Coffee Pancake

That term exists here with one specific meaning (CSAM) and everywhere else under the sun meaning something else. Every movie is wall to wall ********. Every roleplay character is ******** Every avatar we make here is ******** (heaven forbid we actually have to look and act our age!!) ******** is not a dirty word or term. This is the first place people encounter the term and because it's so broad and so vague, people end up thinking that being under a certain age here is inherently wrong. Using SL to make CSAM is what's wrong, and that is very specific. Making a young looking avatar for "barely legal" sex isn't. Barely legal, like being barely under the speed limit, is entirely ok.

Oh no!! The free starter kink included in the welcome pack! BREEEEEEDING ...

Please define "childlike facial features, is child-sized" so that there can be no doubt about where the line is. Please do so in a way that does not ban accurate and diverse representations of 18 year olds.

Inspiring an awkward feeling should not be grounds to get ejected from the platform and your avatars taken out back.

Too many want this to be true, just so they can watch the world burn.

No, it really isn't. An IP address can change, be easily masked, and is often routinely shared between multiple users. You can routinely have the same IP address with people living over the street or in the same college campus. If you're using a VPN, your IP address is shared by hundreds of others. There is no infallible way to stop any specific person from accessing any service connected to the internet and appearing as a brand new individual. Trying to do serious user tracking without the user joining a service designed to do explicitly that (like facebook) is a fools errand, even then .. it's easy to present a fresh identity.

It could have been made with any viewer, make a minor change to some XML file to rename a floater showing a list of cunningly named plywood cubes. It would actually be easier to make in photoshop. But .. claiming it was made using a secret evil viewer regular people don't have and can't verify suddenly makes it legitimate.

The allegation was insane. If person A and person B are married in REAL LIFE .. why would they ever even need .. no, WANT to do anything here. If by some amazing feat of mental gymnastics they do in fact desire to, as individuals of considerable platform power and wealth, why would they opt to do it on a PUBLIC region. I swear to god, that article opened with a free box of stupid pills and everyone lapped it up without once thinking "hang on a feckin minute" .. gays .. yup.. children .. yup .. that ********* term I only know about because it's banned here .. yup .. easily faked pictures with unverifiable context .. obvious sock puppet grinding his axe .. COME ON

We should not be perma-banning anyone. It catches and forever removes people who most likely got caught out of position on a technicality and who would respond to a suspension and warning. We lose our most invested users. People should be afforded every opportunity to 'grow into' Second Life, and that can be a rocky road, we all know stories of those who started out breaking rules and getting banned, only to come back later and shine. Those who come to SL with the intention of causing harm and breaking social, cultural and legal rules are not deterred and LL are powerless to actually prevent their return. Burning their account to the ground creates a revolving door where an account is simply part of their misadventures cost. It would always be better to suspend an account and let the person reclaim it (or even buy it out of jail), fostering a sense of attachment to an account creates motivation to not get suspended and locked out again, even if it takes a few trips to the sin bin.

Due to individuals concerns about what might or might not be adult content back in 2007, a lot of statements were made and then codified into rules on the wiki. Like all rules, the moment that line is defined, people will find a way to stand right next to the line yet not cross it. This has created edge cases such as clothing optional family beaches, Perfectly complaint with the letter of the ToS. The problem we have is that ******* is entirely the wrong term. It's an umbrella term covering all aspects of role-playing a character that is not the exact real age of the person behind the character. Quite literally all acting and by extension, all role-play and every avatar we have ever made is ********. What's not allowed is 'sexualized ******** involving representations of minors', and here comes the issue, that's both subjectively and culturally defined. The term that should be used is CSAM and Linden Lab should defer to existing legal definitions. The original article was not a smoking gun. It was dripping with homophobia, couched "facts" and provided all the context itself. SL's own cultural definitions (that do not match real world definitions) were heavily leveraged to create outrage. The existing rules are so vague and so easily subject to interpretative abuse that enforcing them at all is a problem. If the author of the medium article can leverage our culture to create a plausible assertion, imagine what a well crafted abuse report can and does do. This is another side of reddit .. the banned come to us to ask for help, and we lock and remove their their posts before they hit the ground because we can't help them. The assumption from the peanut gallery will always be they got caught doing the very worst things imaginable. But here's the part no one wants to accept. Governance gets it wrong from time to time.

All of this. I've been biting my tongue and I'm about done. It has been an ugly and consuming (almost) full time job for our mod team. There have been bans. We have been threatened, accused of being specific senior Linden staff and directly compared to Maxine Ghislaine. We're still getting flack for individuals and a corporation that chose to go dark and cease all communication, on all platforms, for weeks. The majority of people attempting to post the initial medium article were not regulars from our community, neither are many of those having a mud slinging contest in the responses to Brad's statement (that as an official announcement we have had to allow). This whole mess, from whatever side you chose to look at it, was not a product of the regular SL community (embroiled in such meaty topics as how do I find this hair, do you like my avatar and where to find company & connection), neither are those most vocal about banning people and punishing specific social groups in SL. The entire thrust of the article was Linden's own dirty laundry. Not ours. The damage has been done and it hardly matters if there is validity to the claims. Yes, there are SL issues to resolve, there has always been issues, but to take an axe to the community over this is absolutely not the right course of action. I will be deeply upset if this results in a crack down, removal, limitation (explicit or implicit) of child avatars (or those who might be swept up in such a change), the overwhelming majority of whom (and their friends and virtual families) have done nothing wrong. Even simplistically locking them to G rated regions makes the majority of SL activities impossible, G & M regions form a patchwork all over the mainland, it would be impossible to drive or sail. Governance needs to change its approach. They have one tool and it's an orbital nuke, applied in response to one specific accusation OR failing to pay the bill on time. If the way this whole adventure has been handled is any indication, I beg to disagree. They likely don't even realize that the scale of the problem this issue has raised, is almost entirely of their own making. The correct policy terms should be "Using SL to make CSAM isn't allowed. Have one free orbital nuke. Goodbye.". Instead we have the nebulous ******** term, that not only differs considerably from its real world usage, it's been so poorly defined that it acts as a social dragnet encompassing both adult and non adult activities and appearances. Something Virtual Secret managed to illustrate with staggering consistency for 800 weeks straight.

yeah, I'm sure the forums will carry on whatever happens.

This whole mess, like all the other messes before it, will be addressed via this singular option if the ramifications fall on residents. The only questions are how big the rule changes might be, and how deep will it wound the community and platform. A community and platform LL are famously in touch with.

If you read Brad's statement, those people will be us. With a new ToS and rules.

Some person broke into my home, stole my TV, murdered my goldfish and then went home and ate cookies and ice cream. If only *some* of these things are unfounded, which ones are everyone going to focus on ... especially when the follow-up statement hangs a lantern for all to see, saying "and we will continue to crack down on fish killers".

LL might not .. but watch everyone take a ban on child avatars to 100% include short female avatars. Do you think you can survive a torrent of abuse reports everywhere you go because everyone is afraid they might get banned for being seen near you?

Femininity is an expression of gender, it can be applied to any and all.

The only safe way to express femininity. Suck it up guys, this is what peek milf looks like.

This is the real problem. We're already bordering on open season targeting short avatars, women with petite breasts, anime, furries and femboys. New "tighter" rules (that the majority wont even know about till it's shoved in their face) risks creating a social dragnet where people will report first and ask questions later. These reports if acted upon are a summary death sentence for all avatars owned by that person. It's easy to to think 'this wont affect me', but with the stakes being so high pressure is on. New rules put's everyone in a 'better safe than sorry' mindset. "Is that a child avatar or is her bf crazy tall .. above my pay grade, report it so I can't get in trouble." Not everyone wants to be Jacked McBeefpack or Jane TiddyMilf, least of all the younger (20s) people SL desperately needs to join. If the rules attempt to prohibit child avatars entirely (or force venue owners to take that stance), then SL isn't safe for SL's users, this is how you get a social cascade, a run on Second Life's social bank and once the exodus starts, it wont stop.

Child avatars are not actually children in real life. WTF is all this trafficking nonsense. Why are residents as a whole getting new rules.

We need a lot more than the odd sign at a lonely welcome hub.

Zindra is half done because LL dramatically underestimated the size of the adulting population and the migration required. The initial grided regions was assumed sufficient. When it plainly wasn't, they hastily added more regions as the news slowly filtered though, demand and panic spread though the population, things inevitably got worse. The rules were incredibly vague. Some were afraid of getting reported playing dress up, did owning a sex bed count, would a different partner every night make a home a public location, what kinds of avatars could go to A land. There were specific personal use case questions from everyone affected, of which only a tiny minority raised here or via support. LL started trying to add carve outs and "clarifications" to the adult content policy to limit those who would be affected both as a way to calm fears and limit demand. This was of course ineffective as SL's social tooling wasn't up to the task (and still isn't), most users had no idea, just that sex could get you banned. The clarifications (often written up on the fly to answer a specific user question and later codified on the wiki) combined with a desire to be done created the situation we have today, where certain highly questionable activities are permitted under a strict interpretation of the rules and strip clubs don't need to be on A land. The rules acting like a giant dragnet under threat of a ban made the migration a social disaster and cemented the impression that Linden management not only refused to eat their own dog food, they utterly despised dogs in general, even the good boys. Adult land became 'better safe than sorry' with private regions a close second. Mainland has never recovered. LL seem to tacitly acknowledge its importance to platform health, while at the same time trying present a wholesome virtual world that demonstrably no one wants.

Belliseria is Purgatory. A liminal no-mans land.

Seriously, OP should do this. Firestorm support are awesome.

Oh ick .. ping @Soft Linden