Searchability, Filters, and the 18+ Enforcement Problem

This one is going to be way out into left field - you have been warned.

After reading several of the so-called "drama" threads that frequent General, and filtering out 99% of the endless loop debates, I realized there was, indeed, one valid concern sparked that is still worth mentioning.

It's still extremely hard for residents and Lindens to enforce the 18-and-over age restriction, even through means of asking for a valid credit (or debit*) card.

This is valid for discussion purely because it's something that, as with many "games" of this nature, is happily swept away with a disclaimer on the main page and, at times, reactionary measures. Additionally, I feel that it is more relevant to Second Life, not because the content is markedly different from anything else on the internet, but rather because content controls are harder to enforce than a security patch by Microsoft.

What I'm looking for, then, are ways that LL would in theory be able to increase enforcability over who is allowed into Second Life and, to a lesser extent, how they might be able to allow residents to "control" content so as to ultimately allow Linden Labs to legally lower the age restriction without facing PR penalties or dropoffs in new residents.

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I'll begin with a few ideas of my own, as well as their perceivable pros and cons:

1) Google-like Content Search-and-Filter:
Status: Up For Discussion

This would actually be fun for a Linden to write. Using an algorithm similar to Google, it would be feasible to allow content filtering through the use of an "intelligent algorithm." Such an algorithm, for example, could cross-check naming conventions at the client level and disable content, transfers, chat, and avatar displays by certain residents. In other words, we would render these residents "nonexistant" to those choosing to filter them out.

Example Case: Little Billy wants to join Second Life, because his friends tell him that Tringo is the best thing since sliced bread. Billy is 15. Billy's parents know that Second Life can be used for some pretty raunchy stuff, so they opt to set up their child with a "Minor" account on their credit card, and establish a password-protected filter for their child when they sign him up for an account.

Billy enters the world, and after his trip through newbie island, he rezzes into the Welcome Area. Since this is not peak time, only three residents are there to greet him - another newbie like himself, a SimCast resident dressed in medieval garb, and a BDSM-fanatic, dressed to kill, with a cage gun in hand.

However, because Billy's parental filter is set to ignore the term "BDSM," among others, this person never appears to Billy beyond a grayed-out dot on the radar (symbolizing an auto-ignored resident). Being a club-goer, this person attempts to hand Billy several textures depicting some rather... questionable... material. Billy never even sees a transfer request, as his client has filtered it out entirely. Frustrated at the lack of attention by this new resident, the person finally attempts to Cage-Gun Billy. Once again, nothing happens. Completely oblivious to what transpired, Billy sets off for Morris to build a model airplane, his first creation in Second Life...

Benefits:
- Allows younger residents the ability to enter the world.
- Allows other residents the option to "filter out" content that they do not wish to see, via a networking system of control and term-querying.
- Allows "smart" searching beyond binary matching in "Find" - a system that actually leaps to similar terms and phrases by routing itself through the groups a person has in his or her profile.
- Renders maintenance for a "Teen Grid" easier, sparing LL some overhead

Possible Problems:
- No system is perfect; enterprising residents could find ways to "bypass" the filter
- Allowing minors into Second Life would still be a questionable practice
- "Googling" a resident might offend them



2) Short term: Checking if a Resident is over 18
Status: BAD IDEA

There are several, more valid, ways to enforce this policy. The direct cost, however, is a more cumbersome account creation/validation process:

- Have U.S. Residents input a valid Driver's License
- Have international users provide Passport Identification
- Request Bank Records on the form of Account a Resident Holds with Them*

Of the three, the final option seems to be the most feasible. Because banks keep records on the form of account a person holds with them (for example, a Minor's Account bound to a Parent or Guardian), such a system could provide more reliable information than a disclaimer for checking a resident's age.

Benefits:
- Enforcability on Minors

Definite Problems:
- Marginal Dropoff in Newer Residents for Linden Labs
- Cumbersome Signup Process
- Some Records (eg. Bank Account Information) may be kept Confidential
- Perhaps not worth the cost to implement

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Have at it!

Jeffrey, in addition to your scripting talents, are you a typographer too? I say this because your formatting is superb and leaves me at great ease when reading a post such as this.

You make good points.

Something like that. My job puts me in a position where, even though it's not my direct job description, I'm forced to be a grammar,. and speeling nazi on a regular basis. I was also raised by an English teacher, so that doesn't help.

This concludes a brief autobiography. Please turn to Side B for rants on Steamboy.

Just say NO to minors on our grid.

This debate was had and is over. They are making a seperate teen grid.

As for the personal information, NO!

The Internet is unsecure. Until parents step in and be more responsible, there's little SL can do more than they do to stop them coming in.

And even if you do ask for this, it's not 100%... kids can still use others' information, both voluntarily or without knowledge.

First off Hiro, tossing your opinion out is nice, but would you mind linking said debate so I can read through it? It would be nice to reevaluate the points addressed there.

Second off, a "teen grid" would require a fair deal of management on LL's part. Indeed, it takes many of the problems of the mainland away - but at the same time, presents its own problems of content control. The good thing here is you could feasibly overlay my first point onto the "Teen Grid" as well as the mainland.

I agree with the negative stigma of personal information. I threw that out there to see if it was shared.

So, instead of blatantly dismissing me here, how about we get something constructive going? The whole point of the thread is to share ideas on fixing two problems - the 18+ enforcability and content filtering/searching using context-based and/or recursive algorithms. If you have a beef with what I'm saying, I'd love to hear an additional solution.

/120/2f/23935/1.html
Have fun, it's a long thread.


A teen grid is already in teh development process. Have you been missing the posts about how Char has been reassigned to it?


*nods*
Considering tens of millions of Americans have their identity stolen every year, I think that's a safe bet.


Sorry to come off harsh... but I'd assumed EVERYONE had heard of this debate... it raged on for a few weeks, often heatedly.

The Tribe has Spoken. I am the weakest link. Goodbye.

Although, the unfortunate thing is this still doesn't address the problem of enforcability. Nor does it address my point that a "smart filter" system could be overlaid on the "teen grid" in addition to it being (already) in production.

Oh, and Hiro:

We are going to be getting a teen grid, what about the minors in world now? LL still has two issues with the minors thing, one is solved, one isn't.

1) Legal - Since they are a de-facto adult content provider, they are using what I believe is the legally acceptable standard of a valid credit card, which is only supposed to be owned by someone of age. They are covered on this one, and are not required to further filter content (even though they do go beyond this with PG/Mature sims). Also, due to the creator-centric nature of SL, there is no way for LL to police this without checking and rating every upload along with making sure that there are no genital shaped prims linked up.

2) Game quality - Keeping the minors out due to them causing trouble for the valid paying customers should be an ongoing concern of LL, even after the teen grid goes up. However, since we aren't going to give them any more personal info that is legally required, they need to use other methods. The current abuse system could be beefed up so that reports of bad behavior (a typical sign of a minor in grid) can be given more easily and can be responded to quickly. The response time to a griefer/potential minor now can vary widely.

Actually enforcing the rules once an infraction is reported is another way LL can improve on this. Anecdotally, some people are repeatedly given warnings and suspensions out of some misguided notion that they will reform. A "strict linden" or a "cool linden" can make all the difference in whether a possible minor slips through the cracks one more time. A uniform response would also be welcome.

Oh, I agree. I think it's a no-brainer and that was one suggestion that came up in the thread. I didn't mean to put that down that idea in general; it's just that we have a nice world where few kiddies get in and we'd like to keep it that way.
ROFL!!!!

Two problems with this one:
1) I had a driver's license at 16.
2) My brother, at 23, does not have a driver's license.

Maybe I sound very naive, but ... what exactly is the problem with the current procedures?

You need a credit card to register. My son never will get one before he is 18. If he uses mine I will surely check what he does with it. If a parent does not do this it is not the problem of Linden Labs! IMHO ...

And it would be very hard to implement an authentification system that would work for all the nations in which SLs residents reside IRL. For example we don't use US driving licences over here in Germany. And there are A LOT of different passport systems in the world! You know, there are really some residents in here who do not reside in the US of A ...

And don't you think it would be just as easy for a teenager to get my passport number or my bank account info?

BTW: The most 'adult' content I have seen till now in SL is some nakedness and some people dressed in funny fetish clothes. My son is not even going to school just now but I don't think, seeing that would hurt him much.

OK, OK, I know that there is real pixel porn available ... but, to be honest, when I have a look at what minors can see or do 'legally' with other offline or online games - for example even in the relatively nice WoW ... All that fighting and killing (which even is part of the games goals!) worries me much more than thinking about a 15 year old boy seeing some fetish clad people or a pair going at it -- which he usually will have seen before his 15th birthday anyway

I know opinions may vary with these issues. But to any parent who does not like her children to get in contact with sexually oriented material I would strongly suggest keeping them from the internet at all. Most of the systems for content filtering and access control won't hold back a clever 12 year old (with parents, who are usually not even half as computer savvy) for long!

fetish != porn

Teens shoudn't be alowed. No solution scales.

Problem: Tagging content as mature.

How do you recognize a...
... dildo?
... sex ball?
... porn?
... book?

With the internet you can create ratings for sights based on the links to it and what there ratings are. But text is good for this. Text has specific meaning. Language is designed to connect and convey information. To be able to have any luck at filtering you would need to connect everything through some created language. The trouble is you can't filter what doesn't have connections. New content is unfilterable untill the system groks it. Considering how easy it would be to keep something from being grokked properly, I can't imaging how a teen grid is plausible.

The solutions availavle to do the grokking, just won't scale to meet demand.

(very tired, may edit in morning)

Kyrah, I aggree wholeheartedly. It did not intend any equation. If it was possible to read my post in such a way ... sorry for that. I just seemed to me, that the original poster feared that the 15 year old boy might be 'hurt' by looking at someone in what you might call 'BDSM fetish clothing' in some way too.

BTW: The word 'fetish' means a lot of different things to different people. Even if we go by the strict definition of the Webster ... ... there might exist a lot of fetishes to some people that others may not even notice. I have my little fetishes too - which I don't 'need' but like very much

The way I see it working is as follows. Since all objects are tied to their owners and creators, your theoretical system would first cross-check the root name. Then, if that passes, the system would crosscheck the owner and/or creator's profiles for any "buzzwords." The prevalence of any algorithm beyond that, for example, could be used for extended searches for "like" terms for other uses.

Part Two: Suppose I am searching for groups on Moby Dick (I just had to keep with the pun, sorry ). To perform an extended search, suppose the algorithm finds a group hunting the elusive white whale. The algorithm could then spider out to each of these members' profiles, cataloging any other groups on the subject... etc, etc.

Now, it's quite true that your comment on "new content/users" would not be filtered out. However, as more terms get caught in the mesh, this problem would correct itself, but still be far from perfect.

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As to the other train of thought here, it's interesting to see how this can apply to minors. I think it's a moot point that we're looking for something that would overlay the teen grid to provide that added layer of protection. Of course, I'm thinking along the lines of Parental Filters that exist for the internet, today. While far from perfect, these systems still provide some measure of added protection.

Oh, and the point on "additional checking proceedures" is dead. Going to rubber-stamp it saying so.

Just a thought - and I know it wont solve all the problems...

Thinking back to when I was 16.... I could convince my mother of just about anything. Teenagers are master con-artists.... I think a hormonal thing

So it doesn't surprise me at all that the 18 or Older rule is impossible to enforce. If the WWW had been around when I was 16 - I would have been signing up for all sorts of crap - telling my parents "Hey, Mom - I'd like to sign up for <x>. Its for school. And its Educational. Can I borrow your credit card?... I'll pay you back with my own money...."

While I could have easily conned my parents into something like this.... what would be out of my control - is what appears on the credit card statement. Every month, they went through their credit card statements with a fine tooth comb. So do I as an adult - they taught me well

If the entry on the Credit Card statement from LL said something like "Second Life <ADULT - MATURE CONTENT>".... or something to that effect, I'd think that would make a 'conned' parent start asking questions of their kid on what they're doing and why.

I understand it won't solve the problem..... but help maybe?

Travis

Simple and sensible!

yea they have proven to allready piss people off let alone allow or own ideologies shape them in to something bad

I like this idea. Come to think of it, I'd love to see partner sites follow suit.

"You bought what with my credit card, Timmy?!"

Jeff, I'd have to say that the single most valuable thing about keeping our grid (supposedly) adults-only is that it protects the company, and many of the residents from legal responsibility, when inevitably some parent finds that their 14 year old daughter is enjoying a virtual existence as a Gorean slave-girl, exotic dancer and paid sex escort.. When the parents come to sue, the first answer is "Well, you weren't supposed to let your kids use your credit card to get into an adults-only game".

Also, the idea of searchable filtered content, while well-intended, would be in implementation disastrous, for two reasons:

1-Like someone else pointed out, it would be extremely difficult to qualify new material with metadata as to what type of content it is, or possibly is. If I'm a member of "Sexy Slaves", would that disqualify me from uploading content that minors could view? What if I quit the group once a week on "uploading day", then rejoin after I load it? What if I'm a member of a sex-group, except we carefully avoid any text spellings that the system would recognize? "Seckkks Slayyyyves; We have hawt seckkkks all the time, and LOVE to meet new young members. Curious about the darker side, highschoolers? Come and check us out." People are very good at slipping under the radar of these systems, I'll give you an example:

I have a friend who plays on a Disney MMO, I think it's called Toontown. It's set up to be very kid-friendly, including protective measures. One of the measures is that it prevents people from communicating (except with stock phrases, like "Let's go on a mission", unless one person knows another's "code". The code is something that would only be able to be communicated in-person, or via phone, so that parents could let their 8-year old kid talk to their friend in the next town in-game, but a predator wouldn't have any way of conveying his/her code to these children, and striking up a conversation with them in earnest. Oh, by the way, my friend is in her mid-twenties, and feels silly about playing the game. One day, she was invited over to her cartooon friend's cartoon house to play the same game that they'd been playing for weeks. It seemed a stupid game, and she didn't understand why she kept getting invited over to play this moronic invention which seemed to involve re-arranging the pictures on the wall, and then standing around. It turned out that they were spelling out their codes to her, and had been trying to do so for weeks, using the methods available to them in-game. Once she figured out what was going on, she found out that, aside from the other 11 and 12 year olds in the game, there were an awful lot of 20somethings and 30somethings. And most people had figured out the same way to bypass the no-communication restriction. The kids in the game seemed to be as aware of the bypass as adults, which means that people are now free to communicate, including 43-year old players "getting to know" 12-year old players. My friend, fortunately, feels creepy about the idea of hanging out with kids, so she mostly keeps to the older players, since she enjoys the game and is in the same age range as them.

2- A system like this would disqualify many, many good instructors, teachers and helpers from participating with people. Some of the best instructors I've had have rather "randy" groups listed in their profiles, but they don't at all discuss that when they're teaching "SL Basics" or "Building 101". People lead multifaceted lives in SL, and many of the sometimes-naughty ones are also some of the best ones to be assisting other people.

There is only tiny problem. Poisoning. Some teens will take delight in poisoning the filters; creating connections between groups that shouldn't exist. It would be the new form of greifing. For example: Bunny makes aero-space vehicles. A group of 20 noobs decided that Bunny has an unfair advantage. So they setup 10 groups with names like "Bunny's mile high sex club", "Bunnys' Whores" "VIP Elite Bunny Escorts". They then go to the welcome area getting people to join said groups. They get cross-over between the groups. Now Bunny signs on one day to find that nothing is selling; only later to find out he has been blacklisted. Guilt by association.

I think the problem here is I'm not locuting that there are two, distinct issues I'm attacking here. I think it's a fair assessment that such a system could be "gamed." However, aren't there real-world solutions to such a problem?

For example, Strife's example case actually stems from Part Two, Advanced Searching, which I actually did not intend as part of the "blacklisting" feature system (for the reasons described) but instead, a search unit residents could hit to see the term "Bunny" as it spiderwebs out through profiles using that exact term. I apologize if I've been vague there, but it could add to poisoning in the form of spam.

Unhygenix also raises very valid points. And, with the conception of the "Teen Grid," they do hold relevance in the form of keeping predators and other liable content/users off the grid. The "blacklisting" featurette would, indeed, render most of the methods noted nonexistant. However, it's viable that these same users could simply purchase a "clean alt" and use it to forward messages... it's definitely something to think about.

And on "multifacetted lives," Unhygenix, that may be true but it is irrelevant. Since we're talking a system of limiting "potential" abuse, and the parents would hold the on-off key, that's a value judgment for them to make.

Oh, and Lecktor, that was clearly intentional. Note the grammar mistakes right after I wrote "grammar," ya twit.

So it is okay to judge someone based on one aspect of their life?

Also, don't the parents already 'hold the on-off key'?

Why the interest in letting Teens on this grid? It means suddenly having to impose self-filtering to a new level even in Mature areas, just incase something gets through complicated failure-prone filters. It also means that things become gray when something fails...instead of having an absolute ban that they can point to and say "We do not allow non-adults" you add something where now the company has to try and build and enforce nuanced rules to try and cover every situation. Where is the real benefit to the current community?

If I want to play with Teens I can go to SWG or WoW or Matrix.

With the security features built into Windows these days, parents can lock down their computers so kids cannot install anything they do not approve of. If they don't care enough to do so, why should I have to then be subject to an arbitrary set of rules and filters that people can then abuse or get around anyway?

Parents don't "hold the keys" where company liability is concerned. Furthermore, I believe you're misinterpretting a systemic "parental filter" with resident discrimination here, which are two completely separate things. Rather, the emphasis would be on letting parents isolate and remove what they don't want their children viewing. "Wildcards," such as those people with multifacetted lives, would risk visibility in this manner - and there's no polite fix to that, really.

Think of it as one of those internet block programs that inadvertedly blocks a school project site. A "bypass" might be the best recourse here.

And, while we're on the subject, I try to be one of the most tolerant people in SL, so please don't paint a nazi uniform on me here. I may be a cynic, but I respect peoples' rights and decisions.


Hold it, Sparky. This conversation switched gears around post 5 - 10 when Hiro brought a relevant thread to my attention. We're now talking two very separate issues - Searchability, that is, algorithms to expand searches for residents, and the option of a "Parental Filter" on the Teen grid. I believe we were also on the issue of further "detecting" minors on the grid so as to protect existing residents... but that fizzled out with Travis' excellent comment.

As to where this came from, completely out of the blue. It's one of those threads where I feel Second Life could benefit from some of the protections available on the World Wide Web, seeing as it's rapidly becoming a metaverse in that respect. Though this was a segue from a bit of a.. rather "lovely" topic.

I will not be responding to the next post in this thread, because it is phrased too much as an attack. If anyone reading has anything further to add, please go ahead.