Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Motivations and Goals

A few thoughts, in response to LL's Adult-oriented content controls FAQ...

(I wasn't sure where to post this as I wanted to keep it together as a response to the FAQ - hopefully here is relevant)



1. Who determines (and who is clearly 'able' to determine) what "clearly more conventionally adult" means? Surely that's subjective? We are adults in an adult environment (well, I am, I'm sure there are exceptions but you state SL "is fundamentally directed to an "over-18" audience", so I'm working from that premise only to avoid clouding the issue of minors/grid mergers etc. for now). Am I being told what to think with this statement, it's worded in a way that makes me feel that I am?

2. To me, it reads that you are somehow prioritising the needs of educators and professionals over 'other' Residents. If so, this is doubly insulting, if for no other reason that myself and many other Residents ARE creators, educators, professionals AND users/creators of 'adult' content (and by this I'm working on the premise that you mean explicit hardcore sex/violence content, practice or services?). I enjoy a sexual BDSM lifestyle in SL AND run a company AND teach. Are certain (legal) lifestyle choices/professions not compatible?

Your opening statement of intent - the motivation - requires some more thought, IMHO. Take a moment to think carefully about this, without the influence of either the (alleged) requests from "numerous Residents" and your consultants, lawyers or financial investors, both current and potential.



Please can you detail these requests (much more than you have and with some independent 3rd party validation) in an openly accessible way for all Residents. It appears that a huge number of Residents have no idea about your plans and a good number (here in the forums) are confused and distressed by them. Personally, I don't know anyone who has been consulted specifically about this (unless you mean the occasional pop up survey box on login that asks general questions like, 'has my SL use has improved or not', or whether I'd like it to be more predictable). Broadcast the plans to every Resident - like you would a region restart, perhaps, and ask for their feedback on the forums. A number of Residents don't venture here and I'm sure they would provide some very valuable customer feedback. Most people inworld that I've informed about this plan over the last 48hrs had not heard about the upcoming changes whatsoever.



This seems all very unclear, I'm sorry to say.

1. "Short-term"? Can you give us a more precise schedule, please, if it's going to be short-term - especially regarding geographical separation?
2. "...for adults only"? What are the statistics of illegal underage use of SL currently?
3. Four weeks of discussion - and you'll be ready? Really? Are you able to provide every creator AND user of 'adult content' with a realistic project plan for relocation and/or whether they have to or not?

What evidence is there that you don't already support and enable the widest range of use cases? (I'm still assuming you mean RL adults only as users?)



Yes, you've said this already - 'numerous' isn't a clear number (it's not even a statistic). I usually think of 'numerous' as 'more than 3'... do you see why that's a confusing statement? Details please - actual numbers and the system by which these requests were gathered and collated would be useful, in an accessible, transparent format.



Yes, what system is anyone aware of that guarantees this? I know of none. Sure, there are some checks (which involve parting with private information, which I think a lot of Residents will be wary of) that can help 'reduce' the instance of minors in SL. It's been said, though, that time and time again in the forums, that many verification systems are flawed. Safer? As an example: how could interaction between minors (or even just 'unverified' Residents) and 'inappropriate adult content' be policed? IM and intergrid transfers would surely have to be rigidly monitored, wouldn't they? Or, maybe I'm missing something. Will there be restrictions on any form of contact between creators/users of 'adult content' (the verified) and the 'unverified' mass not allowed into the new continent? I'm very confused about this, if it is meant to be any more than a PR exercise to appease lawyers, puritans and/or potential investors in SL. I'm sure though, that the issue of having some sort of additional assurance would be welcomed by many adults in SL, I'm just not sure this is at all the route to take - it looks flawed from the outset. It sounds and feels potentially hazardous for anyone involved.



Hmmm. Unfortunately this wording sounds like you mean to knowingly bring minors into the existing adult grid and leave Teen SL 'as is' for those wishing to remain there. At the moment, reading all the other posts, there doesn't appear to be a precise answer to the questions of many, which is "Will this initiative result in a merged SL (regardless of what happens to Teen SL), where we will have adults and minors interacting on the main grid?". This is a very worrying prospect for many in SL. I and many others will certainly leave immediately if this is the plan. Clarification, please.



OK. Good to hear. No worries with this FAQ about permissible content (despite the issue of where, how and by whom).



Again, could we please see some (or more) actual detail of this - in an easily accessible format, transparent and open to all Residents? It makes sense to be more pro-active about this to reduce the sense of disempowerment and lack of belonging that many of us are feeling right now, since hearing of you plans.



Yes. Good. I applaud this. However you make it sound (with the wording at the end, "...albeit with the enhanced ability to tailor..." like we're not adults and can't make decisions for ourselves. The plans don't appear to be specifically about just an 'enhancement', but appear to many that you are setting out on a policy of segregation and ghetto-izing, under pressure from external influence. Which is sad, as that damages your hitherto laudable aims of inclusiveness and openness. Personally, I feel that I can engage in SL 'most suited to my needs and interests' by feeling part of a diverse community (whether I like some parts of it or not). Putting me in a box, labelled 'pervert' (even though I may qualify according to the dictionary) just makes me want to leave SL and take my money with me. I've never felt that so strongly before in any online community and for it to happen here in SL is very disappointing and discouraging. I've already lost close friends here, that have left because of this news and it's very painful.



Again, laudable - that's the SL I want. But... a lot of us feel that our 'choice' IS being limited with this plan, NOT enhanced - or that we will have the chance to keep it as it is today. We're feeling forced against our wishes. Why do you think that is?



Interesting. I don't want to really play devil's advocate here.. but, is that fair, if the talk of flaws in verification systems are true?



Hmmm. Maybe I've finally become truly paranoid, but am I to become just a target audience for marketeers? It sounds like it. That's not a SL I want. And again, I'm skeptical about this "additional layer of assurance", without detailed analysis being freely available.



What data proves that? I would have thought making the client and grid more stable would have been a much higher priority.



Ok. Good.

So, to conclude, how many extra staff will LL need to employ to carry out this initiative? A lot of us will need close supervision and liaison inworld. What will be the financial incentives to stay in SL, as a mainland (Mature) landowner, who will be forced to relocate?

Overall, and from reading the blog, forum posts and FAQ on the subject, my conclusion is that it's a terrible idea and poorly thought out - one that should be ditched promptly, so LL can focus on more pressing technical matters to improve our Resident experience.

Yours, rather disappointed,

Professor Milos
(I guess, soon to be ex-(premium, 40$/mth tier paying, shopaholic) Resident, of what was, SL).

"Thanks for all the fish!"

My own personal belief is that what really puts newcomers off is the griefing and inappropriate content at welcome areas, PG sandboxes, and other public PG areas, and those that don't follow the existing rules are unlikely to follow the new rules either...

Matthew

There haven't been any completely stupid ideas for a while, so we were due for one and here it is!

I am guessing, after reading quite a few posts that I am one of the few in SL that doesn't live in 1952 or in a convent. One of the few that doesn't run screaming from the computer after seeing a boob or hides in a dark closet after seeing a pixellated penis!

Honestly! University students not wanting to come to SL because they are afraid of what they might see?? ROFL Is the Chancellor of said institution of "higher learning" on Ms Poppins?

Once again LL has proven that it is incapable of making an informed business decision. Instead it just shoves its collective heads up its behind and does what it wants.

I have clicked around some nights and found myself in some very ODD and what I would consider distasteful areas (sex with animals or mutilation/torture, for example) but instead of having a hissy fit and calling for the ban of all such nasty things, I acted like a mature 44 year old adult and TP'd home and continued my adventure.

I have met a lot of interesting people, had a lot of interesting conversations with people I would not have otherwise met in sims I simply stumbled upon because they are either straight strip clubs (I am gay) or happened to be a BDSM sim that I stumbled into.

Again, if you dont like it where you are ... TP OUT! It's very simple!

As for combining the Teen/Adult Grid ... well that is even stupuider than the OS/Homestead fiasco!

And I for one will IMMIEDATELY close my sim to everyone but the few friends that live there now. And will probably end up selling and downgrading my account. There is no way I will expose MYSERLF or MY FRIENDS to that legal nightmare. My sim offers rentals ... each tenant "owns" his/her land and has total control over there lot. But I am not going to play nanny to ensure that little johnny doesn't see one of my tenants on their sex bed or that little susie doesn't see someone's pixellated penis.

Trying to make the few vocal prudes happy by making what YOU deem 'adult' is stupid, a wate of time, a waste of resources and will make sure that even more people leave SL.

Perhaps the time and effort will be better spent fixing the problems that are more pressing ... like LAG, lack of response to ARs, pitiful customer service.

A suggestion to those that don't want to see sexual activity in SL is simply ... DON'T LOOK! Or TP somewhere else!

Adults don't need to be babysat. And I have no intentions of babysitting someone else's child either.

Once again ... another *brilliant* idea, LL! And FYI that was sarcasm. Look it up in the dictionary. Oh wait! Better flag that book as ADULT. It has naughty words in it! It may offend!

I want to change my land to adult now. I think I will make my beach front a nude beach now, put that into the land description now and hope liden gives me land parity when they make me move. I thought mature equaled adult.

I used to love SL so much. As the slightly more than a year has rolled on, the forced downgrades to bad viewers, only to have the updats to the bad viewers not get any better, inventory loss, failed TPs, halted log ins, world services failures and the list goes on has really taken a toll on my enjoyment. To further take it's toll BAD policy decisions, which seem to only take LL' bottom line into account has made it worse. This latest fiasco is about once again deminishing the experience of the residents of SL. WE the users of the net are not responisible for what children see on the net. We should not be forced to give up what we have worked so hard for and paid so much for, to do the job that lazy parent are not doing. And when I say give up, do mean give up. Oh anyone that thinks our adult content will be safe under the new policies is deluded. Sure it's just control and reorganization now. Then they will find a reason to remove this set of objects, the that one, and soon we will be a boring, sterile 3D world. Oh I've seen it happen on IMVU. People lost things they paid real money for. And I don't for a minute believe LL isn't capable of the same thing. After seeing how they treat their residents, no doubt about it. It's sad, terribly sad. Makes me wonder if the island my partner and I have spend so muh on and worked so hard on is even worth it.

This is an interesting point, I wonder how LL will decide who is to move, i imagine it will be people like us who run adult open businesses first as re reading the posts Lindens have made, most private land owners wont fall under the move rules at least to start with.

I very much doubt land will be swapped any other way except size for size but thats just my opinion, it matters not for us as we build high anyway and as long as i get SQM for SQM i don't mind, it will be interesting watching the coming days developments

Blast From The Past...

The blog known as "Gigs Shrugged" mentioned a LL blog post from December 2006 where it was specifically stated, in part: "...[W]e cannot play the role of arbitrating personal grievances or defining behavioral standards. This is particularly important as Linden Lab becomes more international. We don’t want to force a California-centric set of rules on the virtual world...."

I remember reading that post, back in December 2006.

What happened?

What changed?

WHY is a core value - everyone being responsible for themselves - being dropped by the wayside?

Based on this policy statement, thousands of residents invested millions of dollars into Second Life.

or better yet, what happens if ALL of the residents in SL decide to move to the new "Adult-Adult" land, and leave all the puritans, intolerant, and bigots behind, and alone with each other in the shattered remains of the mainland....

I mean LL, couldn't come right out and say we want all the aforementioned losers to move to a new grid, so they tell us that all the "Adults" have to move. very clever indeed, but no one will want to be in what is left behind.

What business university, or other organization would want to setup shop in such an area, filled with nothing but groups with agendas and views that they try to force on others.

We should all pass the word and embrace this change, tell everyone that this is the opportunity to get away from the bigots and other small minded people and go to an area that supports and embraces the freedoms that we came to SL for in the first place.

So lets all move to the new "Adult-Adult" sim and leave all those who practice hate as a lifestyle behind.

While my place doesn't technically qualify as "adult" I would rather live next to those who suuport freedom and choice than in a mainland dedicated to bigots and special interests.

Based on this policy, thousands of residents invested millions of dollars into Second Life.

Will I be kicked out of my own sim?
I have no way of proving my age as I refuse for good reason to transmit personal information over the internet.
Once again I suppose I will wait and see.

I absolutely agree with all you have said - I'm so tired of the rhetoric of all of the bigots, puritans, and small-minded people. They are a vocal few who try to control the many. If we all leave the main grid and leave those few vocal bigots, the main grid will be a ghost town since those few will be wandering around wondering what the heck happened to everything they were used to seeing. Hmmm - they should quit crying over their spilt milk about what "little Johnny" or "little Susie" sees as "little Johnny" and "little Susie" shouldn't even be on SL. Also, they need to quit crying over what their poor virginal eyes might see as they are supposed to be adults and as an adult, that comes with some responsibility on their part - TP out of areas they find so objectionable, stay in their homes on squeaky clean island, or better yet, they just need to leave SL for all of those sanitized sites such as IMVU.

Thanks Fmagick - that brought a smile back to my face. Interesting use of lateral thinking - I like it... and would support it, if but for the danger that they'd obviously follow us there. Would we be able to refuse access permanently to those that chose to stay behind in the old lands?

(No idea where I'm going with this. See LL? See how divisive this issue will become.. we're already building virtual social barriers in our heads.)

If I'm forced to move (and forgetting just a moment about the nightmarish technical issues of parcel shape, terraforming, multi-parcel builds, too many clubs in one SIM, re-marketing traffic loss and 'ooops - that doesn't look like how I packed it before the move' build move problems) - can those who are forced to relocate insist that those who did not wish to see us or be near us can never come over the wall? Your idea sounds very good then.

Gated community anybody? Hmm.. this idea could run to search filters too, I respect their lifestyle choice, but I don't want to see their results in my search for smut.

I digress, apologies for the tongue-in-cheekedness - but I needed a light 'relief'.

Based on this policy, thousands of residents invested millions of dollars into Second Life.

(1) Do you have to post this message in all the threads?

(2) Won't happen, unless the G-Team pulls some outrageous blunders.

I think I've seen every message in every thread and I haven't seen that. Can you provide a reference?

They won't make you move for a nude beach.

Myself and 3 other business residents of SL have our shops located on a "Mature" region.

Although our businesses are on the land "we" paid for are set to "PG".

I am "thinking" we will still show in search for the "97% of people you claim" that do not want to be exposed to adult "Mature" (as SL is for adult's) content.

Will these residents still be able to teleport to our businesses located on a "MATURE" region?

If not - what is Linden Lab going to do to compensate us for our losses?

I am wondering this "compensation" as my business was located on two Open Space regions before you decided to pad your wallets and I lost hundreds of RL dollars to you because of that stupid decision. Am I to absorb more losses this go around??

Having gathered my thoughts a little, I have this comment on the "motivations and goals":

I find it weird that LL has entirely ignored any request for better options for zoning, so people could build a community and themed area without something wholly inappropriate moving in next door, be that high-tech in a fantasy area or sex in an educational district.
And then we suddenly get this “lump everybody who’d dare to express a mature thought together in the ghetto, so university students, who’d be mortified and scarred for life by seeing sex or violence, can get a safe, predictable environment”.

There is a *huge* discrepancy between what Blondin Linden is saying in the forum and what some other Linden(s?) wrote and published in the knowledge base. Given LL’s track record of having the forum being a place for people to vent, rather than to gather feedback, I tend to consider the – now unavailable – knowledge base article more indicative of the (by and large already decided upon) end result. –Especially since the server code for it has already been deployed, having silently piggybacked on the last couple of server updates.

LL repeatedly claims that “residents have asked for better ways to control their experience”. That may very well be true. I have said before that I’d love to be able to, say, have different people pool together resources/land for a themed area instead of having to personally buy 8 sims to control the covenant. It just seems LL has *entirely* missed the point about *what* it was people wanted to control. I want to be able to build a little pocket of the world, shaped to my, and my friends’ and associates’, imagination; not to be able to (forced to) choose between the “educational” and the “porn” continent.

The forums would have greater authority if contributors went back and deleted their more existential posts.

look out main grid, the teen grid is movin on in!!!

I'm going to assume that adult content will be governed and regulated in "public" places ..not in homes, or privately held property which prohibit anyone from entering who is not on an accepted list.

I for one agree that there should be more care given to dropped pose balls in a public mall, or material of an "adult" nature being shown prominently in shopping areas which are not controlled by adult content warnings. We all know that children can get access to those kinds of places. However to restrict "adult" content to a single continent is a bit drastic in My book. It would seem that would be similar to the "sex" police busting down your door because you were involved in an act not "socially" approved but quite legal and legitimate in the privacy of your own boudoir.

I write literature of an "adult" nature and certainly would be chagrined to discover that people can not purchase nor read My books except on a specific island devoted to erotica.

Ruin Quan

Please, Lindens. DON'T LIE!

You are saying that many residentents are asking for "more control" to what they will see.

You are not giving " control", you are actively blocking contents to some residents:

Peplo who are not verifying (what are you verifying? Nothing!) won't be able to reach content, no matter if they want or don't. This has nothiung to do with more control, with respect. This is just a big lye.

Do what you want, you have the power to do it, bu don't think that we are idiots!

Seems to me an awfully big stink is being made of 2-4% of the total SL content.

The adults go to a new land.
The adults friends and social groups go with them.
The business who depend on the adults (and verified accouts) have to follow (even if thay are not adult themselves).
The adult grid is the new grid.
Mature land devalues as the market is flooded with adults selling off, combined with the perception that Mature land is restricted ... PG+.
Adult land values explode. Early adopters FTW.

A lot of adults who can verify give the mainland the finger and move to private islands.

New users and people who are unable or unwilling to suffer invasion of privacy to verify are stuck.

Underground Sex clubs appear for people who cant verify. The smut creeps back to the mainland.

We all know we can still easily gamble in SL, and we all know that the age players didnt just stop and go away either - we just dont find them in the search. Which is maybe the point. Make SL shiney and clean to the casual observer or investor and pray they dont look at the belly of the beast.