Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

Avoiding the relevant part again phil?

It was in regards to your claim of having a linden say it was okay.

Kindly show the evidence, or accept that otherwise any such claim can and will be considered a falsehood.

Since sometime in 2005.



Several months ago. This new policy is strengthening an existing one.


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Trafficbots are significantly newer than ad farms. They weren't even realistically possible till after 6/6/06.

I will tell you what is hilarious, Linden Labs removed popular places in an effort to curb traffic gaming. But at the same time putting places in Showcase that are infested with campers. Gotta love rewarding cheaters huh?? lol freaking hilarious.. You think they care ? hahaha NOT!

Alternatively, It is possible they care but don't really think things through.

We've been through it all before, Mort. You can consider it a lie if you like, but the sensible thing to do if you don't accept it is to simply not take it as a gimme.

The even better way is to get hold of a Linden and simply ask.

I mentioned i did, and you and others said that my word wasn't enough. So up to you to provide proof, where a voice chat doesn't have a log file so mine has as much backing as yours.

This could well be true but it seems they don't take the dim view of artificially inflated traffic figures that some residents do. At least one place in showcase has a lot of models.

However the place looked nice, stylish, quality looked good.

I think you are right "Dim view" wouldn't describe it very well.

more "Exasperated view" would describe their comments I have read on the topic.

Like Chip and others have said -- they had hoped people would be basically honest with the search parameters.

And yet in showcase they have stores who most definitely use this tactic. Their very own showcase contains examples of how to boost your traffic this way.

does chad in janitorial services know what bob in marketing is doing?

It's their showcase, they handpicked these places. It's supposed to show the very best of Second Life. They handpicked a place that has plenty of artifical traffic.

Again does a person in one department know what a person in another department does?

Well yes I understand that.

I do not think they discriminate in the least against people who game traffic.

That doesn't mean they like it necessarily.

So your point is that it's ok for Linden Lab to go to a place, like the look of it, put in their showcase?

Yet you've spent page after page arguing that shoppers who do that, don't care about such tactics, are being cheated and it's outrageous and the people doing such things are the devil in disguise.

Sorry Mort, it doesn't wash. You excuse people when it suits you but there's no consistency to your points.

You slate Phil for artificially inflated traffic, but refuse to do the same for Linden Lab.

You use LL like it's one person, try again Ciaran

What a person in a large company does in the name of the company is judged differently than what a person does on their own.

After all are all ex-enron employees scum who embezzle huge amounts of cash?

What may be on the governance department's plate might not even be a though in the eyes of a marketing drone.

They're a company, one whom you engage with. Yet you say people shouldn't engage with business owners who engage in such practices.

You still can't manage to criticise Linden Lab over artificially inflated figures or putting a store in showcase that uses such tactics. Are you against the practice or against Phil?

What I want to know is if this is the best way to use search, it is all sanctioned and LL are happy with it then where are the blog posts telling you that it should be done and how it is done. Also where the hell is the Torley video?

I didn't say I didn't have a beef with LL on somethings.

And I do have a problem with the tactics that alter search through manipulation vs optimization.

I also know that just because Joe sees a place he likes and puts it up on the showcase, it's not an open endorsement by the entire LL organization but one by Joe.

You are right about this.

Thats something Pie has long said and it makes a lot of sense. Linden Labs has benefited from these artificially high concurrency numbers in the past.

Still .. the showcase thing they probably didn't really even bother or care about it.

I really wish Zaphod would repost that quote by Robin though, it sure comes across like they do care about the situation.

Ciaran does have a valid point here, one I did not give much thought yet.

It is one I would like to see people like Sling react to as well. He declared he refused to do business with "cheaters", avoid them even (cannot recall the exact words atm). Now we all do know that LL is taking full advantage from the inflated traffic from there bots. They do know they are here, but decide to keep them.Plus they seem to advertise places with artificial traffic in their showcase.

Now I would say if you really are very ethical and moral about this, you would refuse to do business with LL as well. So why don't the people that are so definitely saying they don't want anything to do with cheaters, not cancel their SL account?

And no, it's not something you should do, if you are enjoying SL. But this is something to consider though. Maybe morals and ethics are a bit more elastic then you thought.

It is possible to be select on where you fight battles against corruption. It is also possible to try to educate corrupted people that corruption is not the way to go. You have to stick around for that though.

I truly believe for the most part that LL wants SL to be run ethically, honestly and truthfully, however like all people and organisations they fall short on certain issues. That is no reason to abandon them though.
The difference with business inside SL who are exploiting things that were never designed to be exploited (trying to find neutral wording here) is that they have no intention of stopping and finding a better way. They are only interested in milking it until they are made to stop without consideration for anyone else.

LL is not like that and I expect their thinking more goes along the lines of there is no solution to the problem yet but we are not going to stop working on one. They have said that traffic will eventually go away and already is lessened in importance to search as you and Phil like to point out.

Whilst LL do benefit from the bots figures it is not as if they sought to deliberately to make that happen with that goal in mind. They do not encourage others to start running bots to help them inflate figures otherwise there would be the "Botting its fun..." blog post and the accompanying Torley video.
It is merely a by product of implementing an idea that was originally supposed to be make search reasonably fair (regardless of how successful it was). They have shown willingness to diminish the role of traffic to lessen the effectiveness of traffic bots - hardly the stance of a company who wants them to stay in my opinion. More like a company taking things slowly and trying one thing at a time in a delicate situation.
That is why their measures have not been very effective but it does not mean they are not trying to do something about it.

So back to the point you raise Marcel, I do not beleive that LL as a whole is unethical in their approach, they seem to take a relatively good ethical stand point. Sometimes they make mistakes though just as we all do and sometimes, for some problems, the solutions are not as simple as they maybe seem from our point of view. So we stay and give our support and hopefully guidance in the way of feedback and discussion. At least that is the theory anyways.

So much of "I believe LL this, so everyone should do it like this" and "I believe LL that so everyone should do it like that", when it's all meaningless. You can't sensibly argue a case based on what you believe someone else thinks.

The fact that LL includes places that do what you disapprove of in their showcase indicates that LL doesn't have the same disapproval as you. You beliefs are no argument at all.

Since you were trying to choose your words carefully, who are the "corrupted people" that you mentioned?Are you saying that we bot runners are corrupt???

Good post Gabrielle.
Yet I am not entirely sure about what you write.

Of course traffic was not meant to be artificially inflated in the beginning. But some users found a way (camping and later botting) and LL never raised a finger. Only when resources are in danger (too many bots to have other users enter a sim or have an event) they act. While it is very easy to either block bots and camping, you saw that on banning gambling devices.

In the meantime they benefit from the artificial traffic as much as any bot owner does, just in a different way. And yes they say they are going to make traffic based lists go (search places) yet they still don't.

Now I do not see LL as unethical, they are right they benefit from the data generated. But I do not perceive bot runners as unethical either. My main point is that some people are leaning towards extreme with their statements about people using bots, but "forget" to see that LL benefits from them as well, and leaves them as they are.

And of course you can choose where to fight your battle against corruption. But it is to the anti-bot camp much easier to make a statement towards for example Phil (the only bot runner open about it) then towards LL. In my belief, if your moral/ethical values are that high, you make no difference: LL, the large company, uses artificial traffic to promote its business. Phil, a small business owner compared to that, uses artificial traffic to promote his business. Both should be equally treated as long as neither removes the practice.

Phil mentioned several times he wants to remove his bots, but leaves them as long as they are allowed because his competitors do as well. So he cannot remove them without hurting his business (20% less sales I believe he said).
LL is talking about removing traffic as a metric in search, but does not do it so far. It might hurt their business as well. So again, both are equally unethical as far as I an see. Either fight both, or do not make statements you don't want to have anything to do with businesses using those practices. That is how I see it.

Yes you are right Phil, though we all form beliefs based on what we see LL do publicly. You feel they show approval, I feel they don't. This gets argued endlessly by both sides here but my point was to Marcel based on my beliefs I do not have an ethical issue doing business with LL because I feel they are a completely different case to the people bot farming or using other exploits, etc. and do not in fact see their methods as unethical at all.

Thank you for your post and your opinion, though we are never likely to agree on the bot farming not been a subversion of the system I can at least appreciate your point of view.