Today's thread on bots

nothing personal. LOLOL

oh dear. that's unusually large!

i'll try to fix it.

The fact that those who run trafficbots increase concurrency faster that those who don't *IS THE POINT*

Wow. I am amazed that you are unable to conceptualize the ramifications of that simple statement.

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If a trafficbot contributes as much to the problems caused by high concurrency as everyone else - you and 10 trafficbots are 11 times the problem I am.

If a trafficbot contributes only half as much to the problems caused by high concurrency as everyone else than you and 10 trafficbots are 6 times the problem I am.

If a trafficbot contributes only one fifth as much to the problems cause by high concurrency as everyone else than you and 10 trafficbots are 3 times the problem I am.

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And for the record, your inability to grasp such a simple point doesn't mean I wasn't making one.

You see how much easier it is when you write things down, instead of assuming that people can read your mind?

It's a point, I suppose, but a very weak one. I was expecting something a bit more substantial. For it to be a strong point, you would also need to state or show that a significant percentage of avs that are online are not people operated. So a few people are responsible for multiple avs, and the vast majority are not. So what?

Ramifications? LMAO. Collete, you need something that suggests that bots are a significant percentage of online avs during peak periods, rather than looking at just 2 people. Of course, if you are suggesting that 50% of people run multiple avs and 50% don't, you'd be talking rubbish, so I'm sure you're not trying to say that. And since you're not trying to say that, I can't help but wonder what you *are* trying to say, because your point seems pointless.

If it helps, yes, running multiple avs means that I am responsible for more avs than you at any given time, including during peak periods. I never claimed anything different. If that's your whole point, then I agree. If you'd made it clear earlier, I would have agreed earlier, but I would never have imagined that that was your whole point. It's not even a criticism lol.

I think the real point is what is inevitable if bots are allowed to continue unstopped and then people can't stand it anymore and stop paying to be spammed, tricked, scammed and gamed.

"Specifically" is irrelevant. They designed a system with capacity for some number of connections, regardless of whether they're bot or 'normal'.

They've been aware of the impact of bots for a long enough time that I'm certain they've taken that into consideration with their resource allocation and imposed throttling and capacity limits.

Keep in mind that 'bots', can't process texture images, sounds, animations and most other high-bandwidth network-lagging data.

Landbots that jump from place to place don't need to request all that extra high-bandwidth data.

Sure it's unfair if one person has many active concurrent connections to the grid and is using more resources than any other single 'normal' user.

But LL monitors the hell out of the grid... and when patterns of abusive resource utilization become noticible they intervene, sometimes by throttling access to certain resources, sometimes by suspending accounts.

Magicking away all the bots won't stop scams, won't cure lag, won't stop camping, and won't guarantee privacy. The slight and temporary improvement in each is simply not worth the loss of freedoms that would be necessary to ban all bots.

Adding to the parts of the discussion that Jopsy brought up, I can pretty much guarantee that I and my bots together use a *lot* less resources and almost everyone who uses SL, including you Colette. Why? Because I stay out of SL as much as possible, and I'm only in for around 90 to 120 minutes each day. When I'm in, I don't go anywhere, unless I'm called out to a customer's problem, which isn't often. I'm sometimes in the store, but I have all those textures already downloaded. I don't go around wearing hair of 100+ prims, or boots of 200+ prims, forcing people to download everything. In fact, I'm a very frugal user of resources, and you just would not believe how little all my bots together use.

I'm actually making a point. It's not the number of avs that sometimes cause system slowing. It's the system resources that avs use that can sometimes cause slowing, and the influx of real people is mostly responsible for that when it happens. I can prove that the bots don't slow anything, and we can all prove that people-operated avs do.

Be afraid of my boots. Very afraid...

Traffic bots don't need to cause resource problems to be completely unethical.

You know how McDonald's has that number on their signs that says "147 billion served!" or whatever it actually says? What if they'd actually only served 10,000? It would be a blatant lie with no other purpose than to deceive potential customers by making their restaurants appear far more popular than they were. Would anyone support their using that tactic? If so, why? If not, how is it different than what traffic bots are used for?

Using traffic bots to inflate the numbers and boost search ranking is just like that, only it's worse, because that lying restaurant sign wouldn't be pushing all the neighboring restaurant's signs farther and farther away from the road where passing cars could no longer see them.

But hey, who cares about the truth anyway? Right? It's all about me me me! money money money! A good product sells itself, but lies sell it even better!

I assume you're referring to instances such as when they "throttled" land sales searches?

That was indeed an extremely well thought-through and fool-proof plan: it annoyed many humans who used it to no end while bots weren't impressed or hindered by it at all.

Thank you, Chip, for getting this thread back to the heart of the matter. Talk about resource use and how "everyone else is doing it" is all just smoke and mirrors, and it's what the people who do it tell themselves and everyone else to try to make themselves feel better about doing it. The real point is, using bots to raise the traffic count is deceptive, and that's what makes it unethical.

Why? I wasn't talking about anything other than personal usage of Second Life. I used the word "ramifications" because you seemed to be unable to think even a single step ahead.

Now the entire usage of Second Life is made up of different individual people. Each uses an amount they use.

Some evidently feel justified using a lot extra accounts logged in at once. Although they
feel this isn't a drain on the system, they have no way of actually knowing that.

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And of course the beat goes on ..

You have suggested many times on these threads that if people wish to compete in traffic ranking they should do what you do - and use traffic bots.

If that were to happen you would see what you claim I would need to prove. Sizable portions of the population running a whole lot of AVs at once.

As pointed out - LL's contingency plan for if this ever gets out of hand is to limit logons. It is patently unfair for a regular user to be denied log-on so that a Trafficbot runner can keep a traffic-farm running.

I will refer you to Qie's "Linden Lethargy" post, since I think he's probably right about how and why things are the way they are, rather than the idea the Lindens are on top of everything.

This is a good example.

I'm afraid that some people who came to Second Life after the Traffic system had already been thoroughly ruined by gaming are unable to make the connection however.

I'm quite aware that LL has their own priorities (which don't often mirror the priorities of the residents). But when things become a noticible or likely problem for them, they certainly do take action.

Keep in mind that certain bot owners are 'special customers', much like the postal service benefits from junk mailers and the phone companies benefit from telemarketers. We as 'normal' folks can complain all day about 'those other annoying customers', but individually, we rarely pay as much as they do as organizations, and so... they continue to be tolerated by the powers that be.

You're rambling, Colette. You were trying to make a point about high concurrency, and the word "ramifications" was about that. If you wan't to knock it down to just personal usage, then I can near guarantee that you use far more system resources than me and my bots combined. So you should be happy with things.

Wrong again. I've sometimes argued my side of using bots, but I don't believe I've ever suggested that people use them. However, now that we know for sure that they are acceptable to LL, I should suggest it to people who want to succeed.

Exactly! *IF* it were to happen. So, since it's not happening, you've nothing against the way things are at the moment. Right? And since it's not happening, you can't prove anything, whereas I *can* prove that bots don't affect a sim's performance.

Again it's "IF". I haven't read LL's contingency plans, but I don't think I am mistaken by saying that your idea of them is very wrong. If LL limits logons, I very much doubt that they would do as you like to think they would do. I feel sure that they would limit by IP, which would have the effect of disallowing a great many bots. Think positive, Colette. You're way too negative. So far, you haven't come up with any peak period anti-bot points whilst I've been in the thread, but there aren't any, so it's not surprising.

I have yet to see a clear and cogent explanation of why anyone needs to run more than two or three Av's Bots, call them what you will, from a single connection. Apart from gaming the system or stealing advantage over a human resident is there any?

Can someone provide one??

Also, and I may be missing something, but it would seem relatively easy for LL to limit to two or three, the concurrent connections from a single IP.

Well, "clear and cogent" isn't my forte, but I'll take a stab at it: Landbots and landsearchbots. Now, arguably I suppose, those might be considered by some to be "gaming the system" but I don't think they really are; they're adding automation to a market--in theory, just making it more efficient. I suppose humans at one point found land "bargains" on the grid, but expecting arbitrage opportunities in any modern market is really expecting too much, I think. Anyway, as the land sales feature currently exists, there's just no choice but to use multiple bots to automate any part of the process. This is, of course, completely insane, but that's how it is--probably until the eBay-based land auction crap starts working well enough to accept private land sales.

As for IP addresses--incredibly, there are still backwaters of the internet where lots of individual residential users share a single public IP address, through what amounts to NAT at the ISP. I don't know if those represent enough of a customer base to be worth worrying about, though.

Thanks Oie, so for point one the only purpose is to cheat a sytem and get one over on a human resident.

Anyone dispute that??

Good one about the ip. no I didn't realise that those shared ip's still existed, however the packets are stiil clearly identifed as coming from a particular computer aren't they.

I agree with the first part of your post. Resource usage is a red herring because traffic bots use miniscule resources. That was the reason I started talking about the current buzzword, concurrency. Most people have no idea about resource usage, but it's the current anti-bot flavour, and it's completely wrong.

'Ethics' is a valid argument though. This is true:- if a person believes something to be unethical, whether it is or it isn't, then for that person it is unethical.

I can understand the 'ethics' argument concerning traffic bots, but I see it differently. I don't think anyone would disagree that the search results should have relevant places ranking above non-relevant places for each searchterm. So...

Hypothetically, suppose that the top 10 results for 'furniture' are occupied by places that don't sell any furniture at all. Would it be unethical do things that cause a furniture selling place to move above those non-furniture places? It would help search users, and I don't think anyone would find fault so far. But what if the only possible thing you could do is artifically change the *only* ranking factor? The new value would be artificial, but would it be wrong or unethical to do it those circumstances, or would it be better to leave the rankings as they are, with non-furniture places filling the top 10 positions, and making it harder for users to find what they are looking for?

I don't know how each person would answer that. That hypothetical example was a bit of an extreme, but what I'm trying to get at is the point where something changes from being perfectly good to being unethical, and I think that the point may be in different places for different people. Some people may think it's ok to outrank those places that shouldn't even be there. Others may think that it's ok to do things as long as it doesn't involve artificial values, and others may think that it's wrong to do anything at all and the rankings should fall where they may.

Most of what is said on this topic falls into the "wrong to do anything at all and the rankings should fall where they may" group, but I wonder if that's because it hasn't been thought through. I wonder if there are circumstances where some of the objectors would find it ok to artificially inflate the traffic figures.

For me, it isn't unethical to inflate the traffic figures as long as it is moving a *relevant* place up *relevant* rankings. Those who say things like "it's all about me me me, money money money" aren't in business and the profitability of businesses doesn't matter to them. They are being unrealistic.

But Phil.
It's only you that is determining 'relevant' based on your personal business needs and opinions (and on your resources), possibly raising inferior goods to a prominence they could achive in no other way (I'm not saying that is the case btw). Surely what we really need is a way of determining and publishing the true sales popularity of outlets. Just as in rl people will vote with their feet, I for one ignore what I know full well are cheated 'relevancy' lists and ask friends for recommendation.

No, there are no circumstances where I would find it acceptable to cheat the system to falsely promote a business. Ever. No one said it was easy to have principles, but they shouldn't be for sale. Yes, it sucks that honest people lose out because there are so many people willing to abandon ethics in the name of profit, but I'd much rather take satisfaction in having integrity than to allow profit to become so all important that I join their ranks. I'd sooner close up shop and go do something else.

Your justification boils down to "other people are dishonest so I have to be too." If you cut out the bit about other people (since you can't control what they do and their actions aren't your responsibility), you're left with "I'm dishonest." It doesn't matter how many words you use for elaborate justifications. It's that simple. You're trying to claim that your dishonesty is necessitated by the dishonesty of others, and it's a bogus argument. If we were all trying to survive a nuclear winter and the breakdown of civilization where the only way to compete for food was to steal it like everyone else, you'd maybe have a point, but we're adults engaging in commerce in a virtual world and that kind of justification holds no water. You either run an honest busienss or you don't, and if you game the system to gain advantage, you don't.

What if...someone created a blog that blew the whistle on those who used traffic bots in their business....and managed to get it out in the mainstream of all the highly creative and legitimate object creators. Something with pictorial evidence? A screenshot which shows the address and name of the offending parcel...

I think that relevancy is generally agreed. E.g. if a place targets the seachterm 'low prim furniture' and actually sells low prim furniture, then I think it would be generally agreed that it's a relevant place. On the other hand, if a place targets the searchterm 'low prim furniture' and sells only high prim furniture, then I think it would be generally agreed that the relevancy is much lower than the first place's relevancy, although it does have some due to it selling furniture. So relevancy isn't based on business needs at all.

I think that quality (as in your 'inferior goods') is more in the eyes of the beholder than relevancy. An automated search system can't rank according to quality. That aspect has to be left to individuals who visit the places and view the goods.

Some people claim that quality sells, and therefore there's no need for things like traffic bots. They are right up to a point - quality does sell, but only to people who actually see the goods. It requires people to see the goods before anything is sold at all - hence the methods of getting people into the places. Word of mouth helps sales, but it's a slow process, and far from ideal for most businesses that are not just small hobbies. There are exceptions, such as Xcite and a few female clothes and skins stores, but they are rare.



In a recent thread, I suggested the idea of asking people who come to the store:- You arrived here through search because I use traffic bots to gain top rankings. Would you rather I hadn't used bots and you hadn't found the store? Judging by the number of unsolicited compliments for my stuff that I get from strangers, I am certain that the vast majority would be happy that they found the place, and wouldn't care less about bots or no bots - which brings me to the following point...

Somebody posted in this thread that, for people who use traffic bots, "it's all about me me me money money money". I don't disagree with that - it is about profits (money) and, since I'm the recipient of the profits, it's about MY profits - me. It's perfectly normal business thinking - nothing wrong with it at all. But there's another side. For someone who objects to bots, it's all about me me me. It's about what I want, how I want it to be - I, I, I, me, me ,me. They can't show any resources reasons to do away with bots. They can't show any performance issues that bots cause. They can't show any practical reasons to get rid of bots. All they can point to is ethics, and that's far from clear cut. It's all about what THEY personally want. They don;t care about what other people want. They don't care about the people who are glad to have found places. They just want what they want - me me me.