Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Motivations and Goals

How about customers of these products? Will they have to try and sell their homes (undoubtedly at a significant loss) and move to the new "XXX Continent" as well?

*bump*

In addition to what Mari said please also specifically address the case of non-commercial "non-public" purely residental land (be it on a private sim or the mainland).

A 'public sex' area is adult, but would land with a house on it that has a sex bed inside of it for only the owner's use going to need to be flagged adult as well?

I can image most residental private sims having at least one "adult" item that's meant only for private use rezzed somewhere and if that means the entire sim needs to be marked adult then the impact would be widespread.

It's clique

There are already restrictions on adult content, why aren't they being enforced? Adult content should not be freely being displayed outside, even on mature parcels.

@Kitty: I think this is asked and answered in the "Definitions" thread.

Is Daniel Linden back? I'm finding all this Broadly offensive!

You do remember how we reacted to this a couple years ago.. right?...

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2007/06/01/keeping-second-life-safe-together#comments

The link to the Adult-Oriented Content Controls FAQ went missing from the first version of the blog post, so we've fixed that. To save wear and tear on your "Back" button, here's the link in question:

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6032

I stand corrected. Typing way to fast.

Oops . Thanks .

Marianne - I'd highly recommend joining the conversation in the other thread (Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Definitions) where that topic is being

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=311513

You can also read the current definitions of "PG" "Mature" and "Adult" here:
https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6010

"We will create clear and consistent definitions of what constitutes adult content, in line with our Community Standards."

Defining this one element alone will be slipperier than a bed of eels in a bucket of Jiffy Lube. After thousands of years of civilization the human race has not yet managed to work this one out so I'll be fascinated to see how it pans out in the virtual world.

The cultural and religious mores of the international community who inhabit Second Life are significantly different and "adult content" for one group may be more rigidly interpreted than another. For example, would topless bathing on a sim be "adult?" Not from a European perspective. And what about profanities? Will there be an installing of filters? And if so, which words are "adult" and which are not? And who would determine this?

Also fascinating will be how to police infractions. If some walks into a non-adult area naked and says "f-you," what happens? Even if there were a set of definitions for "adult content," acting upon breaches in behavior is going to be hard.

Before "legislating" against certain behaviors, a system of policing and prosecution is needed - otherwise we end up with a toothless tiger.

Yea, right - there's *ALWAYS* ways for kids to get false ID.

I've got a different proposal.

Instead of requiring a flag for "adult" vs. "mature" content...

Why not go ahead, do the TeenGrid merger - and then have a flag people can set in their profile to mark themselves as "family-friendly only". At that point, then they can only teleport to PG rated areas, which would include the merged TeenGrid areas.

Which leads me to wonder - on the Teen Grid - what do they do for skins? I know the TeenGrid client won't let underwear clothes layers be removed.

I would love to be able to hang out with my grandkids in SL and I personally would probably not miss "adult content" if I never ran into it again. On the other hand I wouldn't want SL to be an artificial, sanitized version of life either.

If somehow things could be arranged to protect those who should be protected without censoring others that would be great.

If it's necessary, for legal or marketing purposes or whatever, to allow some set of people to avoid all adult content, I would think it would make more sense to create a Non-adult Continent than an Adult one.

That way no one would *have* to move, and those of us (I like to think, the majority) that are in fact adults and capable of acting and reacting as adults could carry on normally with our (second) lives. Those who for whatever reason want or need to avoid exposure to adult things could move to the Non-adult Continent, where they would be safe.

Moving every strip-club and weapon store and personally-owned sex bed and art gallery displaying nudes off of the mainland into an "adult" ghetto seems like a highly undesirable alternative. Can you give us any insight into why that was the one that's been chosen?

And of course organizations like GLBT support centers will find themselves flagged as adult.

I am administrator of the Yahoo group 'pragatischool' - a group helping to organize a school for trans people in India. Guess what? Yahoo flagged it as 'adult'. Now it's full of ads for shemale porn and stuff, and people honestly interested in helping are reluctant to join.

What an incredibly short sighted, stupid thing for LL to do.

We should all start ARing any Linden we meet for intolerance. 8cP

Why is it when somebody does not want adult material forced down their throat its turned into phobia? You have your way of life and thats great. That does not mean everyone wants to see it, know about it, and have it forced on them when they TP.

Is there no GLBT support group presence on the teen grid? That seems to me like a place it would be especially useful.

You're right...In the US, they're offered to high school juniors and seniors!

As a landlord, I have no desire to have to deal with the problems of adult and teen interaction on the grid, or to be exposed to some litigious parent whose kid saw someone's pixel weenie while that person was having sex in their own home on my land. They would see me as another deep pocket to be named in the lawsuit, when I don't make squat on rentals. I see no reason why I should have to get insurance to cover legal liability in SL.

I agree with Dale. If you're going to integrate the grid, you should make a non-adult area instead of forcing everyone else to move or sell. I will get rid of all my rentals in a heartbeat and tier down before I expose myself to this kind of thing. It's bad enough that I have to watch out for child porn on my land as is. And yes, I've had to deal with rl child porn already.

Gotcha - I edited my reply in the forum above to reflect, don't want it leading off on a tangent haha.

I can't wait to see what kind of geographic metaphor you choose for the new continent btw. There's a whole 'urban renewal/geography of sensuality' angle to this that's kind of fascinating. Need to dig out my Jane Jacobs and see what she has to say.

I personally think this has less to do with the merging of the teen grid as it has for trying to milk business people to come into world and use this platform for business.

Can you imagine building your RW business /shop/ on the mainland only to end up being next to a couple who do not have their xcite parts on whisper or decide to play indecent gestures for the enjoyment of everyone /end sarcasm.

Why not have an /sl business/ client, that would load only safe, SFW content and family friendly areas. Rather than trying to police something you will never manage to do because simply there is no way that LL is going to have the time and resources to do this.

I run a roleplay sim, which we list as mature because of the nature that the stories can turn. While there hasn't been instances of blatant sexual activity on the sim, often there is gore, violence and what I would consider mature content, but certainly not XXX content. If someone happens into our sphere of the world and hears someone tell another something what they consider offends them, that it is adultish content, will they only have to create a ticket to have us moved from mature to Adult rating?

Imlementing this will extremely hurt business in world, like many others have mentioned. A sex bed, while in its display to be sold is not adult content, having two/three/ten avatars engaged in play on that bed is. How do you end up determining what is what? Restricting our sim to age verified will sorely limit our growth which may cause other sims to close for this reason.

Rethinking this proposal is definitly something I am hoping you are considering. One only has to look at the government trying to monitor TV and what is appropriate, it always comes down to this "If you don't like what you see, turn the channel" or in sl's case "TP out" It's not like you have to wait for a bus or a cab to remove you from an area you are uncomfortable with. Sanitizing the world is never going to be successful, without destroying it.

I see from the other thread that Blondin Linden says "The idea is that overtly sexual or violent themed areas would be classified as Adult. Sex beds in a private home, skins, and the such are all fine and would not have to move. Its when the theme or main advertising point is sexual that it would cross a line between mature and adult."

That seems a bit more reasonable, and would markedly reduce the amount of stuff that would have to move. BUT is also seems to contradict what the official definition of "Adult" says; that definition of "Adult" is much much broader, and includes:

"Any publicly accessible Region" that "displays... Photo-realistic nudity". Which would hit for instance an art gallery that has just one quite realistic nude in it. Or for that matter my own shack, which is publically accessible (I hate banlines and like random visitors), and has more than one quite realistic nude on the wall, 'cause I like nudes.

"Any publicly accessible Region" that "references... Representations of intense violence depicting death". I'm not exactly sure what it means to reference a representation, but this would seem, again, to hit an art gallery displaying something like Picasso's "Guernica", or a weapon store with pictures of exploding landmines. (Isn't it true of any weapon store that "the main theme or advertising point is" violent? So aren't those all Adult even in Blondin's wording?)

Saying "oh, yeah, but we actually won't enforce that in those cases" isn't really much comfort; I hate the idea of having a bad law and just counting on the powers that be not to enforce it. If the rule is really going to be more or less rational, as Blondin suggests, then can the official rule be worded to actually *say* that, rather than saying something much much broader that we are then unofficially assured that it doesn't really mean?

Even Blondin's wording, though, still seems awfully broad. Isn't someone's bedroom that has a sexbed and pictures of naked people on the walls an "overtly sexually-themed area"? I mean, words have meanings! "Overtly sexually-themed area" doesn't magically pick out just the yucchy and objectionable ones; it means any area that has an overt sexual theme, even if it's a nice positive pretty artistic or educational or creative one.

I hope I come to have a better feeling about this, but right now it strikes me as really depressing. Adult content is currently not forced down anyone's throat or into anyone's face; people can stay in PG areas and they are already protected against it to the same extent that they will be under the new rules. But now anyone who does want to enjoy the adult parts of life will have to do it off in the shame-corner rather than in the mainstream of SL. And that mainstream will be very much the poorer for that.

Sigh.

Ding! You win.

They endlessly promote SL as a place to do business, but guess what? They came, they saw, and they left in disgust. It's not because of HotChick23's rape RP sex club. It's because of LL's policy of raping their customers, instability, short-sightedness, insecure content (stolen stuff) and the continue fumbling of "policy" every 3 months with something stupid like this.


SL has nothing to offer business (expect to educators and marketers milking a budget).

Good thing you continue to focus on retaining new users, cause you sure have trouble retaining long term users.

The main issue is not going to be the content of the "Adult" standards, whatever they are eventually. People can adjust to the standards, whatever they are.

The issue is going to be the method of enforcement, which currently I don't see addressed by any of the several threads/faqs that have been created.

1. If Linden Lab is unable to enforce its current modest standards (e.g., prolific sexual content in Profile pictures), what is the plan to enforce more stringent and complex standards?

2. Most providers of adult content are not going to be worried about being separated out, they just care that people can come to them if they want to come to them. What they are going to worry about is arbitrary enforcement. Is enforcement going to be ban first, ask questions later? Is enforcement going to be blind response to Abuse Reports? Will there be a way to appeal Linden Lab decisions? What happens while waiting for appeal- does content become off-limits or banned?

The enforcement is the meat and potatoes of the issue. It doesn't matter how fair and clear the standards are if they are arbitrarily enforced. I'm much more interested in seeing specifics on enforcement mechanisms.

I can one-up that. One of my characters is sometimes an adult AV and sometimes a child AV ... even to the point of changing between the two in the middle of a conversation. A lot of the things both wear are non-age specific (jeans and tees) so it is not like my inventory has many sharp dividing lines between kid-clothes and adult-clothes.

The concept is too broad in my opinion. Yes, it's a nice idea that you can provide blinders in RL to keep people from seeing things they don't want to see. It doesn't happen in RL, you can drive down certain streets and see things you really don't want to see. You control that in RL by not driving down those streets.

In SL, what you see is location, advertising, avatars, and profiles.

There can be a mature content location, and if you don't want to see it, you don't go there.

There is mature advertising, and if you don't want to see that, you don't click give me the mature content also.

Avatars and Profiles are a much more difficult situation.

An avatar can go anywhere, and look like anything. Naked Avatars in inappropriate areas are AR'd - they should have some clothes in when in PG areas. But elsewhere, a naked avatar might be just fine. Then there's the case when SL might slide you into some other location because the location you wanted isn't available. Suddenly you're somewhere you don't want to be, dressed or undressed as you don't want to be, and it may be difficult due to some local/temporary bug to change that. Accidents happen.

The profile of an avatar is accessible by anyone anywhere. We're used to looking at someone's profile to make sure that we address them properly, to learn what they are interested in, to find out a little about them before telling them about ourselves. But in those profiles there can be subjects, pictures, data that is mature in contect, and there's no way to predict what you will see.

I cannot see how you can protect people from what's around them. I feel that it comes down to them choosing what they will see, where they will go, what they will do. Just as in RL, you make your own choices of what you will see and do, and you back out quickly from places and things that you don't want to deal with.

We laugh at the old joke (which is true by the way) of a little old lady calling into the cable company complaining of a channel mixup error that had occurred one day. "That was the worst filth on TV that I've ever watched for two hours" The immediate questions: 1) why did she keep watching; 2) why not call earlier to the cable company.