What about Bots?

There are people about who would tell you that such is only your opinion.
Furthermore thay would argue that their behaviour is not evil/illegal/dishonest. It's not against the current TOS, end even if LL have at this stage clearly signalled that some of the evil practices are going to be actioned, they haven't done so yet, so it's not against the TOS - OK? And therefore not evil -- OK?

Just because a thing is not currently against the TOS does not make it any less evil then when it finally gets around to being included as a violation to the TOS.

Gambling
Age Play
Financial ponzi schemes
Land Cutting

None of those were against the TOS either until enough people determined they were in fact evil. Or at least determental to a business platform.

The problem with traffic bots is that they are not determental to LL's business, they do in fact create a sellable commodity, ie: sellable concurrancy numbers.

Evil is an opinion until it is an opinion shared by a majority of people.

Evil? LMAO! Some people need to get their heads out into the open where some light can shine on them.

Ghosty. Well arranged traffic bots are nothing like you imagine them to be. They use minimal resources and are only a tiny drain on system resources, unlike a single real person avatar. A single avatar will usually use much more in the way of resources that a whole group of well arranged traffic bots.

As for using up avatar spaces in a sim, that's nobody's business except other land owners in the sim. If the bot user owns the sim, then it's nobody else's business at all.

Au contraire, it is the business of the person who wants to visit said store and can't, or the person who wants to go to another location in the sim and can't, because the traffic bots have it full up.

That was actually my point, but maybe I should have spelt it out really carefully.

Not my wording, it was described as a "necessary evil" by one of your supporters. I'm just pointing out that "necessary evils" ain't actually necessary.

It appears that LL are about to formally make it everyone's business.

Traffic bots that aren't stupidly written have their draw distance set to zero so they get few if any object updates. That is, there's nothing in range of them that the server needs to tell them about. Being in a box out of the way also means when you visit you aren't sent any information about them other than minimap info, which isn't a lot of data.

Traffic bots don't move, so they aren't passed from server to server. They don't cause collisions, so they're light on the physics engine. in fact, some of them aren't even physical.

Traffic bots log in infrequently, so they hit the login queue infrequently.

Hopefully they don't have AOs and other laggy stuff attached to them, like most normal avatars. They don't change outfits or rifle through their inventory, so they aren't hitting the asset servers. They have no friends so nobody needs to be informed of their online status.

In a private sim without a lot of sounds, in a box that's out of the way, it's possible to get a bot's bandwidth with the server down to about 4-8 Kbps, which is greater than zero but a lot less than most avatars.

That is, traffic bots are a lot lighter on the servers than a normal avatar.

Sling. What LL do is up to them. When they do it, we'll abide by it, as we do now.

Yngwie. It isn't even the business of the people you mentioned. If a store owner owns the sim, and fills it completely with bots so that nobody can get into the store or sim, it is entirely his/her own business. As I said, it is nobody's business except other land owners in the sim.

Well, that's what they sad about filling OpenSpace sims with 3 clubs and a freebie shop. Look where that got us.

On Friday, right before they leave for the weekend? Nothing like stirring up the masses on a Friday night!

That was LL's own doing. They didn't do it right when their changes to OS sims allowed it. However, if a sim owner fills the sim with the maximum number of avatars, it's nobody else's business. That applies to any kind of sim.

If the intention and result of the sim owner using bots is that Search gets gamed, then it's everybody's business.

That aspect may well be, but I wrote about traffic bots using avatar spaces in a sim - a totally different aspect.

You are on mainland iirc...

You don't own the sim, you own a part of it. therefore you are using slots on that sim with bots that could be customers or visitors to other parcels on the sim.


And there are still networking resources allocated to every bot adding to the network load.

Bots are not null resource instances, they use and affect the load on the servers and network. Even if it may be less than some avatars, does not change the fact they are using up resources.

Not according to the TOS. Section 4.1:



And from the Community Standards:



Loading up a sim with enough bots that an avatar can't get into any location in that sim, absolutely, without question, will "inhibit another Residen'ts ability to enjoy Second Life," and as such, is a blatant violation of the posted Community Standards which everybody has agreed to comply with, and therefore, a TOS violation. And as such an action would affect my avatar directly should I choose to visit one of those sims, you bet it's my business.

I couldn't care less about bots or what they are used for, they don't affect me day to day. Those ones in shops that say Hi are a tad annoying, I always feel rude for not saying hi back lol. Other than that, I have no real opinion on bots.

But then again, I am Phil's sister, so I would say that.........oh no wait, I'm one of his bots.

I own 3/4 of the sim, and I use around half of the avatar slots. There are only 2 other businesses in the sim, both of which rarely have any avatars in them. You can't find any realistic fault with that.


Nobody suggested that bots are null resource instances. Well arranged traffic bots use a miniscule amount of resources compared to the average person avatar.

Yngwie. A sim owner has complete control over his/her sim. You can read what you like into the ToS and such, but none of it changes that fact. If a sim owner wants to fill the sim with the maximum number of avatars, s/he is free to do so without any ToS infringement.

The only circumstance where filling a sim with avs, so that others can't get in, is when it is mainland and the whole sim isn't owned by one person, in which case it is against the ToS. Nobody says anything different.

I agree with Phil... a private sim owner or a full mainland sim owner currently has the right to load their sim down with all the bots they can muster.

The fallacy with his arguement tho is that should every sim owner decide to do this, or even just a majority of sim owners do this, SL would crash to the ground.

The use of traffic bots to game the traffic metrics to place your business or venue at the top or near the top of the Search results in any catagory is offensive because of this. As a profit generating business strategy it relies soley on the good nature and sense of fairplay of most SL merchants NOT to game the system and therefore only benefits those individuals whose own moral compass considers profit more important then fairness.

It relies on the idea that most people do not want to "game" any system but just want to compete fairly. Because most people do not want to game the traffic metrics thru the use of traffic bots, those who find it an acceptable business practice profit. How do I know most people don't game traffic with the use of bots? Because SL hasn't been rendered useless under the weight of them. At least most of the time.

Those who spout "Profit is the only consideration!" repulse me, and should repulse anyone who's been watching the world economic climate change to this maelstrom of shit in the last few months. Haven't we all had enough of business owners who's only consideration is Almighty Profit?

Don't get me wrong... I like making a profit as much as anyone else. I just don't think I have a right to make a profit by tricking or gaming any one or any system or by pushing against the boundries of legal business practices until someone pulls me off the wall.

That's just my opinion. You don't have to share it.

Assuming that Phil's argument that bots cause negligible load is correct. It's a superficially valid one, but I believe he's neglecting the load it imposes on certain bottleneck resources, and he thinks I'm full of cr*p... there's no reason to automatically accept either of our arguments, but on the other hand there's no reason to automatically accept either of our arguments.

private sim owners can use the sim resources as they please. If you do not own the entire sim, then you shouldn't be using more resources than anyone regardless of how many visitors they get. It's like saying people shouldn't complain about you having 20 bots on a sim when your sky high build is enough of an eye sore that nobody stays on the sim to visit their places. Especially since LL has returned camp pads when someone owning 80% of the sim had enough to use 50% of the avatar slots... Just because you own X amount of a sim does not mean you are entitled to Y amount of avatar slots for that sim... just an amount of square meters and prims.

They can not use the network resources, as they affect the entire grid, as they please.

So loading down a sim with 100 bots fills that sim, plus it also places a burden on the grid's netwroking backbone systems.

So LL has a catchall in that you are using grid resources in addition to the sim resources for putting limitations on use of bots at their discretion.

Actually, this was never a confirmed fact. The Community Standards actually state that:



Ownership of land doesn't make any difference; all areas adhere. Yes, this means it's a CS violation to shoot/orbit someone on your own land, unless your land is set Unsafe.

The issue of a land owner being able to break the rules on their own land is a nicety of enforcement, but the actual CS are in opposition to it.

indeed all land ownership gives you is concerge help, access to the land and prim limits, and ... nothing else

You are still bound by all the rules and restrictions of every other person on the grid.

I beg to differ. Someone who owns a full sim - mainland or private - is free to use all the av slots in it. However, someone who owns a particular percentage of a sim is not necessarily free to use that percentage of the sim's av slots as that wouldn't be right. For instance, someone who has a home on a 1024 would not be able to invite someone round if the rest of the sim is owned by one person who fills the av slots pro-rata. Nevertheless, someone who owns, say, half the sim could comfortably use 1/4 of the avs most of the time. It's a matter of common sense. Suppose there's a club in my sim that has events where, say, 20 people turn up. I couldn't use 3/4 of the av slots during the events just because I own 3/4 of the sim, or it would be against the ToS. Common sense should prevail at all times, as it does in the sim I am in.

The point I made when this bit started is that, as long as such common sense prevails, whether or not the sim has lots of traffic bots in it, it is not the business of people who can't get into stores because the sim is full. If the traffic bots fill a sim that is owned by the bot runner, it is nobody else's business. If s/he has a store in it, and the bots prevent customers from coming, it's his/her choice. On the other hand, if the bot runner doesn't own the whole sim, then s/he must leave room for as many people as want to get into the sim, regardless of how much of the sim s/he owns.