something constructive to say. But if you have nothing constructive to say, what value do you actually add to the conversation? Should I just ignore you?

[Persephone Emerald]

4 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

As I said, it gives them the Ability to lie, instead of saying nothing, by hiding it.  I didn't say they would.  I wouldn't.

We already have the ability to lie about everything else about our real lives in SL. We can lie about our gender, age, race, marital status, financial status, where we live or what we do for a living. SL data such as online status or account age can easily be discovered with scripted objects, however, so hiding it could actually *show* who is both hiding information and assuming we aren't smart enough to know how to check them.

I still have candles in SL that can check if any avatar is inworld. I mostly used them to check on whether a RL boyfriend was trying to hide when he was in SL. Of course we can also join a group someone is in and check their online status from the membership list. I'm sure it would be easy enough for someone to create an object that can similarily check the account age or status of any user, so trying to lie about such things would be useless.

[Solar Legion]

I have made posts concerning this topic here and in one other thread. Read them and figure out the reason for the reactions.

I have made no direct responses (meaning I have not used the quote function within this thread) quite deliberately as there is no point in doing so.

Further there is no "conversation" to be had on this topic beyond what has been said by myself and others regarding the uselessness of the idea/request.

Again: Find and read my responses - I will not be entertaining requests for explanation as each response by myself and others contains such explanations.

[Extrude Ragu]

1 minute ago, Solar Legion said:

I have made posts concerning this topic here and in one other thread. Read them and figure out the reason for the reactions.

I have made no direct responses (meaning I have not used the quote function within this thread) quite deliberately as there is no point in doing so.

Further there is no "conversation" to be had on this topic beyond what has been said by myself and others regarding the uselessness of the idea/request.

Again: Find and read my responses - I will not be entertaining requests for explanation as each response by myself and others contains such explanations.

No, I don't think I will. I think that anyone who thinks it's ok to laugh at strangers and then tell them to go dig around and figure out why they're being laughed at is not a particularly nice person worthy of my attention. I'd be more inclined to block you. Feel free to correct me on my perspective of you, but right now I don't think you're very worthy of my time.

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 hours ago, Midnoot said:

You keep demonizing the right to privacy. If I WANT to tell you, I will. I shouldn't be forced to tell you anything.  ( Account age for example.) You keep trying to equate the withholding of information with lying. You keep trying to associate suspicious activity with the request to hide basic information that you claim is irrelevant to you. Your example was one that only  someone who is trying to date random strangers on the internet has to worry about. It didn't even cross my mind , because i'm not trying to date anyone, I'm not trying to deceive anyone. I simply want to be in control of how much information i disclose to strangers on the internet.

Your SL account age is not personally identifying information. 🙄

[Persephone Emerald]

16 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

A simple solution to this would be to make the ability to hide SL Birthday something that is only available to +30 day old accounts.

To avoid breaking scripts, an account with its rez date hidden could simply return something like 0/0/0000 or a predictable constant like SL's own birthdate. Viewers could be programmed to recognize such a date as the 'chose to hide' date whilst scripts will just see you as a particularly old avatar.

 

I don't think using the past as a precedent for the future is good here, because as people get older they are more likely to be conscious of their age and more likely to want to escape it. It's only natural that as a platform like secondlife ages, issues like this will become more common place over time.

These are good ideas as to how LL could hide account age if they chose to do so.

Personally, I don't want to hide my account age, but I can imagine some people might feel uncomfortable about others knowing they are "oldbies" or "newbies", especially when these terms get thrown around on the forum as disparaging terms similar to how "boomer" and "millennial" are used elsewhere online. Whatever happened to respecting experience? Is age to be the next artificial distinction to divide us now, along with race and financial status?

Account age isn't even a real indicator of RL age or SL experience. Some people started in SL as teens. Some started after they retired in RL. Some gave it a try years ago, abandoned it, and have only recently come back.

[Solar Legion]

I find the entire idea to be laughable and have made my views on the topic quite clear. You can either go and read them directly or move along - your choice.

There is no reason whatsoever for me to do anything further than point you in the direction of said response(s) as there is no 'conversation' or 'discussion' to be held here so far as I am concerned.

Your views concerning my 'niceness' are your own personal opinions and have no bearing nor relevance here.

Edited February 12 by Solar Legion
Link Insertion

[Extrude Ragu]

Fine, but I didn't know that did I. To me it just looked like you're trying to get a rise out of me or something.

11 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Your views concerning my 'niceness' are your own personal opinions and have no bearing nor relevance here.

They are quite relevant to me. In my life I prefer to engage with people who have my best interests at heart. I don't like to waste my time caring about the thoughts of people who would be quite happy to have a negative impact on my day to day life.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

rezz date can’t show how old you are in real life, it can only show how young you aren’t.

So who cares? 

Snobs against noobs, snobs against oldies, who cares, if someone disturbs your SL because they don’t like something about you (or your avatar) just block them and carry on 😁

[Solar Legion]

Yes, relevant to you - not to the thread/'topic' at hand.

Beyond asking for clarification, the rest ('niceness' and such) should have been sent via PM as such has no bearing to the thread. This includes the latest response.

Consider further 'discussion' on matters not pertaining to this thread, closed here. If you'd like to lodge further complaints concerning my tone and reactions, PMs are over there. Who knows, you might be surprised.

I will close this with the following: There are topics I find to be laughable in and of themselves, ideas and notions as well. For those that I do not find laughable, I find that there are plenty of ways to present such that are laughable.

I will not often bother to engage in such beyond reactions as there is no point whatsoever in doing more than such. Any intent ascribed to such is within the mind of the one ascribing it. If such is an issue ... then do feel free to make use of the tools you have to avoid such messages in the future.

[Extrude Ragu]

12 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

rezz date can’t show how old you are in real life, it can only show how young you aren’t.

So who cares? 

Snobs against noobs, snobs against oldies, who cares, if someone disturbs your SL because they don’t like something about you (or your avatar) just block them and carry on 😁

I mean yeah there's always going to be snobs, people who treat you differently depending on your age. Even if you hid your age there would be people who treat you differently because you hid your age.

Still, a lot of residents come to SL to get away from RL. People knowing young you aren't is RL. Why should a resident be forced to share that information. I think that letting people not share it would make SL more enjoyable for the people who play to get away. The people who play SL to date would simply look for people who do share that information. We can all live in harmony.

[Extrude Ragu]

22 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Yes, relevant to you - not to the thread/'topic' at hand.

Beyond asking for clarification, the rest ('niceness' and such) should have been sent via PM as such has no bearing to the thread. This includes the latest response.

Oh... you mean a private message?

I must say I find it quite amusing, perhaps even 'laughable' that in a thread about privacy concerns of residents, in which you chose to laugh at them, you asked for your own privacy, when asked why you were laughing 😊

[Alwin Alcott]

2 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

you asked for your own privacy, when asked why...

well.. i don't do it either, but personal disputes are adviced to move to PM .