LL Handling Of Abuse Reports

Let us look at the section of the "Community Standards" related to LL's handling of Abuse Reports:

"Reporting Abuse
Residents should report violations of the Community Standards using the Abuse Reporter tool located under the Help menu in the in-world tool bar. Every Abuse Report is individually investigated, and the identity of the reporter is kept strictly confidential."

In my own personal experience, Abuse Reports are not "individually investigated" at all but warnings and even suspensions are arbitrarily issued without any investigation whatsover. The door that is consequently wide open is that false Abuse Reports can be filed by anyone against anyone and the result is that Abuse Reports themselves become a method of griefing and abuse.

Really, if Linden Lab itself cannot keep to its own Community Standards how can it possibly expect anyone else to keep to them?

I will be very interested in other's experience of Abuse Reports against them.

I've only ever had one against me and that was for putting a lot of trees at the edge of my plot to cover an ad farm, fair cop guv'nor as they say.

LL have access to all the chat logs, the evidence is there. What sort of AR are you finding to be unfair?

My post is not essentially about any particular incident but about LL's handling of Abuse Reports. I know of several people who have been suspended and they don't know the reason for it. That coupled with my own personal experience underlines my point about Warnings and Suspensions issued without any investigation whatsoever. However in my particular case of a warning involving alleged verbal abuse in a particular region, there was absolutely no public chat nor IMs at all by myself in the specified region!

My other half's alt received a suspension for supposedly griefing some woman with a prim. Thing was that alt hadn't been logged in in WEEKS. The real perpetrator had a name 1 letter different from his.

LL did not investigate AT ALL.

when I AR someone, I tell them.
"Hey!! XXXXER - I ARd and muted you, have a nice day!"
then I mute them so I can't hear the complaints roll in.

watch for ARs to go thru the roof once XXX goes into effect.

Exactly the reason why LL needs to learn to keep to its own community standards and investigate instead of just initiating their all too familar and very, very frequent knee-jerk reactions!

I have a severe distrust that Linden pays any attention.

Someone has posted a real life threat to me in their profile and a number of people have AR'd them. I did too, once the profile was pointed out to me (I have the person muted and don't look at the profile because they're muted).

Not only did they NOT get suspended, but this person has done something ILLEGAL and should have their account TERMINATED. I have called the FBI and they say I need to have local authorities handle it. Since I think I know about where they live, I'll need to find the police department in that city and have them deal with it.

Linden Lab, you should enforce your own rules, guys. The ToS actually has a paragraph stating that threats are WRONG and ARable. How about it???

My only ban ever in my history of playing Second Life occurred 2 1/2 years ago. I was banned for three days for saying "Oh fu**" as i was being orbited into the stratosphere above Ahern Welcome Area by a griefer. Thats right folks. I was banned for being griefed.
That incident actually formed my opinion of Linden Lab and its employees to this very day.

I have been suspended twice for retaliating after a prolonged attack by multiple avs and once for simply being griefed. These events happened early last year and late the year before. I lodged complaints by IM, email, fax, phone and ticket. Not even the decency of a reply. My observations lead me to believe that certain people are given a free ticket to do what they like. The first time I was ever griefed (while sailing) was by a person who I have strong suspicions was a Linden employee. So, after no assistance or cooperation from the G Team, I took matters into my own hands, learned to AR quickly and also to call the G Team out when I suspected they were protecting one of their own. I almost always get a response to that, usually not a helpful one though. Oh, and I keep clear of sandboxes most of the time these days.

I was ARed and suspended for three days last week. Why? Cos I IMed a guy who had come into the store where I was rental manager with the intention to harrass the tenant I was with helping set up her store. He kept shouting his conversation through the store so she could hear it, trying to get a rise out of her, so I IMed him and asked him to please refrain from doing that as the person he was talking to was standing right beside him and it was very rude to shout. After a bit of name calling from him, threats to ban me from Sims and abuse shouted through the store about me, I was suddenly out of SL for "harrassment and abuse".

I had sent the store owner (my employer) a full account of the incident, including logs (and she has banned him from the store) so I was able to include them in my "appeal" to LL. I had my suspension lifted after 24hrs.

Incidentally, the tenant he was there to harrass was suspended too...and she had the guy muted so had no idea what was going on.

I ran into him again two days ago at an event, which I ended up leaving.

Why aren't people who delight in making trouble and false report others for no reason let off with no consequences???

These abuse report team staff at Linden Lab have no formal training. Its the job below customer service in this company. These clerks do whatever they feel like doing and if questioned, sends out a standard response and then circle the wagons if one insists upon justice.

I have sent out questions about e-mails from LL. They are ignored for months and then some false e-mail pops in my in box stating that since I did not respond the case is closed. Just so they can tidy up their records without being accountable. I have tried to find out who at Linden Lab is responsible for the abuse team. Live Help threw a dart and chose the Marketing Manager. But of course, she denies such claims. So obviously these people are not accountable to anyone. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.


.

Close the mainland!!

Perhaps if everyone filed an AR against the Linden Labs Abuse Report handling team they would get the message.

There again, they probably wouldn't.

Sigh,

Rock

That would accomplish what? ARs are accepted in any and all sims, regardless of being estate or mainland. (=_=)

----------------------------------------

On my end, I've written ARs that resulted in *poof* "*** Linden: Hi Immy!" and I've received one AR that resulted in *poof* [Bye Immy]. (>_<

My own suspension was a direct griefing that does show that there are times when ARs are taken at face value and a summarily executed. But, I personally have many more examples of times when the Linden response was very active and positive. (^_^)

At the same time, I've seen situations that lead to suspensions and items returned under "broadly offensive" clauses that are frequently stated as not so in general opinion. Items deemed sexual that are not. And, we have quotes here on the forum from Lindens (outside the Gteam) saying so. Communication breakdown? Enforcement of convenience? I dunno. (T_T)

It works, but... Yeah... It's a broken system. (T_T)

Private estate owners can elect to have AR reports sent to them rather than direct to LL.

Matthew

The Abuse Reporting system is the worst thing Linden Labs have, because it's not cost effective, it's something they really are not bothered about improving, the simple cheapest solution is to believe the report and ban who the report is against. For this reason alone it will never matter whether any service Linden Lab offers is good, this will always drag the company to the position of having a bad customer service record.

Hmmmm....ok....lets take a look at this situation from a real world perspective.....

In a real community.......there is a police force of sorts that maintains (and I use that term loosely) a relative order and enforces laws. If anyone has EVER had a situation where they needed the help of above mentioned authorities.......then you know dam well it is NOT a simple or quick process.
On the day to day.......there's a handful of law enforcement officials out and about......trying to keep an eye on things and be on the ready for problems. (which we as human beings manage to cause a LOT of on a pretty regular basis) But....based on the population of a community.....there's a certain number of law officials right.......

Now....lets look at SL......how many residents on line at a given time? Let's say anywhere from 40 to 80,000 in any given hour......grid issues not withstanding...... and how many people are employed at LL who actually handle abuse reports, do you suppose? Truly, I have no idea.......but I'm willing to bet my 2life that there's nowhere NEAR enough employess at LL at any given moment.....to handle the 1000s of abuse reports that probably come in on a daily basis.

Lets face it.....for every legitimate abuse report....I bet there's 30 that are completely rediculous or unfounded. Having worked in customer service in some capacity for most of my life......I can attest to the fact that the greater % of complaints by people are based on lack of ability to read & understand basic rules/directions...... or just over-all self absorbed hard headedness. My guess is that LL deals with this on a regular basis and probably would dearly LOVE to be able to handle all legit abuse reports on a more personal level......But I imagine that at this point in their growing corp. life.....that they simply do not have the man power to do it. It's a seriously crappy position to be in.......but looking at the issue objectively and realistically.....even in the real world.....wiht lots of law enforcement out there.....it's a near impossible task to handle (properly) every single complaint that comes down the pipe.

I know I may get things thrown at me for this post....and that's ok....I can take it and I still love you guys LOL

All "abuse reports" are ridiculous. Nobody can be killed or mugged in Second Life.

Somebody annoys you - just move on..

Yes exactly so taking your figures its ok for them to ban or suspend when only 1 in 30 are legitimate? And who makes the decision that 29 are unfounded?

Edit: I'll just add, a bad customer service is bad whatever the reason, who would say "oh your service is bad because of that reason, oh ok I'll change my mind and say you have a good customer service"

That actually works now? (O.o)

Wrong. Examples... land extortion... fraud... disclosure of RL info.

Well in the context of zoning, many estate owners will actually care about the appearance of their land. You probably wont even need to file a report. Somebody puts something up that's obviously ugly and the estate owner will go pay them a visit.

A Linden Lab liaison doesn't need to care, it's just a job.

Really, the direction this discussion is going...

Just toss the whole TOS/CS out the door. (=_=)

Get rid of (PG) regions completely. (=_=)

Kill the regulations against banks, gambling, adfarming, (sexual) ageplay, copybot. (=_=)

Wipe the whole permissions system. (=_=)

Open the doors to unlimited anonymous alts. (=_=)

Let people make their name anything they want, even if it's iF***ed Yourmother. (=_=)

Include a LSL function to allow spampires to "bite" you without your consent. (=_=)

Somewhere in the floodgates will be an item that crosses ~your~ limit and at that moment you're going to wonder where the controls are. (=_=)

It's Linden Lab's toy. We're playing on their lawn. If they don't like what we're doing, we can shove off. I know. I've been there. (>_<

And I'm glad Linden sometimes is very quick (within minutes) in responding to AR's that have a major concern!

And to walk away - one just can't actually take the whole SIM in the inventory and move it to the next free slot.

Wolwaner

meh. Second life *is* land extortion.