Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

Hi. I don't notice it. But I am not the subject of this discussion.

And that is where hypocrisy rules the world.

@ Nany, where did I say it was my sexual preference? I said I wear my collar to signify the same thing people wear wedding rings for. Did I make one mention of sex in my post? No.

Here's the thing little boy, do not put words into my mouth that I did not first speak; it is disrespectful and only works to further support my statement that you are a vile creature.

ok, I'm pretty careful with keywords, use them very sparingly and tightly targeted.

Nany Kayo, let me put across an intriguing point to you:

I own a private sim. I have been a corporate service provider for about three years now. I have been a business of my own for that same length. You, offend me more than the adult content. Why? Because you would like to harm the user-base that I am in Second Life for. This thread's about solutions and suggestions, thus, as an oldbie (March, 2005), I will now lay down a few very basic and simple ones as an educational service provider with corporate clients and contracts (past and present) which have breached six figures US$. Currently looking at seven figures for a recent offer. Yes, that's an awful lot of cash influx.

-- We companies do NOT WANT censorship of this degree. It hurts the userbase we're here for. It destroys people's incentive to want to use SL on their private-time and therefore impacts business-time heavily. Furthermore, we have no inclination to believe that Linden Lab will effectively police any new policy, and will in fact repeat past mistakes with inconsistent enforcement.

-- We will not be benefiting from this action. Our campuses are already Mature. We have no intention of making them Adult or PG. PG deadens the freedom of expression of students, the range of curricula that may be taught within TOS, and Adult is bowing to censorship; Some of our teaching topics would most definitely be "adult", as some of them do involve photographic depictions of bodily trauma, simulated bodily trauma, possible imagery of textbook-drawing genitalia, surgical procedures, and other topics likely to be highly sensitive. There has been little indication that these topics will not be search-censored alongside other broad-spectrum search censorship.

-- The Australian government's disastrous experiments with net filtering so far have shown that the general public does not approve of these methods. Why? Because they are more damaging than useful. Vastly slower net speeds, false-positive filtering removing useful and beneficial information, and false negatives, allowing filtered material through anyways. Automated filtering is simply not sophisticated enough to be effective, and is often more harmful than beneficial. Adult venues will simply game the filter until they find what it does not block, and use those terms. Then the filter will be tightened, and will block even more benign information. Repeat ad nauseum.

-- Linden Lab have already proven time and time again that they cannot handle griefing, spam, gambling, and other topics. They cannot enforce them consistently, never have, and never will. In this instance, I fear that an open campus would be targeted by a misguided abuse report from someone offended at images depicting head trauma, while fifty small 'speakeasy' adult venues would be overlooked. There is a very real possibility that the G-Team would act on this abuse report by content removal, destroying hours of work by skilled and paid consultants, necessitating expenses to fix the damage. They have proven in past that they do not investigate nearly deeply enough.

This is just a little point of thought from one of your educational service providers who did not request these changes. Please do not pin the onus for this trainwreck on me and my colleagues, Linden.

Selkit Diller,

I don't own Linden Labs. I don't set their policy. All I am doing is agreeing with their decision.

[My company does want this change, btw.]

Is your company working with a conglomerate of universities ranging the spectrum from conservative to liberal-arts?

Please, do tell me how massive damage to the userbase and a paradigm shift is a good thing. I'll just be waiting over here, working on educator-sponsored medical-ed roleplaying simulations. Outside Second Life, where censorship is a little less in line with conservative Australia or Communist China. Cheers.

You have repeatedly mischaracterized their decision. What exactly are you agreeing with?

Yes, we intend to address a very broad and deep range of academic and business interests.

I don't see this change as massive damage to the userbase. I do see it as a move toward providing the option of a more professional environment for business and education.

In my particular situtation, it is a deal-maker or deal-breaker. My constituents will not use SL until the porn is screened off more effectively.

You must be suicidal. Some people agree to almost anything without thinking about consequences!!! It is not about you moving to ghetto. It's about your customers not being able to follow you there.

please refer to the blog post faq.

I hope you've got a plan B then.

I am so tempted to say, I will not miss you. Please, go ahead and leave SL.

Of course. Also tempted to say, I'm a hell of a lot smarter than you. : )

I have. It doesn't match up with what you've posted. SO I ask again, what is the policy YOU are agreeing with? Who are your "constituents"? You said that was Native Americans. Have you changed your mind on that?

Business sense clearly isn't all that common.

Point 1: Second Life has the userbase it does because Linden Lab made payment information optional in 2006.

Point 2: Second Life has the economy it has owing to adult content.

Point 3: Private sims depend on that economy in some fashion or another; Rental sims have renters who pay them, whether or not that sim involves adult content. Adult sims have people who want sex. People pay for the sex/sex content/whatever. The people paid, rent the rental sim areas. Or buy widgets. Then the widgeteer buys land or rents land. Imagine America for a moment. Bankrupt every single, I don't know, paperclip manufacturer. It seems trivial, right? Everyone switches to folio clips and life goes on. Yeah, except for every single employee now jobless, the lost industrial capital, the reduced demand that the steel supplier who used to sell supplies to the clip maker experiences, the sudden loss of revenue flow through that sector of the economy. Then it ripples. The steelmaker has to find a new customer, and loses profits. The steelmaker lays off some employees to fix the overhead problem. Those employees stop spending money. Then the hairdresser, grocer, gas station, and others start having problems.

For a purported business-owner, you're rather shortsighted, Nany. Our campus is already free of "adult content" in the traditional definitions. The problem is that under the traditional definitions we're fine. Under the broad-reaching definitions the Lindens wish to implement, nevermind indirect economic effect, our teaching curriculum is "adult" (And no, our target audience aren't pornstars, they're students who happen to have human anatomy learning requirements).

You've wavered from personal reasons to business reasons all over the forum postings you've made, and to me, it seems you appear to be either a disgruntled conservative with something to crow about, or an employee misrepresenting your firm. Which are you, Nany?

I am not the topic of this discussion.

Popular? A whole 2-4% popular?

Sarcasm aside. This really is the point. The decision is based on a such a profoundly flawed set of premises that until you guys (Lindens) really look into that it's not going to be possible to find a solution that BOTH sides of the issue can embrace to the benefit of not only both sides of the content debate but to LL in the process.

- The 2-4% number is just obviously low. Look at concurrent logins at any given point. Then count the AVs in a combat or RP sim. Add up all CCS, DCS, GCS, WARPS sims and whatever other meters I can't think of. Then add all the RP sims or places that DON'T use a combat meter (they're more fun anyway ). I promise, you will find more than 2-4 % of any given sample of concurrent logins are in one of those places.

- The 2-4% number is just obviously low. Do a sampling of AVs Male *AND* female and count how many have a commercial penis not a freebie. One they CHOSE and BOUGHT and tell me what percentage of your community is interested in adult content.

- The 2-4% number is just obviously low. Look at the relative prices of PG vs Mature mainland.

- The 2-4% number is just obviously low. Look at even the most benign skin vendors. Name ANY not 'fantasy' skin (though most of those do too) that isn't endowed with and often displayed with anatomically 'correct' features unnecessary for people not doing things many would define as 'adult'.

- The 2-4% number is just obviously low. Search on: "School" with Mature Content included in the search results: The top 3/4s (at least) of the results by traffic are 'adult'. Try the same with 'art' (number two result sells sex furniture). Try the same search with 'education' and the top results are mostly NCI. Not something people who STAY in SL go to but the really interesting thing is, compared to a search on 'Sex', the traffic numbers are a full order of magnitude higher for Sex than anything else.

I hope others post other metrics for measuring the level of interest in 'Adult' content that reveal the inanity of the 2-4% claim but, more to the point, I hope The Lindens will share how THEY arrived at this metric.

Once you begin to see the flaw here, there can be a *meaningful* discussion of ways to make SL more profitable and allow a gateway for those who really PREFER not to see adult content to see only that while those who want it to find it and preserve the economy and traffic and land sales. LL can never be a parent. No matter what, the responsibility for protecting children from seeing age-inappropriate material falls to PARENTS. But LL can make it easier for parents without killing the golden goose. If we can meaningfully raise the level of the dialog and respect LL's need to make money, we can possibly help them find a solution.

*I* Am Adult Content

- Kyle

Like I said, I am not the topic of this discussion. I am simply agreeing with what Linden Lab has stated as their intent and plan wrt so called adult content. period.

Heard, understood and acknowledged, Nany. Would you care to contribute some useful input beyond your usual crowing, such as how you plan on fully defining and implementing adult filtering without damaging legitimate medical education?

Show your work, class.

William of Occam says you are.

Y'know, Nany, what saddnes me is that your tactics of offending just about everyone in the forums is highly successful. Every couple of pages, you spout some highly provocative statement then sit back and laugh as you trawl in another batch of participants. I gotta congratulate you.

Argent, can you hammer this guy for awhile? It may use up some pages, but it would bring joy to his victims.

There are some folks here who are providing similar services. Nonprofit Commons has some exceptional organizations and people collaborating. You might want to talk to Coughran Mayo. There are a couple others, but Coughran is very knowledgeable.

Oh do try and keep up, the plan has gone up in smoke and they're currently trying to retrieve pieces to put back together from the ashes.

I'm quite female. I'm married to a horndog in RL, so I never get a chance to use the Xcite stuff here more than a minute or two before I get dragged off to the bedroom. I don't have a lot of understanding of the need for using SL for sex.

There you go! personal info : )

Rather artful dodge there, Nany. I did not ask you to pass the buck, I asked you to put some content to your noise. Please show me your detailed requirements for what you think is necessary; This forum exists for the purpose of helping the Lindens form guidelines, and ironically, I believe the people negatively inclined to their proposal have offered more useful input than you have.

Again, I reiterate: Show me your idea on how this happens.