Scylla Rhiadra

Wow. So lovely, Zatasha. The setting and light is perfect (with a bit of mist), and the forefront is crisp and beautiful. So well done!

I don't disagree that the employment of "safe spaces" that merely shut down debate are a good thing. But "safe spaces" that disable, oh, say, holocaust denial, p*rn featuring minors, incitements to violence, etc., are probably not a bad thing? Almost no one I know disagrees that some form of censorship is necessary. Where we trip over each other is in deciding where to draw the line.

Yeah, this I think. Which means it unlikely that they'll ever be a "responsibly moderated social network at scale." Nodes in the metaverse are either going be the Wild West, or fake "safe spaces" that manage to enable the worst of both worlds: uncontrollable garbage, and serious restrictions on freedom and creativity applied to those who do play by the rules.

The debate about copyright and IP -- and I rather suspect you and I are on different sides on this one -- while not entirely irrelevant, is a wee bit of a digressive avenue. What is very much at stake in the issue of governance is, in large measure, control of intellectual property rights. Disney's interest in the metaverse is almost certainly mostly about protecting (and of course finding new ways to monetize) their own IP. The larger point that Masnick is making is not that governance is impossible, and so not worth pursuing, but that it is very very difficult, and will inevitably be very very imperfect. I think that is correct. The issue of surveillance is, I think, huge. LL doesn't much use its systems (except when ARs are filed, I imagine) because they recognize that 1) it would have a freezing effect, and 2) they'd likely have to actually do something about the toxic crap spawning in-world if they detected it. And they don't want to do 2) because of 1). One of the reasons FB looks so very bad right now is that their platform was not merely hosting toxic content and misinformation -- it was actually being tacitly encouraged. I.e., they knew about it and either did nothing or else subtly enabled it. LL likely just doesn't want to know. As AI gets better, surveillance will become more effective -- which may well have the effect of reducing toxic content. But it will also likely turn platforms, including new VR ones run by Meta, Amazon, and whoever -- into banal, sterile places. Creativity and free thought is going to be just as much a victim of surveillance as misinformation and toxic content.

Well, yes . . . and no. The point that I was making in my subsequent posts -- and not a particularly novel one, god knows -- is that there is a tension between those, mostly techno-utopians, who see the metaverse as a sort of 3D web, and corporations who want to "own" it. In the former instance, the metaverse, like the web now, becomes largely ungovernable, at least at the "meta" level. Interoperability and technical standards, of the sort established for the web by the W3C, aren't really about governance in the sense of controlling content. In the latter instance, the metaverse will be controlled, and literally owned, by corporations, probably working in collaboration. Facebook sees the metaverse as their own walled garden; Microsoft (working with FB) wants to establish and control standards of interoperability, and, by implication, the connections that link different VR "bubbles." Disney just a couple of days ago spoke of what "their" metaverse would look like, without irony. So, there is a bit of a battle on right now to define the metaverse -- whether it is to be free, open access, and open source -- in which case it will be ungovernable except within carefully controlled bubbles, more democratic, and probably toxic as hell -- or whether it is corporate controlled, in which case it will be both oppressive and ultimately ungovernable, because content control doesn't scale well. My own sense is that it's the latter model that is going to prevail, which doesn't bode well for it as an enabling, democratizing technology -- but, ironically, may bring it closer to the dystopian, corporatist model imagined in Snow Crash.

Lovely outfit, lovely hair, lovely pic. Just lovely. 🙂

Yesssss!! @Zeta Vandyke, where are those from? (With apologies for momentarily turning the thread into The Shopping Channel.)

This is interesting and relevant: "At the same time, [Meta CTO Andrew] Bosworth said policing user behavior “at any meaningful scale is practically impossible.” FT reporter Hannah Murphy later tweeted that Bosworth was citing Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem: a maxim, coined by Techdirt founder Mike Masnick, that says “content moderation at scale is impossible to do well.” (Masnick’s writing notes that this isn’t an argument against pushing for better moderation, but large systems will “always end up frustrating very large segments of the population.”)." And this (emphasis mine): "While the full memo isn’t publicly available, Bosworth posted a blog entry alluding to it later in the day. The post, titled “Keeping people safe in VR and beyond,” references several of Meta’s existing VR moderation tools. That includes letting people block other users in VR, as well as an extensive Horizon surveillance system for monitoring and reporting bad behavior. Meta has also pledged $50 million for research into practical and ethical issues around its metaverse plans." Sounds like a good time. https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22779006/meta-facebook-cto-andrew-bosworth-memo-metaverse-disney-safety-content-moderation-scale

They can have my breasts when they pry them from my cold, dea . . . Ya know, actually, nvm. /me hands them her breasts

I'm seeing a theme develop here in this thread . . .

Well, and that's one of the central issues at stake, right? Will the metaverse be, as techno-utopians would like, a free-wheeling, open-access, decentralized network, much like the internet? In which case, governance becomes very difficult indeed, but the whole thing is much more "democratic." Or, does it mean what Meta and Microsoft (and probably also Apple and Amazon) would prefer, which is a huge walled garden run on, and ultimately controlled by one or more corporations? Which is, of course, also what SL is, in essence. In this case, governance will become not merely possible but necessary, because the controlling corporations will be held liable for content and online behaviours. The latter seems to me a lot more likely than the former, because the conditions that saw the birth of the internet no longer apply. The internet developed more-or-less organically with very little centralized control. I don't think that the metaverse will be permitted that luxury. And if not, will it really be a "metaverse"? Or just a 3D Facebook?

Prok is right -- governance in SL generally falls somewhere between awful and non-existent. There are no protections for consumers whatsoever. That simply isn't going to fly on a really large commercial platform where the sums of cash involved are in the hundreds of millions. Individual landowners can function as petty tinpot dictators here. Most of them are benevolent -- some are saints -- but the lack of standards, rights, and responsibilities won't cut it in a metaverse that seeks to parallel the real world. SL is rife with appalling content -- racist, misogynist, homophobic, and a dozen or so other "ists" -- that often violates LL's own TOS, and that the governance team seems incapable or unwilling to do anything about. The TOS itself is crudely inadequate and simply not built to deal with the complexities of civil society on any appreciable scale. Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms are besieged by demands that they police themselves; LL barely even tries. A really large scale metaverse is simply going to have to do better, or it will be legislated to do so by real world governments. SL mostly flies under the radar; the media no longer pays us much attention, and there aren't enough of us to produce the critical mass at which a really elaborate system of governance becomes necessary. A really large scale metaverse might well prove to be as ungovernable as the internet has proven to be -- but it will demand that strenuous and continuous attempts be made to at least maintain the illusion that it's not merely about sheer anarchy.

This. That was my thought too.

Omg I could have just called out everyone on the picture threads! Well? Let's hear it!! 🙃

And we're all very glad you took it, Go. ❤️

Well, I'm glad you found them classy, anyway! I don't actually bother that much with matching photos to Flickr groups. I only belong to about 20 groups, and many of those are for particular sims. And that's the one type of group I do specifically post particular pics to. So a lot of my recent pics have been taken at Cravone City, and they get posted to the Cravone City Flickr group. I don't actually follow a group that is specifically for nudes; the few nudes I've done tend not to make it into a lot of groups because most of my groups are restricted to "safe" pics. I have the sense that groups actually don't increase your visibility (or "faves") as much as one might think. I'm not suggesting that they don't have any effect, but I think most of my faves come from people seeing the pics in their stream, or because I've liked something of theirs. I actually haven't noticed a huge difference in the response to pics that were in a lot of groups, and those that were in only a handful.

I really want to like this. First, because I like Siddean and think that Slink is one of the more reliable and progressive mesh body makers (she spent literally an hour once helping me with a problem!). And secondly because I think it's time that mesh bodies caught up to the advances being made in mesh heads (and, I think, hair too, recently). But I have to admit I'm not wowed by the video. I will definitely demo it, though, and if it seems to offer a level of detail and realism not available now on my existing bodies, AND is sufficiently responsive to sliders that I can get the slightly smaller-boobed and non-waif like look that I want, I'll buy it. I think that this is a rather brave attempt to do for mesh bodies what the new LeLutka's have been doing for mesh heads. It remains to be seen if it will be greeted as enthusiastically: the lack of clothing and skins currently is certainly going to be an issue. I also am a little dismayed by the introduction of yet another purely proprietary standard for avatar mesh parts and accessories. I wish to god that mesh and head body makers would get to together and produce a uniform standard for these things -- mapping, weighting, LOD, etc. But this, after all, is the Free Market at work, and to hell with how utterly wasteful and inefficient it all is, so long as it generates more sales, right? Vive la competition?

Many of the people who've answered here take great pictures -- Jordan, Rowan, Claireschen, and Janet, for instance. But we have a lot of other people who see photography as, if not their main activity in SL, certainly as one of the primary attractions of the place. And they have developed systems and routines for what they do. Not all of them use platforms or backdrops, but it would be worth maybe attracting their attention here and getting their input. @Nalates Urriah @Eddy Vortex @Ayeleeon @Dementia Obviate @Nick0678 @Orwar @Maitimo @Zeta Vandyke @taisiyakarpenko @VictoriaGrwd @Charalyne Blackwood @Marianne Little @Chic Aeon @Eva Knoller @Saskia Rieko @BelindaN @Laurel Aurelia @TatianaNikolay There are a ton of others, but that's a good selection, and I don't want to crowd out the thread!

Great shot, Misha! - I love the colours and the rain and the double-exposure! It's been a long time since I went to Kowloon. I should drop by again!

This assumes that everyone possesses an equal amount of power. In practice, inequities in our culture are such that many vulnerable and/or relatively powerless communities will hesitate to speak out for fear of being targeted. I'm not going to argue that SL consumers are particularly vulnerable, as a group (although the caveat emptor philosophy that is the foundation for SL economics means that we have few protections). But I can tell you that I would hesitate to put a negative, or even a middling review on the MP of a store that I know I am going to continue to need access to.

@Truestar Mokeev and @Charalyne Blackwood -- Awww, thank you both! Truestar, I love hearing about how people "read" pics (and not just mine), so thank you especially for that! I learn stuff! So cool! @Marigold Devin -- Thanks Marigold! The pic was actually part of a series on the subject of "time" that I put together for an exhibition, so this one is entitled "Chronology." But I'm just one reader of my own pic; I don't get the final say (or want it). I like your reading of it! I do try to leave enough ambiguity in many of my pics that viewers can actively engage with them to produce their own narratives and stories from them. It seems to me that a good work of art should be more like a Socratic dialogue than a learn-by-rote lecture, so I really enjoy it when I hear other interpretations and readings of the things I produce. I've ended up with some terrifically good insights as a result -- things in my pics that I didn't even realize were there, in some cases!

And let this be an important lesson, kids. If you say her name three times, she appears in a flash of fire and a puff of smoke. Be prepared! Have a fire extinguisher handy! Only YOU can prevent Madelaine McMasters!

Many Scylla. Much me. (If this doesn't give you nightmares, then you're probably pretty impervious to fear.)

Yeah. Or maybe the merchant now gets to leave an anonymous positive review about how wonderful said bed is (and how much naughty Marianne would really enjoy it). Um, as you've literally done nothing but repeat verbatim the language that I found ambiguous in the first place (in fact, twice! for good measure!), this hardly clarifies things. But thank you? I'm going to assume that my first read on this was accurate: consumers can't see who posted, but merchants will have names that will allow them to retaliate if they wish. Meanwhile, anyone -- including the merchants themselves -- can leave anonymous comments, and there will no longer be any way for shoppers to judge their validity on the basis of the identity of the poster. If so, this is not merely pointless: it's stupid, and makes the system even more vulnerable to gaming than it already was.