why did linden labs open all gates to hooligans, so called terrorists, bored kiddies

why did linden labs open all gates to hooligans, so called terrorists, bored kiddies???

okay ... i'm not the absolut SL pro yet being around for only a few month now, but as i'm already officer in some bigger community groups, run a club with my partner and administer some sims, i know just to well about late time troubles and how it harms most loyal, paying and taking SL serious users lately.

to make it simple it come down to one question: why the bloody hell did linden labs change the registration procedure and made it publically available without any age verification??? the only impact to SL i see from it is a rising amount of aggression, vandalism and such things. and to be honest i cant even understand the reason why registration verification was disabled. does it bring in more paying users? not really! does it make SL any better? hell no, its gettin worse every hour. in fact all it does was caus disadvantages and problem.

i dont even want to mention the legal issue. now that every 6 year old kiddie can register and get into SL ... how is made sure no minor are facing mature and adult rated stuff and actions? and how can anyone know the "other avi" havin fun with aint way under age? i know its a fact already now that only accounts that existed before all there changes were done are considered trustworthy.

so is that the idea of the changes to make account creation uncontrolled public available? an insane raising number of new users? and only least part of them actually getting into the game seriously? is the idea really to open SL to such immense vandalism and useless fighting / counterfighting? was the idea really to make all new users being distrusted by opinion?

everyone i talked about all this was having the same bad feelings about it. and some (so di i) even apprehended this might be the first step to SL's end. with all serious ppl in game leaving for the mentioned reasons. with last update linden labs put in a new "terms to accept" feature - but we all know the least part actually read it. and most certain anyone up for trouble wont give a damn on whats said in there. and the feature showing if paiment infos are in use or not on the profile page ... it just pushes the distrust further.

phar

Good question, but probably not for this forum? I can't see the connection with Political Science (explained in the Sticky above).

Here is the problem:

1. Without Age restriction, kids under 18 could come to mature rated areas and watch people having sex, see porn on video screens, and even perform sex with other players. This is what they call in Legalese as "Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor" and if I'm not mistaken that's up there with Pedophilia as a major No-no. What could stop some surburbanite homemaker to find their child watching a virtual sex act at a club, and finding some legal way to label the RL owners of that club as Pedophiles?

2. Around 12:30am SL time at the day of this posting, an attack by griefers hit not only my home sim of Hydrangea, but allegedly several other sims. Giant prim boxes hovered overhead that droped red slap boxes onto the people below. Anyone that got hit by these blocks got pushed and/or crashed their client. The owner of the weapon, a 123456 ping was no where to be found in the find window. I can only assume that the griefer rigged the gadget to activate at a certain time, then deleted his account just in time to avoid being caught. And since there is no way to verify age or anything, there is no way to block this guy from further attacks.

I personally am upset at the lack-luster way of Linden labs allowing this to happen. Most regular players haven't the gear or tech-savvy to deal with this kind of mass attacks or dealing with underage kids. I invested a lot of money to enjoy this game and It upsets me that Linden abuses that by allowing open registrations.

I imagine they did it to counteract claims that Second Life is boring!

Linden Labs has always encouraged taking things out of their hands and into ours.

Sometimes it's wonderful and welcome.

Sometimes it's something that not only would we rather they do, but that they have more power to do well.

I'd not be happy about age verification to be placed in our hands.... but if it is I know I will be sending a whole new type of AR.

"Subject believed to be underage"

I encourage everyone to submit an AR any time you think you are talking to a youngster. It can be very obvious at times.

Jeez, they'll have a couple hundred a day from Devlin alone

Doesn't always work. I got talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago who got me suspicious by talking about school. He eventually told me he was thirteen...an age reflected in his username...and (more disturbingly) his username suggests he's here for encounters with women.

I ARd him...and when he suspected what happened (camera click)...he moved away. Ten minutes later...he was flirting with a female I would presume to be over 18 and she was responding. From the next day, for the next nine days, he'd disappeared. Presumably SL had asked him to verify age and he couldn't. Prior to that, he was on all the time outside of British school hours.

Then, on the ninth/tenth day, he appeared online again...so I assume he's somehow got hold of a parent's credit card. When the system was updated recently, it shows that he actually paid for something. Now, once again, he's online all the time...outside of school hours.

Just an example of the system not working. LL's June 6th actions are irrelevant in this case.

if changes to the account registration effect the whole game, the way its played, the in game society and its order .... where else should it be discuessed but in in-world politics board???

This is not exactly the way I wanted to enter this forum. I just started playing this game just before the last update. I didn't really read the terms on the initial install. Nor did I even realize what kind of content would be in that game.
After this update I skimmed over the terms. I can't help thinking what the hell is keeping kids away from this? The answer is clear. Not damn thing in the world!!! I'm more than a little pissed off about this.
I have known the friend who invited me for a couple of years. We are all adults in our group. I Moderate in a gaming forum, and it is easy to to distinguish the kids from adults just by their names and their writing abilities.
My friend introduced me to a female friend of his who has only played for two weeks. She warmed up to me very fast and the next thing I know, fantasy felt much too real. My chat with this woman was in no way sexual in nature. In fact, we talked about life experiences, family and personal relationships. Through that, I came to the conclusion I was talking to a person who had a good strong set of moral and family values.
There was no nudity involved at all, but the affection animations and the back ground images in this virtual garden of Eden made us both lose touch with reality. SO much so that I had to have a very serious private talk with my friend and another mutual friend at different times. This woman had to do the same with the same 2 friends.
We are now basically forcing ourselves to stay with our group and think about the creativity we can contribute to the game and the community.
I have steered clear of relationships for a number years now, and so have these two women.
If this game can make healthy minded adults in their mid 30s lose touch with reality, imagine what it's doing to human garbage pedophiles. It just sickens me to think about it. Come on Linden labs, wake up and smell the coffee or the bacon or whatever the hell you wake up to in the morning.
Adult and teen communities must not be aloud to intermingle. That's just stupidity in it's purist form.
Part of our group was bombed by the above mentioned user last night. Grown adults wouldn't do such a senseless act.

I am not thrilled about the quite obviously increased number of minors in SL, but I fail to see the point of your post.

After spending time communicating intimately with another adult you found yourself developing a relationship or feelings of some kind for them ? In what way is this losing touch with reality ? What does it have to do with being in a virtual rather than a real environment ? I find this to be pretty much a natural course of events in either. This post says far more about you and your hang ups than it does anything else.

Two theories:
1.) Duck responsibiliy for policiing their game by making that the resident's problem. Too bad the tools are so weak.

2.) Desperate need to pump up the numbers. The real customers are the venture capital people, and the last round of financing came with a requirement to hype the numbers, perhaps?

The trouble with #2, is that is seems to be having the opposite effect on the land sales part of their business. see /130/1d/117461/1.html#post1119111

Maybe they could see the land demand getting soft, and hoped that straining through more krill would be enough to prop up the demand for land? If the current residents don't get too upset, and bail out, it MIGHT work.

The Lindens work in mysterious and contradictory ways.

I hate to be pedantic Phar, but this is not what the Political Science board is here for. Here's Jeska's quote from the sticky:



This board really doesn't have anything to do with the account registration process and is being pored over on other, more appropriate boards such as General. No offence intended, it's just that I disagree with raising this issue here

Indeed they would.

Patroklus, let the mods handle the forum policing.

My point is, if adults are so easily drawn into a role like that, what is stopping pedophiles. from making it their meat market. Would you want to live the rest of your life knowing that a policy screw up got some child murdered? I am more than old enough and life experienced to know that many others will fall into a situation like that.
That is my hang up.
There is bound to be teens and youung adults that won't put thought into continting on a very dangerous path.
I remember my teens and 20's very well. That age group is concerned about sex more than safty. Get my point?

I would just like to remind some people here that the payment system is not, never was, and never will be proof of age.

There is no system out there short of biometrics + certified biometrics database that can tell the age of the person using the computer.

There is *no way* that you can stop teens from appearing on the main grid. It's easy to have one person login, then another person take over.

Please get rid of the delusion that verified payment = age verification. That's not the reason LL put it in.

It's been explained already that the listed payment and verified payment methods are there to track adult violators on the teen grid. You cannot join the teen grid without a verified payment method, thus if an adult is caught on the teen grid, LL has information (via the payment method) that they can give to the authorities.

The purpose of the payment method is tracking violators, not screening violators.

To address griefing from the unverified accounts, LL introduced the hashed system snapshot, which is only the first of the anti-griefing tools that was released. There are several more in the pipeline.

Have a neighbor that have chatted with a few times, i knew he was on the "younger" side, but had no idea till he confided to me today that he had to "hurry up" and sell all his land, seems he'd run up a $300 bill on his mothers credit card...not to mention what all else hes had an opportunity to see and do in a mature sim. I can deff see some legal reprecussions from not at least having them attest not being a minor...but thats just what ive seen so far, i can only imagine it getting worse

This doesn't really belong in the PoliSci forum. Moving to General.

Sorry...I appear to be in the wrong thread. I thought it said something about bored kitties.

*wanders off*

When does it take effect?

----

umm, you can determine a person's age by taking a core sample and counting the rings, can't you?

Oh wait, that's trees.... no wonder it didn't work.... nevermind.

bah - ignore this whole post. I know what you are talking about now. (hashed system snapshot)

Close shut the jaws of Oblivion!

We have a family member that plays in the teen grid, she's 13, and was telling her mom today the grids all abuzz with how easy it is to get on the main grid and into mature areas, the boys are beside themselves...watch out gals..theyre loose!

I do feel bad for any parent that has allowed a credit card to be used by a teen thats loose on the main grid, id start checking my charges rite away and or restricting the use on the account, i can only imagine how much an escort could get out of a teenage boy before a parent caught on...and there is always the pedifile issue....and it just gets worse to think about, shame on you LL...sometimes ya have to do whats right...we all hope you search yer soul and start checking ages for the main grid..for everyones sake, especially the kids.

They would if I bothered to go in-world anymore.

I am working on it. I haved closed 7 Oblivion gates so far, and just found 2 more. (I love the new Elder Scrolls game)

I just closed one the other day.. wait.. GAME? Then what the hell was that in my basement?!?