Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Motivations and Goals

From everything I can gather, it seems to me that LL has been infiltrated with all of the prudes from IMVU as well as possibly executives and staff from IMVU - this push to sanitize and Disneyfy SL reads just like IMVU. And, those who are here from IMVU can fully tell you how we feel and why we have migrated to SL - we wanted to be free from the kids, we want to be treated as mature adults who can think for themselves, and we didn't want the prudes in the minority controlling the activities and products made, sold, and purchased.

SL is for adults. Period. No hard time understanding that. If adults get offended or blush from products they see, then leave the sim - I've stated this before - or better yet, leave SL totally and go join sites that are family (read my lips-kid) friendly.

This cannot work and keep adults who have spent lots of time and money here building their sims, building their second lives, building relationships and friendships, and in general, escaping the realities of RL and trying to do things to please themsleves.

No parent should be allowing their 3 year old toddlers to view anything on SL, not even the teen grid. Keep the kids on the teen grid and leave the adults alone - we are not built-in babysitters - if I'm going to have to be a babysitter, then I demand $25 real dollars per hour to babysit the kiddies. Kids who sneak on the main grid should be dealt with swiftly and effeciently - also, their parents need to be notified of the child's sneakiness and deception.

Wow so SL wants to clean up or something?

If they wanted SL to be some kind ofr advertising or educational thing, they probably should have thought of that before they let it become a breeding ground for perverts and crazies.

I am glad to see that a lot of people are agreeing with me, Or perhaps I them since a lot of people posted before me.

The original system worked fine. No need for an adult or extreme region or whatever label you want to put there.

The search can automatically filter adult content. You can teleport directly anywhere. You can just go from one G rated place to the other and live a happy Disney Day if you wish.

Yes if you loiter outside the safe bubble you might see something naughty. If it offends you that much you have the choice to click that little red x in the upper right hand corner and uninstall the game. If people are still here they must not be THAT offended or they'd get away from it.

It's been explained in numerous posts on here by myself and others. If you haven't gotten it by now I don't think you will.

If Mommy and Daddy are careless enough to let a child or a teenager run wild on the Internet without supervision. It's not my problem. Put parental responsibility where it belongs on the parent!

You might want to re-think that strategy; instead, be either inhumanly nice to them (the kids), or just stay well out of shout range of them entirely. All it takes is one kid to decide he or she doesn't like the way you look, and go yell out that "Pygar Standish tried to seduce me in voice chat (which everyone knows has no logs or records)", and your life as you know it is effectively over.

Have I mentioned already that I believe merging the teen and adult grids is a Really Bad Idea(tm) that has Epic Fail written all over it?

We see through this.... look at the blogs… First we see an entry about some inventory "COMPANY" using SL to train its new Employees. Then we see a blog post about how LL is pursuing "COMPANIES" to use SL as a virtual meeting room. You have already moved the education element off of SL onto its own grid, you have eliminated affordable private Sims. You bought out the only available online store fronts and integrated them into SL, you refuse to fix problems that have been identified for YEARS... we know what your doing... you driving out the small mom/pop creators and anything that stands in the way of Mister Deep Pockets Corporation from investing in SL. Your actions in practically everything you do demonstrates you don't give a rats hind end about the individuals that built this world. People can leave, you still get everything they created. people can sink huge amounts of real money and you make their investments worthless by making rule changes that you can't back up with facts and offer no refund. griffers and Bots run rampant and you do nothing about it. Sims crash and you offer no explanation or remediation. Mainland sim owners can't use the same tools you offer private Sims owners to manage their land simply because we will not be milked for twice the cost. You offer no value in having a premium account other then the right to pay you more money to have mainland lots. You haven’t updated the economy stats because your afraid to show how far in the bowl you have pushed this once wonderful community. And the toper of it all is of all the posts in this new blog you have created, this one is the one where you don’t allow open replies in a public location.

So prove me wrong… show us current and accurate economy stats. Show us detailed repeatable and verifiable proof that the MAJORITY of people in SL are having problems with adult oriented areas. Address issues in SL that we have asked you to in Jira for year with real and effective fixes. You want to protect the Kids… don’t let them in… if someone is offended by a sim… tell them not to go there any more….. you already threw a spanner into the SL gears with OS, please don’t pull the plug on SL with another have baked & ridicules hair brained idea. Enforce the rules you already have…. If it’s a PG sim, then it should have PG content… you want people to be warned about possible adult content. Then give those puritanical few the ability to have a pop up warn them when they enter a region that’s designated as mature…. Then publish the stats that show how may people override that and go in anyway, just so we can laugh at how hypocritical they all are.

Don’t punish the people that have invested time and money in SL and relegate them to some red light district…


For those that are wondering, No I don’t have any sex related items in my mall at SL. But to be honest, I wouldn’t mind the traffic it might bring should one move in next door...

I had a lot to say about this post, but you know what? I'm done. We put a lot of energy into creating alternatives that support the needs of the new people coming into this place without disrupting the lives of the people that actually helped build this place. Many of us have been in world longer than the remaining Lindens, and our ideas are brushed aside without so much as a "we'll consider it". There is really no point in wasting additional energy on this thread. If the lab ever decides that it is open to a real dialogue on this issue, you pretty much know how to find all of us.

To the point: you are saying two completely OPPOSITE things in adjacent sentences. Does this discussion matter? Or is the AO continent going forwards despite almost universal opposition to the idea of being forced to move? Which is the lie?

Seems pretty obvious. If this discussion meant anything at all you would have by now gotten the idea that kicking people off their land is a bad idea and that maybe something more voluntary in nature might be appreciated.

I don't know that any of this matters but a good idea came up on Gwyneth Llewelyn's blog.

PROBLEM: Corporate and Educational special interests are afraid of running into oddball and sexual stuff when trying to do business here.

SOLUTION: Switch "verification" around so that entering Corporate and Educational areas requires verification. This would actually then keep anonymous griefing and sexual activities from occurring in their areas.

Fix search so filtering actually works.

Create verified-only entrance portals for the special-interest folks.

LEAVE EVERYONE ELSE IN PEACE in our grubby old mainland sims.

... who is to say that folks who are in the PG or Mature regions won't be also the type of people who sometimes are spending time in the Adult regions?

Picture this:

A *insert creature of some form, human, horse, dragon etc* goes for a night in smutville, and around the sex clubs. Doing things that make Linden's blush for a few hours, then leaves to go back to a PG disneyland.

Now if you merge teen grid into SL. Then your putting what could be potentially horny folks next to potentially stupid 14yo's. How will they know what age the person is? If they ask and the teen lies about their age? Then what? I'll tell ya what. YOU'LL GET SEXIN'! Or worse, the person doesn't even ask, and the teen doesn't tell.

And don't dare laugh that off, it not only happens, but it happens often! I've been almost tricked by a few teens, but there has been lots of people I've roleplayed adult things with, that I naturally can't ever for sure know their real true age. (Nor can LL for that matter) I just hope that they are all the adults they claimed to be.

Sexbeds in private houses are still allowed remember. And not only that, but sex in SL doesn't even need that.

Don't be fooled folks, not all sex takes place on a bed. It happens in IM's all the time, while both av's are dressed and even just casually sitting next to each other on a couch in a PG club. It can happen even when two people are in different regions and no where near each other. Is LL going to monitor everyone's IM conversations too?

Now.. maybe no one would get hurt most times.. but often some folks like to ask the roleplayer the other end to do .. adult rated.. things. Picture phone sex and you'll be starting to get my point. I can picture it now, a parent walking in one a child only 14yo's old, finding them half naked and doing things that I won't describe here to keep the easily offended happy.

Parent: "Tommy/Sarah! What are you doing with that hand?!"
Child: "The *creature in SL* told me to do it, he/she/shi sayes I have to wear this collar too! "

Then, BAM! Lawsuit! And a grounded kid for 6 months who isn't allowed back onto the internet (hopefully).

If this is the forerunner for LL merging the regions, then that will be the last thing for me. Gambling, banking, opensims, and this. If they merge the grids next, I'll be leaving. SL will become a legal mindfield and just not safe for adults or teens. The only safe place for adults will be in adults only land. That is assuming that it doesn't flood with teens too! Getting verified with a credit card is really not hard to do. I'm verified with a visa debit card that any teens could get. And having Lindens patrol, like police around SL to ban and remove people who get too public in their sex will just take the "freedom" and "choice" which we all enjoy completely out of SL.

Then we have the problem with overcrowding in the adult-only backroom of SL, where we'll all be packed in, 101 agents per sim.

All just to give a select few people, who don't want to see boobs the ability to avoid it in the mainland? Oh wait, what if their friend lives in the adults only region? They'll be at risk again!

What if they go into a friends house even in the mainland region and they stumble in on 2 avatars going at it, with a paddle and odd collection of other toys mixed into the fun. Oh noes!

Considering the number of times I've crashed while naked (getting dressed, or for other reasons ofcourse) and logged back in to be booted to another PG region because of bugs in the SL system too makes me think lots of poor people might get introuble for innocent reasons.

"Ahh! A naked person!"
"Wait! I accidently clicked the wrong LM! I was going home!"
"Pedo! Pedo! Report them!"

Not to mention ofcourse the pain of moving your clubs, the loss of business, money and thus the impact this will have the SL markets. Will the new land people move to have the same traffic value as the one they have? It takes a lot of hard work to get up high traffic numbers, and it's those numbers that get your club so high up in the search results, and thus lots of visitors. What about the actually positions, will the visitors be able to find the clubs after they move? Moving always reduces traffic, because people need to find out where you moved to, because the LM's don't work!

What's next? Swearing filters? Ban death metal music in SL? Human-only regions? If this is about cleaning up SL's image, any one of those could be next really.

... The word has been used alot here in this thread, and I got to say, really, it's the only fair term that can be used to describe LL's move here. FAIL. Epic, mass, grid wide, powerful, fail.

And that's honestly the first time I've used that word, I always thought it was silly before, but really it fits here.

If I had a dime for every time this has happened to me (and, invariably, I end up in a newbie welcome area), I could afford to buy out Linden Labs. And the worst part is, I don't even know that I've landed in such a place in such a condition until I've finally rezzed in, and by that time, I've attracted a LOT of attention!

Worst time was when I was caught in a rather heavy amount of extreme bondage gear.. that was Awkward beyond belief. XD

Grady: "err... hi"
Everyone else in the room: O_O!
Grady sneaks slowly towards the exit. o.o;;

EDIT:
And again, isn't this a much more important issue that LL could be working on!?

Does this mean I'm not allowed to use my 'humping' gestures too in the mature and PGregions? x_X

THIS.

Brilliant.

I was about to write the longest post anyone has seen on a message board until, somewhere around page 451, it dawned on me. I was about to contribute ideas and considerations that could do no more than help Linden Lab succeed in this endeavor.

We've all been down this road before and now, to no ones surprise, we're back. If you want to save yourself some needless time and agitation, log out, go for a walk and let this matter settle itself because it really doesn't matter what they end up doing.

I agree with this as well. You would think Corporate and Educational entities both would WANT everyone who is in their sims to be RL verified that they are who they say they are. It just makes more sense to create a continent just for them, but i guess the thinking is, they deserve the right to go wherever they want because they are the "legitimate" users of SL. While the rest who use SL for playtime and that evil porn have to be stuffed into a backroom and hidden from sight so their is no negative image problem to deal with.

I not only expect to see what proportion of the population is requesting this kind of change, I'm expecting the data itself to be released for independent analysis.

I maintain, and continue to maintain, this is the prelude to merging the Teen Grid with the Main Grid for no other purpose than to bolster what I am coming to believe is a faltering bottom line.

People have been suspended for using that on others so,
I hate to ruin your day.

If the corporations want to absorb SL basically, because they fear building their own sim would see nothing but crickets and the occasional random teleport, then why not instead learn from the world others there have already built.

Why not hire some of the best content creators in-world to design corporate sims and activities. Make them LESS sterile, bland, corporate-y. Less freakin' boring in other words? Then, you know, people might actually show up on THEIR segregated island, and they wouldn't have to steal (the SL) what exists.

OK let's analyse the issues.

The overall goal seems to be to avoid coming across anything unexpected, which seems to dull the excitment of SL. However, I think we can drill down to:

i) adult items appearing unexpectedly in search. There is a mechanism already in search - items can be marked as Mature, and Mature items can be filtered out. There are issues with this - people not marking mature items as mature (either accidently or deliberately since they don't want their results filtered); arguments whether the default should be to have the mature items filtered or not, etc.; people gaming the system by adding unrelated keywords to mature content listings. Adding a new tag isn't a solution since all these issues would apply to the new tag. Better policing (e.g. an report this item in the search pane which results in an intellient response from LL) may help reduce this.

ii) eyesores on the mainland - well an eyesore is an eyesore regardless of whether it is adult related or not!

iii) teleporting into unexpected content. Firstly the unexpected and unwelcome content may not necessarily be adult. However, if you consider how this migh happen: well if teleporting randomly you sort of need to expect the unexpected; an out of date landmark; an incorrect listing; SL's habit of sometimes dropping you seemingly at random on the same sim if a teleport fails; SL's habit of sometimes dropping you randomly in SL on logon. Some of these are issues with SL, but in general this is just going to happen. Adding features to the map and teleport so that you can see whether an area is Mature or PG before teleporting. Perhaps, display the description of the land you are teleporting to during a teleport (or logon), and if it doesn't match where you are thinking of going, you can cancel. Change the behaviour of double clicking on a landmark back to the original one of opening the landmark (so you can see what it is a landmark to and check the map before teleporting) rather than automatically whisking you off to the location.

iv) mature content in PG areas - well it shouldn't be there. Better intelligent policing from LL

v) Unexpected mature content alongside non-mature content (but in a mature area). E.g. a mall which mainly contains clothes but then has skins etc. Most of the better malls where this is a risk, already partition themselves, e.g. the more risque items might be on the top floor and clearly signposted. Part of this would be good practice guidelines, and better *monitoring* by LL. I say monitoring rather than policing as it doesn't need to be heavy handed - just a gentle, "don't you think it might be better for your customers if you put all the ... items into a seperate area...". Also, as has been suggested by many, allow different altitudes to be flag and controlled independently. So that the ground might be PG open access, whereas a skybox at a high altitude could be flagged Mature, Verified Accounts restricted.

vi) griefers rezzing mature objects in PG areas etc. - well this is going to happen regardless, and not amount of new tags, or tagging content or locations, or getting people to move will resolve this. It is already a TOS violation, and AR-able, and needs better (intelligent) policing from LL. You already have tools to help police this yourself if it happens on land you own - and there isn't much more that can be added without risking adding new tools to the griefers' arsenal.

Have I missed anything?

In general whilst there are a few technical tweaks possible (the major one being able to designate different altitudes under differrent access settings), most of the problems need more active, consistent and intelligent monitoring and policing from LL, I'm afraid, and I'm not convinced that the LL's solution actually addresses any of the above issues.

Matthew

OMG! If they do it, they can replace the Your World, Your Imagination slogan with Our World, Our Apathy! Or how about Jedem das Seine ("to each his own"? Well we could settle on that old tried and true triad, "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

Is that not what they are proposing? Herd us vile, unwanted and unloved denizens into a ghetto? Newbies can ask us, "Why all the barbed wire?"

After all, according to Mitch Kapor,



My! Doesn't this just fly in the face of the lovely, fluffy horsesh-- soufflé (my term for corporate and political spin) the Lab served us about how amazing the world is with all that content created by Residents like us.

Linden Lab Newspeak Translation for the Slow: All you whiners are freaks, weirdos, disenfranchised nobodies. But you make good sh--. Keep up the good work! We're making sh--loads of money off you. Oh we'll let you whine and think you're part of the decision-making process. But you're not, you stinking proles.

That's the view top management in this company has of its customers.

Well, time I got out my pink triangle now and make sure it's affixed to my chest. It will make it so easy when the goosestepping Super Secret Thought Police In Black come to take me away to the the "Adult Rest Camp".

Thank you, Liza. I loved the satire and irony of your post. Doesn't disguise the ugly truth though does it?

Matthew, you nailed it. But LL won't believe that's a real possibility until they're slapped with the lawsuit and the subsequent damaging PR. Pragmatism doesn't allow anything beyond range of the moment thinking. Corporate America is rife with it.

I've read with amusement people saying they don't believe the issues here are related to the merging of the two Grids. It's coming. It's a matter of public record and a Linden admitted "this project is being kept separate from that project."

As far as LL is concerned, this is a done deal. So's the merge. The business model they're pursuing escapes me. It has all the appearance of a company willfully throwing itself over a cliff.

What does the Board of Directors care? They've made their money. They try to make more. Ethics be damned. Lying to customers is all the rage in corporations today. "We care. Now go away."

They can dress the message up in all the altruistic horsesh-- soufflé they want. If LL truly cared about providing a reasonable or good customer experience ... they'd shelve all this crap and fix the bugs in their client-server architecture.

I have reached the conclusion -- they can't. SL is a pig (but like Wilbur in Charlotte's Web, a lovable pig). WE care about this world. The Board of Directors don't. They pretend to care because it's pragmatic to appear to care.

No. This is called painting the corpse or putting lipstick on a pig. This is the old Linden way of dealing with customer dissatisfaction. "Let's add new features so the user base is distracted from everything being broken and it takes two to four times longer for anyone to do anything." (Oooo. Windlight. Pretty.)

M Linden and Phillip Linden stated publicly on the blog, "Stability is our number one issue." They lied. They told us what we wanted to hear.

Oh heck. Now I went and done it.

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES! They lied to us. (Let's be truthful here in our "dialog" about goals and motivations here.) And the lower echelons will keep blowing sunshine up our a--es because, let's face it, they have a job to do, a mortgage to pay, a significant other (likely) and kids to feed.

This has been LL's way of not dealing with the core service issues with their company and their product during my entire experience with it. And they've just convinced me ... It's broken. It can't be fixed. It will never be fixed.

They'll just keep slathering more lipstick on that old pig for as long as they can squeeze money out of it. When it finally gives up and dies, they'll carve it up for bacon and sell it off. (Hey! It worked in Argentina until its economy collapsed!)

Matthew, the motivation and goal is money. If some kid gets hurt, oh well. The lawyers will handle it. We'll stand up in public and look pained and empathetic and tell the world how it pains us that a child was victimized (or worse). We'll be contrite and respectful and breathe a sigh of relief when the cameras are turned off. "Another disaster averted! We're so smart!"

That's the ethics and morality of the people at the top of this company. They believe we're a bunch of marginal freaks and cry-babies and don't care what we think. We're beneath them. We are unimportant. This dialog is nothing but a PR exercise.

Search for an earlier post of mine. The Chairman of the Board pretty much said what he thought about us in the closing keynote speech at the 5th Anniversary SLCC.

He thinks none of us are representative of the majority of his customer base. We're the marginalized, the downtrodden, misfits in the mainstream. It's okay to lie to the freaks. Pragmatism says, "If it works, it's right!"

And that will be reflected in whomever LL personnel choose as the "emerging thought leaders" for more "dialog." That focus group will be biased towards whatever the Board of Directors wants. And gawd knows, the Board always gets what it wants.

Cory Linden was right to move on (whether terminated or quit, it doesn't matter). He probably heard us loud and clear but was powerless to do anything. He had "fundamental differences" about the direction of the company with Phillip Rosedale. We're seeing a glimpse of that.

Hell, the majority of the customer base has "fundamental differences" with the company's direction. This forum and every other on this topic should make that abundantly clear.

To the Board of Directors, we're nothing but a cash cow to be milked.

Hmm. Maybe it's time for old Bossy to kick over a lantern ...

When did the silent uproar over adult content happen anyway? I find it difficult to beleive this very vocal yet invisible majority of residents have little to no presence on the forums. You would think a topic like this would have taken on some form of extended debate in the forums between the residents leading up to this. I haven't even seen protests in world against the adult content. Who is this mysterious group of customers that are able to cause such sweeping policy changes while remaining so well hidden and silent?

Were I the kind of prude who is trying to shove their morals down everyone's throat, back when I was almost a brand new resident, I would have probably left. Thank goodness I've got adult sensibilities to realize that everyone is going to be subjected to things they don't like, don't approve of, don't want to see, and don't want to participate in. Let me explain.

I believe it was somewhere around the time I was about a 3 or 4 month old resident and I was fully clothed having just changed into a nice outfit. I logged out for about 2 hours and returned, only to find myself logged in somewhere where I wasn't at as my last place (I had intended to go to the place where I had changed clothes). The place LL logged me into had a slave auction going on. I was fascinated even tho that wasn't anything I had wanted to participate in. I watched and listened and it was just like any regular auction you could go to on any given day in any given city in any given country. At one point there was a Master who asked if I had a Master. I stated that I was a free spirit and he apologized and welcomed me to stay to view the activities, which I did.

Now, if I were the sort of prude that wants these changes which would spell a total epic failure, I would have been highly offended. I wasn't. Actually, I thank LL for throwing me into a situation that I previously had been uncomfortable with - it broadened my horizons and taught me even more tolerance for people's differences.

Corporate, nonprofit and educational institutions need access to the entire worldwide population of SL. They are here to connect with a worldwide market. They need to be open to the public.

On the other hand, people having sex dont need to be open to the public. You would think they would want everyone who sees them to be verified.

Corporate, non profit and education want to know who is visiting their parcels so they can target them for future campaigns and promotions, they absolutely want that information.