Land buying Bots are effecting EVERYONE

Before I start, please stop yourself from turning this into an off the point give low blows to land dealers type of thread.

At this point, there are 3 auto buying landbots that I personally am aware of. Now obviosly I have never been a fan of any. The first 2 bot owners however would at least attempt to be civil, and as far as I am aware, they would give back land when a resident had listed it in error.

Now there is a 3rd auto buying landbot called Landbot Hax. I do not know who owns this one. The scary part and the part that effects everyone, this one is run with no compassion and on 100% greed. Yesturday I landed on a plot, was nice, was cheap, I clicked buy, I got the dropdown, my account was deducted, I lost my 8K, the land went into the name of landbot hax. When lag is combined with the bot speed, transaction errors occur. I can wait for LL and my 8K and go through the email war until I get my money back, but what if this was an average resident who had saved the 8K in order to buy the land. They are out 8K for a month or more until LL can get back to them.

Anouther situation with this new one, people land on a plot, if they like it click buy, the bot buys the land and resets it so fast at a higher price, that before the human buyers buying window changes, they click buy and don't realize until they get the drop down that they just paid a higher price for the land to Landbot hax instead of the original amount from the original seller.

Third situation, which really pisses me off, and I logged onto sl today with im's about this one. A resident mistlists a plot. They miss a number, or intend to sell it to the friend standing there on the plot with them. The bot insta-buys and resets the land higher faster than a human can do anything. The resident is then forced to take the loss of his or her land, or buy the land back at the price Landbox Hax has reset it at.

These landbots, this new one in paticular, have an effect on EVERYONE in sl, not just land dealers. I am personally hearing about this bot hurting people 5 or 6 times a day, and I think thats an insane number. God knows how many times a day this happens that we arn't aware of. LL needs to do something about this situation. It just keeps getting more and more out of hand.

LOL! Yes, let's not say anything negative about one type of land trader, let's just be mean to some other type of land trader! This is sillier than LL turning off comments on blog posts about the game crashing.

You know as well as I do these forumns get way off of the point. Like it is now....

Are these bots legal? Has LL said one way or another? How do they work? Is it a client hack? A script? It seems that if it is legal and LL hasn't said they are not allowed, then even if they are unfair, isn't it then just someone taking advantage of the system, legally? If they are legal, why don't all the land traders use them? Then it would just be a battle of the bots.

Awesome question. If only I hadn't answered it 1000 times already.

Honestly, the forum search is not any good. This topic has been brought up many times before, but I can't remember any of the answers. Same topic, same questions, I guess.

My only real worry and the reason I felt this one needed a new post was because this new one is like the lowest of the low. An yes, currently its as legal as spam plot dealing.

Is it okay to name names in the forums if it's a bot and not a 'real' resident?

And since now it appears that several people have bots, yes, I think the land market has turned into a 'battle of the bots'.

And when you loose your land because of an error, lets see who you get farther with, a bot dealer, or a human dealer that acually has a concern for reputation.

Bots are completely legal. There are thousands of them. LL know about them and have commented on them in the press here: http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/02/09/linden-sees-further-drop-in-real-estate-prices/ and have mentioned them in the blog. They do not consider them a problem. They have worked closely with the open source community and the libsl team and pretty much helped them as much as possible.

In fact, about a month after land buying bots became very popular they went to the extra effort of changing the TOS so that it more explicitly allowed bots.

Other land traders don't use them because all the old guard are incapable of programming. Land flipping used to require little more than clicking on search once every 2 seconds. Everyone who thought that scam would last forever and failed to put any investment into the future is now crying about how hard done by they are and trying their hardest to get people like me banned, or harass me until I leave or maybe just stamp their little feet and pout until someone feels sorry for them.

I'm pretty much getting tired of it. It's been three months now and you guys still think you're going to be able to buy cheap land by clicking around on stuff? Give. It. Up. That game has gone along with the weaving loom, the horse and buggy and betamax.

Well, if that is the case, then I guess there is nothing wrong with it. I do feel for these people that lose out because of an error. But also, SL has come a long way in making sure people can clearly see how much they are selling the land for and to whom they are selling too. It happened before bots ever came along with people manually doing it. People would complain all the time that it was in error, but some land dealer could have cared less. I see the bot as just an extension of the need of some people to put the value of the dollar over anything else. It would be funny if there were 100 people all with the bots. You would have bot on bot wars.

Still, form a technical standpoint, I would still love to know how these bots work.

As you can see by this feature vote http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2783 and if you talk to the many residents being taken advantage of, that's not totally true. Adn Lindens are talking about adding features to stop this. I just hope they do soon.

ALL landbots should be destroyed!!!

I'm not a land dealer, nor do I intend to be one. I do some land though, one 3072 parcel I bought from a recently and another 2560 that I bought one lot at a time but are all contguous. I bought the 2560 from land dealer, I guess. He had and still has several lots in that sim. My dealings with him [actually a group] have been fair and decent. No complaints. I have learned a lot from reading land threads in this forum. Sarah has ben one of my unintentional teachers. thank you, Sarah. My opinions on land dealers is nuetral. I think there ar eprobably good ones and bad ones.

This bot Sarah is talking about should be stopped. Hopefully LL will stop it. It is going to be a serious problem, especially if it continues.

What can we do to stop it? Since I haven't actually sold any land [other than a 1L swap with one of my neighbors] I don't have any experience there. It may be safer to only buy or sell land only after a pre arranged contact with another person, a potential buyer. Hopefully both would be on line and ingame at the same time. Then the seller can make sure that the price is accurate and set the land to sell to ONLY that person. The buyer of course can make sure theprice is accurate too. This solution is not problem free. That process wil slow things down and many good deals, both buys and sells will be lost. IF I decide to sell some of my land [doubtful] I would first try to market it informally to ffriends and acquaintences, or people I know by reputation. E.G. I would have no hesitation in either buying land from or selling land to Sarah.

I appreciate the warning on this and I, for one, will be very, very careful in future transactions eithe rbuying or selling. Also, IF I know their identities, I would REFUSE to either buy from or sell to anyone using a bot....period. Some may take issue at this, but I have a right to decide with whom I do business with.

Oh P.S. I feel some sympathy if it really is possible to see one thing on the land buying page and then pay another because a bot flipped it faster than you could click. I'm not so sure that's even possible and I wouldn't put it past some people to lie about it just to make a point. Regardless, if it's true then there needs to be a technical solution implemented by LL in the viewer.

As for "accidentally" selling your land. I mean, man, there really couldn't be more warnings. I know it happens dozens of times a day, but seriously, what more can you do to protect people from themselves?

Yea but no matter what protection is in place, human error will happen. And I didn't come into this attacking you and your bots personally. You know I don't like your bots, you know I am fully against bot buying, but this need breed of 100% greed driven screw everyone over type of bot if really frightning.

This makes sense for buying but if you're selling your land on the open market via listings, you have no say to whom you sell it to.

Is there a way to "private treaty" between land buyers and sellers?

You can set your land to sell to a specific buyer only at a specific price. Then no one else can swoop in and grab it. That is the safest way to protect your buyer from a bot.

i did a double-take on that too. is it really possible? anybody prepared to test it out? it does seem like a gormless coding oversight on ll's part if true. if (cli_parcelprice != sim_parcelprice) { sigh(); }

=P

I L'edMAO at the new breed of super power brainiac bot flipper

Seem the one that is running the bots is in a group. Just do a People Search for Landbot Hax and you'll see that the Bot Master none other than the notorious creator of the Copy Bot. Just adding 2 and 2 together.

Oooh! Anyone can join! I can be a bot too!!! Yippeeee!!

But I probably won't. Even though it sounds like it must be the cool thing to do since it's full of libsecondlife folks.

Wow, maybe LL will take notice now...

Maybe your bot just isn't fast enough. Maybe you just aren't a good enough scriptor. Maybe you are going the way of the weaving loom, the horse and buggy and betamax.

coco

I just looked at this group. It's the usual suspects.

In my view, they figure it this way: They can do whatever they want to do. They are invincible. LL has given libSL its blessings.

In return, libSL has given us Copybot and now this.

If we don't like what they do, too bad, so sad. They own the code, and therefore they own SL.

To be against anything they do is to be Against Progress, and to be hopelessly, laughably provincial. And laugh at us they do.

coco