Above: A Bonnie bot, tirelessly on bot patrol
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:
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.
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:
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...
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.
More here and on this /SecondLife Reddit thread. And more about Bonnie Bots on New World Notes soon.
What I would find useful would be their estimates of the actual non-bot, non-afk concurrency for SL as a whole, sampled at least daily if not hourly. My guess is that the true concurrency may be a factor of 2 lower than the numbers published by LL. Also, a searchable database of the true (i.e., non-bot) traffic for the sims.
Posted by: George Djorgovski | Monday, January 23, 2023 at 04:34 PM
I find your article a bit contradictory. You recommend the Book "Surveillance Capitalism" but at the same time agree with using Boonie pages as a data resource to determine buyers' behavior and therefore designers' creation and rigging.
I agree with ban lines making the SL experience less enjoyable, but on the other hand, SL is positioned as an adult playground where having unexpected visitors might make everyone's experience even less enjoyable than having bans around.
I am pro the use of anonymous data, nevertheless, this should be gathered under specific parameters such as only looking at public regions and events for example. Private regions should be off the equation as well as blinded and ban-lined ones.
It would basically give the residents the right to decide if they want their data gathered or not (just like regular digital marketing does nowadays or pretends to). But then we'd face a tech issue to classify these areas, and also the same issue "Surveillance Capitalism" states about people rejecting surveillance practices once they acknowledge them.
I for example, now expect plenty of regions to ban a bunch of bonnie's, which is sad as I've been finding great events and regions thanks to their site for the past month.
Posted by: JannaWhiskers | Monday, January 23, 2023 at 05:17 PM
Privately owned isn't private access. When talking about an area being public or private, you're not talking about ownership. There are no publicly owned sims, unless some government is paying for a sim.
Private vs public is a question of access, and conflating it with ownership is, well, conflation. Remember, a word can have multiple meanings.
If a sim is private access, nobody can go to it. Your local bar is a public place. It's privately owned, but it's a public place. In America there's something called "The Moose Lodge." It's basically a bar, except it's private. You have to be a member of the lodge or be escorted by a member of the lodge to go there. That's private.
So if access is public, then it's public and the Bonnies can go there. Much like a public bar, a privately owned sim can choose to ban the Bonnies. Some have even done this. Of course you can always go the Moose Lodge route by restricting access to a group.
Posted by: Myra Loveless | Monday, January 23, 2023 at 07:39 PM
There have been two or three Linden posts on the official forums about the bots not being against TOS.
Two of the most vociferous posts against Bonnie Bots on that reddit thread are the moderators who have locked your Reddit thread shortly after one of their own posts were locked on the Linden forums.
They may be gung-ho about privacy but I guess this shows but you can see where they stand on the free exchange of ideas.
Posted by: Der Krampus | Monday, January 23, 2023 at 09:25 PM
They had nothing on their profiles until a few months ago, so I had no idea who was running the bots and what information they were collecting.
These bots may be useful because Second Life has developed through the free creation of content by users. However, if the identity is not clear, people will be suspicious.
Posted by: Hilde Gynoid | Monday, January 23, 2023 at 10:10 PM
https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/493215-spying-tracking-and-stalking/
Posted by: Moloch Redgrave | Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at 05:57 AM
The fact that people are upset by this should be enough on its own.
There has been an expectation of privacy with SL data remaining inside SL, if you look at the LL KB articles, they actually state that you can restrict where your information is seen.
Whether this is or isn't technically a breach of privacy, a growing portion of the userbase feels it is as they find out about the BB site. LL in failing to respect this expectation of privacy constitutes a breach of trust in the company and the platform.
This is an expectation LL have themselves reinforced publicly and are on the record many times saying proudly, that they do not and will not sell our data.
That statement is meaningless if the only reason they have for not selling our data is because they think it worthless, and literally anyone can have it all should they put in a little technical effort.
Posted by: 0xc0ffea | Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at 08:14 AM
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Posted by: blackholeapk | Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at 10:33 PM
This system is invasive and the creator Discord in SL is rude when questioned about the bots constantly repeated daily hourly coming to private sims. If you find it occupied after multiple visits there is no valid reason to keep visiting so often. I was told to "f off" by Discord. Amazing how "kind" this person is in interview with Linden labs.
Posted by: Lucien | Wednesday, January 25, 2023 at 07:09 PM
if these bots, their owner, their website and what they're being used for is so innocent, why don't they explain what they're doing and what data they're collecting honestly, instead of closing their bots profiles to bock other residents from finding out what they're being used for and why they seem to be spying on and following people around the grid and refusing to offer any explanation. also, why do they have the right to collect and publicly display what other residents are earning and selling on the marketplace? I wasn't informed about my data being collected by these bots and I bet many others weren't either and I'm sure none of us were given the option for our data to be displayed on their website or not. Plus I'm sure I'm not the only one that's tired of having bots randomly landing on them in random regions. They claim the bots aren't tracking us but they seem to know my exact coordinates far too often to be coincidence.
Posted by: Rahbit | Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 06:45 AM
I have concerns!!! The huge one is why we need to opt out and the second one this site knows whether we are premium or premium plus. That’s information that isn’t displayed on our inworld profiles yet bonnie bots has it. Let’s discuss at the next video!!!
Posted by: Isabelle cheren | Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 03:50 PM
@ Isabelle cheren. I saw that as well. We don't even have that information available to us in world. This seems like a security leak to me. Who else would have that information aside from LL or Tilia. This is concerning for sure !!
Posted by: Onyx | Friday, January 27, 2023 at 01:45 AM
As people opt out, the data will become more incorrect. May we please have all the names of the bots involved so we may accurately ban and block? My membership is my business, not the business of anyone viewing that website. Linden Labs needs to do something about that ASAP, definitely a breach of privacy there.
Posted by: Bekks Heartsong | Friday, January 27, 2023 at 07:44 AM
By using kiddions mod menu user will get Mod guns, cars, money, weather, give yourself clothes, ghost yourself from the map, teleport, call in PVs without having to wait, make a solo online session
Posted by: https://kiddionsmod.com/ | Tuesday, January 31, 2023 at 04:10 AM
My issue isn't so much with them collecting statistics, I actually think know what bodies are often used and things like that are interesting and helpful. My issue is with posting profiles, while I wouldn't call a profile in SL private per say, there are settings that allow you to have only friends see something, or just second life, so posting profiles on a site where the whole world can see, seems a bit much.
Posted by: MissSweetViolet | Wednesday, February 01, 2023 at 04:56 PM
see updates also here:
https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2023/01/-bonnie-bots-update-second-life-data.html?fbclid=IwAR3JZrBC7vD1ZRE9ZJd8x9KNzA2SCDmREaPEZxEjGlKBlWc03DDOrw0mc4w
Posted by: Lala Nana | Friday, February 03, 2023 at 04:54 AM