What should LL do? [Eek! An SL kid thread!)

No, not too difficult: totally ineffective. As I said, if the real frequency of such behavior were ZERO, it would have absolutely no impact on the image of SL. None. It would not reduce the number of *reports* about it, if it never happened at all.

1) Yes. Not as in accurate and responsible reporting, but as in finding perverts. Or rather, one pervert.

2) No.

"The issues" in this case, as repeatedly pointed out by most posters, boil down to a single person being mapstalked by a reporter. The reporter was very familiar with the subject at hand. Said reporter then reports on this pervert (not even predatory, given the reporter's methods) he "discovered" and implies dire implications for Second Life as a whole. It's the very best example of irresponsible reporting to hit my eye in the past few weeks ...though that's likely because I avoid celebrity press.


In college, I helped organize an anime convention. The anime thing hadn't exploded at that point, and the convention was notable enough to hit the eye of the press. The special twist in their collective journalistic minds was, hey, here's a bunch of material that covers a huge range of consumers, and media presented at the convention ranges all the way from childrens' shows to profoundly adult-oriented titles.

It didn't matter to the press that the convention did age checks and required parental supervision below a certain age, maintained a large group dedicated to convention security, had any number of other supervisory elements that are fulfilled by any number of conventions and events with similarly massive attendance. Reporters latched on to the "both kids and adults" thing and ran with it. It took anime or anime-style media becoming flatly mainstream before the general populace stopped seeing it as something alien and threatening and ignored the subject entirely. Reporters lose audience, find new subject, rinse and repeat.

Two lessons I learned from that experience:

One day, a colorful talk radio show ranged in to the subject, and alerted by a friend, I called in. They asked if they came to the convention, could they find this and that. My response was, sure, if you look hard enough you can find anything. But doesn't that say more about you guys than the convention?

Two, I took a direct call from a concerned parent. Her son was attending the convention with a group of friends, probably all dogpiling into a hotel room, and she was worried about him. He listened to those Zombie tracks about doing the nasty with dead bodies, he wore black, he watched anime. She wanted to be reassured, have somebody watch him to make sure he didn't do anything awful and get in trouble.

It wasn't so long ago I did all that, I say. He's a teenager, he has these interests and even if it's not just acting out, don't you think he has a firm foundation in reality? It's pretty a given that young men will be stupid, but do your parental best, stay in touch, and understand that we have an eye out over the convention as a whole. I think he'll survive.


So Second Life is this new and alien thing. We know it's evolutionary and essentially nothing new, but a whole segment of the world population is being presented with virtual worlds out of the blue. They know about text messaging and the Web and 'World of Warcraft' and that's about it, and all these things online are a simmering underbelly of perverts and stalkers going after their children. They're the conservative parents, innocent to the world, and anything new is dazzling and scary.

So what? Second Life and "the grid" is a meme under good parenting by Linden Lab. The distracted and worried parents of the world have slowly acclimated to the idea that you don't type in whitehouse.com when you're trying to teach children about the U.S. government. A whole lot of people have visited SL, and these days an increasing number of them enter through general media portals that present a comfortingly familiar world: CSI, cartoon characters, etc.

Based on its age, if the hardware requirements weren't comparatively steep, SL would already be entirely mainstream. The next big thing is already out there. Sky has grid presence and the reporting, for good or ill, is driving visits that will increase presence.

The story is already old news, the meme is tired. SL will stay fresh. We'll all survive and grow.

Who, oddly enough, happened to be blogged for her proclivities again just a couple of weeks ago...

But it's not zero, and nevertheless we don't actually know that any of these reported instances were manufactured.

It's a dubious mental leap really. A bit like saying that some people are framed for murder, so let's not investigate any murder.

So we give the "journalists" free reign to break the TOS and RL laws in their pursuit of the story?

The biggest problem I see is that LL opened offices in the UK, otherwise they could tell the "do gooders" to go piss up a rope.

I have been in SL for over 18 months now. I have seen one instance of underage sex play and that person was ejected and banned from the parcel as soon as the owner found out what was happening. And yes, in my past I have hung out in some damn nasty hardcore areas.

LL has done every thing they can to end this aspect of role play. What steps do you suggest they take now? Do you want them to hire enough people to listen in on every conversation? Filters to catch any instance of improper words being used? Tell us Stephen, how do we get to this land of sunshine and sugar drops that you envision? Give us some concrete answers, not your "Someone think of the childrens" speech that has become rather cut and paste for you now.

You don't understand. Stephen doesn't have answers. He's emotionally capitalizing on classic FUD, stirring up the perception that there's an extensive seamy underworld of child predators. But alas, any attempt to keep SL clean will tar-baby Linden Lab and all of us into sickening oblivion. A vicious cycle of defeat!

Self-professed staid businessman or no, he's the posting equivalent of that bored jerk who sits around in the Ahern welcome area steadily applying his broken English to insult Koreans.

Well, but for heaven's sake: LL has bent over backwards to try to address the real instances of this, on every known occasion. So it's not like murders are going uninvestigated. The thing is, do you seriously imagine that there is *anything* LL could do about the real problem (however real it may be) that would keep Farrell from another scare-mongering report? Not a chance: He's found a niche and has been rewarded for it. He'll be back, no matter what, and some people will lap eagerly at whatever he spews forth as "news."

Personally, I wouldn't particularly mind if the grid were all PG-rated. But seriously, it would not even delay the next report; if anything, it would make it all the more juicy, LL having labeled the grid safe for all, and yet look at the Evil Lurking Just Under the Surface.

Ahhh.. the high road..

Firstly I'm not sure who the "we" are that would tell anyone to do anything. And I've tried pissing on a rope.. it wasn't as bad as you make out..

Secondly, I'm not sure that I ever said I had the answers. All I said was that I can see a problem, that it might effect SL's future and that we should probably see what we can do about it.

To be honest, I'm not even sure what's wrong with trying to build a world of sunshine and sugar drops.. and at the end of the day, in a population of 500,000 max.. why wouldn't we try to "protect the children".

I'm sure you're a big rufty tufty man Chris, who's seen the backside of life and spat in it's eye.. but to be honest, I'd really rather that "the children" didn't have to face such trials until they were a wee bit older..

What children? We're all supposed to be adults here.

Because Stephen, I really doubt there are any children here. If there are, they aren't cruising for sex. 15,16, 17 year olds? Yes probably but they are not children. I am sure that roleplaying as a 6 year old is what every 17 yo wants to do.

But yet again, you rant that things need to be done, yet offer no solutions to the so called problem.

As for the high road, I say what I think and I damn sure don't sugar coat it.

Then let us focus on keeping the children out of the adult grid; not on which costumes adults wear.

What if the world made the entire internet everywhere PG and enforced it as a standard.

What would the world actually lose?

Lol.. well there are some that say it should. It'd certainly narrow my google search results next time I want to buy a "long hose".

Everything that we're discussing here is in fact open to investigation on the web as a whole.

Operation ORE and the resultant convictions were as a result of an investigation into CP and the people who downloaded it and looked at it.

In the UK there's a crime called incitement and a guy was convicted only this week for running a "grooming" course on the web.

All of these things happen in SL, I know only rarely.. but the police don't normally let a CP RL website off the hook because statistically it's a very small % of the overall web.

My view is that if we dislike external agencies policing of SL, then we have to accept more internal policing of ourselves.

Good point.

Im not sure you answered my other question, but this point here is important.

This thread isn't about policing its about yellow journalism. No one has argued against the right of legitimate police agencies enforcing RL laws with regards to the Residents of Second Life.

LL has been fully cooperative with the authorities in the cases we have been made aware of.

Exactly Colette. What stance *should* LL take? Should they do more than simply provide the press release response (which I actually think is a good response overall)? Should they request time to respond on Sky News? Do a blog entry on the issue? Sit back and let it blow over?

FWIW, I think they've made their position clear over time regarding sexual ageplay, pedophilia, and so on. I personally wish it were spelled out more specifically and that I did't hafta do so much work to get all the details -- but I can understand (to an extent) their reluctance. I am curious, though, what people think LL should do about reporters doing such clearly slanted pieces. Their follow-up on their "discussion" was particularly dreadful.

Mari

There's a big difference between Law Enforcement agencies investigating legitimate crimes, especially when children are concerned, and self serving "Journalists" who are merely looking for a scoop , even if they have to manufature it themselves. It's an old story, going back at least to the Spanish-American War.

I thought I'd follow up with some helpful Wikipedia links. I hear it's the in thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensationalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_journalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_fear

Remember the Maine!

As I've just posted on the other thread I've been bugging today..

All of this might be moot, now that we've learned of Philip's planned move.

The new person will have responsibility for handling the press, media and PR as well as the rest of the value chain.

We'll just have to wait and see..

You can tell the man by the company he keeps: Five News with Natasha Kaplinsky seems to do a lot of "predator" stories and "scary internet" stories. As well as the Second Life stories, there's ones onYouTube, MySpace, and so on.

At the same time, Five News advertises a MySpace page, a Facebook group, and an island region within Second Life.



My understanding of them is they wish to see sexual ageplay off the SL grid and, disgruntled with LL's response to date (particularly in regards the locations owned by one individual), has taken to attempting to create media interest as part of their campaign against the location.



...and has been in the news on massively.com and secondlife.reouters.com for her championing of one of the open grid alternatives.

Mari

Sounds like a good deal for him,he gets to stop being a soulless corporate suit and return to his geek roots.

I just can't stop laughing about that "Boogerheads" picture. Such a classic.

I'll bet the alternative grids she's been championing don't explicitly ban ageplay (yet).