So what changed in the Terms of Service?

[Madi Melodious]

8 minutes ago, Piper Kelly said:

Maybe LL should think about banning the people that go around derendering a child av's clothing.       Just saying.

Well, this is also another sore point in the community.   Majority of the problem comes from a small group of players that keep getting banned, recreating accounts and just coming back.  LL would punish the ones that follow the rules instead of dealing with the constant rule breakers.   That is the impression in the community.

[Dorientje Woller]

14 minutes ago, Piper Kelly said:

Maybe LL should think about banning the people that go around derendering a child av's clothing.       Just saying.

Here, hitting the nail on the head. LL goes the way like so many things in the world nowadays. Blaming and punishing the victims/mass and not the offenders. Child/teen/woman doesn't r*ped it/herself because it/she is dressed provocative, it's the perv that isn't able to keep his hands at home.

[Coffee Pancake]

11 minutes ago, Madi Melodious said:

Well, this is also another sore point in the community.   Majority of the problem comes from a small group of players that keep getting banned, recreating accounts and just coming back.  LL would punish the ones that follow the rules instead of dealing with the constant rule breakers.   That is the impression in the community.

This is why I am against permabans for any reason.

They don't work. They have never worked. Especially when it comes to dealing with the actual bad apples, they just come right back.

The honest ones stay away and get to deal with emotional trauma and ptsd.

[Denim Robonaught]

25 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The modesty layer is also a joke when the rebirth body exists.

Aren't you a child avatar ?

Not right now .....

Great way to move between ratings though! Nobody's going to say anything about an adult in diapers 🤪

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

This is why I am against permabans for any reason.

They don't work. They have never worked. Especially when it comes to dealing with the actual bad apples, they just come right back.

The honest ones stay away and get to deal with emotional trauma and ptsd.

A very well known (and oddly popular) forum "personality" was permabanned about 12 or so years ago. He refused to go quietly into that good night, but reappeared here, on the forums, using literally a dozen or more new accounts. He'd pop back in again after getting banned, hang around for a few months until he was once again detected, and banned yet again . . . and then rinse and repeat for about 4 years I think.

They couldn't keep him off the forum, yet alone in-world.

[Kathlen Onyx]

32 minutes ago, Madi Melodious said:

The modesty layer isn't called for when alpha will do the job just fine.   

What they are preventing is the Child avatar from being able to turn it back on themselves. That's why Alphaing won't work. It must not be able to be removed.

The thing with all this though is that what is to stop them from just putting on a non compliant body at any time. I am pretty sure ***play doesn't happen in the open and if it's two or three people doing it they are behind closed doors.  Who would know but them and do you think they will be sending in AR reports on themselves?

Unless they make a specific account for adults that can't purchase child avatar things and a specific Child Avatar account that can't purchase adult things then it's very simple to get around the rules while appearing to comply in public.

I kind of see this as LL saying "welp, we did what we could to curtail the behavior. If they get caught not conforming then we have reason to ban"  BUT the thing is that they never will be caught and nothing will change.  It's just made it a lot of hassle for those that were already following the rules.

Yes, there is something bigger happening here and we just don't know what it is....yet.

[Drayke Newall]

8 hours ago, Daniel Regenbogen said:

As in "don't visit this haunted house, 3 houses down the street is a brothel"?

Then even under the old rules you would be in violation of LL's Policies. The old Policies stated that a child avatar is not to be any where in proximity of sexualised objects, content, scripts or sex beds. You being 3 houses down would be a cause to AR you or ban you from the region. This is why many adult regions banned child avatars from their land because you being there could get them in trouble due to the 'proximity' rule.

Also, you didn't mention this however others were talking about it... these 'family friendly nude beaches' would also be in violation of the old rules. I'm surprised they even existed at all and LL didn't take them down as sexualised objects and scripts would also include genitalia.

8 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I still dont understand how the child can get the sim in trouble, its the childs responsibility to stay away from adult content, not the other way around.

The old policy included a statement that said that sexualized objects or adult poseballs etc could not be placed nearby places that could be considered 'children spaces'. For example, if an adult region had a playground on their sim, despite the intention of said playground to be used by adult's only, a child visiting such an area and seeing poseballs for adults in proximity could allow them to AR the sim owners to get them in trouble. So to be safe many Adult sims would refuse entry to child avies.

Just like the new rules now, the old were just as ambiguous and confusing leaving it open to interpretation. As Zalificent has stated in the past, the rules are written by people (usually lawyers) who have no understanding of how people 'play' and engage with SL which means people play guessing games with the rules.

This is also why other platforms go so far as to ensure they release everything (i.e. what something is to look like such as modesty layers) as part of an announcement and not just 'you must wear a modesty layer' and leave it at that for everyone to interpret what LL mean, when LL dont actually mean what everyone else thinks they means.

To announce a new major policy change the day before the weekend when they are not in office and wont comment is also so LL.

7 hours ago, Daniel Regenbogen said:

Caught that when I started to turn off the computer. Do you *really* think that these people were hiding in adult rated regions with public access?

No they were hiding on general, moderate and adult rated regions with public access if the instigating article of all this is to be believed.

5 hours ago, frankyjake2333 said:

When your own internal investigation found nothing wrong the correct thing to do would have been to proceed with business as usual.  You found nothing wrong, but you go out of your way to break something that helps so many people.  That speaks very poorly of your management skills.

Where did the announcement say that they found nothing wrong or that the article in question that started this was all complete rubbish? The announcement of these changes said nothing of the sort. It simply said that Linden Lab found no wrong doing of their own employees or contractors.

It never said that they found nothing wrong with users, content or regions within second life in relation to their policies that were changed.

Edited May 5 by Drayke Newall

[BriannaLovey]

16 minutes ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

What they are preventing is the Child avatar from being able to turn it back on themselves. That's why Alphaing won't work. It must not be able to be removed.

The thing with all this though is that what is to stop them from just putting on a non compliant body at any time. I am pretty sure ***play doesn't happen in the open and if it's two or three people doing it they are behind closed doors.  Who would know but them and do you think they will be sending in AR reports on themselves?

Unless they make a specific account for adults that can't purchase child avatar things and a specific Child Avatar account that can't purchase adult things then it's very simple to get around the rules while appearing to comply in public.

I kind of see this as LL saying "welp, we did what we could to curtail the behavior. If they get caught not conforming then we have reason to ban"  BUT the thing is that they never will be caught and nothing will change.  It's just made it a lot of hassle for those that were already following the rules.

Yes, there is something bigger happening here and we just don't know what it is....yet.

In the past, certain objects (such as sim crashers) have been completely removed from the asset server. If LL is serious about this, that is what they will do with the older child bodies.

[Coffee Pancake]

8 minutes ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

It must not be able to be removed.

But they must be able to change avatar, or in the case of rebirth body users. they switch shape and skin and BAM! Their avatar is now a tween/teen/adult wearing all the same stuff they had, same body, same head, same outfit.

A child avatar isn't an account status, it's a collection of attachments and clothing and stuff. All of which can be removed and replaced and changed because that's how all this works.

it's a nonsense that only exists because someone who has no idea how SL works decreed that "child avatars can't ever be nude" (because nudity was mentioned in the medium article and we're just ticking boxes). A farcical modesty layer is the best they could come up with and they couldn't even come up with guidance as to what that actually means.

As written - The new rules - You can have a child avatar wearing one sock with a modesty panel on one elbow and it's legal (wait, did you assume it had to cover a specific area? why do you think we have been asking for guidance!!)

Read this post - It's the best in the entire thread.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

10 hours ago, Leslie Trihey said:

I'm not scouring 97+ pages of a multi-day discussion to find more examples. "Sorry."

@Rowan Amore asked you for an example of somebody in this thread claiming that female avatars under 7 feet tall would get banned.

 

You didn't need to scour 97+pages, just YOUR OWN posting history.

On 5/3/2024 at 3:52 PM, Leslie Trihey said:

Fact is if you don't look like a 7 foot tall Kupra Karen your walking on thin ice.

 

Happy to help out and save you from scouring.

[Sydelle Zanzibar]

I've was an 11yo kid for 10 years then I "aged up" to 12. I am all for the new rules for A rated regions. I have to shop there pretty often as lots of shops are there and it always feels uncomfortable, so I got a ghost avi for shopping. that is no big deal.

The problem I have with all this is the ambiguity of the modesty rules. I'm happy to comply, afterall one big reason im a kid is to avoid sexual content.  But HOW to comply? It's easy to just say 'comply' but the rules are not clear enough. I already edited my skin, but i have no clue if my skin edit  complies with the rules, and i can't go anywhere to look it up.  If this is going to mess with BOM so I cant use my system clothing and other BOM stuff, my avatar will not likely be fixable to keep the look i prefer and 90% or more of my outfits are useless. Then you have the mesh outfits: If the modesty layer has to be a certain size and color, and can't be made transparent (I read that as anything all the way to  alpha) then most of my mesh clothing also is now useless since i alpha out areas all the time. I'd like to think this entirely avatar breaking interpretation of the rule is NOT correct because I hope there is some common sense being applied, but no one has clarified it so maybe it means kids will all bel imited to a very small content pool that isn't yet created. 

So as someone who's been a kid a very long time with a large inventory, it feels very much like a punishment for existing. I dress modestly and spend most of my time in SL alone building puzzles. If I have to lose my avi, I'm sad! and why wouldn't i be?  All this concern (and 114 pages of forum thread debating i read most of) would be totally avoided by making real guidelines and rules that are followable so people know what is expected. 

LL needs to answer important questions:

What defines a "child avatar"?

Besides all the anime and other unusual avis, we have people in spaces i read who are adults and alone sitting around worrying if their chest hair  is showing enough to not get banned. So its not just kid avis worrying about this. 

What is "modesty"?

SL has never been a place where modesty rules by any stretch of the imagination. but if we  have required modesty, modesty standards MUST be implemented, You cant just leave it to "the community". There's people who in their culture children run around naked and no one thinks sexually about it and there's people who think women with no makeup and wearing baggy sweat suits are sexy. Some people in this thread feel having breasts even small ones or showing a belly button is sexual on a kid and disgusting, and others who think its weird to sexualize that since breasts/nipples and belly buttons are natural. Most times whichever standard they know in their RL lives is not wrong, its just different than others around them. SL needs to have it's OWN standards and we all need to know what they are. Full Stop.  It's not a matter of telling people how to skirt the edge of modesty, its about being clear and reasonable. 

It is simply not reasonable to give a rule that says basically, 'an unclearly undefined subset of the community must follow strict rules or be banned and for fear of encouraging bad behaviour we will not be explaining the proper way to go about following the new rules.'

 

Edited May 5 by Sydelle Zanzibar
typo

[Madi Melodious]

29 minutes ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

What they are preventing is the Child avatar from being able to turn it back on themselves. That's why Alphaing won't work. It must not be able to be removed.

 

In what world will this work?   I have 3 bodies in my inventory, are they going to disappear?  There is simply no way a modesty layer will work with the current body system when skins and bodies can be changed at will.    Unless they demand a modesty layer for all bodies, child and adult, all sizes, it simply will not work.  If they are intending the break the rules in private this rule does nothing to stop them in any way.  It is simply unenforceable unless you completely change the way the entire system works. 

[Dorientje Woller]

1 minute ago, Madi Melodious said:

In what world will this work?   I have 3 bodies in my inventory, are they going to disappear?  There is simply no way a modesty layer will work with the current body system when skins and bodies can be changed at will.    Unless they demand a modesty layer for all bodies, child and adult, all sizes, it simply will not work.  If they are intending the break the rules in private this rule does nothing to stop them in any way.  It is simply unenforceable unless you completely change the way the entire system works. 

That would be the nail in the coffin for SL.

[Madi Melodious]

2 minutes ago, Dorientje Woller said:

That would be the nail in the coffin for SL.

Puts simply what they have asked or demanding isn't possible in any way with the current system.  There is no way you can place this layer on any current avatar of any size and make it un removeable.  that is simply a fact.

[JUSTUS Palianta]

Why should adults wear a modesty layer because tinys can't behave themselves.

[JUSTUS Palianta]

You can build a modesty layer into the mesh of the avatar.

Linden can remove items from your inventory to prevent them being worn.

It's all possible.

[Drayke Newall]

13 minutes ago, Madi Melodious said:

In what world will this work?   I have 3 bodies in my inventory, are they going to disappear?  There is simply no way a modesty layer will work with the current body system when skins and bodies can be changed at will.    Unless they demand a modesty layer for all bodies, child and adult, all sizes, it simply will not work.  If they are intending the break the rules in private this rule does nothing to stop them in any way.  It is simply unenforceable unless you completely change the way the entire system works. 

The problem is that, LL (or whoever wrote these rules) seem to be not aware that child avatars are not just made using specific mesh bodies made for child avatars but also from adult bodies, furry bodies, anime bodies, etc or child specific skins.

The rule is clearly a half baked rule to cover themselves with them actually not realising that their proposed rule just doesn't work as intended. The only way their rule will work as it stands is if they 'trust' all users to do the right thing of which will never happen.

We are 114 pages in and you are not going to get an answer at all until Monday - if then. Clearly from the FAQ not being updated to answer this question but updated to clarify others, and the multiple tags requesting confirmation shows that LL are in an oh-oh situation and dont themselves know how they are going to fix and enforce it without a big staff meeting to discuss.

Edited May 5 by Drayke Newall

[Madi Melodious]

2 minutes ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

You can build a modesty layer into the mesh of the avatar.

Linden can remove items from your inventory to prevent them being worn.

It's all possible.

Not possible.  Anyone that wants to break the rules can simply use one of the old non mesh bodies.  Those are still around.   As for your latter what they going to remove?   are they going to get it all?  probably not.   Plus when they start removing content on that level, if you think the fall out is bad now, wait till they try that.    not possible. 

[JUSTUS Palianta]

Linden can remove items from your inventory.  Every single object has a number just like an avatar.  Not the first time they have done it and it won't be the last.  I think they call that life.

[JUSTUS Palianta]

Arguing about it just makes you guys look like well ... kids.  Making content for children has always been a grey area and done at your own risk.  Purchasing thus content has always been done at your own risk too.  

[Madi Melodious]

1 minute ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

Linden can remove items from your inventory.  Every single object has a number just like an avatar.  Not the first time they have done it and it won't be the last.  I think they call that life.

Do you know many items are in the second life database?   Years ago I heard it was 13 trillion nothing is ever truly deleted.  To remove all that from the grid they will have to rez all out to be sure.   

[JUSTUS Palianta]

Linden can log in anyone's avatar any time they want and rez and delete their whole inventory if they want, that's just how it is.  It's quite possible they will do that to avatars who are reported.  Arguing isn't going to get you anywhere, these are the TO's everyone agrees to, to log in SL.

[Alwin Alcott]

6 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Yes but she picked him up on adult land first. You can't have a brothel on moderate land, advertised or not

as long it's possible to promote/advertise them on the general aimed part of the employment section, there's a little more to repair for LL.

[Madi Melodious]

2 minutes ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

Arguing about it just makes you guys look like well ... kids.  Making content for children has always been a grey area and done at your own risk.  Purchasing thus content has always been done at your own risk too.  

Nobody here is arguing about anything.  We are just simply pointing out how things are.   So, if they want 100% modesty layer to be unremovable and permanent, there is only one way they are going to do it.   Close down SL as it is, go through the inventory, all of the items in and remove them, then rewrite the entire system from the ground up to include modesty layer on every avatar type, size, and genre.   good luck with that.

[Sydelle Zanzibar]

4 minutes ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

Linden can remove items from your inventory.  Every single object has a number just like an avatar.  Not the first time they have done it and it won't be the last.  I think they call that life.

You don't seem to understand. Most child avatars are not made by exclusively using "child content", especially RP ages over 6. We buy things we can modify to make look childlike using the mod rights, alphas etc. We do this because not much child content is even available. We are not talking about some child content with genitalia. I have a normal skin just like you do, but i got a full perm one and edited it a bit to be less adult. Not everyone knows how to do that.  You can't just remove all skins from SL!  I have a responsibility to get ones that are more modest and to hide adult parts, and i will, but the people the rules are made to stop wont, they will just use adult skins. If LL removes those, what will the adult wear?