Regarding privacy and legality of products sold on Marketplace

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Weird double posting. NVM

Edited August 17 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Zalificent Corvinus]

7 hours ago, discussionbot said:

I know the narrative of ‘LL doesn’t get involved’ is frequently quoted and often true, but surely if there’s some form of creator malpractice on their own marketplace they should take a look into it. Especially for products rendered useless for no good (assuming) reason, after paying for it. 

Umm, no...

"Anarcho-Fascist 1980's Un-Economics Fictional Free Market Fallacy Fairy Small Government Capitalism"

 

The concept of "Trading Standards" barely exists, "Consumer Rights" are limited to "your right to try a demo *if* one is offered".

 

[Arwyn Quandry]

Yikes, what a thread. Gonna put both buttcheeks out here and say that I think scripts which intentionally stop a user from using items they purchased should be against ToS. It's essentially a scam. Whenever I find out a creator does this, they go on my do not shop list.

[Piper Kelly]

7 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

And it happens by accident.

I (and many others) discovered a few years ago that the HUDs for the hair we had bought from a particular, relatively popular hair creator, had stopped functioning. It appears that the HUDs had been "calling home," and that whatever web resource it had been using to do so was no longer functional -- so the HUDs just "broke."

That particular creator offered "fixed" versions of all the broken hair via redelivery.

So long as the object or its HUD is connecting to something external, I'd say that deliberately breaking something is pretty trivial.

So thats why I got all those redeliveries.  I wondered why 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

16 minutes ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

Yikes, what a thread. Gonna put both buttcheeks out here and say that I think scripts which intentionally stop a user from using items they purchased should be against ToS. It's essentially a scam. Whenever I find out a creator does this, they go on my do not shop list.

In fairness, this is the first time I've ever heard of a creator intentionally using this to render an item unusable.

Although, I'd be unsurprised to learn of others. Fortunately, though, I don't think it's common practice.

It IS, as Prok suggests, galling that we can't name names here -- but I also understand why that's the case.

[Gabriele Graves]

22 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

In fairness, this is the first time I've ever heard of a creator intentionally using this to render an item unusable.

Although, I'd be unsurprised to learn of others. Fortunately, though, I don't think it's common practice.

It IS, as Prok suggests, galling that we can't name names here -- but I also understand why that's the case.

I know of at least one person in the inworld scripting group who admitted they put it into all their products and yes, if you do things they don't like, they will blacklist your id without refund.

Edited August 17 by Gabriele Graves

[Kathlen Onyx]

7 hours ago, discussionbot said:

Honestly. Hear me out fr. if you’re above 50k posts you gotta chill for a bit and maybe get throttled for a max 10 posts/day lmaooo

You do realize the post count is cumulative right?  

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I'd be unsurprised to learn of others

There was a certain brand of collar scripts, the owner put a bricking system in the "merchant build kits", so if a merchant/creator using those scripts in their RLV products, offended the system owner, the merchants creator ID code would be added to the brick list.

So if you, for example, had paid L$1000 for a merchant build kit, then found out it was supposed to be cheaper, and complained about being swindled, not only did your kit stop working, so did every product you'd made with that kit, and sold to end users.

 

This isn't a hypothetical case, it was an actual thread here on the forum some time back.

[Kathlen Onyx]

 I wonder what would happen if in real life everyone's coffee machine suddenly stopped working?  I think we can all be glad that doesn't happen!

[Zalificent Corvinus]

By way of a contrast...

There's an upside to "potential bricking" too.

There's a merchant, makes INM compatible items.

Things like a random party balloon rezzer, where the balloons burst and "splatter" INM users.

 

The Product is clearly described as having a "bricking" feature, and that *if* the merchant gets reports of a customer using the device maliciously, in in-appropriate areas, then it gets bricked, with no refund, as it's NOT intended for use as some kind of smutty griefer weapon.

 

[Annie Nova]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

In fairness, this is the first time I've ever heard of a creator intentionally using this to render an item unusable.

Although, I'd be unsurprised to learn of others. Fortunately, though, I don't think it's common practice.

It IS, as Prok suggests, galling that we can't name names here -- but I also understand why that's the case.

I was banned from a creator's region for saying some negative things in a thread a few years back, some people just can't take being critized. *shrugs*

Edited August 17 by Annie Nova
to add

[Orwar]

33 minutes ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

I wonder what would happen if in real life everyone's coffee machine suddenly stopped working?

   Coffee .. Machine? 

   If that thing stops working there's something gone awry with gravity, at which point I think we have some bigger issues than coffee to concern ourselves with!

[Alwin Alcott]

8 hours ago, discussionbot said:

Honestly. Hear me out fr. if you’re above 50k posts you gotta chill for a bit and maybe get throttled for a max 10 posts/day lmaooo

when being here for, lets say 10-15 yrs a limit of 10-15 posts a day would still be that amount.
However some are posting as they have nothing else to do, or hate their live out of these forums,  the average over time isn't that dramatic

Edited August 17 by Alwin Alcott

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

10 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Coffee .. Machine? 

   If that thing stops working there's something gone awry with gravity, at which point I think we have some bigger issues than coffee to concern ourselves with!

Who has time to wait for gravity these days, just get yourself an Aeropress!

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

By way of a contrast...

There's an upside to "potential bricking" too.

There's a merchant, makes INM compatible items.

Things like a random party balloon rezzer, where the balloons burst and "splatter" INM users.

 

The Product is clearly described as having a "bricking" feature, and that *if* the merchant gets reports of a customer using the device maliciously, in in-appropriate areas, then it gets bricked, with no refund, as it's NOT intended for use as some kind of smutty griefer weapon.

 

I never get invited to those parties  😂

Aren't you fair game if you are wearing the INM though? It's hardly being griefed if you have the hud on. I have my notifies turned off, so if I'm standing too close to someone doing it, I can get hit by the overspray and not even know until hours later when someone says ummm... whats that on your leg?

I'm sure some whiney users would complain though.

Its like those evil titlers, when you'd give some one a really evil title, then they would complain about it and reset it.

Don't want the consequences, don't use it.

Edited August 17 by BilliJo Aldrin
added stuff, then added more stuff, changed the order

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

Who has time to wait for gravity these days, just get yourself an Aeropress!

   I do find it interesting how willing people are to throw money at something that might save them a few seconds in doing one thing (when, arguably, that thing is nothing, as far as time is concerned, compared to actually boiling the water), but then takes a whole lot more time and work to clean, creates unnecessary risk (pushing it over or cracking the cup when you're just out of bed, and getting splashed with freshly boiled water seems like a bad way to start the day). It isn't even convenience, it's just convolution!

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

4 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   I do find it interesting how willing people are to throw money at something that might save them a few seconds in doing one thing (when, arguably, that thing is nothing, as far as time is concerned, compared to actually boiling the water), but then takes a whole lot more time and work to clean, creates unnecessary risk (pushing it over or cracking the cup when you're just out of bed, and getting splashed with freshly boiled water seems like a bad way to start the day). It isn't even convenience, it's just convolution!

 

With good marketing, people will buy anything. Look at electric cars 😂

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

Just now, Orwar said:

   I do find it interesting how willing people are to throw money at something that might save them a few seconds in doing one thing (when, arguably, that thing is nothing, as far as time is concerned, compared to actually boiling the water), but then takes a whole lot more time and work to clean, creates unnecessary risk (pushing it over or cracking the cup when you're just out of bed, and getting splashed with freshly boiled water seems like a bad way to start the day). It isn't even convenience, it's just convolution!

 

I initially felt the same way when I first received one as a gift so it sat unused in a cupboard for quite a while.  However after using it for a while I was surprised at just how good a cup of coffee it makes (I own a fancy espresso machine and a dual hot plate drip filter machine but use the Aeropress the vast majority of the time since it's just easier and tastes equally good).  Cleaning it consists of unscrewing the filter cap and pushing the used filter and compressed coffee grounds out and straight into the bin then running it under the tap to wash off any excess coffee grounds.  Stability is definitely an issue if you aren't mindful but I've taken it to work and made coffee using paper cups before so it's not quite as perilous as one might imagine.

All in all, it's probably the fastest and most effective coffee making device I've owned (and I've had a pretty wide selection of them), so much so that when I finally wore out my old one (the seal went after about 8 years of use) I went and bought a replacement for it the same day.

[Stephanie Misfit]

10 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Everyone else can post once every thirty seconds

And some seem to manage to do that.

[Tjay Wicken]

7 hours ago, TrishAce said:

A shame that the hostility between people in the comments is taking away from the topic.

Items being potentially rendered unusable either via controlled means or servers going offline is something I feel isn't considered or talked about often enough.

The former, what OP experienced, shouldn't even exist in my opinion (unless you are refunded).

As for servers going offline, it would at least be nice to require some transparency from creators.  Some are obvious and more transparent about it (such as anything with a web portal, you would expect the product to be worthless if the shop goes out of business), but some other items might not appear to require a server at first sight.

This is a very good point and something which really should be addressed at a ToS/Policy level by LL.

There may be legitimate reasons to use an external server to validate things, such as for subscription-based products or those relying on external servers for core functionality. However, it should be an absolute requirement for creators to make potential customers aware of this external dependency and provide realistic expectations that the product may cease to function in the future.

I don't see any way of ensuring this outside of a ToS change that requires creators to indicate dependencies on external servers. Creators using this functionality maliciously should have their accounts terminated/closed.

[Raspberry Crystal]

@Tjay Wicken this seems like such common sense, of course this should happen!

[Ceka Cianci]

3 hours ago, Annie Nova said:

I was banned from a creator's region for saying some negative things in a thread a few years back, some people just can't take being critized. *shrugs*

I just didn't agree with a creator one time that came to the forum, over like green energy or nuclear or something like that. They banned me from their region, which is where you went for updates..

It wasn't even about their product.. It was about energy.  lol

some people just don't have good energy I guess.. hehehe

[Arwyn Quandry]

10 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

In fairness, this is the first time I've ever heard of a creator intentionally using this to render an item unusable.

Although, I'd be unsurprised to learn of others. Fortunately, though, I don't think it's common practice.

It IS, as Prok suggests, galling that we can't name names here -- but I also understand why that's the case.

It's not super common but I've seen it done before. There's a kids creator who got a lot of hate for doing it some years back, no idea if they still do or not. I've heard of it happening with genitals before too. Creators usually defend it as a measure to stop copybotters from buying their products but as someone has pointed out, they can just go to a no-script area or use an alt. It feels more vengeful than legitimate.

[animats]

10 hours ago, Tjay Wicken said:

However, it should be an absolute requirement for creators to make potential customers aware of this external dependency and provide realistic expectations that the product may cease to function in the future.

Now that's a good idea. Put that one into "Feedback", please.

(I have a swim HUD that phones home. Didn't discover this until the server went down.)

Edited August 17 by animats

[WeFlossDaily]

Some creators enable a way to break their own products so they can force their customers to come and pick up a fresh update, shop around the store, and buy some more virtual goods. Just an idea.