Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

Yep, you could say that, and it wouldn't be any more a representative sample of the vast majority of SL users than this forum thread. Most of the people I know do give a toss about bots so whose sample do we extrapolate from? It makes for a silly argument. It's more useful to look at the impact of bots on the impact on the usability of search, what search rankings are actually rewarding and why, what the long term implications are if everyone feels they have to run bots to have a fair shot at being noticed, and so on. We mostly go around in circles with people trying to explain why it's unsustainable and of dubious ethics, and the other side saying "no one's making us stop, neener neener."

One thing ill point out on the neener neener thing.

Linden Lab never tells people to stop anything..


Until they lower the boom on them


Ban History

Sexual Age Play ... no notice.
Gambling ... no notice.
Banking ... almost no notice.
Ad Farms ... almost no notice.


Remember when those things were allowed we got the LL doesnt say its wrong neener neener spiel as well.

And all of those had their problems with ethics.

We could all Wake up tomorrow to a "Trafficbots Banned" blog post.

Yep, they'd be unlikely to telegraph it any more (and probably less) than they did the gambling ban, but I'm not holding my breath.

I think what will someday happen is they will remove traffic , with no notice.

Of course they are just as likely to get out of the search business altogether.

To be honest it wouldn't surprise me if their claims were very near to the mark.
People really don't care that much...they don't disect and over-analyse why there are so many green dots on the map....they just want the product they are searching for.
Its more of issue if the Place uses keywords for products that they do not sell.....i think that would piss people off more.

Many of the people I see in SL (you know SL also considered a social networking platform, not just business) are looking for other people, Green dots... Not products. This why chat bots have been developed for clubs. A club owner I was talking with the other day said she gets offers for chat bot service. Pay them a fee, not small, and they will bring however many chat bots to the club they want to make the place look busy. They will even script them to say things and shoot off stuff to make them look real. Obviously targeted at people looking for people. How disappointing it must be for the real people to come to a club filled with dancing zombies. maybe why the club scene is failing.

People who use bots for such things are setting them selfs up for failure. They will hang them selfs sooner or later.

As i'm not really a clubber....i can't really make any comment. I only can talk about Malls and businesses in general. If what you say is correct...i agree with you. It's a sham!

And generating additional traffic numbers with bots isn't?



As for the google search appliance, it's also used on corporate networks to index various files and uses just keywords. Since a document file isn't going to have inbound links, and for reference it can read html pages as the pure text that they are (use view source someday you'll see it's a glorified text file for the most part with imbeded items)



As for the argument that because it's not listed as banned, then it's okay... there is nothing in the ToS that forbids someone from deliberately setting up a lot for the sole purpose of screwing search up to the point that LL takes notice. Using bots, prims and all the 'tools' that are considered okay because they are not banned... even if they sell nothing on the lots. In fact they don't have to consider or worry about folks not being able to get on the land... no lost revenue.

OK logins failed due to high load and we run 3 BOTs for the 3 group's and the land management. I have just this minute got up and when i tried to login i got a fail so I have disconnected my 3 BOTs from the grid, until it is stable again, i wonder who else will join me and remove their BOTs from the grid while the problem exists.

Any Takers?

However the initiative is good, I doubt it will help. The problems are not related to concurrency anyway, yesterday there were >64k online without any problem.
Most of the time the problem is not related to concurrency anyway, as most bots do not add to the load they are talking about. Active avatars, scripted attachments, high prim hair and shoes, moving and thus constant loading of textures, teleporting, many groups to update, all those things add to the load on an environment like SL. Static bots without any of this, hardly add to load.
Nevertheless, your initiative is a good one

Yeah i suspected that but whatever the reason whenever there are failed logins i am going to remove the 3 we run off the grid until it is fixed. I know thats like peeing in the ocean but its about time someone suggested it and then actually does it

I agree with BOTs when they are used correctly and without gaming as they make my life a whole lot simpler, but i hope others will follow suit and do this when logins fail for whatever reason. But i wont hold my breath

But why should they change it, as it works very good at the moment. It is easy to find what you want and that is the point. No matter what system you think of, it can be influenced for the better and the worse. In my opinion, the current search all can be improved a lot in the way results are displayed, but the engine itself is a good one.


Of course the fact it is not banned does not mean it is immediately okay, I can think of many examples not covered in the TOS which are not okay by far. Take selling empty boxes for example, something which can be done without any punishment from LL.

For me, the decision on what is right and wrong is more related to what is does to other people. Add farming for example, harasses many users. Banking scams are meant to hurt people.
Bots and Picks camping are not. Picks camping is even for the people attending it, a good thing as they can make good money from it. Bot both things do not hurt anyone and are a perfect way to improve your ranking.
Now the only problem with these two things, is that some people find them unethical. Well, I can live with that, but it is allowed too, for us it is a business tool that does not harm a person, and is allowed by LL. Not using the tools, gives us a disadvantage because our competitors do not sit still. So it is a choice: do we compete with the methods that are allowed, and not bad in our view, or don't we. Well, you know the answer.

For the record: Both Phil and me stated several times we would encourage to stop using traffic. We do not use bots or picks camping because we enjoy it, but because we have to compete to be successful. So we are not in favor of bot use, we see it is necessary in order to keep up with the competition.

That's not my argument, Mort. My argument is that, since LL stated in writing to me that traffic bots are not against the ToS and are acceptable, when I told them that I use traffic bots and specifically asked them if it was ok to do so, they are currently acceptable to LL. It's not actually an argument. It's a statement of fact.

Phil no offense, but in a court of law and public opinion something like that has to be proven. So till you can get them to make a blog or forum post so others can see it in writing that it's okay... there will always be contention on it.

Because as it stands there is no evidence that anyone else can see that they have said it's okay or not.

In a court of law, it would be proven, because it still exists. But it's in a part of the site that only LL and my account can see. Nobody has to believe me about it, but that doesn't make it untrue. I copied and pasted it here once, but that wasn't proof, and I can't insist that I am believed. Nevertheless, it is true and, for me, LL have stated that the use of traffic bots is currently acceptable because it is not currently against the ToS.

Some inferred evidence that could be believed here is that my bots have been ARed a number of times that I know of (people sometimes like to puff their chests up and tell me when they AR them ), and probably other times that I'm unaware of. So far nothing has happened to them, and I haven't received any contact from LL about them. If anyone here has ARed them, they could say so.

It's not rare for someone to puff their chest out and post that they've had bot farms removed by ARing them, when I'm in the thread. But my bots are still there. What do their chests look like now?

Some evidence of the acceptability of traffic bots to SL that *has* to believed here, is that we all know that LL is fully aware of them, and we all know that they have spoken about them. But they have done nothing to remove them.

It's blatantly obvious that traffic bots are currently acceptable to LL, and nobody can seriously argue against that. It's not a matter of opinion. They may take steps to remove them in the future, but right now they accept them.

It's blatantly obvious that the worst excess of ad-farmers were acceptabe to LL, right up to the instant that they took action.

It's blatantly obvious that the remaining land-extorting practices and OTT advertising on 16m plots are acceptable to LL. Whereas it is true that they are discussing ways and means of repairing the damage or at least avoiding more damage, it still remains blatantly clear that the practices (that the appear to want to stop) are acceptable to them.

It's blatantly obvious that the operations of landbots swooping on mistakes and keeping the land are acceptable to LL.

It's blatantly obvious that load imposed by landbots hitting search was acceptable to LL right up to the moment that they throttled search frequency by avatar.
It's blatantly obvious that the response of landbot runners in reimposing the load via multiple bots in federation was acceptable to LL.


etc., etc.

It's blatantly obvious that your definition of "acceptable" in the circumstances is a trifle skewed.

Almost everything you mentioned was true. They were all acceptable to LL until they decided against them and took action. It doesn't make any difference whether people are happy with things or not. If LL knows about them and does nothing, then they accept them. It's perfectly simple.

The one thing where you were wrong is about my definition of "acceptable". The only thing that is skewed is your thinking. Remember that we are not talking about what is and isn't acceptable to you and me

Great now we do have traffic bots that do use resources bouncing from sim to sim.

That was already responded to. The first paragraph is nonsense, of course. The remainder was just a guess at what the groups were. Read the reply for one possibility.

Do we? How much sense would it make?
What has been happening in the given example, no one knows but the parcel owner (and maybe not even them), but I am pretty sure they do not have traffic bots bouncing from Sim to Sim. Simply because it is not useful at all.

If you read my previous posts, you'll note that i don't use Bots or like Bots. By the same token theres no point in getting your knickers in a twist either.....until LL change the way traffic is counted, bots are here to stay for the foreseeable future. If you're a business owner then maybe you should spend more time optimising other Search types and promoting your businesses through other mediums.....that would be more useful than whinning away on RA. I totally ignore Places Search....i don't use it, i rarely look at it.....it doesn't really exist for me!

As regards shopping habits, most customers really don't give 2 Monkeys about the green dots that are 700m in the air....unless they are lagged out on that SIM because of them. They just want to shop for the product and then move on. In the grand scheme of things...the few people that spend time thinking on what'ts ethical and what's not are really out there in the wilderness.

I'm sure LL are aware that 20% concurrent logins are bots, if they thought that was an issue, they would have banned them ages ago........or changed Places Search. How long have we had Land bots......what has been done about it?

Right, but this is a good reminder for some pro-Traffic folks who want to somehow salvage it by counting it differently--as in number of unique avatars per day, or the like. Such steps would absolutely *ensure* that a new generation of trafficbots appear that whack the hell out of sims and central services by logging in and out and/or teleporting from parcel to parcel of clients.

I just wish LL had the guts to shoot Traffic/Dwell in the head for once and for all and put it out of its misery.

Maybe no use, but I remember in the early days when bots were first found in cages, one of the botrunners was sharing them between stores.
Maybe it's to avoid detection, or to balance traffic over a few locations somehow by variying bot time at each location

And maybe they were what I suggested - simply a group of people who were visiting the place for whatever reason. That sort of thing was organised here as I recall - a group of forum users doing a tour of certain shops. In my reply I mentioned that 10 or 12 freebie hunters landed in the same spot in my store in the space of 15 or 20 seconds. Who knows what they were, but there's no reason to suppose they were bots TPing from place to place. That doesn't mean they weren't - just that there's no reason to suppose that they were.

Well to avoid detection would make some sense, though it keeps being stupid After all, they will be detected by people anyway, maybe even easier as they suddenly see the dots appear.
To balance traffic it would make no sense at all, it is way easier to divide the bots over your locations having the same effect. But hey, there are some weird minds around