Last night I teleported to a cozy patio with a firepit on a tiny asteroid to talk with the team of Bonnie Bots, the little Second Life user data website causing enormous controversy across the Second Life community. Since the imbroglio flared up, they have updated the site's homepage with this disclosure:
Information about Second Life should be freely accessible by all. We intend to make previously obscured information available to all residents, enable open use of the information, and expand available toolsets to further content creation. All information collected and made available is publicly accessible and is not, and never will be, utilized for any monetary gain. We support individual privacy and will never attempt to obtain information not contained within or relevant to Second Life.
"We understand there are people upset about us releasing our data publicly," as team spokesperson Skyler Pancake explains. "However, people need to understand there are individuals and groups collecting this data secretly. Anyone with a little effort can easily collect this information and include it in seemingly harmless objects. The concern shouldn't be over us releasing this information publicly but who else is privately maintaining such databases and not informing anyone."
As the team and I chatted on the asteroid, one of the Bonnie Bots itself primly sat in silence. They warned me to take a picture of her quickly, because she was programmed to go back on her rounds across the Second Life grid soon.
While the Bonnie Bots team has bore the brunt of this controversy, they wanted to make it clear that they are hardly the only people collecting data on Second Life users -- and how much is already publicly accessible for people to collect off them:
Who's Afraid of Second Life's Data Gathering Bonnie Bots? (Comment of the Week)
There's been lots of interesting conversation and debate spurred by my post on BonnieBots, the new website tracking genuine Second Life activity. While Bonnie's bots don't violate any Linden Lab policy that I'm aware of, the sheer amount of information that both her avatar and web-based bots are able to collect and surface on the site has generated much surprise and controversy (including in comments here).
Reader Kate Nova argues that much of the pushback is based on a very understandable distrust of surveillance provoked by very real abuses by the Internet giants:
Some concern has been raised that Bonnie's bots also pull data from user profiles available in search, but Kate argues this is not the intrusion some say it is -- and that overall, the site is incredibly valuable:
Continue reading "Who's Afraid of Second Life's Data Gathering Bonnie Bots? (Comment of the Week)" »
Posted on Monday, January 23, 2023 at 01:55 PM in Comment of the Week, Economics of SL, Social Structures, Social Upheaval | Permalink | Comments (13)
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