bunboxmomo

Like I said, not a sockpuppet, and been around on SL far longer than my profile shows. I am new to the forums though and asume too much faith in humanity at times. (I'll blame that on the counselling training) (but that is quickly changing.)

I fear there is an assumption in belief that we develoeprs would just step in and make new different types of legos after someone came in and smashed the lego pieces and then laughed about how we're all bad actors anyway, just because we're scripters regardless of if there was any involvement in bot operations or not. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who's response would be "Lol make it yourself" and go on to more developer friendly platforms. In fairness, I'm sure there would be those who step in to "make it themselves" until the next time the mask slips and this kind of attitude comes out and they bail too. No one wants to make things for a platform where they feel they are viewed as shadey shadowy malicious figures just for making stuff, until they go out of their way to win the approval of their peers, instead of just being treated with good faith from the start. I know I certainly don't. I also think it's probably under-estimated just how many APIs are actively used in all kinds of scripts on a regular basis in cornerstone functionality of SL

Again with the "your vested interests". I am not a bot developer, I do not operate a bot network. I am in favour of the deny_bots flag. I get you feel frustrated because we disagree, but stop creating some imagined boogeyman persona and sticking it on my forehead so you can smugly smack it down. Cut that out.

That goes entirely against Open Source as a concept that SL is built on. This is fundamentally incompatible with the user-driven creation ecosystem SL is founded on. The very platform itself would not exist if a hardline approach to locking any and all development to LL was what existed surrounding SL's development. The very thing that has allowed SL to thrive as well as it has, for so many years where other platforms would have dried up. The lindens do fantastic work, but this has always been something we've built together, not just another social network run entirely by it's dev team.

Yikes. You know bots do a lot more than just "scrape user data" right? This sounds like you just really hate those types of bots from a principled position and you're going on the warpath against scripted agents in general, even if that means to an end deprives residents of their own choices along the way, even ones about blocking bots on their land that without they literally can't anyway? Also I'd remind you, you were literally just advocating *against* long term efforts to *remove* the ability of LSL to get data without adequate permissions.

Is that why you've been taking this stance? You're against any approach that would allow bots to continue to exist and give control to users because it would potentially get in the way of the goal you want being a total bot ban in public opinion? I've been trying to get my head around why you seemed to be opposed to giving better user control, that suddenly makes sense why you have that position, I certainly don't agree with it though. Is this just a principled matter of you hate bots then rather than this being anything about actual functionality and resident control over their own privacy?

llGetAgentList and then iterating down llGetObjectDetails, llGetAttachedList and various others would all be part of a pure LSL approach. (See why I'm arguing I shouldn't be able to do this for invisible parcels if I'm not an EM? It's no different to the concerns people had about bots doing it, the difference is this doesn't need a bot so you wouldn't even be able to tell.)

There are functions that exist for this *in a region*. You need to use scripted relays to pull information from *other* regions, or use bots running bot clients. Alternatively, just open your viewer and set draw distance greater than a single region. (It should be noted this information can also be scraped through llHTTPRequest as it currently stands if you are using a product by a creator who is collecting your information withoutr your knowledge, as llHTTPRequest headers contain data on your current region, your region position, your velocity and direction of movement and your oreintation.)

Compared to right now where users have no control over what information is available to other users about them? And comapred to right now where countless residents have no means to prevent bots from scrapeing data from regions like those in Mainland? Whats your advice to them? That they pack up and buy premium and move to Belli? Or is it just a "Too bad"? You know my point isn't about allowing bots more access, it's about giving residents control so that *more* residents can take control of their own data and about *extending* this to users who currently have no means to. I mean with your point of concern, you could just as easily make an invisible parcel by default also restrict scripted access, and then have additional check under that that allows scripted agents the user can click. I'd rather you don't creatively cherry pick quotes from my post to make it look like I said something else, and then paint me as someone arguing to allow bots access, just because you don't like the fact a choice might exist that you don't personally want on your own land out of every other context in that post about *taking away* access. Thanks.

AI Counselling sounds like a new and exciting field! 🤑/s (I do have some VRC projects I need to be developing and a paper I am supposed to be writing but this thread is becoming crack-c***ine for my ADHD, so I'm going to be a responsible adult and close this and catch up with you all later! Take care!)

I think you're doing a fine enough job, don't put yourself down! Pancake is right that there is a significant reason this is difficult to do as it stands in the codebase and data structures, but as you've put quite well yourself there are reasons such a rework of this could be warranted to give residents choices that currently isn't viable with deny_bots being *only* estate level. (No one is advocating for removing that. What is being advocated for is adding *more* similar flags in other places even if as a long term project)

In both PCT and CBT we certainly do when dealing with cognitive distortions such as emotional reasoning yes. We employ unconditional positive regard but we encourage congruence in PCT, and mindfulness in CBT. If we go further, Psychodynamics as a whole is entirely based on this concept of exploration.

Actually I would argue this for reasons more than just bots. Currently as a scripter as you have so rightly pointed out, I can use LSL to pull information about people in "invisible" parcels, even if I am not an EM or my script is not deeded to group. Quite frankly, I should not be able to do this, and you're right that would require a substantial rework of how some data is handled. I don't even need LSL to do it, I can see it in my viewer. A rework, I would argue is warranted as a long term project, in the interest of allowing residents more control over the amount of information made available about them to other users, when in land they have marked as wishing to be hidden. In addition, the current state of the scripted access flags is in dissonance with SL's UX and every other flag we've had to date which is mirrored at high level and low level respectively. It's not extreme to express a desire to see that resolved as a consequence of that. Keep in mind, this is a thread discussing what has been a change to SL that has a significant impact (PII inlcuded). The whole purpose of this thread is discussing significant changes, so it's not unwarranted to put forwards discussion about changes in other areas in much the same way. I would also say that until this policy, people would have said the same about making changes to how UUID36s are handled, and how bots are handled, would be as you put it "not practical", and those changes have been made with potential pending changes on the engineering backend as part of this depending on the outcome of internal discussion, as Soft Linden said earlier in the thread This is a discussion of potential further changes, not a discussion of what can be done at the flip of a switch here and now. Also with regard to the following While that may not be a choice you feel you would wish to make for your own parcel, it may be a choice someone else might make. The point allowing residents to decide what choices they wish to make for themselves, rather than forcing an all or nothing as it currently is. Estate Owners should have final say on estates. Region owners should have final say on regions (Where it does not conflict with estate owners) Parcel Owners should have final say on their parcels (where it does not conflict with EOs or ROs) Being not invisible but inaccessible, is a completely valid choice someone may choose to make, and it's not for you or I to say "We have to protect them from making that choice, they might choose the wrong one!", and remember this goes beyond bots. A resident who chooses to have their land closed but visible, is equally valid as any other choice a resident may make about their own land, and we should not presume end-user ignorence as a reason to "benelovently proect the user from making the wrong choice" and accept our preferences are our own. Residents should be free to decide for themselves how they wish their own data to be used, or not at all, rather than this dicated to them through lack of ability to effect a meaningful decision (Such as is currently the case in ML). No one is under the mistaken impression that this would not be a long term implementation due to the way data is handled currently, I've got my compsci qualifications , I understand entirely what you're trying to say there. What I and others are saying is that it's a long term project, worth doing.

Potential freudian slip on my part lol. I'll explain where that came from, but just know I'm not bringing this into this lol, just explaining that a bit. So to tap into real life profession here for a moment. In counselling we actually have some degree of a astrisk on that point. People's feelings are always deserving of being heard and are valid in that sense, but when it comes to disputes or perceptions of others and their actions, in Counselling we actually advocate the opposite and encourage people to examine if their feelings reflect reality and encourage them to challenge their own feelings where they don't. I'm not bringing counseling into here, but explaining the freudian slip in why I left that out in that statement. 😅

I would ask you to read the rest of that same post, because this was mentioned and is part of what people are asking about with parcel level flags. Changes to visible viewer data and data visible to LSL, to in turn make that viable.

Well the context is Prokofy was quite literally saying to leave the thread and that without an existing reputation I am not allowed to post in here. I understand you are not a fan of the term and believe it to be overused by those who would seek to deligitamise conversation, but that is not the context in which it is being used. This *is* an attempt at gatekeeping, the idea of the questioning of someone's right to be present in a conversation on the basis of a bar of entry. As for the idea that malicious users have pivoted to use of bot networks instead, well you're welcome to that speculation, but that it is speculation on your part. These are still people, who even if on the recieving end of much disagreement from privacy-minded residents of Second Life, they are still residents of Second Life and have just as much right to the platform as anyone else. It is my understanding that the development and operation of bots on the grid, in of itself, has not been in active violation of any policies or that of the ToS, until recently and even then this is a very tentative recently. My understanding is that they still are not in violation so long as they use registered scritped agents that respect the deny_bot flags. The only thing they have been in violation of, is the personal consesus of a number of privacy-concerned residents. But that consesus among privacy concerned residents is just as valid as anyone else's and there is just as much right to present that concern to the lab to petition for changes in policy or feature provisions to allow for better control over one's privacy in relation to bots, and it is just as much bot developers/operators rights to state their own positions and their own concerns. It does not make either group, wrong or bad for taking their stances and having their positions that they present in that ongoing debate with other residents and to the lab. It is then for the lab to decide if they feel a policy change or feature provision is warrented, as they have done so. To go beyond that into attributions of malice and deviousness in intent to said people from the basis of speculation or their poor presentation of self in previous communications, or the , is a step too far and is an act of rationalisation of fears and concerns about it. I'm not saying that to dismiss those concerns, of course your concerns are warrented and valid given past context, and deserve to be heard, but when they cross over into blanket attribution of malice, that's where a line has to be drawn in the interest of good faith and being fair to one another. I am 100% in support of the addition of deny_bot flags, and I want to seem expanded to parcel level *AS WELL*, so more residents have the ability to decide for themselves what they are comfortable and what they are not, but I cannot follow with you into the active attribution of malice onto others without reasonable evidence for that, as it is unfair to people to be judged by sepculation or past actions of others and have intent perscribed for them by others onto their words or actions, even if their own words and actions can see combative and tone-deaf, as this can (and likely is) the result of natural human frustration felt by people when they are told by others day in and day out who they are as a person. Of course this goes in both directions, and I would say this equally to those who attack privacy-concerned individuals for being privacy concerned, even if I personally feel there is a lot of misunderstanding around bots on a personal level.

Actually a good way of summarising the point! Differences of opinions can sometimes get things all very mixed up if we let assumptions of one another creep in, but seeing as that is a natural thing, conversation does easily get very muddled up if we let it! It's easy to fall into sweeping statements and each individual should be given good faith, but mindfulness of the past context is also relevant in understanding the feelings people have and why, and it's important to consider these in communications and transparrency, both in terms of people who have concerns about bots,but also those who feel frustated being judged based on the actions of others, some of which come from even before their time! So it's good to be able to ask ourselves what is the context that informs our positions to be aware of that, and good faith goes a long way, but at the same time mindfulness of each other is also important, even if we find someone else's positions to be frustrating. People and their opinions and thoughts are always valid.

Why are you asuming I have staked interest in this? Can we dial these assumptions back a bit? I mean I've been quite vocal in this thread about saying I think they should do *more* about deny_bots. Not less. But even if I wasn't, why on earth are you trying to gatekeep people participating on a public conversation? I, and anyone else, do not need to submit to you for your approval, who is simply just another resident like the rest of us, for the right to participate in a public conversation the lab is having with it's residents. So can we drop the characterisation?

Who am I? I mean who are you? We're both residents and that's really all that matters. Maybe a little less speculation about "Oh you're an interested party" could be great, there is no grand conspiracy when someone talks about a thing. This was over a decade ago, theres been a long time for knowledge and information about things to propegate, it's not unusual for things to become to common knowledge and come up in conversation. Don't need to get suspicious about it and it's a little weird to immediatelytake to that kind of suspicion and veiled accusations when someone just talks about a thing. Can we operate in good faith instead perhaps? We're all residents in Second Life, that's all that really matters when it comes to talking about the way things affect us in our day to day SL in policies like this. If instead you're taking some kind of offence about adding context onto it as part of discussion, I mean ok I'm not going to try imagine why that was and I don't want to speculate? I get the impression you thought I was somehow saying these things were good or minimising them, and I can understand how you get that impression but reality is that things are inherently complex and drives and motivatons people have is rarely informed by cartoon-like depictions of nefarious nairdowells and caped crusaders, its usually just different people have different ideas on what is good. Obviously though I think we can all agree that the leaking of personal information, even as part of vigilante actions to protest it being collected, is still just as bad as the secret collecting of it, on account of the damage this does. Now as for the context behind that talking point, this is relevant to discussion, because the historical context informs us why residents have a sense of anxiety about wide scale data collection on SL. This kind of data is a normal thing, and in an SL that is increasingly connected to the modern web, it's a historical unease we need to be aware of and consider both on the side of informing policies about user privacy, but also what is reasonable and what is unreasonable expecations of privacy. There is a history in SL of events, like for example that of JLU and TWH, which as a result means it is understandable why residents who have experienced this are very mistrusting and uneasy whenever the topic of data about the grid comes up. Now the vast amount of cases of this are non-malicious, but it is important to have a mindfulness about the natural unease a number of residents may have given historical context and consider that in communications and transparrency in how these systems work. While there is no inherent obligation of that, it can go a long way where there is that history, which was the point being made, when data leaks without hacking action are a historically relevant thing to the discussion of bots. I hope that is able to clear things up.

I getcha, and it's good general internet safety advice, but a top down solution means *no one* can do it, even those who know the risks and want to, or other uses like for example people with real world businesses that want a distinction between their "SL" presence but happy to share about their "RL presence, in their profiles. That's just one example off the top of my head that a top down blanket position would unfairly affect. It's better to just encourage being safe about it imo

To be fair, I empathise because I can get where you're coming from on this, but residents *do* have the right to decide if they want to allow a scritped agent onto their land or not. Yeah it may be a kneejerk and clumsy implementation of this, I'm with you on that, but its not our place to just ignore a resident setting an option to deny access. This does get a bit more cloudy with the Belli estate ban, I do agree that is overkill by LL because it means people who own homes their with their own personal use bot that don't leave their own homes have been affected by this too. At the same time, neighbour residents are still entitled to knowing that, that *personal* bot isn't doing any collection beyond that personal use, and LL should have implemented a better more granular system so all parties are satisfied, rather than the one we have, but for now it's how it is and it should be respected by developers (even if we're voicing our strong concerns about it in the mean time) Yeah its going to cause problems to things when those services degrade, but let them. If anything that may lead to further discussion.

Oh! it was redzone? I never actually knew those were one and the same! Well yeah, there point exactly lol, but yeah just some contextual history that may be of interest to some. Update: Checked it after reading this, seems JLU did have their own seperate thing that did rediculous levels of data gathering, but it wasn't redzone, but often described as "redzone-like", but yeah this wasn't meant to start off a line of conversation since this would be off-topic lol (Slightly related though regarding historical basis for resident concerns about data collection given past events though!)

Not an entirely accurate retelling, there is some context here that is relevant. (We dealt with TWH, *alot* back on the MLP sims when they were around and have as a result ended up pretty familiar with them and even had several conversations with them.) What happened there was an anti-griefer organisation by the name of JLU, was running a networked ban system and collecting data on its users on a wide scale through the on-sim devices people using their system had. This database was *massive* and was done in secret while pretending they only collected data on the "bad guys". During this time period, a lot of universities, and student groups as part of these were also common on SL. I wont name the specific one of import here, because well, it blew up rather spetacularly in a conflict with LL and I don't know if even naming that student group might run afoul of LL (it shouldn't, but better safe than sorry lol). Two members of this student group, ended up joining JLU. Their intent was to learn about it, during the course of their induction and training at JLU, they were shown, and given access to, this massive database and told to keep it's existence a secret because "It would be really bad if people knew we had this, if this was to fall into the the wrong hands, it could be catastrophic for our reputation." The name "The Wrong Hands" was the name this group picked in response as a play on the term their instructor at JLU had used, when those two students decided this wasn't right of JLU to be doing. They took vigilante action on their own to leak the existence of this database. I can't recall if they leaked any of its contents with it. However people see the name and it's an easy conclusion to draw that they're "bad" when someone names themselves "The Wrong Hands" There was no hacking involved, they literally had been given access by JLU. The resulting fallout, was massive and JLU was disbanded, but so was the student organisation that these two had been part of by LL as a result of tangental issues that the student group caused LL. The Wrong Hands, continued for some time after that. They were never a griefing group, but there was some overlap with some of them in later years, that were also part of PN or "The Letter H", but in truth most of them were pretty chill people. Just some interesting SL history, you'd be surprised how much rumour and false characterisation distorts history over time.

Accurate statement, I feel the existence of the ability to deny access to scripted agents is one that is rooted in good common sense and in line with residents making their own decisions about their own land. I would not choose to prevent access of a bot but I do not believe my choice to be alright with it, should be imposed on other residents, or vice versa. (With the exception of the right of region owners to impose this on parcel owners within their region) I am 100% lockstep in support of someone who would choose to do so, and their ability to do so without the need to petition bot developers themselves. In terms of parcel flags, I support that because that's how everything else works, and the UX should be consistent. We already have region/parcel flags, there is no reason this should not be the same and it also gives more freedom of personal agency to residents over their own land. I do however, think the fears about bots, is very very much rooted in a firm misunderstanding of what code can and cannot do, and what these things are in SL. However, that doesn't change the fact a resident should still have the right to say "I dont want it on my land", but I would be an advocate of "Hey its not that scary" and helping to relieve concerns, while still ultimately leaving the decision to residents in their own land. So yes, I am a net detractor. I'm not against it, I think it should do more and I think it should be done better, but I have concerns about the way its been done, and the potential impact for further creating a divide between residents on account of how clumsy it's been implemented and the style of communications in how it was announced. I have a deep appreciation for the lab and their continued passion for Second Life, and while the lab has taken different paths I can recall over the past 13 years I've been a resident of SL, their most recent path on their philosophy is one that I've felt genuinely encouraged by and optimisitc about SL's future with regards to their comments and stated goals on LabGab and other communications. But that doesn't mean I won't raise criticisms or concerns where I see it. We often focus on the good things do, and often shame the idea of pointing out the bad something does, or how something isn't as good as it could be, but in devops (and honestly engineering or anything really as a whole), pointing out what is shakey, is the first step to getting it stronger and better. This also extends to individual policies or aspects about SL. Such is the case here, I think a region deny_bots flag is a good thing, but despite being in favour of it, I have concerns and I see shortfalls and problems I am concerned about, as well as other knock on effects, that are worth acknowledging, even if that consideration wouldn't result in a changing of course. Hence my, at first appearance, contradictory positions in this thread. In my experience, I find at times people have a hard time working out "What side is he on?" when I'm actively passionate and engaged in discussion, not just here but in all kinds of things? Sometimes people think I take contradictory positions, it's more I seperate things out quite heavily in the way I kind of go about considering things in my own thinking, so it looks like I'm darting back and forth on a "side", when rather I may agree in some areas and not in oithers. Truth is, I'm not on any side, I'm just a person who takes a very analytical approach to things. But in terms of my personal views, I highly value personal agency in SL and the ability of people to determine for themselves what they are comfortable with and what they are not, so in line with that I'm in favour of the scripted agent access policy as a concept and even in its partial implementation, but want to see more.

People should be free to decide that for themselves though. You're totally right about a generational difference, us millenials are kind of half and half on it when it comes to our online and rl identities being one and the same, albiet from personas, but when it comes to the most recent generation they have fully embraced that and while we may feel concerned on their behalf because it doesn't fit with our own choices, they're stillf free to make those choices for themselves?