Second Life's "Adult" Filtering Keywords Confuse (So Far)

Here's Linden Lab's wiki page on words that will be defined and filtered as Adult, when the official viewer incorporates the content filter this Summer. It's almost certainly not safe for work reading, or for that matter, while you're eating. And while it's also likely to be drastically revised over the next few months, it's incomprehensible now. An event on environmental policy featured in An Inconvenient Truth should not be described as "Gorean". Mysteriously, however, the word that rhymes with "Brother Tucker" is not listed in the Adult category. 

Much more seriously, with these existing keywords, an SL conference on "rape prevention" could not be advertised as such in a Mature event listing. In a conversation last week, Linden attorney Ken Dreifach told me that the sex and violence filtering rules would not relegate content with educational or cultural value to the Adult continent. With this existing list, however, I'm not convinced that'll be consistently possible. Hat tip: The Twitter channel of Patchouli Woolhara.

Comments

[Crap Mariner]

Threesome is filtered but foursome isn't?

I can hear it now... "We'd better TP both M and Phil if we don't want to get filtered, Bitch."

-ls/cm

[Crap Mariner]

Whoops. Meant to type that as Mitch.

(Paging Doctor Freud!)

-ls/cm

[Rika Watanabe]

It's impossible to apply adult content policy consistently, as it should have been expected from the start.

Mind you, most of their other policies have the same problem. That's probably why they aren't listed clearly in a supplement to the TOS and Community Standards documents, but hidden all over in small chunks, including places inaccessible for the public.

[Connie Sec]

Define "Educational" or "cultural"..or more importantly..what is NOT these things.

[Tateru Nino]

That's not, err, Linden Lab's page. Looking at the page history, no Linden contributed information to it. It's user-contributed information determined by experimentation.

[Tristin Mikazuki]

A good hooker or stripper can be educational lol

[dandellion Kimban]

There is something seriously wrong with world where heroin is OK and blowjob isn't. And I don't talk only about SL here.

[Hamlet Au]

"It's user-contributed information determined by experimentation."

Yes, user experimentation of... Linden Lab's release candidate with the Adult content filter. On Linden Lab's wiki.

[Tateru Nino]

Agreed. It's a fine, but important distinction.

[Random Merryman]

The shambles begins...

[Eileen McCallister]

Hey, two of the dirtiest words ever are missing: corporate and fascism.
You hear that sardonic laugh in the distance? I'd swear that was George Carlin. Though he's on the other side he's still writing, you know. His newest piece is called: "92 words you can't say in SL".

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

So, people advertising singers in SL had better not say "Jane Doe is the best scat singer since Ella Fitzgerald".

The substring rule avoids silliness like a profanity filter I once saw that would censor all references to Hellenistic culture or Matsushita Electronics, but that also means it will be trivial to get around. I fear it's an exercise in futility.

[Wolf]

It looks like content filtering has already begun but even those verified can't search on these terms. Looks like we're going to invent a whole new cat and mouse game. Can I have my s3x and y1ff now please?

[DagnyT Dagger]

Aw well, ya knew it was coming. Funny though, that lolita is not filtered.

I'm all for this new adult continent. Let the grown ups have our own place to have our own fun. Let the puritans and griefers deal with each other. I frankly have no use for kids, fuddy-duddies, or the puritanical witch hunters anyway. In fact, I'd LOVE to buy a chunk of land on the new new continent, the sad thing is, I don't have a landbot to go out and get it at a reasonable price when it first goes up for sale. Too back they can't make sure only real people are buying the land.

[Toxic Menges]

In previous jobs, I have had to collate, and manage lists of words that were deemed offensive and not suitable for the audience with which I was working (a teens and kids message board, and a teen virtual world). It's a thankless task, this list - in this version, or a legitimate LL version will be circumvented.

Codes will spring up, alt chars will be used, punctuation, and other forms. Of course to the casual user, they won't be able to access these words as they won't be in the know, but my point is this: There is no perfect list here, language evolves, context is king, and community (regardless of the type of community), will thrive.

I am confident, however, that LL is on the ball to a fair degree, and until this organic segregation experiment goes live, how can they work out what words will be used and how?

Community is all about a million users with a million different scenarios. I watch with interest how this pans out.

[Arwyn Quandry]

I too can see a code springing up and everyone trying to get around the filters. Before Habbo made it so you could disable their word filter, there were all sorts of interesting misspellings used that the filter software didn't pick up on.

I also think that they might be isolating a portion of new users - those who come to SL for quick, anonymous sex. Escorts are still going to be on the mainland, sexbeds are still going to be available, but the culture will evolve as to stay one step ahead of the Man and keep profitable without having to conform to the rules. In a way, LL is just making more work for themselves by doing this.

[Arwyn Quandry]

(Forgot to include this in my last comment)

I can see some Goreans arguing that they shouldn't be filtered, as their interest is not based around sex, but around a distinct sci-fi culture. Norman's books, at least as far as I've read into them, have no real sex scenes, and are pretty tame by modern romance novel standards.

Also, there are many work-safe fetishes (check out this list: http://www.cracked.com/article_17149_5-ridiculous-safe-work-fetishes.html ) A fetish, even if it provides sexual gratification for someone, isn't inherently sexual in itself. LL has quite a bit of work to do.

[Ciaran Laval]

You don't need a client to test keyword filtering:

http://search.secondlife.com/search.php

You'll also find that if someone types banned words into their profile description, you won't find a HTML link for them, indeed if you only type their first name they won't show up at all.

This doesn't include profile picks yet.

[Ciaran Laval]

Oh and Blondin Linden has deleted that wiki page as it was inaccurate.