Second Life Home Sprinkled With US Presidential Race Yard Signs -- But Perhaps Less Than in Previous Races?

Photo by Alsatian Kidd -- click for larger versions

New World Notes' story on the banning of political ads was featured in New York Times (well, briefly mentioned at the bottom of this article, anyway), so this is important clarification from reader "irihapeti" is worth calling out:

Reading the Terms of Service [it] is clear that political signs are only banned on mainland advertising networks. They are not banned on private-owned parcels where the parcel owner does not act as an advertising network across multiple regions

So if I have a mainland parcel I can stick a Vote For Whoever sign on my front lawn. I can't do this on multiple parcels across multiple regions.

A road trip on mainland shows this. People continue to put yard signs out on their home parcels which is OK for them to do.

Irihapeti goes on to add this interesting if contentious point:

As featured in "So Very Kerry" from 2004

There are a whole lot fewer signs (even before the advert network ban) this US election than there were in previous US elections. Bush vs Gore was I think the zenith of US election activism in SL, more so even than Obama vs McCain.

This sounds roughly right to me -- though I think she means Bush vs. Kerry in 2004, shortly after SL officially launched. And I certainly noticed more election signs during that election, not only because SL's early adopters tended to be more idealistic and civics-minded, but also because there was much more emphasis on Second Life's mainland -- privately-owned islands weren't launched until 2005 -- so it made more sense (if not more taste) to put out giant billboards likely to be seen by as much of the userbase. 

Nowadays, Second Life is more of a disparate series of shopping events on private islands, where most everyone can avoid billboards of any kind -- and in any case, users have more than enough tools to blank out pretty much anything from their surroundings. As Han Held puts it:

I've had to live around very toxic political jerks on mainland ...and to cope, I made heavy, heavy use of derender. Worked for me, I didn't even notice that they left until I saw the parcels were abandoned one day ...

By contrast, Facebook only added a feature for blocking political ads a couple months ago. But like I always say, if you want to anticipate what social network companies will add to their feature list, read how Second Life dealt with similar issues years ago.

Comments

[Amanda]

Second Life was tiny in 2004. The same number of political ads would disappear on the grid today like a single drop of lemon juice in a cup of water. 2008 was more active when SL was much bigger.