Flatterbots Violate Second Life's Terms of Service, Argues Mr. Epsilon (Comment of the Week)

Controversy continues over the plague of "flatterbots" in Second Life, which are reportedly earning their owner $160 a day, and in the comments of our latest post, NWN reader "DBDigital Epsilon" makes the interesting case that Flatterbots violate SL's Terms of Service:

"For those that doubt is not against the Terms of Service: While there isn't directly anything saying 'begging' I would like to point to:

8.2 You will not post or transmit prohibited Content, including any Content that is illegal, harassing or violates any person's rights. (ii) Impersonate any person or entity without their consent, or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation,

"The [Flatterbot behavior] above is misrepresentation your affiliation for the purpose of acquiring money. And:"

8.3 You agree that you will not post or transmit Content or code that may be harmful, impede other users' functionality, invade other users' privacy, or surreptitiously or negatively impact any system or network. (iii) Use robots or other automated means to increase traffic to any Virtual Land; (iv) Engage in malicious or disruptive conduct that impedes or interferes with other users' normal use of the Service;

"Now granted the accounts may or may not be increasing traffic, dependent upon the settings in the account. But it is disruptive to be in a store see bots that pester for money and you might leave the location just to get away from it. Hence it is interfering with sales of the store owner.

"So again, this ultimately against the TOS and I would suggest that everyone report every Flatterbot they see, stating what is going on and that it is a violation of TOS. They will take action I think. Especially since the owner has said they are making a lot of money off this scheme."

This strikes me as somewhat of a stretch, but I definitely think one can argue Flatterbots likely violate the spirit of the TOS, if not the letter. In any case, if the controversy continues and gets more heated, there's a good chance Linden Lab will simply update the TOS to ban Flatterbots more explicitly.

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Comments

[Saffia Widdershins]

I think DBDigital is right.

However, if we are talking 8.3 violations, I think more serious violations are the cases of criminal extortion related to griefing that have been happening, and the open sale of sim crashers on Marketplace.

The Flatterbots are annoying. They are not destroying people's livelihoods.

[JJ]

It is also good for residents to post on a bots profile "web" tab to let others know that that account is a bot doing this stuff, such as: Cynnthea Resident

Check her "web" tab in the profile and you'll see a few people leaving comments that that account is a bot.

[grace]

Good to know it violates TOS. But I think it's not a matter of policy here, but a matter of enforcement.

I don't think Miss Flatterbot Operator will give a hoot what the TOS says or stop what she does because of a change in TOS to prohibit begging.

[grace]

Sorry just one more thing to add, in response to another post above that suggested the bots are annoying but not destroying livelihoods.

Griefers who crash sims or crash viewers - yes that is indeed something serious which Linden Lab should do something about. Especially if they can procure tools that help them do that.

But I think the flatterbots being allowed to continue threatens the SL economy and SL livelihoods also. If content creators who spend hours and hours making stuff, taking business risks and effort in designing and marketing their work on SL marketplace are making less than the 1.2 million lindens that the flatterbot operator makes per month scamming people, maybe we should all stop being builders/scripters/clothes-makers and start operating flatterbots instead.

[CarloAntonio Negulesco]

So, as far as TOS violations go, reading this makes me think that anyone using an avatar that doe not accurately represent their RL looks and attitude would be in violation of TOS. They are, after all, misrepresenting themselves, are they not?

How many people say they are male and are not, or female and are not? Aren't they "misrepresenting their affiliation" in terms of gender? I would think so.

As far as 8.3 goes, the purpose of the flatterbots are not to increase traffic to any location, so that really doesn't apply.

[shockwave yareach]

I personally think that any bot should be prevented from using the IM services. Having a bot be able to speak in public chat? Potentially useful, especially for business and sales applications. But I cannot see any good reason for any bot to be able to spam people from one side of the metaverse to the other at random.

Simply change it so that Scripted Agents are not able to use IM and 98% of the abuse will stop. While I see some good uses of bots (Alazarian's shows), I see lots of abuses as well (beggers and traffic manipulators). Since LL can't be bothered to enforce it's TOS, the least they can do is make it so Scripted Agents either cannot chat in IM, or make it so that on the 3rd complaint the IM is disabled for that agent until the owner gives a good reason for LL to reenable it again.

[Val Kendal]

I agree Hamlet, that's a stretch. I don't see what the 'affiliation' for 8.2 is that is being misrepresented. Seems like 8.3 (iv) is the most reasonable, since their activity *might* cause people to leave a store, but it's not like it's a griefing attack. Much as I find them annoying and a hassle, I just don't see how making up a fake personal story and harassing gullible people (including me) for money in an organized manner, is any different from what hundreds of newbs do every day on a one-on-one level.

[Pussycat Catnap]

shockwave: I doubt any of the beggar bots are registered scripted agents.

[elizabeth (16)]

is rubbish this whole argument that DBEpsilon made. bc is contra-principled. the whole argument is based on the idea that is somehow against ToS bc the request is for money

is not against ToS to ask people for anything. like: Hi (: nice dress? where you get? you have LM you can give me?

but thats different according to the argument. bc is a LM. not money

the act of asking is not different tho. if it was somehow different then we all get booted out of SL for asking anyone else for anything