RC Questions

Search terms have been abused heavily for years. I really believe this was a big factor in LL's plan. People couldn't contain themselves to keywording properly. Non-adult ads would put in BDSM and other things to get in on that popularity. Sex related ads would put in non-adult terms to get in on that. It made search a mockery, and meant no matter what you searched, you were bound to get something sex related come up.

Well congrats, that won't be happening anymore, but look what it got us. :\

Tegg, I don't think that anyone has said "we all hate it", as in there is literally nobody on the grid who agrees with this There are many things about the *idea* of better content filtering and search capabilities that are absolutely worth pursuing.

But this plan doesn't *do* any of those things. it's just a band-aid over a gunshot wound. it's an *appearance* of "doing something" that actually will make things worse.

How, you ask?

Well, for starters, I'd be willing to bet cash money that 99% of all of the incidents of people being confronted with content that they do not want to see have been *griefers*, or newbies looking for virtual tail in the welcome areas and freebie-marts. The content has come *looking* for the PG people in a PG area, they didn't stumble across it by accident.
This plan does nothing to stop that. In fact, after this plan takes effect, the only place that will be griefer-free is Pornotopia! the rest of SL will be just as vulnerable as it ever was.

Second, it doesn't do away with the unverified account. people can still create anonymous, disposable AVs to do their dirty work.

Third, whether LL wants to admit it or not, the plan is to make the main grid an all-ages platform. whether it's a merger with the teen grid ("there are no plans for that at this time" or simply doing away with the teen grid and allowing teens to access the main grid ("-silence- somewhere off in the distance, a dog barks" that *is* the plan according to phil.
The current plan protects the porn from the kids, but does nothing to protect the kids from the porn. Mature sims will still have every single form of *non-advertised* porn that they do now. and Mature areas are still only "protected" by a TOS statement saying that LL assumes the user to be over the age of 18. For that matter, *PG* sims are only protected by that- you can get AR'd in a PG area if someone cares enough to do it, but if you have disposable freebie unverified accounts, little susie and timmy can get an eyeful of any sort of perversion, any time of day- just by camera-looking (or even just staning still long enough).


Just these few items are reason enough to go back to the drawing board, so I ask- What exactly is it about this plan that you are in *favor* of? I'd be on board with changes that actually made a difference, but this? No chance- it's a giant upheaval to no purpose, and executed in the worst possible way.

^V^

Yes, even if you have PIU and your home is Arapaima, if your setting has been left on PG/Mature, you get sent to a non-adult info hub!

They're not misguided (and NK isn't Bonkers- she's a one-issue voter no problem with that, after all) They have been *misinformed* by LL as to what this plan will and will *not* accomplish.

They are in favor of the idea, and are either convinced that this plan will do what it says, or that something is better than nothing.

Personally, I don't think that the evidence supports that conclusion, and that someone who completely agrees with this plan hasn't look at it closely enough, but hey, that's just my opinion. My *informed* opinion, but just an opinion, nonetheless.

Frankly, I think that the best thing would be for LL to announce the plan on the log-in screen and *then* see what support for it is like.

That way we'd *know* the "for/against" ratio, and wouldn't have to guess all the time

^V^

Well.. I sorta said it.. Post #2 in this thread..


NK is too bonkers. I read many of her posts. She's fruit loops.

I think that they aren't as free to warp the nature of SL as you might think- They sold a product under the TOS, and now they are changing the nature of the product *after* the sale. I'm pretty sure that's actionable. I suppose we'll see if it is.

^V^

Heh, not bad

And then the folks who agree with the changes can use "Don't thread on me"


^V^

And if they have the tick-box, then there won't be any liability on LL's part at all. Look at the internt. look at the *harcore* porn sites- the "Barely legal" and the "naughty schoolgirl" sites. they do two things.

The have you click a box that says "I'm over 18, not violating my local community standards, and I'm looking for smut"

And then the ask you for your credit card, so that if you forget to cancel, then then can dun you for the extra month (or even sell the number to the mob or something).

That, and keeping records on file that say "All of our models are 18" is *all* they need in the way of protection. even from the US government, and the state postal inspectors and state justice departments.
Civil litigation would be likewise stymied. perhaps not against the *user* who hooked up with "I'mnotreallyoldenough Morgenstern" and her sexgen bed, but LL wouldn't have anything to worry about, any more than a hosting site is liable for what it's users do as long as they make a reasonable attempt to *tell* the user what is and isn't allowed.

This is black-letter law. upheld in case after case, as long as there has been computer to computer contact, when the first postmaster general of Alabama tried to prosecute, then sue an erotic content provider in California. and *lost* both cases.

^V^

notice this? go back to page one

Except that NK wasn't one-person - the avatar was being used by up to three people at least, some of whom spewed absolute vitriol before very rapidly deleting the post or amending it. (I saw two such posts because I happened to be following the thread particularly closely at the time; one was changed before I even had time to respond, which was probably just as well, given what it said.) I believe the purpose was to be as provocative as possible in the forum, and I suspect (hope) that NK's true owner pulled the plug herself on multiple use to save embarrassment, given that she's an official spokesperson for her organisation.

I'd like to point something out to Tegg- Lord Sullivan was originally a cheerleader for this project. I recall tussling with him a little in one of the early forum threads on this subject. I was a reflexive "Censorship? not me!" type when I started.

Then Blondin started talking. The more blondin and LL talked about this, the less LS seemed to like it. He's not against the *idea*, he's against the *plan*.

Personally, I've come to be a lot more accepting of the *idea* than I was- but my objection to the plan is a lot more grounded in specifics that it used to be. I've even come up with a plan or two that *will* accomplish what Linden Labs wants to achieve, and I've note-carded them to pretty much every linden who has spoken up on this issue.

I'm *trying* to help LL avoid a stampede toward the exits, combined with a capital-draining lawsuit, because I think *that* is what they are headed for.

This much furor, and *most* of the residents in SL don't even *know* about it yet, because there's been no announcement at log-in.

The RC *was* helping that, because everyone using an RC at least saw the effect of the new content controls, and knew enough to check out the docs to see what was happening, but they've evidently pulled it (hopefully for a re-work- Ye gods! what a charlie-fox of a release!).

And the fact that they *haven't* made a log-in announcement tells m something else. They obviously think that a majority of resident *won't like it*. If they thought it was a home run, it would be a *banner-ad* on the log-in screen! They'll advertise an easter-egg contest, and the "Resident's choice awards", but not the biggest change to SL since the invention of the physics engine?

I mean, what does that *tell* you?


^V^

Not to mention that it will put a whole new level of expectation on LInden Labs. As things stand now, LL provides the framework- the space and the tools- for the user to create the world around them. A *bunch* of users doing this is why SL is as vibrant a community as it is. Without user-generated content, LL would have to *provide* content as well as the tools, and they don't have anywhere near the resources to accomplish that.

So as long as they are dependent upon user-generated content, they will have to cope with those few users who create *disruptive* stuff, and those who create things that are "adult content".

You cannot have one without the other.

^V^

How about we just enforce the rules about marking the maturity level of your ad and parcel, so that "Big Dick's Pleasure palace" and all its offered services don't show up in a search for "Grandma's Cookies"? I mean, have we actually *tried* AR, ban, & suspend for folks gaming the search engine by not marking their parcel "mature"?

^V^

How is that meant?

The societies on this planet are not perfect, but: if all people at all times were "smart" enough not to try to stop something, the Berlin Wall would still exist, your home would be target of a USSR nuclear bomb and Mandela would still sit in a jail on an island and to point on business, we would have still the poison glycol in italian red-wine and the germans would have a chemical-cocktail of a drink instead of pure natural chemics-free beer and so further and so on. And last but not least: Obama were not president, but maybe shoeshine boy in a ghetto.

I mean: sometimes it needs 28 years to kick at a wall until the wall falls down, but if people have no courage to try to make the impossible possible, then: good night civilisation.

So, we have it to do here with some mad cowboys wich walking around in too big boots.

It is a very small company and we are: more and we have: the money. We are: Second Life. So we can do something.

Something.

And we should.

Because of dignity.

With courage and closed ranks we can do much, but with a thinking like: "However, I'm at least grown-up enough to understand what is going on, and smart enough to not try to stop it." eh...hahahaha with that thinking you would be the perfect puppet of the puppets masters.

Can you seriously say that LL's plan will fix *any* of this? Because it *won't*. Creating a PG only bubble would, as long as you ended unverified accounts, limited access to "pg island" to verified accounts only, and required a better age verification regime to get *off* "pg island" (separate from the account verification).

*That* would fix the things you mention. what LL is doing is *worse* that nothing. it is offering the *illusion* of doing something.

Again, I don't object to the *idea*, I object to the *plan*. And the *plan is misguided*.




Which has nothing to do with SL, LL, or the rest of us. we aren't on the public airwaves. We are an "opt-in", "adults only" service run under *California* law. the only legal trouble that currently threatens LL over adult content is that of angry customers suing to get their money back when the Mature "anything goes" land they purchased and pay tier for turns into something other than what they bought.





I'm sorry Darien, I respect the hell out of your opinion, and I wish that LL had any intention of giving you the choices that they *say* they want to give you. But this plan simply doesn't do what you seem to think it does.

I see not reason why I ought to be grateful to LL for treating me like a leper, "filtering" my very existence from anyone who doesn't know enough to *specifically* look for me, or shuffle me off to a "special" place because I'm a business, but let *exactly* what I'm shuffled off for doing stay on "mature" (unfiltered, unverified, and in front of the wall-camming children and everything) land as long as it's *free*.

I see no reason to be grateful for a company who will implement a grievously broken system of "verification" that can be gamed by anyone old enough to *read*. A system that will not only not protect *me* but won't even protect *them*.

I see no reason to be grateful to a company will happily sell me something, collect rent on it for over a year, and then change the very nature of the product before my eyes, rendering it useless for the purposes I bought it for.

And finally, I see no reason to be grateful to a company that not only won't listen to me, or anyone else, but *lies* in my face and tells me that they *are* listening, and that my "input" matters, while all the time *KEEPING THE NEWS FROM MOST OF THEIR CUSTOMERS*.

Ungrateful? I should say *so*!

I should be *grateful* that rather than killing me outright, they are killing me an inch at a time? Should the people in Darfur be "grateful" to the LRA that they weren't shot in the face rather than merely chased from their homes?

Sorry, Not something I can agree with. You shouldn't have to be "grateful" to someone for only hurting you a *little* rather than a *lot*. You can be grateful to some intervening force, but not the giver of the harm.
LL *is* giving out some harm here, and they could be giving out a *lot* less.




Well, considering that it has never *been* "hashed", it can hardly be "re-hashed" can it?

And the RC client, and the definitions of "adult content" are the subjects here because LL employees chose the subject headings. If is was left to me to choose, it would have been:

"We're going to talk about this until someone listens to us and gives us a reasonable answer or two to our questions. "Shut up and go away" isn't an option here".

But then, they didn't ask *me* what to call it.

But, if it makes you feel better, I'll say something about the definitions.

Dual-use words, like "cock", "ass", "pussy", "prick", "escort" and "tit" (amongst many others) shouldn't be subject to content filters. there should be *context-based* filtering, not Key-word removal of the sort of words that make children giggle in church.

Neither should technical or anatomical terms be filtered, because there are many "non-adult" uses for those.

I suppose that profanity could be filtered- I wouldn't mind that so much I suppose.

^V^

Ann, don't know if this has been posted yet but here is the link: http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/Adult_Content_Keywords
it from http://satiateddesires.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/second-life-adult-content-changes-how-theyll-affect-you/ this website. So it is public now.

Which is why I am selling (actually giving away) Deviant Ghetto buttons!
https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1412265
To the person who said that a tenth of a percent requested it, you are wrong, there are several religious groups, corporations etc that have requested it.
As for our media friend angry at christian media stifling his ability to fill us airways with pron (misspelling folks ) free speech both ways, you need to go earn a billion and buy a network then you can control some media like GE and Murdock do.
I am ambivalent. I don't believe it will kill SL. I do believe that leaving things as they are will help it, either.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. The protest stage is *never* over as long as you see a wrong (or a stupidity, even)being committed, even if it is being committed by everyone *except* you.

It isn't "spewing vitriol" to point out the flaws in the plan. Neither is it "spewing vitriol" to ask for explanations of exactly *why* the flawed plan is being clung to like driftwood in a hurricane.

"Account verification" is useful to deter griefers. Period. Attaching some sort of info to the avatar will make it easier to identify and ban the person *driving* the avatar from SL. "Account verification" will not deter underage users. Not for Long anyway.

What *would* deter underage users is better *age* verification than what LL seems to be insisting on using. It has been broken since before I started using SL, and implementing it now is a harm, not a help.

Get a better system and it would be more useful, but not in the way LL plans on using it. They plan to allow access to *all* sorts of content to *any* account, *AS LONG AS THE CONTENT IS FREE*. Only those wishing to *buy* kinky sex will be asked for their ID. those wishing to give it away, or even take it (to the degree possible in SL anyway) will be perfectly free to pursue their muse without any interference by Linden Research Inc.

I don't think of that as a good plan.

Another thing that would deter underage users is a "airlock" place, welcome area, continent, etc that was limited to PG only content, and also required *account* verification to access (to keep out the freenis bumping, penis bombing griefers). If one couldn't leave this "airlock" without *actual* age verification, it would also deter underage users.

Filtering search helps, but only if you limit it to the "airlock"- allow only searches for things *in* the "airlock" until age verified. *then* allow fully functional search of anything.

SUSPEND AND BAN any *user* ( and all alts) who violate the content rules for the airlock,

STOP issuing new unverified accounts.

PUT a shelf-life on avs- log in at least once every thirty days, or you get deleted after 60 days more. No exceptions.

LET the current crop of unverified accounts die a *natural* death.

Presto, you have a grid that even *children* can play on (in the airlock), and nobody has to see anything they don't sign up for.


Now, if I think that *my* plan is a better way to go than arguing whether or not "tit" ought to be filtered for PG, but not "mature" or "adult", then why shouldn't I *say* so?

^V^

/me agrees completely. (except about the part of wanting a sex-free SL experience- I can't say that- )

^V^

Is that even true? The first time I fired up 1.23, my rating was set to Mature.

The search window always defaulted to PG.

I think that you haven't thought this through- the "wind" is from a couple million users who *still* don't know about these changes because LL won't put it anywhere but blogs and forums with the occasional virtual "press conference" to spout spin about "use cases" thrown in.
The vast majority of users *don't* look at these things, and LL *knows* it. it would be *simple* for them to put this on the Log-in screen and get an *immediate* response from their customers about this issue, but evidently they don't *want* one.

More than anything else, this is what bugs me. it is unfair, and hardly anyone *knows* it's being done to them. And LL is *happy* with that state of affairs.

Focusing on "putting the system through its paces" is *acquiescence* to the system.
The *system* is so badly flawed as to be a *harm*. It needs to be *replaced*, not "fixed" and saying otherwise would be contradictory to the facts as I know them to be.

LL *needs to know that* don't they? I mean, isn't part of the commenting process to tell someone that their corporate fly is unzipped and they are about to step on their own dick?

BY the way, is "dick" a filtered word?

^V^

All due respect Boodie, but that doesn't *exempt* LL or SL residents from *trying to "give the people what they want".

If some folks want to go through their second life never seeing a titty, they should have that option. If some folks want better assurance that they won't be hitting on children in singles bars, I suppose that they have a right to be listened to.

But those people *also* have the right to an *effective* remedy, not just a band-aid.

What I object to is that LL is trying to get off cheap, and still do the very things that *caused* this problem- i.e. The unverified, free account that they brought online to jack up their user numbers.

I agree that those who don't care, or wish to worry about these things would be perfectly happy in Pornotopia free from greifers and surrounded by all the adult content and poorly age-verified receptacles of lust their virtual bods could handle.

But I'm not one of those people. I'd like to see things a little safer and a little less wild and wooly in SL, but I'd like to see an *effective* regime set in place, not a sloppy haphazard one.

^V^

Wynochee, While I uphold your right to speak as you wish, I have to say that you don't get "rights" from a software company, nor can a software company take them away from you. No court in the world will hear your human rights case against Linden Research Inc.

However, you *are* a customer. there are plenty of consumer laws that protect you, both internationally and in the US. Concentrating on those will get you farther that appealing to the LInden Tao- they're no longer following it, and they no longer even care if they are.

^V^

Out of curiosity Karin, when did you hear about these changes? I've known for a little over a month.

Anyone else? How long have you known about this specific plan (not counting the "broadly offensive" debacle )

^V^

Basicly I know that. But since some of my earlier life circumstances and influences infected me with kind of "resistance is necessary" formatting, it happens from time to time that my fingers typing such things. It depends also on daily moods and how the company acts from day to day (or how they act not). But anyway: while my character likes to see the things sometimes so and to say things in english is additional ever not too easy for me, there are people like you, wich doing the other smart views and comments to LL. With wich I fully agree, by the way. Your comments are very well developed and often brilliant, since I noticed them along the weeks.

However: if a Linden peeks in here, then LL has a mosaic of points of view from all over the world and from different backgrounds, on wich they can meditate or not. In any case they have a colorful and passionate customer base. If they only would learn, to see that as a value for their product...