Private sims can make their own rules??

On a recent visit to a private sim i came across camping bots and what i consider to be adult content on a mature sim. When i tried to report the camping bots i was unable too, so i tried via the Help menu in tools but recieved a pop up telling me that any reports i make will not go to Linden Labs but to the sim owner. Can anyone tell me if this is normal?

go to linden village and enter all the details about the sim with the sim name. don't expect LL to do much.

Already have, and your right they didnt........
this is the reply to my ticket
I totally understand that you'd prefer to report this to an independent entity, and can assure you that this feature actually is unsupported. The pop-up message is a relic from days gone by, before we disabled the feature, and I have taken your ticket to our engineers so that the misleading message can be removed.

But one week on nothing has been done, i just wanted to know if private sim owners can enforce their own rules and if this is the case what is the point of LL bringing in rules about adult content and camping bots if over half the sims ( private) cant be reported. If i was to report the parcel direct to the sim owner do you think they will do anything? I think not.
Sorry for sounding off but bad day and im P***ed at LL

A private simowner can make his own rules.
Such as no ban lines, the type of buildings allowed (theme), residential or commercial land (zoning), sort of business (no clubs for exemple), ...

BUT: we do have to respect the TOS.
And that means also no bots, no adult activity on mature sims, ...

What is adult ?
Here some of the Linden logic(?) about it:
[11:25] Blondin Linden: A strip club and nudity itself were deemed Mature. As long as the stip club didn't use adult key words or have adult animations in some sort of backroom sex, then it could be on mature land.

16:03] Sin Toshi: Is unadvertised sex poseball/sex bed content still OK on mature land? Did that policy change at some point? Or did I misunderstand what you told me during previous office hours?
[16:04] Blondin Linden: You can sell a sex bed on Mature land
[16:04] Sin Toshi: but not poseballs?
[16:04] Blondin Linden: you can sell those too

LL certainly does enforce at least some parts of the TOS and CS even on private sims. They've actually deleted private sims and banned their owners if the violation was bad enough (i.e., the WU sim, etc). Perhaps you found one they don't - or they disagree that it's a complete violation.

This feature actually still *is* active for those regions that decided to activate it during the few days that was possible. Today estate owners can't put in their mail addy for this anymore, but if the region was switched to "ARs go to estate owner" during those few days, ARs still go to the estate owner and not LL.

Sim owners have to operate within LL's TOS and CS.

At the moment I get the idea that the Lindens are more focused on the mainland, but that does not mean we can do anything we like on our private Sims.

Also, I never had issues reporting things on private sims. Maybe a glitch?
Their responce is weird for sure. But for the actual AR, they never reeport to you what happened with it.

So you see "adult" content on a mature PRIVATE SIM, and you report it...

I see.

I just estate banned your ass.

No, Briana, he saw camping bots on a private sim and reported them.

Pep (despairs at the lack of literacy - or maybe powers of concentration - of over-emotional "females" here.)

PS Your self-awareness is improving though, I see.

When i try to put in a report via the normal way (help ..report abuse) a pop up appears blocking me from putting in a normal report, its very long but what it says is the sim owner has selected to have all reports sent to them and not Linden labs, i dont see this as fair, the sim owner is going to be one sided and take the side of their tenant. Also the same parcel owner is using the bots these have also been blocked from being reported some how, the report button keeps moving to different positoons on the pie and when report is clicked nothing happens. I understand the adult rules, i was forced to move one of my shops to zindra, i followed the rules and think its unfair that others dont seem to have too.

my point exactly......whats the point of me reporting anything to the sim owner and not LL, the sim owner is only going to ....."ban me"!!

What did you see that "you consider to be Adult content on mature land"? Adult content is permitted on mature land if it is for personal, not business or other public use. If you saw some sex furniture in a house, it is allowed...at least this week. If you saw a sex club, store or other business then yes it should either be on Zindra, or on an Adult flagged private estate.

This is a prime example of LL's inability to fix the wording of policies when it's obvious that the existing wording is confusing, ambiguous, or unclear.

It's true that they say no adult activities on mature land, but when you read the specifics and the clarifications, the policy seems to be closer to "Don't do things that would make it likely that a person who doesn't or can't have the "adult content" checkbox enabled would come across adult content, either by accident anywhere or by deliberate use of Search (but not by deliberately looking for skyboxes)." That's still a vague wording, but it's better at capturing the real intent.

The bottom line is that certain types of adult sexual activity and stores are permitted on Mature land, with the important factors being how they're marketed or otherwise promoted and how visible they are to avatars who wander around without going inside buildings. (We need a new acronym: IANALE, for "I am not a Linden employee", meaning this note is my opinion and interpretation, and not an authoritative statement of policy.)

Its not so much what i saw that im annoyed about now, its the fact i am unable to report anything on that sim the normal way, the reports all go to the sim owner, they get to decide whats right and wrong.

Going on a witch hunt for those breaking the Adult & camping rules won't help you improve your sales on Zindra. By it's very nature...Zindra is a fail as you are always going to sell your products to a reduced audience. I'm not sure what the percentage of SL users being age-verified or PIOF.....but i doubt if it is much over 30% if that. From what i gather a lot of businesses on Zindra are struggling right now.....of course there's always going to be a sprinkling of success stories there, but that's probably more to do with their marketing abilities than anything else.

On a side note i have noticed lots more Private Sims switch over to "Adult rated" during Sept/Oct. Around 5.5% of the grid is now Adult rated.


Breakdown of current regions by Ownership and Classification:

* Estate - Adult: 1278
* Estate - Mature: 19272
* Estate - Offline: 1
* Estate - PG: 3218
* Linden - Adult: 346
* Linden - Mature: 3837
* Linden - PG: 1421

So even from the above, you'll see Zindra is not an exclusive Adult rated zone....Adult rated estates now outnumber Zindra nearly 4 to 1.....and will continue to increase.
When you factor in the incredible lag on Zindra (on the occasions that I visited)....one could argue the shopping experience would be a lot better on one of those Adult rated Estate sims where EstateOwners seem to have a better handle on SIM performance in tackling lag.

What *do* you think you are doing Teagan?

Pep (Stop trying to prevent the over-emotionals from derailing your thread!)

Why were you there in the first place? If you saw content you did not like, why didn't you just leave? From what it sounds like, preemptive estate bans of your AV sound like a good policy for all private land owners.

It's not just businesses on Zindra who are operating at a competitive disadvantage. Anyone on a Adult estate who is playing by the rules is.

I'm not going to go around AR'ing clearly adult businesses on Mature estates, but I won't give them my business, either.

This sounds like your AR was focused on the inability to file the AR directly, or at least that's the one that got picked up on by the person handling it.

Try just filing the AR directly from another location, begin by saying "This is for such-and-such parcel on such-and-such sim, I wasn't able to submit the AR from that location, but here is the issue:..." In other words, don't combine "they're in violation" with "the AR system is broken" in the same report.

It's an unfortunate fact of life that people who provide online customer service, which is what this is, often respond to just one issue per submission. It's not entirely their fault, but it does mean that you're much better off keeping each request focused on a single issue.

I didnt go looking for adult content on mature sims and its not a personal matter as some seem to be saying it is. I went shopping for something and came across something i thought shouldnt be their. If everyone simply Tped back out and did nothing do you think LL ( or sim owners ) will enforce the rules.
So now it seems the answer is simply ban me, doesnt that prove what ive been saying that Private sim owners will enforce their own rules no matter and we just have to put up with it and shut up.

Judging by the complaint against camping bots, it seems plausible, if not likely, that Teagan was there because of a search, with the hope that the search result placement would not be due to a violation of the anti-camping rules. Under such circumstances, and assume that the alleged violation of the rules is correct, it seems quite reasonable to be upset and to wish to file an AR.

Your conclusion is, of course, true, regardless of whether or not one agrees with Teagan's actions.

As I recall, only certain AR types were supposed to be routed to the Estate, with anything serious going to LL. God knows what they actually implemented, but from the reply it sounds to me that the AR went to LL as intended and they just aren't doing anything about it.

That isn't all that surprising in this case because, particularly wrt traffic fraud and Adult content on Mature land, LL seems to move in mysterious ways (at best).

I don't have any qualms about people ARing Adult content on Mature or PG sims, although I don't think it's having much effect. I'm not doing it myself, it's just not "my issue," but I can completely understand people doing it--especially if they themselves complied with the content rules and are now stranded on an Adult region with restricted access and restricted visibility in Search, while certain sleaze havens have actually retagged as Mature despite having some of the most "Adult" content on the grid, because they don't like the effects of following the rules.

Just type "escorts" (plural) into a PG-only search of Classifieds or Places to see the kind of sleazy business practices involved. One of them even uses "ZINDRA" it its parcel name!

I'm not out to promote "snitching" here, but it would be pretty damned difficult to blame anybody for ARing such reprehensible behavior.

Makes no odds Milla......if all the participants on Residents Answers Forum decided to boycott such businesses....it will still be just a drop in the ocean of the entire SL user base. Most people in SL don't care about SL semantics when they go shopping...they just want to find their product first and foremost regardless of location.
Many adult rated businesses have worked out that applying the "Adult" tag is a severe handicap on potential sales......so they'll continue for as long as they can trading under the "Mature" banner.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong....I'm just trying to explain how it really is.

With regards to the original question, private estate owners can indeed make their own rules on their estates. TO A POINT.

A private estate owner is free to set rules that are more restrictive than the Linden Lab TOS and there is no recourse. Where they cannot make their own rules, is to declare that activities which are forbidden in the TOS are welcome on their estates.

The problem lies in what is done about it. A company that is already understaffed in regards to TOS enforcement has no choice but to be very selective on which battles to fight. This may be one of those cases where in the interests of choosing their battles wisely, it has been (correctly) determined that this issue would cost too much manpower to deal with as opposed to more serious abuses.

It's not that straight forward....it depends if they are using adult keywords to advertise those products, which i very much doubt...as the Estate-owner or plot owner would have received an email from Linden Labs during the early part of Sept to either change SIM ratings or change adult keywords in Land description or classified adverts.
Like someone mentioned earlier...it is possible to sell adult type products e.g Sex beds and sex animations on Mature parcels. (You can read Blondin Linden's comments)

You're more likely to nail them for the Camping bots though....especially if those traffic figures are reflected in Places Search. Again.....if those same Traffic bots are placed on a Parcel that is not ticked for Search, LL can't and won't enforce those camping ban rules as Search (particularly Places Search) is not being gamed..