New Abuse Report Handling - abuse report privacy?

Right - While Linden Labs probably wouldnt ban you after such an investigation, why should you get investigated at all when the banning is completely arbitrary?

Worse the people who banned you might make up stuff that will make your investigation go badly.

Break up with a Ban Link memeber of good standing who is a little vindictive - BAM you're banned in 100 sims. You thus could get investigated by LL for dumping someone.

You use the gorean sims for example - some use bans as a method of ensuing compliance. For example a habitual runaway slave could get banned (killed in a RP sense) from a whole block of sims (depending on how much influence the Master the slave angered has). Now someone gets investigated for not roleplaying "well."

WHat if you get banned from Dreamland? Do you automatically get investigated becuase its so many regions?

Maybe they should just give landowner the power to Account Holder ban - and leave it at that.

No LL investigations, no escalations based on what some non-Linden Emplyee thinks is a violation.

Just a simple - "I ban you and your alts - bye"

If the grid is big enough that person will just have to go somewhere else for stuff to do.

Exactly. SL is quickly outgrowing the small town paradigm, and expecting them to scale up for growth requires a change in the way they handle this whole technology.

How is being an SL estate manager any different than being the owner of an internet forum? The person who puts their money on the table and orders a forum from a hosting service is responsible for creating the ground rules and for enforcing them. The hosting service couldn't care less who is on that forum, and what they say there, as long as they don't violate some basic rules for legal internet behavior. Even then, the hosting service is probably not going to actively police message areas until someone reports abuse.

Whether or not we like this, I can't really see how LL can continue to be actively involved in the day-to-day disputes of tens of thousands of residents.

But if they really want to get out of the judicical side of SL, the very best tool they could provide would be the ability to mute an entire avatar, not just their chat. A muted avatar would simply disappear off your viewer. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how many ARs could be avoided with this feature?

Off your viewer? More important to get him out of your life. Can you do that? Methinks I no wanna have an avatar totally invisible to me caging, orbiting, particle-spamming bumping, pushing, and otherwise griefing me.

Well, there is the problem that if you get banned from this and that Internet forum owner, there isn't some giant internet owner who is going to pay attention to how many forum owners ban you, and then ban you from the whole internet.

As for turning to real life law (and judges do have the power to order a person not to use the Internet), real life law is about a jillion steps behind here.

As detractors everywhere say every time someone suggests taking something to real life, "You'll just be laughed at, after all it's just pixels and just a game."

Problem is, most things that go on in SL aren't worth taking to court, and the court may well not care anyhow.

So what we have is a so-called "service provider" - LL - offering terms of their service, but also apparently announcing they really don't intend to uphold them, as long as you give them enough money. ("If he assaults you, that's his right - it's his own land."

Even as a "service provider," LL is more akin to AOL than they are to the internet as a whole, and even AOL has standards that presumably apply to all and equally.

The privacy problems of giving AR's to other residents are nightmarish to contemplate.

coco

My first reaction was to laugh, but I feel sorry for the estate owners, they will know have to deal with the Abuse Reports and the political fallout of doing so. I do not envy them. The hardest thing I had to learn with regards to being a resmod was to see the implications of my decisions before I made them. The consequences are easy, the implications are hard.

As to the privacy issues:
Considering the most abusive abuses of the ARs are against the CS, I'm not worried.

I don't think you and I are thinking of the same thing when we think of privacy issues.

I'm talking about someone who previously might have told LL things they wouldn't tell just anyone, thinking it would be between them and LL.

I'm talking about a person who in making their AR, may want to include something embarrassing, or private, or something that would amount to disclosure. Previously, we could rest assured that only LL would be viewing these.

(By the way, I have never sent any such AR, but it seems to me that with the things that go in in SL, such as sexual harassment, it's quite possible that in many cases people would want to keep their complaints private.)

I'm not sure I understand your take on it, when you say, "the most abusive abuses against the AR are against the CS." I'm not talking about people who write abusive AR's, if that's what you mean. I'm talking about people who are disclosing information in their AR they may well not want passed on to residents, who can then pass it on to other residents.

coco

Theres a lot of things that happen in Second Life that are a lot more personal than occur on website forums and websites in general.

People who are truly involved have a lot more of themselves immersed in their Second Life than they do on their Geocities Page or their Myspace. Not to mention invested.

I think theres too much of calling Second Life the 3d Web by a lot of people on the forums, and not enough aknowledgement for many its an extention of their social lives.

Being investigated by Linden Labs becuase I disagree with one of the Ordained region owners who has a lot of friends and is part of ban-link?

Giving details of when Ive been harassed to some 3rd party not bound by the TOS/CS?

Thats crazy.

We need to stop trying to infringe on the innocent to punish the largely ineffective griefers.

No one expects the Spanish Inquistion.

Oh snap, I didn't think of that. I hadn't considered that the Estate Owner reading the AR would constitute a violation. Maybe there should be a checkbox so that issues of that nature don't get sent to the estate owner.

Boy, I'm glad LL is paying attention. Trollers aside, these forums raise issues that are important to SL and may easily be overlooked by anyone - like this one.Right on.

Basic point is still operative: This decentralization looks like a good thing, but we do need to look at the various ways that estate owners themselves can abuse it. Let's work on solving that problem; this is otherwise too good to scrap.

Already raised in the blog, with the answer that there will be "warnings". Warning have proven way more efficient than actually giving people options, just look at how hard up landbots are

Hello everybody,

so far I get the impression that all of you think that Linden Labs will blindly ban every account that goes over a certain threshold of bans. And that they are completely ignorant of BanLink and the impact this (or similar) site(s) has (have).

Also most of you think of the bad.. well... worst cases. You completely disregard the ability of the Simowners to think. I give you the point of malicious people, of people without manners and of plain.. well.. ah.. rude people. But the majority of people I met in SL are very nice and kind.

And also... if you do include private things in an 'Abuse Report'... well.. ah... huh? Why? I must admit that I am curious now

Ok, sorry... back to topic... Well I just had a look at the blog again and noticed that Chadrick has responded like I have never seen any Linden respond. So I really believe that this can be a good thing.

Let's try it.

What is to stop a character assination of someone... I imagine a senerio whereby a banning on say 5 estates owned by one person for a disagreement, potentially resulting in a cascade effect if that information is distributed, which it can be, between friends and or associates of other estates, without a 'fair trial'.

Dont think anyones said this.

However the Lindens have said they will investigate people who goes over a threshold.

I must say that this whole thing give me the shivvers. AR's should be handled by independent people representing the company behind SL and have because of that a certain level of trust...
Estate owners belong by default not to that category.... They are not independent at all, they are too closely involved and trust is not something I give to a stranger with an unknown background to me.
Worse... a estate owner is a customer to Linden!

Thereby I am a persons who stands strong for privacy... that some Estate Owners can do with the information belonging to AR's as he/she pleases is something that hurts priivacy big time.

And yes, who watches the watchmen???

Morwen.

Chadrick stated in a response on the blog that new identity verification stuff would allow estate managers to ban alts along with the account they want rid of. I'm not clear on whether that means they intend to divulge (even by default) all your alt accounts to sim owners or not, or your ip or registered email etc.

So far, I'm on the fence on this one. IMO, we don't have enough accurate information yet. Just a blog post with an amount of ambiguity, and then lots of speculation and what-ifs.

As an estate owner (albeit a new one and a single island) I don't even know yet if I would opt-in to this. If LL plans to offload the responsibility without providing suitable tools and capabilities then there's no way. And as others have pointed out, both in the blog and in the forums, if there is no way for an estate owner to 'escalate' something to LL, again it's a non-starter for me. My biggest concern is, if I have some alt cauting serious griefing on my island, I ban him, and 10 minutes later he's back as another alt... if I am to be the government, then I want the tools to ip or machine ban someone if they've proven they're coming back as alts to continue troublemaking.

As a resident, I would like to see three options added to the AR popup. The options would be like radio-buttons, and the choices would be 'Send to Estate Manger', 'Send to Linden Labs', and 'Send to Both'. On the mainland it would always be 'Send to LL', and on private estates, the default option would be whatever the estate manager wanted to set the default to. However -- the resident would have the final say on where their AR went. I don't think this should be too much to ask. Residents should know where their AR is going, and should have a say in that. Really, I think if residents know their estate owner, if they've dealt with LL's customer support before, most are going to prefer to deal with the estate owner -- where its appropriate.

Anyhow, I guess my point is, Estate Owners need more tools and information in order to take on the added responsibility, Residents must be told ahead of time where their AR is going, and ideally should have the option of where to send the AR or send a copy of it, and I think we all need more information before passing judgement on the whole thing.

-Atashi

You are treating this as a new policy. It's not really new.

Here is a comparison of the before and after of this new policy.

Before: Linden Labs doesn't respond to your abuse report.
After: Linden Labs doesn't respond to your abuse report.

Before: If you want something done about griefing on a private sim, you have to talk to the owner.
After: If you want something done about griefing on a private sim, you have to talk to the owner.

This doesn't really change anything. I guess it makes the current system "official." Or, it confirms what you already suspected. At least you don't need to have false hopes about your abuse reports anymore.

It's not a bad thing to make owners primarily responsible for handling abuse. Maybe there will be some level of competition between private owners to offer a level of security that will make residents happy.

Edit: If Linden Labs is officially downgrading the services it offers to private sim owners, shouldn't this be accompanied by lower fees charged to private sim owners?

But its upgrading them ... they get a fancy new title and everything.

It will be interesting to see how the new verification system works. It would be hard to give private owners the capability to ban by identity without access to the IP addresses. One person can have access to multiple IP addresses, but on the same subnet (correct terminology?) To get one person, and one person only, a set of ten IPs might need to be banned. Or the only way to stop one person might be to ban an entire ISP.

Private owners need tools to secure their sims. But I'm also very wary of letting strangers get my IP address. I wonder if this identity verification system can give private owners better banning power but keep customer privacy intact at the same time.

Sorry, you're right. I guess that means, with an upgrade, there will be a fee hike.

It's possible to allow certain extra tools for estate owners without having to divulge any extra info.

Want an IP ban? Tick a box to ban the IP when banning the AV. No need to see the IP.
Want a MAC address ban? Again, tick the box.

If LL start handing out the IP addresses of one set of customers to another set who simply pay them more money, how long do you thing they will survive as a business?

The thing that concerns me most though is not the extra tools, it's the privacy.
If an estate owner, one of their assigned "sheriffs" or any of their friends decides to stalk somebody, LL will not intevene at all, no matter how bad it is. Without making crystal clear to people that ARs no longer go to linden, there's a good chance the accused will see the AR. Combine that with tier payments made through paypal, and there's a chance the accused has the RL name and address of the accuser.
LL have a good chance of spotting serious mental illness in their staff, where every action is monitored closely. Can the same be said for anyone who comes along with $1600?

I agree it's possible to do this so that the "offender" only ever gets "you can't go there" and the sim owner need know nothing about it except for a box being checked for ip or mac ban or whatever.

What we don't have is word from LL that that is how it's going to be done.

I hadn't thought about how resident owners having your address and credit info would interact with resident owners handling abuse reports. Sounds bad.

A specific IP ban just isn't useful at all since the large majority has a dynamically assigned one.
MAC address is supplied by the client so just worthless with an open source client.

IRC style mask banning would be far more effective but has the bad side-effect of banning a whole lot of other innocent people.

The means to virtually stop griefing has been there for months, but noone is willing to use it. Ban unverifieds and griefing will go from being a recurring "nightmare" to an occasional nuisance every now and then.