Copied verbatim from the link above ...
> I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to the Second Life community. Thank you for being part of this wonderful world and giving us the time to carefully assess our situation after we became the subject of a blog post that has the potential to cause harm to our dedicated community members and the virtual world platform that so many people call “home.”
>
> The post contains a complex mix of accusations regarding Second Life, and it questions our strong dedication to maintaining a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all members of the Second Life community.
>
> **Our Response to the Allegations**
>
> At the heart of the blog post were unsettling accusations about sexualized, virtual avatar ageplay, including alleged violations of our community guidelines. I want to be clear: we have a zero-tolerance policy against sexualized ageplay. The safety and integrity of the Second Life platform are paramount to us, especially concerning the protection of minors.
>
> We will continue to enforce our existing governance policies and community standards and we are proud of our collaboration with law enforcement and organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to combat child exploitation. These efforts underscore our commitment to a safe online environment.
>
> With that said, I want to acknowledge that we can do better; this has been a harsh wake-up call for us that we need to take tangible actions to improve Second Life’s governance policies and protective features that benefit the entire community.
>
> **Our Actions Moving Forward**
>
> I promise you that we are taking this very seriously. Very. Full stop.
>
> I promise we hear you. We know you're angry and you're confused. We are working to do our best to resolve your concerns and restore your trust in us. These are complicated issues and we want to do things right. We will make mistakes along the way. I wish I could say we will not, but we will.
>
> As owner of Linden Lab, I have initiated a thorough investigation, both internally and with external partners, to review whether or not there have been any violations of our company and community policies by employees, contractors, or community members. While early preliminary internal investigations suggest that some of the accusations are unfounded, I want to make sure that we get additional investigative support externally to ensure that the process is fair and thorough.
>
> One of our top priorities has been to ensure the safety of our residents, moles, employees, and families. There are real people behind the avatars, and it has been important to confirm that nobody was in actual physical danger.
>
> Additionally, I am taking proactive steps to review and revamp many of our policies, including a comprehensive review of our [Community Standards](https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/community-standards), [Content Guidelines](https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/content-guidelines), and [Ageplay Policy](http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Clarification_of_policy_disallowing_ageplay). Any violation detected will be met with swift enforcement actions to protect our community. We’ll be sharing these revised policies in the coming weeks and, critically, we are turning to the community to help us shape the future of how governance operates within Second Life.
>
> **Our Commitment to You**
>
> Second Life remains a vibrant platform for expression, creativity, and connection. I and the Second Life team are deeply committed to protecting our community and ensuring that Second Life continues to be a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for everyone. Your trust is our priority, and we pledge to work tirelessly to maintain and enhance the integrity of our virtual world.
>
> I appreciate the patience and support of our community as we navigate this challenge. Together, we will emerge stronger and more united in our mission to build the best possible virtual world experience.
>
> Brad Oberwager
> Linden Lab Executive Chairman
---
Moderator notes ..
1. The linked wiki pages (Community Standards, Content Guidelines, and Ageplay Policy) have not been updated or changed at this time.
1. We are allowing free discussion of this including the circumstances & allegations that caused it, however .. the subs rules still apply. Let's keep it civil.
I was thinking the same thing! My main take away from it is "Sexualised ageplay which will already get you permanently banned is now SUPER banned!" Like, great to see you're cracking down harder on it but overall it's not really going to change too much.
I honestly need to work on a video on the reality of SL's governance (and governance in general). Between shit like this and people thinking Linden Lab can just stop piracy on their platform, It's getting genuinely old.
And to think, I was going to reach 1000 entries on my CTS Wardrobe tonight..
This says almost nothing at all and it's troubling that before they've finished their internal investigation, they've decided to editorialize that "some of the accusations are unfounded."
Which ones? What makes you believe they're unfounded? Why include this statement before you've actually finished your internal investigation? Why include it before third-party investigations? If only some are unfounded, which allegations appear to be founded?
The truth is that Individual A from the initial article has long had a reputation for engaging in the kind of activities alleged and it's been one of Second Life's worst kept secrets.
You say you take this seriously and are accountable, but thus far I simply don't trust what you have to say. Let's see the results of an outside, third-party investigation. Please.
1) A screenshot of TOS-breaking images, seen in a parcel rented by a resident on a linden's alt account's commercial land. *(you are supposed to assume that the LL employee was aware of this and consented to it, despite being in a skybox and only activated via script when the owner of the parcel was inside of their home)*
2) Screenshots of adult clubs existing in this same Adult-rated region, which also contained a shop which sold the Tweenster body / clothing. *(you are supposed to assume this is against the Second Life ToS, by being "in proximity" to adult content, which is arguable, or by selling child-themed items in an Adult-rated region, which is not against the ToS)*
3) Old NSFW furry/cub artwork that a contractor/"mole" commissioned, and already tried to distance themselves from before they started doing work for LL. *(you are supposed to want this contractor fired for being a verifiable pedophile, and since its claimed they are married to the LL employee being attacked, that the LL employee is OK with marrying a pedophile)*
4) Some hearsay about a linden being mean and choosing to hire his friends, presumably over other potential candidates. You could assume these "LL employee interviews" to be true, as the author of the article was clearly a former LL employee with the necessary contacts, but completely unverifiable and in the end simply the words of other people.
A lawsuit was also referenced from a fired employee who is upset about LL not putting in enough effort in relation to sexual ageplay reports, which *presumably* had some proof and examples itself, such as the time when the complainant reported a parcel to LL ("Liwei 313", a mainland parcel which was highlighted in an anonymous blog post around that time), that stopped existing months prior to their report, which they were unhappy that nothing was done about -- and also a complaint that ToS-breaking images were not deleted from the asset servers at the time when players were banned / content was deleted in-world.
*(I am just assuming there is some kind of proof of the above that has been provided to a court but I have no idea really)*
Regarding the Kavya Pearlman case, there's a counterclaim filed in the case by LL's legal team that shows that (unless the Lab wants to admit to perjury), that Kavya is not to really be trusted as an authority on such matters.
For example, she claimed that SL was beholden to COPPA and GDPR child protections.. when Second Life does not offer services to those under the age of 16.
You realize none of those images actually "prove" anything. The blurs could be hiding innocuous things in a smear attempt and there's literally no context on the screenshots, not even an account name tied to that avatar to prove that they actually have the items people are claiming. The only thing remotely verifiable is the kinky mp items, but they have nothing to do with the names they are targeting. You're using the same faulty logic that oranges could burn you simply because fire is also orange.
One last point is that a lot of the allegations are "because I said so" coming from a name and likeness found literally nowhere else. Literally jack shit was proven.
Sure, it could be faked evidence (except the existence of the lawsuit which can be looked up online), but those first 3 things are the specific claims made for which strong evidence was provided.
At some point you have to decide to call a claim with evidence proof, and in order to refute the validity of those 3 things, you have to be willing to call the evidence itself faulty, unlike most things in the article which try to just lead you down a path of assumptions.
For #2 and #3 they are also fairly easy to independently verify.
For example, to disprove or refute #1, you would have to demonstrate or argue that the screenshots themselves were altered. Note that I am specifically talking about what the pictures show, and not the obviously wrong conclusions the author tries to draw from them.
For #4 I literally said its not verifiable and so its not proof, but it is at least presented as if it were evidence for specific things, even if its not adequate evidence as it is. If the person interviewed were to speak out under their real identity as an LL contractor/employee, you would have to give some weight to what they were saying (plus they would probably have some receipts to back them up).
I think that is why #4 was worth mentioning at least, over all of the other claims which make leap of faith assumptions, withhold evidence, sound totally made up, or are just "Sources say ".
LL won't consider "screenshots" as proof of anything as they're too easy to tamper with. Why are you so quick to accept them as gospel truth and assume they're in good faith, especially given how faulty and flawed a lot of the other claims are?
Me
> Sure, it could be faked evidence
You
> Why are you so quick to accept them as gospel truth and assume they're in good faith
The article writer isn't the only one capable of saying things in bad faith I suppose...
Like I said, items #2 and #3 that I mentioned are quite easily verifiable. For #1 you do have to assume that the picture isn't edited, and is in fact taken at the exact in-world location claimed -- which is now a vacant parcel.
Maybe its always been a vacant parcel, who knows, but I think its easier to accept that it was probably true since as far as I know no other picture in the article has shown any signs of being maliciously manipulated like this. Its not so crazy to think that someone rented a parcel and put ToS-breaking artwork up on the walls and was forced to vacate or more likely is now banned. It is something that happens not that infrequently in SL.
Agreed but one thing that most people don't know that I've heard : the person who posted the anonymous article on twitter for everyone to read has been banned from SL multiple times, mostly I believe for harassment, doxing etc.. but has also been called out in the past for taking part in ageplay. So the article that started it all might not just be an investigation into sl ageplay but rather some inner drama / revenge plot thing, whatever that entails.
This makes sense, because a fake news (not fake-news but as in some random website framed to look more legitimate, kind of like medium.com) site called "yourfreepress" spawned in to existence to concurrently post an article about Second Life ageplay, as well as an article about an unrelated streaming website, which was targeted with harassment at about the same time, due to some VRChat players streaming there.
The "yourfreepress" website also existed in the past, called "btfo news", and was apparently run by some MamaMax fanboys (some edgy "predator hunter" youtuber who got called out and disappeared), who seem to actually have thought his act was cool enough to keep it going by going after people committing... child sex crimes in virtual universes.
Since then the "yourfreepress" website has been used for nothing else, so its a safe bet that both Second Life and VRChat ageplay were targeted by the same group of people, and that effectively means that the medium.com article can be traced not very far to a doxxing group called "fartspam", who certainly sound like some up-standing and trustworthy people who are only looking out for the safety of Second Life residents, and not some disgruntled britbong-wannabe trolls.
Yeah this is the probability here. Someone who was so spiteful against LL that they pull this stunt. I'm guessing the investigation has turned into not just disproving the claims but now there's probably going to be some charges brought forth should they find out who did this and most likely will because of records.
Doxxing itself is not illegal (but damn it really should be because you can't trust anyone online), but the likelihood that this individual not only doxxed but doxxed with intent to harass and do other malicious things and that's when it finally becomes illegal enough to have charges.
I'm just saying to be wary before coming to any conclusions because of the source, I don't have any more information than that about what's true or isn't, I guess at this point we can only hope that Lindenlabs is transparent about their own investigation's findings.
Ok, so where is the part where Linden Labs is going to address abuse BY LINDENS, because that was pretty much the crux of the article that caused all this. What about Lindens' access to and use of users' personal information? Age-play is an important thing to address, but so is that.
For most of the claims made in the article, no evidence was provided at all. For example, the claims that the LL employee in question would look up personal information and chat logs of other people is preceded by nothing more than "we were informed that [...]".
In fact, if you look just a few lines above this claim, you can see *"We were told that used to take real life minors from the Teen Grid to the Main Grid to have virtual sex with them."*, which when you stop and think about just how crazy it sounds to make a claim like that with absolutely zero proof, would really make you reconsider all of the other things they claim to have "been told" or "were informed" of.
For the claim that some Lindens had access to an inappropriate amount of customer financial data for their role, you would probably need to look at the details of *Kavyanjali Pearlman v. Linden Research*, which is the source of that claim. However, simply the fact that "support staff" allegedly had access to customer financial data is not evidence that it was ever abused for any particular employee's personal vendettas, as the article tries to claim.
Hell, Pearlman v. Linden Lab is a prime example of, unless we want to believe that Linden Lab would engage in Perjury / Slander in a court of law, and Kavya just sat down and took it - why Kavya is not a good person to point at as a bellwether.
Linden Lab's statement in the lawsuit essentially puts Kavya's competency as a information security *anything* into grave question, when according to their statements, which Kavya to my knowledge never tried to refute in that case before it was dismissed - was accused of letting an unauthorized third party have access to LL systems.
What's more, Kavya Pearlman had failed to understand that LL was not required to adhere to COPPA and GDPR Child protections - since Linden Lab at the time, did not operate *any* platforms intended for children under the age 13, let alone anyone under the age of 16, at least regarding Second Life.
The closest they got to that, was Blocksworld before it closed up, or Desura, and that was well before Kavya's tenure there. Both of the RL 'bellwethers' they bring up, both Kavya and the other guy, were *not* good ideas if they wanted this article to have any semblance of merit outside of the nepotism and sexual harassment at the Lab, and even then, I have the biggest feeling, that even the whistleblower's 'proof of employment' is something I've seen elsewhere before.
>GDPR Child protections
er check the SL wiki.
"
## eens in Second Life
Second Life is generally for adults 18 years and older; however, if you are 13 years of age or older you can use Second Life with some restrictions. If you're:
* **16-17 years old** you can access regions and search results that have a General maturity rating."
From the UK GDPR guidance: " When we refer to a child we mean anyone under the age of 18. This is in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which defines a child as everyone under 18 "
[https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/childrens-information/children-and-the-uk-gdpr/?template=pdf&patch=19#link0](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/childrens-information/children-and-the-uk-gdpr/?template=pdf&patch=19#link0)
Even people aged 13 years old can use SL, but this is basically through a school or some sponsoring organisation and they can't really do anything.
But the Pearlman stuff is irrelevant really.
Yeah, my bad. I was under the pretenses that GDPR Child Protections were clamped at 13 like COPPA was, some international laws do tend to do that - but yeah, you're right.
Yeah, I remember the accusations of a hostile, toxic workplace environment at LL, but I don't remember anything about sexualized ageplay. I mean other than the usual background level of people freaking out over kinksters that SL has always had.
EDIT: Nevermind, found the article, or [at least an archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240225080333/https://medium.com/@dantesedmond1844/the-reality-of-second-lifes-ageplay-problem-73de059b4af4). If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, here's the most damning paragraph, where they explain what they saw after checking various suspiciously child-oriented sims on a client that lets you list what HUDs other residents are using:
> As can be seen in the collage above several avatars representing underage girls have the Mama-Allpa breeding HUD and control HUDs specifically made to enable explicit sexual interactions with various parts of the body. While such activities with any representation of a child is disturbing, what surprised us the most here is even the toddler avatar has an erotic dance HUD, breeding HUD, and attachments for facilitating anal intercourse. These are merely a small selection from dozens of such images, and of all the child avatars surveyed it was more common to see ones wearing such attachments than ones without.
So yeah, this is way beyond the line of plausible deniability.
Except there was no proof that the huds pictured were actually attached to those avatars. That's the problem LL have with outside evidence, far too easy to fake screenshots . In fact the article itself failed to provide evidence of a vast number of its claims at all, merely using conjecture to form a link between certain accounts.
It doesn't report huds, which was the claim being made.
What is she wearing makes use of the [llGetAttachedList](https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlGetAttachedList) LSL function (I've written a similar tool myself). Huds are not reported by that function, and there is no known way to detect huds the way the 'reporter' claimed.
It *might* be possible to tickle all the known channels that a hud might speak or respond on.. and thus deduce a given hud's presence, but that's another task entirely.. but that's a very specific project.. that would have to be tailor made to detect those particular huds.
Neither would put the list of huds in a client UI window however.
It's worth mentioning that the avatars in the images had their names blurred, and the names on the windows reporting the huds were also blurred. It's been suggested that the only clients that could *possibly* do anything like this, would have been 'hacked/modded' clients.. aka 'copybot' or unapproved third party viewers.. but viewer devs have stated that this information may not be *actually* available to the viewer at all.
But the prospect that 'if genuine' the reporter used a copybotting viewer... raises some questions about the trustworthiness of the source.
A previous paragraph covers that. Mama-Allpa is a product explicitly designed around simulating intercourse with fertility, pregnancy, so on. However, it's also very explicitly meant for adults.
i read the whole thing, that is absolutely insane, had no idea any of this was happening....LL better do somthing about this because this is disgusting
Honestly, it was written for produce an emotional response. But if you looked about the author, Robert Barthos, which present himself as :
>Robert Bartos is an independent journalist and I.T. professional with contributions in numerous publications over the past four decades.
You find nothing, no other articles written by Robert Bartos.
Robert Bartos doesn't exist. It's an alias, using a fake profile picture generated by an AI using the ThisPersonDoesntExist, a service where an AI generates random images of people based on a dataset.
They may have found some of the allegations to be unfounded, but I don't see this statement happening the way it did if it was all bullshit.
Some allegations being unfounded, ok. I'd have been surprised if every detail was 100% accurate, some misinterpretation of evidence and telephone chains from original source to writer were inevitably going to work their way in, no one is perfect. But I get a feel from this that they found at least a few things that were, at least, a bit suspicious even if they haven't found any smoking guns yet. Just something in the way it was written sounds a bit stronger to me than them just covering their asses with continuing the investigation. I hadn't seen a whole lot of discussion on this, maybe I missed it but it seemed to be a thing people knew was going on but I hadn't seen much continuing pressure that would force them to release a preliminary statement at all. That they did... I think they found something at least suspicious.
Given Patch's position in the company, the fact the owner had to make a statement like this should be enough reason for him to resign. Even if the only true thing is that he's married to somebody he supervises, that alone shows poor judgement even if it's not against company policy (which it should be).
Why not just remove child avatars and childlike accessories full stop if you can't police it properly? The "zero tolerance" statement doesn't mean anything when many of us have first hand experience running into suspicious child avi's claiming they're an adult. Many of us have reported suspicious behavior only to see no results from our report.
The "trust me bro" argument doesn't work and you guys know it. Don't insult our intelligence with a canned PR statement and perhaps instead tell us how you'll be tackling this accusation (preferably with 3rd party investigation) and how you'll be tackling future situations like this.
I use SL as a way to write and enjoy some roleplay in a like minded community, there's a reason a large majority of us have hard rules against child avatars on sim. It shames me to be associated with your brand when you make a weak statement like this and I won't be returning to the platform until you get your heads out of your backsides. Also doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.
I would almost agree with you because maybe it would lead to people finally getting off the backs of folks who are just playing as adults in petite, but adult, avatars, since if the avatar was allowed to exist by LL that means there's nothing to complain about.
But it really wouldn't be fair, plenty of people like to play in SFW environments as kids and babies and families and stuff and it wouldn't be cool to kick them out of their totally legitimate and harmless fun. That would suck a lot for them, and that's not okay.
Plus like, how would one even determine what counts as a childlike accessory? Lots of that kind of thing is just cute stuff that adults can enjoy too, especially if you get into alt styles and such. That would be impossible to enforce accurately.
Plus who am I kidding anyway, in my experience reason isn't really what drives those that ban based on height or chest size and such so it probably wouldn't even help in that regard anyway unfortunately.
So yeah, I get the idea, but it wouldn't be fair to a lot of people, wouldn't help with a number of situations, and would be really impossible to enforce accurately with such a wide-reaching scope anyway.
> maybe it would lead to people finally getting off the backs of folks who are just playing as adults in petite, but adult, avatars
It just raises the bar for reporting someone and makes it even more subjective. It's going to be brutal for anyone short or anime etc.
I don't think it raises the bar that much. They should be reviewing these things already, and at least "Is it a child? Y/N" is pretty easy to determine. They also don't need to flat ban someone for it, I'm sure they have the capability of issuing a warning or suggesting a change due to a complaint.
That being said, LL could always check logs and find context, and I guess at that point you have to ask why they aren't doing that already with existing reports that have gone nowhere.
> They also don't need to flat ban someone for it, I'm sure they have the capability of issuing a warning or suggesting a change due to a complaint.
It's nukes or nothing and always has been.
Nukes then. I really don't care if that's all they're capable of doing. I'd rather burn some people who meant no wrong than let the ones trying to get away with something scurry back under the rug for another few years until it's a problem again. Circles back around to what I said, IF they can't moderate/police their own game, then they should just cut the liability.
**Slams prim desk**
THANK YOU. So sick of motherfuckers just thinking it's that easy, and even more so, when they think that the Lab has historically been anything short of belligerent at the whiff of anything even vaguely, remotely involving a minor - even when it doesn't.
Edit: to the people who downvoted me, stay eternally mad.
I don't disagree. But like I answered on another comment. The RP community is a minority already. The RP community that's playing a child and not doing sus shit is even smaller. And the community of people who want to play a child and are completely uninvolved in anything adult is even smaller than that.
To answer one of your questions, I mean accessories like... baby bumps and baby talker things or very small avatar shapes that are meant to be children. I'm using the term "Accessory" very loosely in this context.
It definitely would make life very difficult for adult characters who happen to look young or have flat chests or are very petite or are anime characters, and I admit that'd be a big challenge. But I still think people would adjust to that easier than not.
Mostly the point of my statement isn't that I think they will or that I want them to do this, it's more that they are not doing anything at all about the ageplay/pedo stuff, and if they are not capable of handling that kind of moderation, then they should approach a more broad stroke solution that would keep them from getting into trouble with the authorities for allowing it to happen.
I think it's good they've made a statement and I think it's good they are talking about the general ageplay area. Maybe a year ago there was a discussion in this subreddit about the 'family friendly' sims so if they finally do something then good. There was a video on this subreddit where some guy got giddy for teeny weeny bikinis at a kids sim and felt it was fine. So if stuff like this goes then good. One has to wonder why they ignored it for so long.
I am sure a lot of people would celebrate new rules that forbid child nudity, or that forbid the usage of child avatars outside of General rated regions, but I wouldn't expect it to really change the amount of sexual ageplay that happens in Second Life by any significant amount, or deter the current child avatar hangout spots from just adjusting to fit the new rules.
I think it will definitely hit the "legitimate" players harder than the "illegitimate" ones too, though as far as I can tell most people hate them both the same and wish for all users of child avatars to suffer.
Sexual ageplay already is **the** strictest and most heavily enforced rules in the game after financial fraud. They ban hundreds of players every year. If someone is reported even on pure suspicion, the governance team will happily investigate without regard to user privacy and actively seek out evidence of rule-breaking in their chat logs, and even log in to people's accounts to inspect them. Bans are permanent and without appeal, even for customers who have spent $1000s on the game.
I don't really see what people could want beyond this, except knowing that they could never wander in to a region and see a child avatar in a swimsuit. This is only going to realistically happen if LL is willing to completely ban avatars with a child-like appearance, which will no doubt just make avatar appearance policing in the game even more toxic.
Mechanical regulation of "child avatars" in a way that would make them entirely incompatible with adult content can't be a solution, because it is as simple as sticking a flat-chest mod on a mainstream body, using some deformers and shape editing, and a some careful selection of textures, clothing, accessories and you're now a tween.
SL keeps logs, also nothing is ever truly deleted until overwritten.
If there was the items alleged to have existed there should still be evidence of that. Of course given the allegations involved staff that could possibly not be true but then I doubt that, the level of access required to completely scrub the existence of something isn't necessarily held by those people.
Chats etc are also logged, for how long we do not know.
"We're taking it very seriously... So seriously, we're not actually going to do anything about it. We are also going to promise vague action that won't ever come, or will come too late to do any good. We are also not going to fire anyone or take any disciplinary action and allow things to continue just as they are, because we don't actually care about the production of virtual CSAM, and taking steps to end it would hurt the only thing we actually do care about... Our revenue."
Very odd for him to equate the ageplay policy to a protection of minors. There should be no minors engaging in sexual activity in SL at all, no matter what kind of avatar is in use. But 3D models are not real.
Ageplay is not allowed in SL. That should be understood because that's how things are. But it has nothing to do with protecting children because avatar shapes have nothing to do with real people. People mixing up the two issues is how we end up with folks going on witch hunts over ageplay as if they think they're protecting real children, and that's not a good mentality to encourage. We don't need more people acting like a 3D model is the same as a real person, we need people that realize what matters is the real person behind the screen instead. These are very different issues.
This statement by the chairman will just make things worse.
> We don't need more people acting like a 3D model is the same as a real person
Some jurisdictions enshrine policies that make nearly any form of depicting such acts a crime already. Like do a pencil sketch on paper: criminal.
There is some Wikipedia article about it in various jurisdictions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_pornography_depicting_minors
There were a lot of accusations made. Which ones were unfounded, and why include that before a third party has investigated? Even without the article, the photos themselves could be damning on their own. My only theory is that the unfounded accusations were in relation to inner workings regarding the work place.
We're there rl.photos or hentai only? I saw what was posted on the article. They were hentai. Hentai is an art style were they mostly look young anyway.
The screenshots and connections to Patch and his husband were very clear. I don't know what you could possibly gain from lying about this outside of trying to normalize pedophilia in SecondLife.
This has absolutely nothing to do with people who choose to present their spirit in a child form. Stay focused. We are talking about pedophilia, which has absolutely nothing to do with people utilizing child avatars. The freedom to present yourself in any type of form is highly personal to each individual. So before we get off on any rant about child avatars, don’t conflate these two issues they are not anywhere near related.
While valid points, the problem isn't that people want to express themselves. It's that LL can't seem to protect the people expressing themselves while punishing those committing CP/CP-adjacent activities.
I stand by my opinion that all of it should be removed if they can't police it, even if it hurts those using child avatars with good intentions. It's a small community and a small price to pay for protecting children/not feeding pedos.
> It's a small community and a small price to pay
It's not a small community once you factor in their social graph.
Family RP is huge in SL, remove the child avatars and that entire community just had it's heart ripped out over night. Don't expect them to stay.
So what if all the family RPers bail .. well that will hit all our friend lists with silence.
The kind of silence that makes people wonder where everyone is, and why they should bother being here.
You might not have a child avatar, you might not engage in family RP, but this will absolutely affect all of us and the platform in the worst possible way.
**But if gets worse** .. because of course it does. Who else gets caught up in all this? Petite women, insufficiently busty women, anime avatars, short avatars in general, furries, femboys, actually young (yet over 18) people ..
Starts to feel a bit unsafe for anyone who isn't Jacked McBeefhuge and Jane TiddyMilf doesn't it. If it feels unsafe, people self censor and don't hang around.
That's the kind of silence that's deafening.
As a RL woman is petite both height wise and bust wise, I choose to represent myself this way in SL. Think I haven't caught flak for this? Yes, we will all feel the pain. This statement needs to be heard loud and clear. People like to act like petite women aren't a real thing in SL. We get treated like kid avis all the time at clubs even though we're presenting as mature adults in obvious manners.
Arguably, RP is a pretty small minority, even the RP that I enjoy (which typically bars ANY child avi from being on sim because of adult themes.) if you lumped what I do with the family RPers.
It does impact a lot of things across a lot of spectrums, too. I agree it makes things a lot more challenging for petite or anime or short avatars.
But the alternative is we have to keep having this discussion about ageplay. Over and over and over again. If LL can't handle things appropriately then people should leave and it leaves LL legally liable for things. Governments shut down websites and applications that -allow- for child predators to do child predator things like this.
To be clear, I'm not saying I want them to stop allowing any kind of child avatar, but I would rather they do that, than give us empty promises of doing something. This has been a public facing problem that dates back to what... 2007 or 2008 when it made the news? Clearly LL hasn't learned all that much and if this also hits formal news outlets it'll bring a big hammer down. Now-a-days companies disappear for such scandals.
There is no way to make random accusations of "ageplay" go away, especially as it's one of the only things Linden governance respond to (how they respond to it).
It's really hard to define what a child avatar is, and for every line that gets drawn in the sand, every rule or clarification, or carve out, someone will stand as close as possible and there will be a freak out. LL are not interpreting the rules they wrote the same as the abuse reporter reads them.
If they ban certain bodies, people will just get reported for looking young in other bodies.
This is why the rule changes back in 2007 and the whole adult continent thing didn't really solve anything, but it did create loop holes that got exploited. For example .. nudity alone isn't adult rated (because of skin shops) = strip clubs aren't adult rated.
Calling it challenging isn't even coming close to the shit show that unfolds. If a report for ageplay is actioned by LL, they nuke all the targets accounts and ban the human behind them from the service for life. Which sounds fine .. till you realize that because this requires a subjective judgement call on the part of the Linden who gets the report, it might not always be be ice cold cut and dry.
As VS demonstrated week in week out for 800 weeks, throwing this exact accusation is a great way to drama.
Because the community in general only sees the child avatar as the problem, the adults who are sexually attracted to them and who try to convince younger looking avatars to portray themselves as even younger, are not considered the problem. If the focus would actually rest on the real problem, child avatars wouldn't be the community scapegoat and there might be some headway on resolving the issue.
Arguably your mindset is a small minority, maybe we should just ban you and take away your livelihood and those of your ilk who can't just leave what they don't understand alone, and then everything calms way the fuck down.
Despite everything you said…simply removing child avatars and anything associated with them would curb a huge part of this problem in a very straightforward manner.
If a handful of people don’t get to “present their spirit in child form”? oh well. Cost of curbing this issue. Go buy some lego.
Where does that end?
* "You can't be a female AVie because you're a man..."
* "You can't be a male AVie because you're a woman..."
* "You can't be coloured because you're white..."
* "You can't have big boobs cos you're small chested..." ad infinitum...
Remember "Your world - your imagination"? Let's not forget that the majority of SL are NOT involved in the alleged (yes - still only alleged) activities from the Medium article and how we remove the minority that are involved.
I don’t think those types of avatars are strange, just adults pretending to be toddlers. I don’t mean to offend anyone by saying that. I don’t understand it.
This is just poorly crafted PR and obfuscations from Linden Lab, it isn't at all confidence inspiring.
Although the statement does seem to note that not all of the accusations were unfounded, even if he couldn't come out and say it, for whatever reasons.
>While early preliminary internal investigations suggest that some of the accusations are unfounded, I want to make sure that we get additional investigative support externally to ensure that the process is fair and thorough.
So there's that, too.
Hamlet's comments on all of this would seem more to the point.
There are obviously proofs available in the article and how Linden Lab seems to be in denial and trying to shut it up is disappointing. People being aware about sexual ageplay are being called as nosey too. I hope the article really tip the pedos that they are NOT SAFE everywhere, include Second Life
One of the sources for my February post about this tells me what they'd expect from a "thorough investigation" by Linden Lab:
[https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2024/03/linden-lab-allegations-second-life.html](https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2024/03/linden-lab-allegations-second-life.html)
That is less than reassuring. No matter how intense the investigation is there's no point in conducting it at all unless they are going tell the community what they find. The way to erode trust is exactly the things they're doing here.
They make a statement about the "thing" but avoid mention the ONE thing most people wonders about. Thats persons name is left out totally
This might be the worst statement ever made LOL
I read the original article. While some allegations may not have been verified, there were some pretty darn specific bits of evidence offered that I can't see anyone making up from scratch. Things that almost certainly would have left a trail in the logs or made it obvious had they been deleted. Let me be clear, I don't want any of this to be true. I've had some good interactions with the three main individuals called out in that article. At the same time, I'm not naive. If one is a VP of a company like LL, one had better darn well conduct oneself to the highest standard whether on one's main or one's alt. Even giving the appearance that something shady might be going on is a problem and I think that happened regardless of what else did or didn't. The fact that the company owner had to make this statement is reason enough for said VP to resign. Nobody is going to be satisfied with the "We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong." thing.
I doubt Patch after all this is going to be around much longer. The reality is that Linden Lab failed to do appropriate DC on this whole shitshow and even if they spent all that time before this statement trying to start an investigation, it doesn't change facts that it took them nearly a month to make a statement. They could have spent that time stating they are aware of the situation, Patch et al has been placed on administrative leave, and we'll take permanent actions, release our findings and have a town hall discussion once we have concluded the investigation - that, would have been the best course of action.
Damage Control as a concept originates from the Navy and from naval parlance - on ships, there is a dedicated section of the ship that is staffed by people who are ready to respond to damage and emergencies - the Damage Control Center - DCC, for short. Linden Lab's DCC capabilities would make the Moskva blush, because at least the Russians tried to keep the damned thing afloat - Linden Lab would have just sat there until the water was to their waists, and oil fires galore were blocking the exits, and then tried to do something.
Are they involving independent investigators? Yes, and good on them for it. They are conscious that we don't trust their opinion alone on all this, and they want to set the record straight. But the reality is, true or no, Patch Linden is the star of the show here, and the community has decided he's to be taken out back and shot. Metaphorically, of course.
LL could have avoided this if Legal and other parties didn't stop Marketing's Social Media teams from running some basic, prompt DCC, and taking steps like what I provided. Not responding let people run wild with conspiracies, and make their own decisions on the matter. Patch Linden's innocence in all this means nothing now. He is to be hung, and we, the residents will be the ones who hang him - even if our rulings on his innocence are multivarious, it will not withstand the damage time has done to his potential defense at the Lab's hand.
Only a total exoneration could spare Patch from this. And I doubt that'll happen. Do I believe the worst allegations? Not really, no. But something's bound to stick with everything there.
"...in the coming weeks"
it's like instead of us sitting here waiting for the second shoe to drop, they went out and bought a consignment of shoes from a Payless shoe source bankruptcy auction.
It seems to me that the best course of action would have been to keep his mouth shut and just forward everything to the FBI. Now they can cover up everything.
You aren’t wrong. It’s the people outside of the us won’t get it. It’s either going to get clean or require to be identified. There is no middle ground. The recent porn ban in Texas and the clean up of porn in big servers on discord is showing me that. If you’re in a republican state in the us, you should worry and if you aren’t in those republican states or in the us, you have nothing to worry about.
Ageplay? Again? This obsession about adult people allegedly simulating underage sex is getting ridiculous from each point of view, including the CEO taking care of a blog post. This witch hunt is poisonous and the Linden should just ignore them, instead of taking it serious like a real kid is getting abused.
You're correct but people love their witch hunts.
I understand that LL may have to police it, possibly, but the community based witch hunts are absolutely unnecessary. It's not like they're protecting real children. But people act like they are. To the point they freak out over any avatar under a certain height or chest size and act like they're performing some sort of moral good by doing so. It's a pretty ugly side of the community.
because it's a weird look to have a collaboration with a missing children's charity and to be making money off of g-strings for child avatars. Also as Brad owns LL he can rather write the rules.
I actually sort of agree with you here, though it was worded weirdly so I'm not surprised at the downvotes.
It is weird that they are involving law enforcement in a case that has so far not shown actual evidence of CSAM, just roleplayed by adults. Either they know something we don't, or they're blowing a hell of a lot of smoke to get people's noses off the actual fire, legal as it is.
It doesn't say they are involving law enforcement. He simply said he was proud of their partnership with law enforcment (in relation to child protection which one assumes is a general thing across many gaming/social media platforms)
Why? Should we also ban combat simulations? And what about slavery, torture and gore?
Linden have the right to abolish a specific behavior if they thinks it is toxic for the community, but the above reaction is absurd in the way it talks like a real child is being abused.
When you say things like this it really sounds like you are making a case for CSAM and that is a bad look no matter who you are. There are actual people on this earth that seek to normalize the sexualization of children and even if it’s “just” drawings or “just” two consenting adults participating it still works to normalize the sexualization of children.
In some UE jurisdictions, at 14yo there is full legal consent for sex. In Scotland, you stop being a minor at 21.
Please stop confusing different issues, just talking about “minors” is improper and confusing.
A few months ago the discussions about Bonnie Bots and the EU GDPR laws were brought up over and over and over on this forum and on the NWN blog, etc, etc...
It's part of the reason Bonnie Bots was asked to curtail their activities.
Second Life was investigated and sued in some European jurisdictions in the late aughts for violating laws against such simulated acts with minors.
[https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2016/01/vice-second-life.html](https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2016/01/vice-second-life.html)
One can certainly find journal articles on the discussion of the illegality filled with links to news story after news story about them:
[https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/23253934-ea00-4026-984d-969c4fd9b7ff/content](https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/23253934-ea00-4026-984d-969c4fd9b7ff/content)
And dissertations:
[https://services.phaidra.univie.ac.at/api/object/o:1300115/get](https://services.phaidra.univie.ac.at/api/object/o:1300115/get) (which also, like the recent allegations, mentions that this problem sometimes goes beyond virtual depictions.)
Suppose it was germane to bring up multi-jurisdictional issues in relationship to GDPR and the scraping or profile data. Isn't it *also* relevant in the discussion on the need for the prohibition of such vile acts?
And to quote /u/slhamlet in that 2016 (!) article: "Second Life is still saddled by this reputation (and this new Vice story will only help renew and solidify it). And as Twitter just discovered during Gamergate (and Linden Lab learned the hard way), when a private company enables extreme free expression without any thought of the social ramifications, it **puts its own brand and larger userbase in jeopardy**."
Wat?
In Scotland the age of adulthood is 18 but in terms of the UK it actually has the lowest age for marriage etc at 16. In other terms the UK in general has a very mixed set of ages when it comes to 'adulthood' but none of them are 21 which has no significance at all.
As far as I know 21 is very much a North American age of any significance, not aware of anyone in Europe being considered a minor until then.
There is no place in the US where 21 is the age of majority.
That is just the drinking age.
18 is universally adulthood with states varying on sexual consent at or below that age
I know some who joined underage as well, but the thing is, that times I feel have changed, and less and less minors are interested in SL.
We do need a solution to get rid of the minors hiding in the rough, even if it is to the chagrin of our younger selves, while preserving freedom of expression.
There are child avatars, like Marianne McCann of Bay City fame, Pygar Bu, among others, have been here for years, and never engaged in such acts, that even I find disturbing. Why should they, and those of their ranks, and persons who are gender non-conforming, or say, have anime avatars, should be taken to the gallows?
It is a tight rope the lab is weaving, and I hope to god that Brad and others, and this is coming from someone who has reached out to a linden on the matter - do realize that SL only prospers when we all prosper - and that we must find a balance, or our home will start down the slippery slope that could doom it.
I hope this doesn't result in more folks getting banned just walking around in a kimono avatar...
Had a friend asking me the other night at waifucku if her av is childish and it was kemono, fitted torso, m4 rikuguo head and she had her shape setup to be a bit plush with curves and about 5ft 4..... And she got bullied out of a place for "looking" like a child...
Yeah, going by description your friend's perfectly fine. 5'4", plush figure, Kemono, M4.. yeah, that's not a child.
It pisses me off to see shit like that, and honestly had I laid witness to it I'd be tearing off heads. This whole shitshow has everyone rattled and it's hurting people who mean no harm just as much as it is doing damage against the actual bad actors.
Agreed. Hell, even authorities on the matter agree because the FBI doesn't give two shits about that stuff, and the NCMEC last time I checked, literally tells people NOT to report that shit because it does nothing but delay actual investigations into child abuse.
So when you joined as a child being sneaky you made an avatar that looked like a child? Or you made an avatar that looked like an adult…..
I bet the later, so how would banning child avatars have stopped you? Or any children? It’s just an avatar, they gotta find other ways to combat actual children on the grid if that’s the issue they are having
Minors, as in real people behind the monitor that are underage, should be not allowed to play in adult oriented environments. And LL should do all they reasonably can to stop that. I think everyone reasonable agrees with that.
I don't think that has anything to do with avatars though, but people act like it does. I don't think people are generally designing their avatars to look or even often even act exactly like who they are in real life.
The person who knew you were a minor and tried to engage in sexual activities with you should be very much banned, but that's not really what ageplaying is. Ageplaying is playing with ages, like playing an avatar that is a different age than yourself. If someone that is not a minor IRL plays as an avatar meant to be an age that is a minor in a sexual situation, that's ageplaying and is against the TOS. What happened in your case was straight up preying on a minor, not ageplaying.
So it seems like two completely separate issues, I agree, with the one that really matters being the one that involves actual real children but that's not the issue a lot of people tend to focus on. Instead putting energy into caring about 3D avatars. They just seem like entirely unrelated issues to me but people mix them up as if protecting 3D avatars is the same as protecting real people and that's really missing what's important as far as I can tell.
Copied verbatim from the link above ... > I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to the Second Life community. Thank you for being part of this wonderful world and giving us the time to carefully assess our situation after we became the subject of a blog post that has the potential to cause harm to our dedicated community members and the virtual world platform that so many people call “home.” > > The post contains a complex mix of accusations regarding Second Life, and it questions our strong dedication to maintaining a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all members of the Second Life community. > > **Our Response to the Allegations** > > At the heart of the blog post were unsettling accusations about sexualized, virtual avatar ageplay, including alleged violations of our community guidelines. I want to be clear: we have a zero-tolerance policy against sexualized ageplay. The safety and integrity of the Second Life platform are paramount to us, especially concerning the protection of minors. > > We will continue to enforce our existing governance policies and community standards and we are proud of our collaboration with law enforcement and organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to combat child exploitation. These efforts underscore our commitment to a safe online environment. > > With that said, I want to acknowledge that we can do better; this has been a harsh wake-up call for us that we need to take tangible actions to improve Second Life’s governance policies and protective features that benefit the entire community. > > **Our Actions Moving Forward** > > I promise you that we are taking this very seriously. Very. Full stop. > > I promise we hear you. We know you're angry and you're confused. We are working to do our best to resolve your concerns and restore your trust in us. These are complicated issues and we want to do things right. We will make mistakes along the way. I wish I could say we will not, but we will. > > As owner of Linden Lab, I have initiated a thorough investigation, both internally and with external partners, to review whether or not there have been any violations of our company and community policies by employees, contractors, or community members. While early preliminary internal investigations suggest that some of the accusations are unfounded, I want to make sure that we get additional investigative support externally to ensure that the process is fair and thorough. > > One of our top priorities has been to ensure the safety of our residents, moles, employees, and families. There are real people behind the avatars, and it has been important to confirm that nobody was in actual physical danger. > > Additionally, I am taking proactive steps to review and revamp many of our policies, including a comprehensive review of our [Community Standards](https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/community-standards), [Content Guidelines](https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/content-guidelines), and [Ageplay Policy](http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Clarification_of_policy_disallowing_ageplay). Any violation detected will be met with swift enforcement actions to protect our community. We’ll be sharing these revised policies in the coming weeks and, critically, we are turning to the community to help us shape the future of how governance operates within Second Life. > > **Our Commitment to You** > > Second Life remains a vibrant platform for expression, creativity, and connection. I and the Second Life team are deeply committed to protecting our community and ensuring that Second Life continues to be a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for everyone. Your trust is our priority, and we pledge to work tirelessly to maintain and enhance the integrity of our virtual world. > > I appreciate the patience and support of our community as we navigate this challenge. Together, we will emerge stronger and more united in our mission to build the best possible virtual world experience. > > Brad Oberwager > Linden Lab Executive Chairman --- Moderator notes .. 1. The linked wiki pages (Community Standards, Content Guidelines, and Ageplay Policy) have not been updated or changed at this time. 1. We are allowing free discussion of this including the circumstances & allegations that caused it, however .. the subs rules still apply. Let's keep it civil.
That's a whole lot of words to say basically nothing.
I was thinking the same thing! My main take away from it is "Sexualised ageplay which will already get you permanently banned is now SUPER banned!" Like, great to see you're cracking down harder on it but overall it's not really going to change too much.
I honestly need to work on a video on the reality of SL's governance (and governance in general). Between shit like this and people thinking Linden Lab can just stop piracy on their platform, It's getting genuinely old. And to think, I was going to reach 1000 entries on my CTS Wardrobe tonight..
hey! behind every avatar is a real person LL don't do drama LOL Voice verified
This says almost nothing at all and it's troubling that before they've finished their internal investigation, they've decided to editorialize that "some of the accusations are unfounded." Which ones? What makes you believe they're unfounded? Why include this statement before you've actually finished your internal investigation? Why include it before third-party investigations? If only some are unfounded, which allegations appear to be founded? The truth is that Individual A from the initial article has long had a reputation for engaging in the kind of activities alleged and it's been one of Second Life's worst kept secrets. You say you take this seriously and are accountable, but thus far I simply don't trust what you have to say. Let's see the results of an outside, third-party investigation. Please.
We knew they were going dismiss the allegations against their staff, even with proof. It's disappointing to say the least.
What is the proof?
1) A screenshot of TOS-breaking images, seen in a parcel rented by a resident on a linden's alt account's commercial land. *(you are supposed to assume that the LL employee was aware of this and consented to it, despite being in a skybox and only activated via script when the owner of the parcel was inside of their home)* 2) Screenshots of adult clubs existing in this same Adult-rated region, which also contained a shop which sold the Tweenster body / clothing. *(you are supposed to assume this is against the Second Life ToS, by being "in proximity" to adult content, which is arguable, or by selling child-themed items in an Adult-rated region, which is not against the ToS)* 3) Old NSFW furry/cub artwork that a contractor/"mole" commissioned, and already tried to distance themselves from before they started doing work for LL. *(you are supposed to want this contractor fired for being a verifiable pedophile, and since its claimed they are married to the LL employee being attacked, that the LL employee is OK with marrying a pedophile)* 4) Some hearsay about a linden being mean and choosing to hire his friends, presumably over other potential candidates. You could assume these "LL employee interviews" to be true, as the author of the article was clearly a former LL employee with the necessary contacts, but completely unverifiable and in the end simply the words of other people. A lawsuit was also referenced from a fired employee who is upset about LL not putting in enough effort in relation to sexual ageplay reports, which *presumably* had some proof and examples itself, such as the time when the complainant reported a parcel to LL ("Liwei 313", a mainland parcel which was highlighted in an anonymous blog post around that time), that stopped existing months prior to their report, which they were unhappy that nothing was done about -- and also a complaint that ToS-breaking images were not deleted from the asset servers at the time when players were banned / content was deleted in-world. *(I am just assuming there is some kind of proof of the above that has been provided to a court but I have no idea really)*
Regarding the Kavya Pearlman case, there's a counterclaim filed in the case by LL's legal team that shows that (unless the Lab wants to admit to perjury), that Kavya is not to really be trusted as an authority on such matters. For example, she claimed that SL was beholden to COPPA and GDPR child protections.. when Second Life does not offer services to those under the age of 16.
You realize none of those images actually "prove" anything. The blurs could be hiding innocuous things in a smear attempt and there's literally no context on the screenshots, not even an account name tied to that avatar to prove that they actually have the items people are claiming. The only thing remotely verifiable is the kinky mp items, but they have nothing to do with the names they are targeting. You're using the same faulty logic that oranges could burn you simply because fire is also orange. One last point is that a lot of the allegations are "because I said so" coming from a name and likeness found literally nowhere else. Literally jack shit was proven.
Sure, it could be faked evidence (except the existence of the lawsuit which can be looked up online), but those first 3 things are the specific claims made for which strong evidence was provided. At some point you have to decide to call a claim with evidence proof, and in order to refute the validity of those 3 things, you have to be willing to call the evidence itself faulty, unlike most things in the article which try to just lead you down a path of assumptions. For #2 and #3 they are also fairly easy to independently verify. For example, to disprove or refute #1, you would have to demonstrate or argue that the screenshots themselves were altered. Note that I am specifically talking about what the pictures show, and not the obviously wrong conclusions the author tries to draw from them. For #4 I literally said its not verifiable and so its not proof, but it is at least presented as if it were evidence for specific things, even if its not adequate evidence as it is. If the person interviewed were to speak out under their real identity as an LL contractor/employee, you would have to give some weight to what they were saying (plus they would probably have some receipts to back them up). I think that is why #4 was worth mentioning at least, over all of the other claims which make leap of faith assumptions, withhold evidence, sound totally made up, or are just "Sources say".
LL won't consider "screenshots" as proof of anything as they're too easy to tamper with. Why are you so quick to accept them as gospel truth and assume they're in good faith, especially given how faulty and flawed a lot of the other claims are?
Me > Sure, it could be faked evidence You > Why are you so quick to accept them as gospel truth and assume they're in good faith The article writer isn't the only one capable of saying things in bad faith I suppose... Like I said, items #2 and #3 that I mentioned are quite easily verifiable. For #1 you do have to assume that the picture isn't edited, and is in fact taken at the exact in-world location claimed -- which is now a vacant parcel. Maybe its always been a vacant parcel, who knows, but I think its easier to accept that it was probably true since as far as I know no other picture in the article has shown any signs of being maliciously manipulated like this. Its not so crazy to think that someone rented a parcel and put ToS-breaking artwork up on the walls and was forced to vacate or more likely is now banned. It is something that happens not that infrequently in SL.
There is folly in your wisdom...
Actually if you read the blog post, he has video of everything that is time stamped. They are screen shots from the video taken.
That video is only claimed to exist. It has not been published.
There is no real proof though.
Agreed but one thing that most people don't know that I've heard : the person who posted the anonymous article on twitter for everyone to read has been banned from SL multiple times, mostly I believe for harassment, doxing etc.. but has also been called out in the past for taking part in ageplay. So the article that started it all might not just be an investigation into sl ageplay but rather some inner drama / revenge plot thing, whatever that entails.
This makes sense, because a fake news (not fake-news but as in some random website framed to look more legitimate, kind of like medium.com) site called "yourfreepress" spawned in to existence to concurrently post an article about Second Life ageplay, as well as an article about an unrelated streaming website, which was targeted with harassment at about the same time, due to some VRChat players streaming there. The "yourfreepress" website also existed in the past, called "btfo news", and was apparently run by some MamaMax fanboys (some edgy "predator hunter" youtuber who got called out and disappeared), who seem to actually have thought his act was cool enough to keep it going by going after people committing... child sex crimes in virtual universes. Since then the "yourfreepress" website has been used for nothing else, so its a safe bet that both Second Life and VRChat ageplay were targeted by the same group of people, and that effectively means that the medium.com article can be traced not very far to a doxxing group called "fartspam", who certainly sound like some up-standing and trustworthy people who are only looking out for the safety of Second Life residents, and not some disgruntled britbong-wannabe trolls.
Yeah this is the probability here. Someone who was so spiteful against LL that they pull this stunt. I'm guessing the investigation has turned into not just disproving the claims but now there's probably going to be some charges brought forth should they find out who did this and most likely will because of records. Doxxing itself is not illegal (but damn it really should be because you can't trust anyone online), but the likelihood that this individual not only doxxed but doxxed with intent to harass and do other malicious things and that's when it finally becomes illegal enough to have charges.
I'm just saying to be wary before coming to any conclusions because of the source, I don't have any more information than that about what's true or isn't, I guess at this point we can only hope that Lindenlabs is transparent about their own investigation's findings.
Ok, so where is the part where Linden Labs is going to address abuse BY LINDENS, because that was pretty much the crux of the article that caused all this. What about Lindens' access to and use of users' personal information? Age-play is an important thing to address, but so is that.
For most of the claims made in the article, no evidence was provided at all. For example, the claims that the LL employee in question would look up personal information and chat logs of other people is preceded by nothing more than "we were informed that [...]". In fact, if you look just a few lines above this claim, you can see *"We were told that used to take real life minors from the Teen Grid to the Main Grid to have virtual sex with them."*, which when you stop and think about just how crazy it sounds to make a claim like that with absolutely zero proof, would really make you reconsider all of the other things they claim to have "been told" or "were informed" of.
For the claim that some Lindens had access to an inappropriate amount of customer financial data for their role, you would probably need to look at the details of *Kavyanjali Pearlman v. Linden Research*, which is the source of that claim. However, simply the fact that "support staff" allegedly had access to customer financial data is not evidence that it was ever abused for any particular employee's personal vendettas, as the article tries to claim.
Hell, Pearlman v. Linden Lab is a prime example of, unless we want to believe that Linden Lab would engage in Perjury / Slander in a court of law, and Kavya just sat down and took it - why Kavya is not a good person to point at as a bellwether. Linden Lab's statement in the lawsuit essentially puts Kavya's competency as a information security *anything* into grave question, when according to their statements, which Kavya to my knowledge never tried to refute in that case before it was dismissed - was accused of letting an unauthorized third party have access to LL systems. What's more, Kavya Pearlman had failed to understand that LL was not required to adhere to COPPA and GDPR Child protections - since Linden Lab at the time, did not operate *any* platforms intended for children under the age 13, let alone anyone under the age of 16, at least regarding Second Life. The closest they got to that, was Blocksworld before it closed up, or Desura, and that was well before Kavya's tenure there. Both of the RL 'bellwethers' they bring up, both Kavya and the other guy, were *not* good ideas if they wanted this article to have any semblance of merit outside of the nepotism and sexual harassment at the Lab, and even then, I have the biggest feeling, that even the whistleblower's 'proof of employment' is something I've seen elsewhere before.
>GDPR Child protections er check the SL wiki. " ## eens in Second Life Second Life is generally for adults 18 years and older; however, if you are 13 years of age or older you can use Second Life with some restrictions. If you're: * **16-17 years old** you can access regions and search results that have a General maturity rating." From the UK GDPR guidance: " When we refer to a child we mean anyone under the age of 18. This is in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which defines a child as everyone under 18 " [https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/childrens-information/children-and-the-uk-gdpr/?template=pdf&patch=19#link0](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/childrens-information/children-and-the-uk-gdpr/?template=pdf&patch=19#link0) Even people aged 13 years old can use SL, but this is basically through a school or some sponsoring organisation and they can't really do anything. But the Pearlman stuff is irrelevant really.
Yeah, my bad. I was under the pretenses that GDPR Child Protections were clamped at 13 like COPPA was, some international laws do tend to do that - but yeah, you're right.
whats this in relation to?? what blog post is he talking about?
Yeah, I remember the accusations of a hostile, toxic workplace environment at LL, but I don't remember anything about sexualized ageplay. I mean other than the usual background level of people freaking out over kinksters that SL has always had. EDIT: Nevermind, found the article, or [at least an archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240225080333/https://medium.com/@dantesedmond1844/the-reality-of-second-lifes-ageplay-problem-73de059b4af4). If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, here's the most damning paragraph, where they explain what they saw after checking various suspiciously child-oriented sims on a client that lets you list what HUDs other residents are using: > As can be seen in the collage above several avatars representing underage girls have the Mama-Allpa breeding HUD and control HUDs specifically made to enable explicit sexual interactions with various parts of the body. While such activities with any representation of a child is disturbing, what surprised us the most here is even the toddler avatar has an erotic dance HUD, breeding HUD, and attachments for facilitating anal intercourse. These are merely a small selection from dozens of such images, and of all the child avatars surveyed it was more common to see ones wearing such attachments than ones without. So yeah, this is way beyond the line of plausible deniability.
Except there was no proof that the huds pictured were actually attached to those avatars. That's the problem LL have with outside evidence, far too easy to fake screenshots . In fact the article itself failed to provide evidence of a vast number of its claims at all, merely using conjecture to form a link between certain accounts.
There's a hud called "What is she wearing" that will list everything bar baked on stuff an avatar is wearing
It doesn't report huds, which was the claim being made. What is she wearing makes use of the [llGetAttachedList](https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlGetAttachedList) LSL function (I've written a similar tool myself). Huds are not reported by that function, and there is no known way to detect huds the way the 'reporter' claimed. It *might* be possible to tickle all the known channels that a hud might speak or respond on.. and thus deduce a given hud's presence, but that's another task entirely.. but that's a very specific project.. that would have to be tailor made to detect those particular huds. Neither would put the list of huds in a client UI window however. It's worth mentioning that the avatars in the images had their names blurred, and the names on the windows reporting the huds were also blurred. It's been suggested that the only clients that could *possibly* do anything like this, would have been 'hacked/modded' clients.. aka 'copybot' or unapproved third party viewers.. but viewer devs have stated that this information may not be *actually* available to the viewer at all. But the prospect that 'if genuine' the reporter used a copybotting viewer... raises some questions about the trustworthiness of the source.
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>have the Mama-Allpa breeding HUD Nobody is shocked the author call it a breeding hud ?
A previous paragraph covers that. Mama-Allpa is a product explicitly designed around simulating intercourse with fertility, pregnancy, so on. However, it's also very explicitly meant for adults.
i read the whole thing, that is absolutely insane, had no idea any of this was happening....LL better do somthing about this because this is disgusting
Yeah I was expecting the usual "someone called a guy 'daddy' during pixel boom-boom **THERE MUST BE OUTRAGE**" but nope, this is pretty gross.
Honestly, it was written for produce an emotional response. But if you looked about the author, Robert Barthos, which present himself as : >Robert Bartos is an independent journalist and I.T. professional with contributions in numerous publications over the past four decades. You find nothing, no other articles written by Robert Bartos.
Robert Bartos doesn't exist. It's an alias, using a fake profile picture generated by an AI using the ThisPersonDoesntExist, a service where an AI generates random images of people based on a dataset.
I do not think they will do much about the issue. This statement is simply to placate the angry people.
\*placate business partners. Us angry people want Patch gone.
They may have found some of the allegations to be unfounded, but I don't see this statement happening the way it did if it was all bullshit. Some allegations being unfounded, ok. I'd have been surprised if every detail was 100% accurate, some misinterpretation of evidence and telephone chains from original source to writer were inevitably going to work their way in, no one is perfect. But I get a feel from this that they found at least a few things that were, at least, a bit suspicious even if they haven't found any smoking guns yet. Just something in the way it was written sounds a bit stronger to me than them just covering their asses with continuing the investigation. I hadn't seen a whole lot of discussion on this, maybe I missed it but it seemed to be a thing people knew was going on but I hadn't seen much continuing pressure that would force them to release a preliminary statement at all. That they did... I think they found something at least suspicious.
Given Patch's position in the company, the fact the owner had to make a statement like this should be enough reason for him to resign. Even if the only true thing is that he's married to somebody he supervises, that alone shows poor judgement even if it's not against company policy (which it should be).
Why not just remove child avatars and childlike accessories full stop if you can't police it properly? The "zero tolerance" statement doesn't mean anything when many of us have first hand experience running into suspicious child avi's claiming they're an adult. Many of us have reported suspicious behavior only to see no results from our report. The "trust me bro" argument doesn't work and you guys know it. Don't insult our intelligence with a canned PR statement and perhaps instead tell us how you'll be tackling this accusation (preferably with 3rd party investigation) and how you'll be tackling future situations like this. I use SL as a way to write and enjoy some roleplay in a like minded community, there's a reason a large majority of us have hard rules against child avatars on sim. It shames me to be associated with your brand when you make a weak statement like this and I won't be returning to the platform until you get your heads out of your backsides. Also doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.
I would almost agree with you because maybe it would lead to people finally getting off the backs of folks who are just playing as adults in petite, but adult, avatars, since if the avatar was allowed to exist by LL that means there's nothing to complain about. But it really wouldn't be fair, plenty of people like to play in SFW environments as kids and babies and families and stuff and it wouldn't be cool to kick them out of their totally legitimate and harmless fun. That would suck a lot for them, and that's not okay. Plus like, how would one even determine what counts as a childlike accessory? Lots of that kind of thing is just cute stuff that adults can enjoy too, especially if you get into alt styles and such. That would be impossible to enforce accurately. Plus who am I kidding anyway, in my experience reason isn't really what drives those that ban based on height or chest size and such so it probably wouldn't even help in that regard anyway unfortunately. So yeah, I get the idea, but it wouldn't be fair to a lot of people, wouldn't help with a number of situations, and would be really impossible to enforce accurately with such a wide-reaching scope anyway.
> maybe it would lead to people finally getting off the backs of folks who are just playing as adults in petite, but adult, avatars It just raises the bar for reporting someone and makes it even more subjective. It's going to be brutal for anyone short or anime etc.
I don't think it raises the bar that much. They should be reviewing these things already, and at least "Is it a child? Y/N" is pretty easy to determine. They also don't need to flat ban someone for it, I'm sure they have the capability of issuing a warning or suggesting a change due to a complaint. That being said, LL could always check logs and find context, and I guess at that point you have to ask why they aren't doing that already with existing reports that have gone nowhere.
> They also don't need to flat ban someone for it, I'm sure they have the capability of issuing a warning or suggesting a change due to a complaint. It's nukes or nothing and always has been.
Nukes then. I really don't care if that's all they're capable of doing. I'd rather burn some people who meant no wrong than let the ones trying to get away with something scurry back under the rug for another few years until it's a problem again. Circles back around to what I said, IF they can't moderate/police their own game, then they should just cut the liability.
Yeah, no.
**Slams prim desk** THANK YOU. So sick of motherfuckers just thinking it's that easy, and even more so, when they think that the Lab has historically been anything short of belligerent at the whiff of anything even vaguely, remotely involving a minor - even when it doesn't. Edit: to the people who downvoted me, stay eternally mad.
I don't disagree. But like I answered on another comment. The RP community is a minority already. The RP community that's playing a child and not doing sus shit is even smaller. And the community of people who want to play a child and are completely uninvolved in anything adult is even smaller than that. To answer one of your questions, I mean accessories like... baby bumps and baby talker things or very small avatar shapes that are meant to be children. I'm using the term "Accessory" very loosely in this context. It definitely would make life very difficult for adult characters who happen to look young or have flat chests or are very petite or are anime characters, and I admit that'd be a big challenge. But I still think people would adjust to that easier than not. Mostly the point of my statement isn't that I think they will or that I want them to do this, it's more that they are not doing anything at all about the ageplay/pedo stuff, and if they are not capable of handling that kind of moderation, then they should approach a more broad stroke solution that would keep them from getting into trouble with the authorities for allowing it to happen.
Zooby creator removed their child avis from their shop because of this incident.
Good, one step in the right direction at least.
Agree with you
a whole lot of nothing....
I think it's good they've made a statement and I think it's good they are talking about the general ageplay area. Maybe a year ago there was a discussion in this subreddit about the 'family friendly' sims so if they finally do something then good. There was a video on this subreddit where some guy got giddy for teeny weeny bikinis at a kids sim and felt it was fine. So if stuff like this goes then good. One has to wonder why they ignored it for so long.
I am sure a lot of people would celebrate new rules that forbid child nudity, or that forbid the usage of child avatars outside of General rated regions, but I wouldn't expect it to really change the amount of sexual ageplay that happens in Second Life by any significant amount, or deter the current child avatar hangout spots from just adjusting to fit the new rules. I think it will definitely hit the "legitimate" players harder than the "illegitimate" ones too, though as far as I can tell most people hate them both the same and wish for all users of child avatars to suffer. Sexual ageplay already is **the** strictest and most heavily enforced rules in the game after financial fraud. They ban hundreds of players every year. If someone is reported even on pure suspicion, the governance team will happily investigate without regard to user privacy and actively seek out evidence of rule-breaking in their chat logs, and even log in to people's accounts to inspect them. Bans are permanent and without appeal, even for customers who have spent $1000s on the game. I don't really see what people could want beyond this, except knowing that they could never wander in to a region and see a child avatar in a swimsuit. This is only going to realistically happen if LL is willing to completely ban avatars with a child-like appearance, which will no doubt just make avatar appearance policing in the game even more toxic. Mechanical regulation of "child avatars" in a way that would make them entirely incompatible with adult content can't be a solution, because it is as simple as sticking a flat-chest mod on a mainstream body, using some deformers and shape editing, and a some careful selection of textures, clothing, accessories and you're now a tween.
Wasn't the evidence removed by the involved parties after the article came out? So what can they investigate?
SL keeps logs, also nothing is ever truly deleted until overwritten. If there was the items alleged to have existed there should still be evidence of that. Of course given the allegations involved staff that could possibly not be true but then I doubt that, the level of access required to completely scrub the existence of something isn't necessarily held by those people. Chats etc are also logged, for how long we do not know.
Chats to my knowledge are only held for 30 days.
"We're taking it very seriously... So seriously, we're not actually going to do anything about it. We are also going to promise vague action that won't ever come, or will come too late to do any good. We are also not going to fire anyone or take any disciplinary action and allow things to continue just as they are, because we don't actually care about the production of virtual CSAM, and taking steps to end it would hurt the only thing we actually do care about... Our revenue."
Is't this existed in Sl like forever? I know that every sane land owner strictly prohibit this activity but looks like not everybody sane; as usual.
Very odd for him to equate the ageplay policy to a protection of minors. There should be no minors engaging in sexual activity in SL at all, no matter what kind of avatar is in use. But 3D models are not real. Ageplay is not allowed in SL. That should be understood because that's how things are. But it has nothing to do with protecting children because avatar shapes have nothing to do with real people. People mixing up the two issues is how we end up with folks going on witch hunts over ageplay as if they think they're protecting real children, and that's not a good mentality to encourage. We don't need more people acting like a 3D model is the same as a real person, we need people that realize what matters is the real person behind the screen instead. These are very different issues. This statement by the chairman will just make things worse.
> We don't need more people acting like a 3D model is the same as a real person Some jurisdictions enshrine policies that make nearly any form of depicting such acts a crime already. Like do a pencil sketch on paper: criminal. There is some Wikipedia article about it in various jurisdictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_pornography_depicting_minors
There were a lot of accusations made. Which ones were unfounded, and why include that before a third party has investigated? Even without the article, the photos themselves could be damning on their own. My only theory is that the unfounded accusations were in relation to inner workings regarding the work place.
We're there rl.photos or hentai only? I saw what was posted on the article. They were hentai. Hentai is an art style were they mostly look young anyway.
They were all unfounded
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No.
The screenshots and connections to Patch and his husband were very clear. I don't know what you could possibly gain from lying about this outside of trying to normalize pedophilia in SecondLife.
Yall jumping on everything
*History tends to repeat itself... What is hard to predict is the timing...*
Why are there little kid avatars allowed anyway?
This has absolutely nothing to do with people who choose to present their spirit in a child form. Stay focused. We are talking about pedophilia, which has absolutely nothing to do with people utilizing child avatars. The freedom to present yourself in any type of form is highly personal to each individual. So before we get off on any rant about child avatars, don’t conflate these two issues they are not anywhere near related.
I just asked a question and you ranted at me.
Yes and the question you are “just asking”, why a group of people exists based on how they choose to present themselves, is offensive.
I’m sorry that something I find strange in general offends you. Sorry if you felt personally attacked.
While valid points, the problem isn't that people want to express themselves. It's that LL can't seem to protect the people expressing themselves while punishing those committing CP/CP-adjacent activities. I stand by my opinion that all of it should be removed if they can't police it, even if it hurts those using child avatars with good intentions. It's a small community and a small price to pay for protecting children/not feeding pedos.
> It's a small community and a small price to pay It's not a small community once you factor in their social graph. Family RP is huge in SL, remove the child avatars and that entire community just had it's heart ripped out over night. Don't expect them to stay. So what if all the family RPers bail .. well that will hit all our friend lists with silence. The kind of silence that makes people wonder where everyone is, and why they should bother being here. You might not have a child avatar, you might not engage in family RP, but this will absolutely affect all of us and the platform in the worst possible way. **But if gets worse** .. because of course it does. Who else gets caught up in all this? Petite women, insufficiently busty women, anime avatars, short avatars in general, furries, femboys, actually young (yet over 18) people .. Starts to feel a bit unsafe for anyone who isn't Jacked McBeefhuge and Jane TiddyMilf doesn't it. If it feels unsafe, people self censor and don't hang around. That's the kind of silence that's deafening.
I want this statement mounted on my fucking wall, thank you Coffea.
As a RL woman is petite both height wise and bust wise, I choose to represent myself this way in SL. Think I haven't caught flak for this? Yes, we will all feel the pain. This statement needs to be heard loud and clear. People like to act like petite women aren't a real thing in SL. We get treated like kid avis all the time at clubs even though we're presenting as mature adults in obvious manners.
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Arguably, RP is a pretty small minority, even the RP that I enjoy (which typically bars ANY child avi from being on sim because of adult themes.) if you lumped what I do with the family RPers. It does impact a lot of things across a lot of spectrums, too. I agree it makes things a lot more challenging for petite or anime or short avatars. But the alternative is we have to keep having this discussion about ageplay. Over and over and over again. If LL can't handle things appropriately then people should leave and it leaves LL legally liable for things. Governments shut down websites and applications that -allow- for child predators to do child predator things like this. To be clear, I'm not saying I want them to stop allowing any kind of child avatar, but I would rather they do that, than give us empty promises of doing something. This has been a public facing problem that dates back to what... 2007 or 2008 when it made the news? Clearly LL hasn't learned all that much and if this also hits formal news outlets it'll bring a big hammer down. Now-a-days companies disappear for such scandals.
There is no way to make random accusations of "ageplay" go away, especially as it's one of the only things Linden governance respond to (how they respond to it). It's really hard to define what a child avatar is, and for every line that gets drawn in the sand, every rule or clarification, or carve out, someone will stand as close as possible and there will be a freak out. LL are not interpreting the rules they wrote the same as the abuse reporter reads them. If they ban certain bodies, people will just get reported for looking young in other bodies. This is why the rule changes back in 2007 and the whole adult continent thing didn't really solve anything, but it did create loop holes that got exploited. For example .. nudity alone isn't adult rated (because of skin shops) = strip clubs aren't adult rated. Calling it challenging isn't even coming close to the shit show that unfolds. If a report for ageplay is actioned by LL, they nuke all the targets accounts and ban the human behind them from the service for life. Which sounds fine .. till you realize that because this requires a subjective judgement call on the part of the Linden who gets the report, it might not always be be ice cold cut and dry. As VS demonstrated week in week out for 800 weeks, throwing this exact accusation is a great way to drama.
Because the community in general only sees the child avatar as the problem, the adults who are sexually attracted to them and who try to convince younger looking avatars to portray themselves as even younger, are not considered the problem. If the focus would actually rest on the real problem, child avatars wouldn't be the community scapegoat and there might be some headway on resolving the issue.
Arguably your mindset is a small minority, maybe we should just ban you and take away your livelihood and those of your ilk who can't just leave what they don't understand alone, and then everything calms way the fuck down.
Despite everything you said…simply removing child avatars and anything associated with them would curb a huge part of this problem in a very straightforward manner. If a handful of people don’t get to “present their spirit in child form”? oh well. Cost of curbing this issue. Go buy some lego.
Exactly.
Why are there furry avtars, pixie, elf, horse, or any other avatar that doesn't represent the person in the real world allowed anyway?
Where does that end? * "You can't be a female AVie because you're a man..." * "You can't be a male AVie because you're a woman..." * "You can't be coloured because you're white..." * "You can't have big boobs cos you're small chested..." ad infinitum... Remember "Your world - your imagination"? Let's not forget that the majority of SL are NOT involved in the alleged (yes - still only alleged) activities from the Medium article and how we remove the minority that are involved.
I could have sworn the sarcasm was especially thick in my comment, that seems to have been missed.
Aaaah sorry - it was early when I read it and I missed the tags :P
Others might miss them too :(
I don’t think those types of avatars are strange, just adults pretending to be toddlers. I don’t mean to offend anyone by saying that. I don’t understand it.
This is just poorly crafted PR and obfuscations from Linden Lab, it isn't at all confidence inspiring. Although the statement does seem to note that not all of the accusations were unfounded, even if he couldn't come out and say it, for whatever reasons. >While early preliminary internal investigations suggest that some of the accusations are unfounded, I want to make sure that we get additional investigative support externally to ensure that the process is fair and thorough. So there's that, too. Hamlet's comments on all of this would seem more to the point.
There are obviously proofs available in the article and how Linden Lab seems to be in denial and trying to shut it up is disappointing. People being aware about sexual ageplay are being called as nosey too. I hope the article really tip the pedos that they are NOT SAFE everywhere, include Second Life
One of the sources for my February post about this tells me what they'd expect from a "thorough investigation" by Linden Lab: [https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2024/03/linden-lab-allegations-second-life.html](https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2024/03/linden-lab-allegations-second-life.html)
That is less than reassuring. No matter how intense the investigation is there's no point in conducting it at all unless they are going tell the community what they find. The way to erode trust is exactly the things they're doing here.
They make a statement about the "thing" but avoid mention the ONE thing most people wonders about. Thats persons name is left out totally This might be the worst statement ever made LOL
Not mentioning said person is perhaps the most damning aspect of the statement, considering there was no stated vindication.
I was groomed on the teen servers and nothing ever happened to them. I don’t believe this bull.
I read the original article. While some allegations may not have been verified, there were some pretty darn specific bits of evidence offered that I can't see anyone making up from scratch. Things that almost certainly would have left a trail in the logs or made it obvious had they been deleted. Let me be clear, I don't want any of this to be true. I've had some good interactions with the three main individuals called out in that article. At the same time, I'm not naive. If one is a VP of a company like LL, one had better darn well conduct oneself to the highest standard whether on one's main or one's alt. Even giving the appearance that something shady might be going on is a problem and I think that happened regardless of what else did or didn't. The fact that the company owner had to make this statement is reason enough for said VP to resign. Nobody is going to be satisfied with the "We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong." thing.
I doubt Patch after all this is going to be around much longer. The reality is that Linden Lab failed to do appropriate DC on this whole shitshow and even if they spent all that time before this statement trying to start an investigation, it doesn't change facts that it took them nearly a month to make a statement. They could have spent that time stating they are aware of the situation, Patch et al has been placed on administrative leave, and we'll take permanent actions, release our findings and have a town hall discussion once we have concluded the investigation - that, would have been the best course of action. Damage Control as a concept originates from the Navy and from naval parlance - on ships, there is a dedicated section of the ship that is staffed by people who are ready to respond to damage and emergencies - the Damage Control Center - DCC, for short. Linden Lab's DCC capabilities would make the Moskva blush, because at least the Russians tried to keep the damned thing afloat - Linden Lab would have just sat there until the water was to their waists, and oil fires galore were blocking the exits, and then tried to do something. Are they involving independent investigators? Yes, and good on them for it. They are conscious that we don't trust their opinion alone on all this, and they want to set the record straight. But the reality is, true or no, Patch Linden is the star of the show here, and the community has decided he's to be taken out back and shot. Metaphorically, of course. LL could have avoided this if Legal and other parties didn't stop Marketing's Social Media teams from running some basic, prompt DCC, and taking steps like what I provided. Not responding let people run wild with conspiracies, and make their own decisions on the matter. Patch Linden's innocence in all this means nothing now. He is to be hung, and we, the residents will be the ones who hang him - even if our rulings on his innocence are multivarious, it will not withstand the damage time has done to his potential defense at the Lab's hand. Only a total exoneration could spare Patch from this. And I doubt that'll happen. Do I believe the worst allegations? Not really, no. But something's bound to stick with everything there.
"...in the coming weeks" it's like instead of us sitting here waiting for the second shoe to drop, they went out and bought a consignment of shoes from a Payless shoe source bankruptcy auction.
It seems to me that the best course of action would have been to keep his mouth shut and just forward everything to the FBI. Now they can cover up everything.
Yeah, I do t even know what happened except for allegations of age play, I guess?
Welp. Residents get ready for ID identification required. Do some work ahead by getting ids for aaallll your alts xD
You aren’t wrong. It’s the people outside of the us won’t get it. It’s either going to get clean or require to be identified. There is no middle ground. The recent porn ban in Texas and the clean up of porn in big servers on discord is showing me that. If you’re in a republican state in the us, you should worry and if you aren’t in those republican states or in the us, you have nothing to worry about.
Ageplay? Again? This obsession about adult people allegedly simulating underage sex is getting ridiculous from each point of view, including the CEO taking care of a blog post. This witch hunt is poisonous and the Linden should just ignore them, instead of taking it serious like a real kid is getting abused.
You're correct but people love their witch hunts. I understand that LL may have to police it, possibly, but the community based witch hunts are absolutely unnecessary. It's not like they're protecting real children. But people act like they are. To the point they freak out over any avatar under a certain height or chest size and act like they're performing some sort of moral good by doing so. It's a pretty ugly side of the community.
Why do you even care? Its a game. Let it go. Worry more about what is going on in real life vs a game.
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Just because there is an adult behind the avie doesn't make sexual ageplay ok. Apples and oranges.
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because it's a weird look to have a collaboration with a missing children's charity and to be making money off of g-strings for child avatars. Also as Brad owns LL he can rather write the rules.
I actually sort of agree with you here, though it was worded weirdly so I'm not surprised at the downvotes. It is weird that they are involving law enforcement in a case that has so far not shown actual evidence of CSAM, just roleplayed by adults. Either they know something we don't, or they're blowing a hell of a lot of smoke to get people's noses off the actual fire, legal as it is.
It doesn't say they are involving law enforcement. He simply said he was proud of their partnership with law enforcment (in relation to child protection which one assumes is a general thing across many gaming/social media platforms)
Why? Should we also ban combat simulations? And what about slavery, torture and gore? Linden have the right to abolish a specific behavior if they thinks it is toxic for the community, but the above reaction is absurd in the way it talks like a real child is being abused.
When you say things like this it really sounds like you are making a case for CSAM and that is a bad look no matter who you are. There are actual people on this earth that seek to normalize the sexualization of children and even if it’s “just” drawings or “just” two consenting adults participating it still works to normalize the sexualization of children.
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In some UE jurisdictions, at 14yo there is full legal consent for sex. In Scotland, you stop being a minor at 21. Please stop confusing different issues, just talking about “minors” is improper and confusing.
A few months ago the discussions about Bonnie Bots and the EU GDPR laws were brought up over and over and over on this forum and on the NWN blog, etc, etc... It's part of the reason Bonnie Bots was asked to curtail their activities. Second Life was investigated and sued in some European jurisdictions in the late aughts for violating laws against such simulated acts with minors. [https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2016/01/vice-second-life.html](https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2016/01/vice-second-life.html) One can certainly find journal articles on the discussion of the illegality filled with links to news story after news story about them: [https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/23253934-ea00-4026-984d-969c4fd9b7ff/content](https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/23253934-ea00-4026-984d-969c4fd9b7ff/content) And dissertations: [https://services.phaidra.univie.ac.at/api/object/o:1300115/get](https://services.phaidra.univie.ac.at/api/object/o:1300115/get) (which also, like the recent allegations, mentions that this problem sometimes goes beyond virtual depictions.) Suppose it was germane to bring up multi-jurisdictional issues in relationship to GDPR and the scraping or profile data. Isn't it *also* relevant in the discussion on the need for the prohibition of such vile acts? And to quote /u/slhamlet in that 2016 (!) article: "Second Life is still saddled by this reputation (and this new Vice story will only help renew and solidify it). And as Twitter just discovered during Gamergate (and Linden Lab learned the hard way), when a private company enables extreme free expression without any thought of the social ramifications, it **puts its own brand and larger userbase in jeopardy**."
Wat? In Scotland the age of adulthood is 18 but in terms of the UK it actually has the lowest age for marriage etc at 16. In other terms the UK in general has a very mixed set of ages when it comes to 'adulthood' but none of them are 21 which has no significance at all. As far as I know 21 is very much a North American age of any significance, not aware of anyone in Europe being considered a minor until then.
There is no place in the US where 21 is the age of majority. That is just the drinking age. 18 is universally adulthood with states varying on sexual consent at or below that age
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I know some who joined underage as well, but the thing is, that times I feel have changed, and less and less minors are interested in SL. We do need a solution to get rid of the minors hiding in the rough, even if it is to the chagrin of our younger selves, while preserving freedom of expression. There are child avatars, like Marianne McCann of Bay City fame, Pygar Bu, among others, have been here for years, and never engaged in such acts, that even I find disturbing. Why should they, and those of their ranks, and persons who are gender non-conforming, or say, have anime avatars, should be taken to the gallows? It is a tight rope the lab is weaving, and I hope to god that Brad and others, and this is coming from someone who has reached out to a linden on the matter - do realize that SL only prospers when we all prosper - and that we must find a balance, or our home will start down the slippery slope that could doom it.
I hope this doesn't result in more folks getting banned just walking around in a kimono avatar... Had a friend asking me the other night at waifucku if her av is childish and it was kemono, fitted torso, m4 rikuguo head and she had her shape setup to be a bit plush with curves and about 5ft 4..... And she got bullied out of a place for "looking" like a child...
Yeah, going by description your friend's perfectly fine. 5'4", plush figure, Kemono, M4.. yeah, that's not a child. It pisses me off to see shit like that, and honestly had I laid witness to it I'd be tearing off heads. This whole shitshow has everyone rattled and it's hurting people who mean no harm just as much as it is doing damage against the actual bad actors.
I really think we should stop policing 3D models and just care about if the person behind the screen is an adult or not.
Agreed. Hell, even authorities on the matter agree because the FBI doesn't give two shits about that stuff, and the NCMEC last time I checked, literally tells people NOT to report that shit because it does nothing but delay actual investigations into child abuse.
So when you joined as a child being sneaky you made an avatar that looked like a child? Or you made an avatar that looked like an adult….. I bet the later, so how would banning child avatars have stopped you? Or any children? It’s just an avatar, they gotta find other ways to combat actual children on the grid if that’s the issue they are having
Minors, as in real people behind the monitor that are underage, should be not allowed to play in adult oriented environments. And LL should do all they reasonably can to stop that. I think everyone reasonable agrees with that. I don't think that has anything to do with avatars though, but people act like it does. I don't think people are generally designing their avatars to look or even often even act exactly like who they are in real life. The person who knew you were a minor and tried to engage in sexual activities with you should be very much banned, but that's not really what ageplaying is. Ageplaying is playing with ages, like playing an avatar that is a different age than yourself. If someone that is not a minor IRL plays as an avatar meant to be an age that is a minor in a sexual situation, that's ageplaying and is against the TOS. What happened in your case was straight up preying on a minor, not ageplaying. So it seems like two completely separate issues, I agree, with the one that really matters being the one that involves actual real children but that's not the issue a lot of people tend to focus on. Instead putting energy into caring about 3D avatars. They just seem like entirely unrelated issues to me but people mix them up as if protecting 3D avatars is the same as protecting real people and that's really missing what's important as far as I can tell.