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Scylla Rhiadra

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Everything posted by Scylla Rhiadra

  1. Scylla Rhiadra
    The theory floated by @Prokofy Neva (and I can't think of a better) is that they are scooping the data from the recent purchases feature on the MP. In which case it is obviously very incomplete. It is "public" in the sense that someone with the know-how can scrape it. It would be like someone watching how much I am charged every time I go grocery shopping by looking at the register over my shoulder, and then publishing my weekly grocery expenses without my permission. The individual bits of data are "public," but . . .
  2. Scylla Rhiadra
    My personal theory is that LL is, as we speak, reviewing its policies on bots in the light of the potential issues that allowing BB, or subsequent companies copying its methods, to use them as they are have raised. I think that explains why Avatar Search has been disabled (at least temporarily): my suspicion is that is the result of negotiations with LL. And I look to see a new policy statement on bots from LL soon. I'm not sure that will cover traffic bots. But it might.
  3. Scylla Rhiadra
    This would be a good place to ask questions about all of this. January 25th, 12pm SLT. Sadly, I can't make it then, but others perhaps can. Courtesy of @Prokofy Neva https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Concierge_%26_Land_User_Group
  4. Scylla Rhiadra
    Remind me, Sammy . . . what country are you from again? I think it might be worth remembering that some of us have in-world lives and reputations that are important to us. Not all of us treat our avatars and accounts as throw-aways. I've spent over 14 establishing myself in Second Life in all sorts of ways. My identity as "Scylla Rhiadra" is not as meaningful in most regards as my RL one, but it is not insignificant to me either. And if bots are gathering information that might conceivably lead to me being banned from certain places or stores, result in in-world harassment, or deluge me in "targeted" advertising . . . well, yeah. that's going to impact on me. Please try to remember that we are not talking about one person wandering around getting screenshots of profiles. This is about 10s of thousands of profiles that can potentially be cross-referenced, aggregated, etc. We're also talking about things like sales figures. Want to know how much money Blueberry made over the last two weeks? It's there . . . on the site.
  5. Scylla Rhiadra
    You might consider joining my new SL group, "Ban Body Shaming AOs!"
  6. Scylla Rhiadra
    Totally legitimate use of bots. Eh . . . maybe not so much. Thank you, Casper. This is actually a pretty useful exemplification of a core question being asked in this thread.
  7. Scylla Rhiadra
    Well, the RedZone analogy is an interesting one. It would be wrong to use it in an alarmist way: RedZone was outright evil. It preyed on people's fear and paranoia, and then became essentially a protection racket, whereby only those who paid for the product were protected from it. I have seen nothing to suggest that these bots are being used for anything remotely analogous to that. What's more, although this is more a technicality, RedZone used scripted objects and HUDs, rather than bots. And it collected information if you came to it: it didn't scour the grid scooping it up. But . . . there's one important similarity between the two: both involve the collection of "publicly available information" in-world (which is to say, only "public" within the platform), and applied it to an off-platform database where it could be searched, manipulated, and so forth, without the restrictions of the LL ToS or LSL to constrain them. LL did, finally, deal with RedZone, despite their guidelines about having no responsibility for information on 3rd party sites. But they did so by removing the in-world objects and HUDs that were the mechanisms by which RedZone worked. The web site which we dare not name has only a few, very minor in-world applications (a Rez Day board? Anything else?) So, the only way LL can effectively deal with that is by cutting off the information collection at the source. Which is to say . . . the bots.
  8. Scylla Rhiadra
    If I might reframe this in the terms of the OP of this thread . . . LL permits bots, but those bots have to be registered, and, by implication with reference to the proscription against using them for gaming traffic, they have to be put to a "legitimate" use. What needs to be defined, still, is what exactly constitutes a "legitimate" use. So long as a bot (or army of bots) is operating solely within SL, it is accessing and deploying information within that "walled garden," and its activities thus legitimate, in large measure because they are still limited by the LL ToS, and by the capacities of the platform (i.e., what can and cannot be done with LSL, the limited means of communicating large masses of information, and so forth). But we're in a bit of a quandary when that data, scraped "legitimately" within SL, finds its way outside of the platform. LL will make no move, in large measure because it can't, against violations of the ToS, as for instance disclosure of RL info, that occur off platform. But at what stage, in the transfer of that data from in-world bots to an outside platform, such as a web page, can LL argue that the violations are outside of its jurisdiction? Again: is data scraping for export off-platform a legitimate use of bots? I don't think you'll find the answer to this in the ToS. Which is what makes this interesting:
  9. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah, this has been their strategy before. Pretend everything is just fiiiiine, while they quietly prepare to take action. Which is exactly what happened with RedZone: there was virtually nothing but bland communications from them until BANG -- they made their move and shut it down. In the meantime, they want to quell the flames of controversy here and elsewhere by whatever other means they have available -- such as closing threads, or closing the entire forum. I am not at all certain that they ARE investigating this behind the scenes, of course -- but if they really thought it was benign and totally unproblematic, I'd have expected them to say "We've investigated this, and there are no issues." That's not what they've said: they've merely pointed out that the info being scraped is "public." Which is of course true -- as were the IP addresses being collected by RedZone.
  10. Scylla Rhiadra
    THIS. There have been, what, four threads that directly or through not-very-subtle indirection touched upon the particular provocation for this discussion now? And it's a conversation certainly going on elsewhere -- to my knowledge, on Twitter, on Discord, and in-world. Clearly, as you say, "feathers" have been "ruffled." Some actual answers, rather than bland assurances that don't even address the questions we're asking, would be both appreciated, and do much defuse a growing controversy that is probably (hopefully?) unnecessary.
  11. Scylla Rhiadra
    This, frankly, could be said about a great many things occurring within SL, including (or maybe especially) de facto evasions of the community standards guidelines and the ToS. LL seems to have many of these rules in place largely so that they can say they've "taken action": they seldom enforce them. (And I could certainly provide instances.) And, as you say, enforcement for many or most of these things wouldn't require scholastic disputation about angels on the heads of pins: it's mostly pretty damned obvious. A few hours a week by a Linden governance person would go a long way to actually fixing such issues, and discouraging repetition. But . . . nope. It's about plausible deniability, I guess?
  12. Scylla Rhiadra
    The crux. I haven't seen here any evidence whatsoever that they do enforce this. Nor have I heard an answer to Rowan's question. Everything else is, in a sense, irrelevant and off-topic. (And yes, that will be used to justify shutting this thread down.)
  13. Scylla Rhiadra
    Which rather begs the question: why do people even bother doing this? What exactly is this accomplishing? How is this being monetized -- if it is -- or what other gain is accrued from this effort? I'm not of course disagreeing with you, but it's a genuine question. Unless there is an entrance fee to get into a parcel, which there very seldom is, how does one actually gain by gaming traffic?
  14. Scylla Rhiadra
    And now I'm wondering if a general resurgence of fear and loathing of bots is going to lead to a more general return to 0 second warnings on security orbs. I await a new thread on that subject! Paranoia runs deep.
  15. Scylla Rhiadra
    Your tee shirt is in the mail, Ceka!
  16. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah, it was added later. The thread was closed by Kiera, but it was Harley who added the "explanation." When I came back to GD after posting my comment in this thread, above, that thread suddenly showed as containing unread posts -- i.e., Harley's. Whatever. LL. /me shrugs
  17. Scylla Rhiadra
  18. Scylla Rhiadra
    I don't even get a "I posted to the Bots Thread and all I got was this crummy tee shirt" tee shirt.
  19. Scylla Rhiadra
    Wow. That was one hell of a weird thread. It reminds me a little of some much older ones that evolved around controversies like the new parcel rating system, when trolls and shiny new accounts with axes to grind were popping up like mushrooms. And . . . wow. LL really doesn't want us talking about this, do they? Not even an explanation this time. Peeve: I missed it all!
  20. Scylla Rhiadra
  21. Scylla Rhiadra
    What? You don't sit in your undies on your kitchen counter? Riiiiight.
  22. Scylla Rhiadra
    Ssssshhhhhh! It'll be our little secret.
  23. Scylla Rhiadra
    THIS!!! You see it even here sometimes, occasionally from people who should know better. SL is soooo diverse -- but a lot of us swim around in very small bubbles.
  24. Scylla Rhiadra
    Oh yes, I've certainly run across those before -- people who very deliberately decide to co-opt you into their exhibitionist fantasy RP. And yes, agreed: it's a form of griefing, a bit different perhaps from others who insist that you play along with whatever RP they are engaged in. I don't think this was the case here, though. I think she was probably just a bit clueless. /me "giggles" 🤢
  25. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah. I think there's a difference between "this is expected behavior" and "this is theoretically permitted here." There are places where one might go because one wants to experience that kind of oversharing. This very obviously was not one of them. I'm not, btw, "angry" at the woman in question. It was cringy and sometimes a bit gross, but I think she was just not very good at recognizing the nature of the place or the crowd. In some ways, I feel bad for her too: there was nothing "wrong" with what she was doing (although, yeeeeeesh . . .); she was just doing it in the wrong place. I think she probably got that message by the time she left -- and probably felt a bit embarrassed herself.
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