Accidental Adult Content

Oh, a few times. 'course, one of the more well-known instances 'round here is the ol' neighbors. I wrote about it, here:

http://marianne.secondlifekid.com/2009/04/29/predictable/

Last times I went to a Linden Lab sandbox it wasn't long before the pictures of a man taking a dump appeared.

I put some screenshots of this sort of thing on Photobucket as a way to bring this to public attention.

Photobucket lately deleted them as a violation of the Photobucket Terms of Service.

This sort of display has occurred quite regularly for years.

This happens on PG, Linden Lab operated land.

But there is nothing in these new rules that will prevent any of that from happening. You will still be able have a sex bathroom and porn in your house.

But that kind of thing is already against the terms of service, so changing the terms of service is pointless. Enforcing the terms of service in the existing PG telehubs and infohubs would have been actually useful... but that would cost money...

I searched for "dance" in Places. On the first page without any scrolling I see "FREE SEX ORGY ROOM DANCE CLUB" and "FREE SEX LAND" and "Xtreme Nude Beach" and "Escort Oasis" and "Platinum club Escorts,girls,escort" and "HotSpot Cam RL Pics Escorts"

A search for futniture "FREE SEX ORGY ROOM DANCE CLUB", "Spanks SEX FURNITURE Beds", "WANKERS Quality Furniture", "D&D Furniture-SexBed/sex beds", "FREE SEX CLUB BORDEAUX"

so on and so on

So don't tell me accidentally running into adult continent is a mainland problem and definitely don't tell me it never happens unless you're looking for it. Pretty much any normal keyword will throw up adult responses in search

And increasing their workload, permanently, by adding to the things they have to enforce... is going to let them keep this up... how?

I hate to admit it since I'm very much an opponent of the path LL is taking with all this, but RobbyRacoon's story gives me pause. It hadn't occurred to me that it was so easy for someone to basically go "here's some kiddy porn on your hard drive, enjoy".

Still, there has to be a better way. The people uploading truly offensive/illegal content aren't going to go to Ursula to do it - it will only be the law-abiding citizens who end up there

My own experience as to the OP is that I used to "accidentally" run across Adult stuff displayed in the big ad farms, in completely incongruous areas, but that's really a different issue and mostly gone away now.

Just within the last week I accidentally ran into adult stuff I wasn't looking for. I bought more land just to have a building platform in the sky and right next door is some kind of sex mall with very explicit RL animated gifs all over the walls.

The thing is, if it concerned me I would have looked at the neighborhood before buying wouldn't I? I was not really offended -- at least not in the usual sense of the word. What offends me is the centuries of oppression of adult matters. I believe since we have been told over and over that desires are obscene or dirty then our desires follow suit and become more and more obscene and dirty. The censors and finger pointers are contributing to the problem. I wish both sides of the argument would just grow up to be honest.

I could go on at length about censorship, but my views have been expressed by far better minds. If you EVER get the opportunity, try to find a recording of Orson Scott Card's "Secular Humanist Revival" speech. It is hilarious and still timely today. It's not really about secular humanism, only jokingly so. It is really a cry against censorship and especially a cry against banning the teaching of evolution in schools. Though he is against pornography, regarding censorshipp of adult content he points out, "More people die daily as a reslult of cigarettes and beer than have died in all of human history from an overdose of beaver shots." I don't know if the tape is still available but it should be. In spite of its humor it is one of the most spiritual and inspiring talks I have ever heard.

In spite of my views on censorship, I am trying to apporach the coming changes with optimism. There may be some turmoil, but if residents want their adult stuff they will find a way. So will the content creators.

I guess that's easy for me to say since I am ambivalent about adult content.

As I'm reading......I'm still getting the idea that a lot of it comes back to mainland. Too much open to interpretation without having covenants and that's a shame.

And.....a lot of folks are commenting on human behavior......LOL LL is NOT going to be able to police that effectively. People who are immature will do what they do.....and other then AR'ing and banning.....there's not much that can be done about wingnuts. And lets face it.....the new guy that runs around nekkid with his swinging mini-me is classified as a wingnut as well. Maturity....

If LL wants to make SL appeal to a business/corporate client that might otherwise have the heebie jeebies about joining a virtual world where one might encounter a nekkid member swinging wingnut.....LL needs to deligate a region to corporate use only. If company ABC wants to have a predictable experience in SL......they can create a group, get their own peeps signed up and keep those not invited or involved with the cause, Out. Not difficult. But I can easily envision a corporate continant where the soul purpose is to bring real world business into the virtual for the benefit of bringing groups of people together globally, and easily.

New noob experience....that's a tricky one. Anyone that I invite to check out SL.....I am very protective of and I will have them begin right on my island and do the tutoring myself. But I discuss SL in detail.....I explian that it is HUGE and all emcompassing. For those that join on a whim and have no real expectation or understanding of what SL is......it's a crap-shoot...I agree. How LL is ever going to handle that element, I don't know. But AC is not the problem.....it's individuals being idiots (sorta like IRL lol)

Not even that. If it's in your home or otherwise not advertised and behind pointless prim walls... it can stay right where it is.

They really need to implement http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-205 so that people can put stuff in a private skybox zone and it won't even be downloaded to people who don't enter the zone.

Of course you do, because you're not interested in the opposing view.

The search kicks up the same results if you're on an estate or mainland. If you're looking for things you're going to end up having to skip over a few very adult results.

Regardless, you must have never had a Gorean or BDSM neighbour because it's not uncommon at all to see those guys hanging outside their houses naked or walking around shops on leashes and very revealing clothes. Maybe your covenant is more restrictive than the one I set on my estate but I'm not particularly interested in mandating appropriate clothing for my residents and as far as I can tell most shop owners aren't interested in turning away customers even if they are dressed like freaks.

Just like the web itself, yes.

No...indeed I'm very interested in all points of view. But again, I wasn't referring to 'search' because the whole idea of searching is to be able to preview things before you go jetting off to explore or shop. So.....AC in search, is at least contained.....and one has the option to bypass and continue looking.

I have been in SL for three years......I started out renting on mainland......and then found a nice private region and now I rent an entire homestead...so neighbors aren't even an issue. But I asked the question because I'm trying to determine (for my own curiosity) where and how, AC becomes intrusive to those who are not interested & looking for it. I don't like the idea of vamped up censorship.....I beleive it's dangerous grounds to tread. But I am also a problem solver by nature.......so in reading everyone's answers....I'm looking at what other ways there might be to handle the AC issue and this idea of predictability.

I have never had an offensive experience with neighbors.....except when I rented on mainland.....and that was due to no covenant. My next step was to find a nice residential area to rent a parcel, and I did. Yeah, there were a few homes owned by folks who had some very X-rated intentions in SL.....but they never infringed on my space...or otherwise bothered me. In that respect, I feel one's home should be absolutely kept out of censorship. (illegal content being uploaded or displayed in SL in any way is another matter completely......my focus here is AC as it is generally outlined and portrayed in SL under legal, acceptable terms)

The thing that strikes me here, is so much is based on the individuals own idea of personal space......and how one chooses to go about their exploration of SL. I don't see the search engine as any infringement on my personal space....I don't much care what pops up as I'm looking for stuff.....I ignore what doesn't interest me. Basically...I don't much care what anyone does in SL, I enjoy the idea on openly creative and diverse community. But I also understand that my views, are not everyone's views. And in my own experience....I have to honestly say.....it's been on mainland.....while exploring, that I've run into more blatant AC material that seemed out of place or scattered without rhyme or reason. But that doesn't mean at all.....that it isn't true elsewhere.....it's just been what I've observed. In the private regions that I owned land over the last couple years.....I had zero accidental or unwanted run-ins with AC. So I draw a conclusion, that's all.

Sadly.....the problem we're having as a community.....is LL is drawing conclusions as well....based on the information they're getting.......and while the aim is to please the masses......there's no way to get an accurate idea of how the community, as a whole, is really responding to the AC issue. It's a terribly slippery slope and I truly do feel for those who are caught in the middle and affected by those decisions.

I think the issue is not with experienced users who mostly know how to avoid content they don't want to see, but instead with people who are new, people who don't have homes yet and haven't really been in SL long enough to worry about having a plot at all whether mainland or other. IMHO the issue is with people who join SL, and within the first day or two run face first into content that suprises them (to say the least), and quit. Just like I did. If I didn't have a friend in SL that told me to give it another try, I would not have come back. I had nothing invested here except a few hours. My RL sister made an account last spring, wandered around a little bit...and quit. 'Not for me' she said, after she described a place she had tp'd to while exploring.

You have to look at SL through the innocent eyes of a new player. I am by no means a prude, and have not led a sheltered life and was taken aback by what I encountered. I totally can imagine a lot of people log on, go WTF, log off and disappear from SL forever.

Starting fresh with a guaranteed "Safe For Work" corporate area would be the sensible thing to do. So of course that's not the course that LL will follow. Instead, they will proceed under the delusion that the main grid PG areas can be sanitized of any "mature" content and that they'll be able to response quickly enough to complaints of immature wingnuts that the businesses whose activities are being impacted will stick around after the first, second, and third griefing by way of mega-prim flexi-penis.

I must lead a very sheltered Second Life, I don't see all this adult stuff everywhere and sometimes I go looking for adult clubs to see if there's an advertising opportunity, escorts rent land, honest!

Maybe it's because I don't search via the places tab very often.

can always go move to the Adult version of second life

http://www.redlightcenter.com/

hehe

Dot hopping is always the best way to find the 'unexpected'. In my business I often try and find popular places to rent and 'go where the dots are'.

Once discounting the fake traffic bot destinations the occassional surprise has been a 'farmyard' and sex club with more than graphic rl pics on the walls but i have a robust constitution. This therefore demonstrates how popular such destinations are. Obviously if people tp in to see why everyone else is there it almost guarantees a 'sexy' destination and its easily just as quick to tp out. No way can you complain about what you see when you land out of nowhere uninvited....

This tp unpredictability could be sorted immediately by these venues floating an X or A over their land (or B for fake bots dont bother....)

The only unpredictable experience I have had as far as stumbling into adult content would be the search. Many times searching for a word that was by no means adult in nature would return many top listings of adult places with extremely raunchy parcel descriptions. Had LL given users a button to report such ads so they could be flagged for further review, we would not need any search filters for words.

Other than that, I have never found myself suddenly in a porn infested place while exploring. Even with Gor I had to seek it out. I have seen more dungeons and sexual devices while camming through walls of private homes while exploring than I have just coming across a public place I was not looking for.

The greatest risk of accidental adult content, I reckon, is from streaming audio, with song lyrics or DJ chatter. No problem with most of that stuff in mature / adult areas, but you hear it in PG areas too.

I see BDSM-looking and naked Gor people all the time, if they're considered 'adult content' now. I've had some real freaky-looking people wander into my shop - the way I see it, as long as people are behaving appropriately for a public place and not harassing or spam-piring anyone, they're welcome to stay.

Long, long ago, in a sim far, far away, when I was just a pup, I had a little cottage. Someone bought the land next to that cottage and built a big nasty blocky looking building RIGHT on the property line, and decorated the inside of the building with very offensive RL bondage photos - some of them were rather stomach-turning. Heck, for all I know, they could have been underage, too! How did I discover this? Well, my little cottage wasn't far away from the property line (though at least I had the decency not to build right up to the line). When I cammed around inside my cottage, sometimes it would rotate into the inside of the nasty building next door. YUCK.

Is this primarily a mainland problem? Maybe so. But I recall a couple times I've TP'd to a place advertising a sale or a hunt on a private sim, and ended up landing inside or within view of a strip club full of naked or bondage-gear wearing people.

Yup, Ralektra, I would agree. And I honestly don't see how LL can 'shelter' new comers from anything that might be viewed as offensive. Other then folks being well informed prior to joining.....how does one even begin to control the experience? I haven't a clue. As a new user....I really don't remember being offended by anything I ran into in the beginning stages of exploring. I was pretty much prepared though, because by the very nature of SL's tag line "your world, your imagination" I sort of assumed anything would be possible. That aspect fascinated me......even though I wasn't personally interested in all the radical AC......it didn't deter me from looking for other places to explore that were more to my taste.

The whole AC issue is really one that should have been carefully thought through in the beginning stages......if LL anticipated so much diverse creativity.......one would think they'd have anticipated the more lude side of humanity finding a niche. But alas they didn't give it enough forethought.....and here we are today watching in morbid fascination as they try to re-direct and refrom the grid to reflect a ratings system. Hopefully they can devise an alternative plan for new users to have a more cushioned first look.......but I guess until such time, folks are just going to have to explore at their own risk.

I appreciate all the resposes to this....lots of perspectives and insights~!!

I see it also as mainly a mainland problem and it should be seperated on the mainland due to previous examples. I've also went to a shop but next door full of blocky spam adult images, with sound effects blasting throughout the area. Or gore images etc.

Or on one place I was renting next door another springs up with bdsm or some fetish junk spamming nonstop.

So when it comes to mainland good riddance, move that stuff to their own version of mainland and that way people that want to buy the stuff or see it can tp to it, and those that don't want to see it dont have to run into it when trying to do hunts or just rent a home on mainland.

as for private islands I'd say leave those be, but yea I'm all for moving mainland adult stuff so it's not peppered around residential and normal shopping areas.

gets quite annoying that mostly the ones you seem to run into next to the shop you meant to go to have to have chat spammers and noisemakers. Course we all AR them in hopes to get them removed since the chat spam / noise spam shouldn't cross parcels imo.

Good opening post Mille and agree with your analysis.

Having participated in the official LL Adult Content forums for several weeks, I'm too worn out to write a long winded post about it.....all i will say is this.....I hope LL have enough spunk to finally inform the entire SL community via the Login screen with links to foreign translated versions of their proposals.
It greatly disturbs me that after 6 weeks or so, alot of its user base are still unaware of these dumb@ss changes!

Chances are that the bulk of the user base will remain unaware until the proposals become part of the ToS and they're presented with a box at login asking them to read and accept the new ToS to continue. And even then, most of them will just check the box without reading.

On the mainland, quite often ... although I'm not the least bit offended by it.

I think the problem is a little bigger than your question represents. A nice little chunk of my mainland PG home is really not usable, because the vampire people next door like to play "snuff and stuff" in open chat, right next to my land. When I politely asked this if they could do it in IM, I was basically called a prude and told to f-off. Fortunately, I have a good bit of land/prims and used mega's and a really nice waterfall to block off the area encompassing their chat distance.

The flip side, is another neighbor that has a pretty good sized BDSM castle, and has friend over pretty regularly for their playtimes. They are super nice people ... some of the best neighbors I have ever had ... all I ever really notice is a pile of green dots, and I just stay away I really hope they will not have to move.