A Better Business Bureau?

I'm going to wing it with this one in Land and Economy where it truly belongs, because it is about business (which is what makes up the economy), but I imagine it will be bucked to that new thread-graveyard called "Polysci". Let's try.

We had a discussion in Thinkers tonight about merchants and fraud and how consumers can protect themselves in SL from unscrupulous businessmen (see the "events" today for 2:00 p.m. for a longer description).

I have a notecard of the meeting if you'd like the full transcript.

I've run across 3-4 people in the game who think they are "the only ones" who are starting a Better Business Bureau -- and each one is confident that he is the best one to do it, and preferably with his patented scripts and products, too LOL. One "Thinker" summed up the problem by saying "My friend is already starting a Better Business Bureau and he has connections..."

That's exactly the WRONG approach. Making up the BBB has to be an act of large public trust, not the usual FIC crap, or even the non-FIC crap. It has to be a very broad cross section of SL to have trust. The problem with any player-based organization is that people can't get to the meetings, it gets too hard, and a few do it -- like high school was always run. Or you get a few crabbing that it can never work in SL, was already tried, blah blah, and that paves the way for a few with zeal to take over.

Some would prefer if the BBB in fact were a secret thing that just kept secret tabs on the bad actors in the game largely to protect themselves and their own investments.

The security tactics that develop in that kind of secrecy then themselves become a not-better business that a better-business operation needs to look at.

The fact is, probably several BBBs will have to come into existence, and probably something like a Consumer Rights' Association or a Customers' Guild or something will have to start coming into being.

I have in mind 3 particular incidents lately -- 1) an effort by a person with "connections" to start a malicious slander campaign against me; 2) an effort by someone to steal others' designs and resell them as her own; 3) and an allegation someone made in private to me about copyright theft which they asked me to publicize because they thought I wouldn't be afraid (but which I couldn't publicize without finding the facts).

The problem with all of these three incidents is that to try to investigate them on the forums only leads to accusations of personal attacks at TOS violations. And in-game, people fear that any effort to create a tribunal will be hopelessly polluted with alts or stacked in favor of the powerful.

But I do think the very discussion itself is an important part of the process of getting better social accountability and personal responsibility in a game where it is all to easy not only to defraud someone, but to maliciously accuse them of fraud falsely. There have to be protections built in to accommodate these realities.

It's not clear to me how much scope you have in the game for publicly mounting an investigation, trying to take witnesses' testimony on notecards, trying to interview people in some kind of lawerly or journalistic manner (how else could you do it in a game really?). One thing is certain, some are given pause by the fear or TOS violation and don't undertake this research for fear of retribution by the powerful.

It's supposed to be left to the Lindens and the Police Blotter, but the TOS, the Lindens, and the Police Blotter really can't cope with the issue of both fraud and false allegations of fraud. It really is a tough nut to crack.

I've noticed that while the Lindens close up threads with personal attacks, i.e. even a credible but harsh allegation personally against someone, but they don't seem to close up as readily any allegation about a business that is suspect, or the individuals involved with a business. They seem to let those threads go for awhile possibly to give the community some means to protect itself against the very real capacity some have in this game of engaging in fraud, and collecting loads of information all the while. Yet if these allegations "degenerate into personal attacks," the threads get locked up.

So some people believe that the only way a BBB can succeed is if the LL's can somehow give immunity from that charge of a "TOS violation" to those BBB investigators. But how on earth can they do that? And would we want them to? Because who will watch the watchers? In a situation where one party is already bragging that they are about to form the BBB already, with all the powers (especially sure to go soft on their own big business LOL), we have to be especially alert to this power-grab.

It might seem inappropriate if very large business people like the land barons were in this BBB, yet they have the greatest financial stake in the game, and they actually got to where they did by not scamming newbies in some two-bit penny-ante way, but by pursuing good business practices on the whole -- although we can surely single out some of their telehub pressure tactics as worthy of reproach.

A "Chamber of Commerce" is not the same thing as a "Better Business Bureau" is not the same thing as a "Consumer Rights Association".

It's important to have a wide-ranging discussion of what kinds of players or representatives of groups of players could be in a BBB.

this is all too much trouble for me to worry about in hobby life. i mean this sincerely, without flippancy and beyond any realm of cynicism. if a customer manages to "steal" a few free trees, it hasn't really cost me anything. if a merchant manages to "cheat" me out of a few lindens, i still haven't lost anything.

i remember my father huffing up the street and threatening to beat up my best friend's dad if he didn't make his son give me back the twenty-dollar skates i'd traded him for a stack of fifty-cent comic books. i'd've likely traded the books to somebody the next week for a fifty-dollar bike, then traded derrick the bike to get the skates back. we kids learned to keep our mouths shut about things like that.

that has nothing to do with the point though does it. the point is that i'm not gonna bother meeting and keeping records and referencing and paying dues and all that to maintain a professionally pristine atmosphere just to play with my little toy business.

Did anything ever happen with RATE (sic?) They had a logo and everything. Is it dead?

Please tell me your kidding..........lmao.

Nope.

We especially need a BBB to protect us from people who claim it's a game, and a hobby, and a toy...but then take lots and LOTS of money from us, and out of the game, and turn it into RL money...without any accountability.

That's right. Yeah. We do need something to protect us.

RATE is in limbo right now. I've been trying to get it up and going again.. :hrugs::

there is no way to take money out of the game. the only way to convert lindens into cash is to sell them to somebody inworld that then has them to spend. why do we need accountability for that?

it's a hobby for me. i know a lot of people that make money from hobbies they enjoy by selling products or entering prize animals & vegetables at weekend fairs, playing instruments or singing at events, working on cars in their spare time et cetera et cetera.

building and selling items in sl is no different except that we have to go through the arduous and expensive task of converting the money. i understand that there are neredowells inworld that prey on the unsuspecting and steal their money. i don't understand what a syndicated protection agency can do to help alleviate that problem.

Let's be a little clear on a few things, Prokofy.

First, it can be a game, or a hobby, or a toy... it really depends on how you treat it. It could also be a lot of work, if you so choose.

Second, noone is TAKING money from us. They don't hold us down at the Welcome Center and force us to hand over any money. We *choose* to give them money in exchange for an item that they created that took their time and possibly money to create, market, and sell.

I don't disagree that there is a need for some form of voluntary code of ethics for merchants, but we should never mandate it.

Best advice: if you think you might be getting ripped off by someone, don't buy from them.

www.gamingopenmarket.com -- sell your Lindens, convert them to dollars, send them to your bank with PayPal. Works great for me.

Did you miss the memo on that?

Juro? I didn't say "mandate". This isn't the government/jurisprudence/judicial system thread.

This thread is about a the non-profit, civil-society type of entity called a Better Business Bureau. It investigates complaints. It posts them -- you know they publish the allegations when they begin to have clusters of them on the same business. Have you ever actually worked a BBB complaint? It's interesting to study. They cull through the specious stuff and they do have a grid for collecting the information properly. I think it's workable. No completely portable from RL, but something like it.

And it is voluntary. The question is, how do you prevent a BBB from becoming just another kids' mafia like so many other "security" outfits in this game where people are "taking care of business".

And the answer is: through transparency. Sometimes, it can be that when someone is alerted that they are the target of a fraud investigation, they right the situation immediately.

to whom? are there fewer lindens in the world after you complete your transaction? is the sl economy any poorer because you handed lindens to another resident and they gave you cash money?

this is not like going to spain and spending us dollars that then get traded in that country and never come back here. you can't actually take lindens out of the world. when you pay a gom terminal, you're paying a resident. when somebody buys those lindens, the gom resident pays them. the interface is external, the cash you are paid is external; the lindens never leave hobby life.

it's cute that they say "convert," but you're not really converting in the sense you're destroying lindens and replacing them with dollars.

Okay, I'm sleepy and punchy and probably have no business posting, but ...

I don't fully understand foreign currency markets, but I don't think that a Peso is destroyed when it's converted into a US dollar. Is it?

Shack is right, of course a peso isn't "destroyed". It's Phil Linden who is quoted as saying he's building a "country" not "a game".

I surely don't have to worry about "fewer Lindens" in an economy when the government prints loads of them and stuffs them in everybody's mailbox on Tuesdays.

I dunno, GOM takes them and converts them and PayPal doesn't seem to shun their payments, so I don't complain. Looks like a duck, talks like a duck.

I think Khamon is just being pedantic to try to reinforce the feeling of "a game". And it is precisely that sense of impunity that people get when they say "it's a game" that I question.

No, PN, it's a very, very, very, VERY simple process. Why you don't seem to grasp it is beyond me.

Follow the steps.

Someone buys something from you. That 1000 lindens is still in game.

You have 1000 lindens. That 1000 lindens is still in game.

You sell that 1000 lindens to GOM for the money to buy a hamburger. That 1000 lindens is still in game.

Gom has that 1000 lindens. That 1000 lindens is still in game.

Someone gives up a hamburger for a day and buys that 1000 lindens. That 1000 lindens is still in game.

Someone else has that 1000 lindens. That 1000 lindens is still in game.

Someone else buys a product from someone else. Process repeats.

At no point in that cycle is money ever created or destroyed. The exact same amount of money exists at all times. GOM does not convert anything. They are payed, or they pay people, but all they do is move money from point A to point B. The money doesn't really go anywhere.

The only new money comes from the lindens, with new accounts and stippends so forth.

khamon is simply saying that

is not true because people have no way to remove lindens from the inworld economy. so if that's your reason for wanting a bbb, you're wrong. this is not an effort to convince you of course; i'm just clarifying the point for our faithful readers.

no shack, pesos are not necessarily destroyed if their taken to the us and converted to dollars. but if they never make it back to their own country because they got thrown in a box or a trash can, they have been taken out of circulation. there's no such thing as taking a linden out of circulation. there's not even any way to save them in such a way that they don't show up in the economic figures. granted the gom av might own several million, but they're still in the world because they can't be physically removed.

the fact that they don't physically exist is beyond the scope of this discussion. but "selling" them on gom is like an internation bank moving money from my account to yours. if you consider that you can then only spend your money at stores whose owners also have accounts at the bank, when you buy things, they move money from your account to the store owner's. but the bank always has the money.

now that's silly in real life. but it's exactly how sl works. they are a bank that maintains our linden balances and forbids us to spend that money externally. we can pay each other for it, and make deals outside the world, but if we transact lindens, it has to go through them to another one of their account holders so that they never loose possession of the money.

btw, it is their money. if they decide to cancel your account for "no reason" you simply loose possession of your linden balance. we do need protection is suppose, but maybe not from each other.

I guess we just perceive differently how the international money system works in RL.

I remember seeing a similar discussion back when SL money sinks were being discussed. In that case, people kept talking about how the Federal Reserve takes US money out of circulation. And I mostly disagreed with that statement.

Now, somehow this same thing has come back in the form of money getting taken out of circulation through money conversion.

I just don't see it, but then I have a very simplistic understanding of money markets.

To me, if I convert one RL currency to another it is simply a currency trade. It's like converting a $10 bill to two $5 bills. But I'm certainly no expert. I just don't have any faith that anyone else in this discussion really knows anything more than I do.

Money leaves the game when you buy land from the Lindens using L$ and in one or two other small ways (uploads, for instance, or the L$30/week to be in Find, etc.). But no, not through GOM. Prok's wrong about that. But anyway, it sounds like he's more concerned about a way to protect people from unscrupulous business dealers and clients, i.e., in-world fraud and theft.



I have spent more than ten years as a RL journalist covering these issues and others, and I can tell you, Shack, that the Federal Reserve does indeed take US money out of circulation. It does it in a number of ways. It burns old bills. It buys the bonds of other countries (which doesn't "destroy" the money but simply removes it from our economy until it's needed again). It buys the currency of other countries. And in one or two other small ways (uploads, for instance -- jk ).

In any case, that kind of system-wide concern doesn't seem to be what Prok is talking about. It sounds like he's looking for something that will help protect people at the level of individual business transactions. Something that's voluntary, so that no one has to complain about being "told what to do." I'd be interested to see what kind of experiment develops along these lines.

i agree that it's probably not his primary concern. it's likely not even really on his list. but it's the reason he gave. the term voluntary will no doubt appear on every page of the manifesto; but i can't help feeling like this will become a ficish group that will lord the threat of ruin over businesses owners that don't bow to the stated methodologies.

y'know, it's amazing how melodramatic one can be after realizing that this all just good fun.

I remember RATE, when you mention this. Rate was always supposed to be totaly volentary, and there would be no pressure, no anything. It would just be there, if people wanted to participate. Then at one of the meetings, it started to take a turn for the worse in this department. But RATE had some absolutely top-notch people heading it up, and the situation was resolved (Though RATE sorta died shortly afterword...).

I doubt we would be that lucky a second time.

I think this is a great idea

I think the function of the BBB is not to be a mafia and roll up with your thugs and wreck the offenders business. Its more of a clearing house for information. I as a consumer can make an informed decision about buying from a business that may have stolen its trees from someone else. What I need is the information in the first place.

A BBB should provide consumners with information about known frauds. Not punish, but document. I have seen at least one threaed concerning stolen hair textures. It would be a good thing if soneone would publish links to these type of threads so that they aren't lost in the usual forum shuffle.

thats just one fucntion.
there are more. I think this a a great thread.

so who would vet the information?
how would inaccurate, biased, or false information be dealt with?

without good checks and balances, a bbb tends to either become meaningless or a kind of mafia organization.

I know you didn't, I did!

I agree with you that something like a BBB would be hugely beneficial for the community, but I just wanted to make it clear to all that it should be a voluntary system and not one mandated by any 'body'.

Prokofy.. I'll let you know when the next RATE meeting is.. you might consider attending, I think you'd find it very interesting.

Ummm, so who ............lmao protects US from people that claim to be do gooders with control issues??

I would think that what could protect you is a) your good business practices and your voluntary participation in a business code of ethics established by your peers and open to public scrutiny and b) you willingness to support and participate in a BBB. That's how it works in RL.

As someone said above, this is a cool thread and it's nice to see some good ideas get brought up. I look forward to hearing more and seeing how this develops. I like the "information clearinghouse" idea. I imagine that would work, too. All you'd have to do is build an edifice of people's experience with various vendors/customers, leavened with a little common-sense vetting, and I'm sure people would come to find it useful. It's like a "reputation system" but it becomes its own reward. If done carefully it could work very well.