New Website Tracks Genuine Second Life Activity, Filtering Out AFK Users & Traffic Bots

Most active sims in Second Life as of 1:30pm PT

BonnieBots is a new website tracking genuine Second Life activity, and the homepage is an incredibly useful guide for finding SL sims with real, active users -- as opposed to traffic bots used by many sim owners to artificially appear popular.

"The biggest complaint we hear is, 'I logged in and couldn't find anyone else,' or some variation of, 'Seemed abandoned'," as site owner Bonnie Belle explains. "The Destination Guide is worthless. Official traffic numbers just take you to 'AFK" places or worse'."

"We wanted to do better."

A developer in real life, Bonnie's solution is elegant: Create better bots. Hence the site's name.

Here's how:

Above: A Bonnie bot, tirelessly on patrol

Bonnie's bots explore the Second Life grid, counting the number of avatars on each sim. That data is then collected by Bonnie to register daily activity trends.

She shows me data on a specific sim (at right) to explain what she means.

"Take Lagoon Retreat right now. They don't seem like they ever run bots. Must be an event there.

"If 40 avatars sit on a sim 24/7, let's assume that isn't a busy sim, that's just AFK avatars or bots. So instead we show change in avatar counts. If 40 people joined that sim in the last hour, that sounds like a sale or a good party. And it works 30% of the time maybe.

"I have fun finding new sims that way and seeing what the happenings are," Bonnie adds. "It doesn't play favorites or require any moderation to keep up-to-date. That's perfect for a lazy developer like me."

And no, Bonnie says she's not doing this to start an SL analytics consultancy or something like that.

"There's no business aspect," as she puts it. "We're just bored and really like Second Life. We think it's fun and interesting.

"We hope the information makes SL more enjoyable especially for new users. And we just think it's all kinds of interesting. Now everyone can see the abandoned land, not just land barons. That's a win in my book."

The only people who might not benefit from BonnieBots might be traffic bots -- and Bonnie herself:

"One of the Bonnies was banned for 'gaming traffic'... [but they] don't stay at a location long enough to game traffic.

"We get a lot of messages from people threatening to file abuse reports for stalking. I think people see Bonnie at two different sims and assume it's an ex-lover following them.

"But we're trying to communicate more."

Much more here.

Hat tip: Gogo!

Comments

[0xc0ffea]

This counts as a major data leak and breach of privacy in my book. I honestly feel that LL are in the wrong letting the wholesale scraping & aggregation of merchant sales figures and full profile indexing continue as though the data is "public".

The profile data especially is not public and can't be seen in it's entirity from the open internet without a SL login.

My own profile is set to friends only on the SL privacy options, but appears, in full scraped by this service. So does everyone elses.

You can easily check your own.

Got to my.secondlife.com/firstname.lastname in an incognito tab and then look yourself up on the Bonnie site ..

[Adeon]

Even has a seasoned decade long SL user, SL was always dead to me. This problem is huge.

Then someone goes and actually solves it (spoilers: it's not LL that solves it)

What's the reaction?

"OMG, my privacy."

Oh, Second Life. I've forgotten how Bass Ackwards you are.

[sirhc desantis]

not often i agree with coffee but on this i do. now i have been dabbling in lsl for.. all the time i have been in sl but the addition of account type via the OBJECT_ACCOUNT_LEVEL data skim to LlGetObjectDetails took me by surprise. of course the wiki has been changed to hide who added it eh lucia n? :)
there again this is the team that thought a function to email an objects creator was a good idea.

[0xc0ffea]

Adeon - I have no issue with anyone knowing where the busy places in SL are, even then that should be the option to opt in or out.

Second Life profiles are not public data. They only exist inside a private members only club you must sign up for and agree to terms. If you get banned from the service, your ability to read profiles is removed.

[Fine by me but .....]

Fine by me but the avatar search section is not TOS. People have their profile NOT searchable, and they still show up on his website public to WWW. How would he feel if his name became public?

[Kate Nova]

I think the BonnieBots are supercool and was giddy when I saw that NWN had a post on them.

I was surprised and disappointed to discover that there's so much hating on them. SL can be narrow and intolerant in so many ways. Ban Lines and Security Orbs make the idyllic SL mainland into an untraversable minefield of hate and GTFO-ness.

Obviously, I'm not the arbiter of anyone else's security and privacy concerns. If you feel that your parcel needs ban lines, or a 10-second security orb, or that the stuff in your profile is private info, it's not my call to dispute that. I kinda wish it were my call, because I think all of these diminish the SL experience, but SL or Physical World, it is, of course, not my call. And it shouldn't be, no matter how frustrated they make me.

Surveillance Capitalism as heavily practiced by Google & Facebook have rightly made everyone security and privacy conscious. Or paranoid. Ironically, if we ever do regulate this, it will be after Google & Facebook already have enough data to control us in perpetuity. Any future regulations will more likely serve to lock out competition and cement these giants in place. On this topic I recommend "Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff and "Zucked" by Roger McNamee.

On the SL Profiles, again, I'm not the arbiter of your privacy. Still, it's not a private, offline diary. It's a "public" (to me at least) Online Profile. The only reason I can see to write a profile is to have other people read it. And since it's an avatar profile, not a fleshvatar profile, I don't see a way that it could be connected to any sort of doxxing, unless you choose to put your first life details on your Profile's tab. From what I've seen, a few avatars, academics and researchers, for example, do put FL info on the FL tab, but the vast majority of avatars do not. I can't imagine posting words or images on my SL Profile that I didn't want people to read or see.

In fairness, I can remember the fuss around the short-lived App "Girls Around Me". As I recall, this app scraped publicly available location data from apps like Foursquare, and publicly available profile data from apps like Facebook, and then combined them to present "Girls Around Me". The data they scraped, at the time they did it, was all within the various apps TOS. And users chose to make their location and profile publicly available. Nonetheless, while it may have been within the TOS at the time, users did not have the expectation that their information would be scraped, combined, and presented in the way that it was. The app was taken down from the iOS store very quickly. In that case I think banning the app was reasonable. And the TOS of today on many sites probably wouldn't allow that kind of activity.

I searched the BonnieBots website for "Kate Nova". It found many "Kate"s and many "Nova"s, but it didn't find me! :P Many of the results were very cool avis! My favorite being "Glitch Nova" who seems to be into Glitch Art. I'd love to meet them sometime!

Regardless of how one feels about BonnieBots Avatar Search, I love all the other tabs of informative data about the world I care so much about! My favorite tab is "Attachments". So many designers do "what body do you wear" type surveys. Which strike me as almost pointless as they are so easily gamed by someone alerting their group to go vote (skew) so-and-so's pole. Assuming BonnieBots methodology is sound, here's a chance to get an accurate sense of the % of Lara vs the % of Legacy, etc, etc. I watched Kupra's meteoric rise, followed by Reborn's meteoric rise, followed by designers who'd recently started rigging for Kupra already abandoning it in favor of rigging for Lara-Legacy-Reborn. Why? What was reality? With BonnieBots Attachments tab you can get a real sense of on the ground, or "on the grid" reality of what people use. In my example, you can see Lara with a sizeable lead, then Legacy, and then Reborn significantly ahead of Kupra in on the grid usage. Should that be private information? Should only Maitreya, LeLUTKA, et al know how much usage their bodies and heads have? IDK. I'm glad it's public at least for now. It does seem like over time more and more information gets locked down. To me, locking down public access of information tends to advantage orgs like CIA, MI6, Google, Facebook, et al. On the topic of publicness, I highly recommend Jeff Jarvis' book "Public Parts".

[Question!]

I sincerely question accurately How does a bonnie identify if an agent is a bot?

[Valentina Kendal]

Oh so maybe we can go back to the old days when LL(and NWN) published the 'Busiest Sims' data and it all ended up being sex sims.
This is useful data to some I suppose. The Marketplace data is quite interesting, and I love the rezz day board!
I've heard that some DJ software in SL can show you the IP address that the people in the sim are logged in from (talk about an unannounced privacy violation) - maybe that could help with determining bots.

[FU BonnieBelleXXX]

BLOCK and BAN ALL BONNIEBELLEXXX BOTS on your Sims and Land. This is privacy intrusion. These bots do as lot more then what they are saying. Like tracking last location data on a avatar. Perfect for spying on someone in SL.

[F bonniebots]

I ban these things every day but there are always more

[Anonymously]

The Destination Guide; people actually applied to be visited as region / parcel. Just because you see 40 + active avatars, doesn't mean they necessarily want to generate more traffic with unknown residents.

I see a lot of things that should be taken into consideration (what I consider) missing on the current website. Its very much the point of view (excitement) of a bot-owner, rather then costumers, and landowners at this stage.

[itsbottastic]

Think about this for a moment. If the Lindens banned all the bots then users would realize how dead SL is. Region owners would no longer be able to game traffic and would lose their top spots in the search. Bots are here to stay because they help cover up the fact SL is bleeding users.

[Kai]

People seem unable to understand that those actually looking into the bots and going to that website a person can find you by looking up a single word. In my profile I specifically state that I am not having SL sex with anyone. I was IM'ed by someone days ago who had simply admitted to searching for the term "sex" on the bonnie site and started messaging women randomly without even reading the profile info which included me. I reside on a G rated mainland sim and never go to sex sims and am not in any sex groups, so YES these stupid bots and their data theft can be abused by idiots in SL to harass people. A profile is typically accessed in SL in one of a few ways, you're in a sim where YOU choose what content you are accessing, someone sees you and reads your profile, you own a business that you choose to advertise and people know about and read it, or you're in a group that you choose to be in that shows member names. If I'm NOT CHOOSING to go to sex sims and some idiot contacts me regarding something I am in NO WAY interested in because they have access to my profile information as was done, then YES this is detrimental and an invasion of privacy that leads to having to deal with idiots in world we would likely NOT have had to deal with otherwise. The bots are a nuisance, an invasion of privacy and I think they ought to be illegal.

[RoseSilver]

Here is my take on these dang bots, I don't care if they say 10 ppl are on my sim or what is on my sim or even me. I am simply irate over fact it reveals information that has nothing to do with community or finding places to hang out, what does my PREMIUM STATUS have to do with it? What does my MARKET PLACE INCOME have to do with it? They are not just revealing sim info they are revealing things that HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH COMMUNITY & IS PRIVATE. My sim is private & yes I have security & all that but I do own a store so I'm fine with them there but to reveal info that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with you finding my store or if I had a club or some pretty sim for you to visit. Most I've read on FB, Discord & such are upset over the personal items.

[legalbeagles]

Gathering numercial data is all these bots should do. They crossed the line leading into and LL by allowing items not able to be seen by the SL inhabiatnats such as membership level. Profiles are read, payment infor is marked bu the memebership level details are not. That is one large legal hellhole bonniebots landed in displaying personal data that is private.

On the subject of profiles being dsiplayed in full by bonniebots. That is not data collecting to show numerical data that is clear breach of privacy and data collection violation.

If bonniebots wish to collect data it should asap remove all profiles and the memebership level.

The latter is not publicly available that puts LL in the noose for breach. Who would want to join sl when everything about you, including private membership details are shown.

Bonniebot you have effectively killed SL.

[Torque]

This is compiling a list of the most successful marketplace content creators and sellers, and the most visited regions and people connected with them.
Seems a rather obvious method to scout talent for other metaverse companies to poach for their world. Buy out the leaders and bring them onboard. LL sits back and watches.

[another]

In my opinion bonnie bots suck!
nobody needs them, nobody want's or even asked for them in SL!
they should change their name to bonnie stalk/spy bots!
I really find it hard to believe that Lindenlabs allows this honestly!
I call this an invasion of privacy!!!