New World Notes

Why Bonnie Bots Attract Backlash Across Second Life, While Grid Survey Bots Do Not: Tyche's Take

 

Pictured: Tyche with one of her data-collecting bots

 

As we watch the controversy over Bonnie Bots roil in angry comments across the Second Life media ecosystem, I've been curious about a mysterious discrepancy:

 

Grid Survey has been using bots to collect and display Second Life sim and user data for well over 10 years. Run by Tyche Shepherd, it's attracted very little controversy among the community; indeed, many SLers eagerly await her regularly summation of the latest data on community forums.

 

Why so much appreciation for Grid Survey, and so much outrage over Bonnie Bots?

 

"I think its a matter of perceptions," Tyche tells me. "From very early on when I started the project, I realized there was a lot more data I could collect including avatar information, but I really didn't want to collect things which were not required for the main task, which in my case, was measuring and monitoring the size of the grid."

 

Another reason might be that the Bonnie Bots don't look like "bots", and from a distance, look like a standard fashionista avatar. That's led some to fear that Bonnie is an alt "spying" on them.

 

"Ah an Uncanny Valley hypothesis," Tyche says, when I suggest this idea. "It's probably more the frequency of visiting -- I'm sure a lot of observations are just records in Visitor Lists."

 

That's another big difference -- Bonnie Bot visits are seriously incessant, compared to Tyche's bots:

 

Bonnie Bots, Explained: Team Behind Controversial Second Life Data Tracker Respond to Feedback, Also Notes: We're Hardly the Only Ones Collecting Public Avatar Data

Last night I teleported to a cozy patio with a firepit on a tiny asteroid to talk with the team of Bonnie Bots, the little Second Life user data website causing enormous controversy across the Second Life community. Since the imbroglio flared up, they have updated the site's homepage with this disclosure:

 

Information about Second Life should be freely accessible by all. We intend to make previously obscured information available to all residents, enable open use of the information, and expand available toolsets to further content creation.  All information collected and made available is publicly accessible and is not, and never will be, utilized for any monetary gain. We support individual privacy and will never attempt to obtain information not contained within or relevant to Second Life.

 

"We understand there are people upset about us releasing our data publicly," as team spokesperson Skyler Pancake explains. "However, people need to understand there are individuals and groups collecting this data secretly. Anyone with a little effort can easily collect this information and include it in seemingly harmless objects. The concern shouldn't be over us releasing this information publicly but who else is privately maintaining such databases and not informing anyone."

 

As the team and I chatted on the asteroid, one of the Bonnie Bots itself primly sat in silence. They warned me to take a picture of her quickly, because she was programmed to go back on her rounds across the Second Life grid soon.

 

While the Bonnie Bots team has bore the brunt of this controversy, they wanted to make it clear that they are hardly the only people collecting data on Second Life users -- and how much is already publicly accessible for people to collect off them:

 

 

BREAKING: Bonnie Bots Team Meets With Linden Lab, Promises Opt-Out & Masking Features for Second Life Users

Above: Patch Linden (speaking) with some of the Bonnie Bots dev team (photo courtesy Bonnie Belle)

 

Most everyone involved with Second Life has been avidly talking for days about BonnieBots, a new website tracking genuine Second Life activity, with many SLers enthusing over the depth and value of this data, and others alleging rampant privacy intrusions. (Examples in comments here, and also here.)

 

This morning, it was Linden Lab's turn to talk: Patch Linden, VP of Product Operations, summoned Bonnie and her team* into Second Life itself for a fireside meeting.  After a reportedly pleasant chat, Bonnie tells me the site will be making some crucial changes:

 

Who's Afraid of Second Life's Data Gathering Bonnie Bots? (Comment of the Week)

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:

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:

Second Life Artist Exports Her Latest Experience to Unreal & Steam -- Here's What Bryn Oh Learned Along the Way!

Above: Lobby Cam in Steam/Unreal. See below for the SL version

Lobby Cam by Bryn Oh is a free new game experience on Steam, and like the name suggests, it's actually created by famed Second Life artist Bryn Oh. Since publishing it to Steam last Friday, it's garnered 7,2000 downloads -- quite a lot, for an indie developer on the platform, and a bit better than the visits her experiences get in Second Life. (Which range from 300-1000 a day, she tells me.)  

Steam only publishes games, so Bryn added a mini quest, but also decided to keep it free to play: "There are things such as a HUD for the letters you find and you can pick up and inspect some models on tables, lots of little things," she tells me. "I was able to monetize it but I chose to make it free. I figure people can support me on my Patreon if they like what I do."  

This is a really exciting move. I'm a huge advocate of Second Life creators expanding to other platforms so they can build their audience and market. It's also very cool to see her SL creation transformed to Unreal. (Compare and contrast the pics in this post.)

"Most of the changes involve aesthetics," she tell me. "Unreal Engine is a really powerful tool where you can spend lots of time on the minute details ranging from how shadows should bounce off an object to creating dozens of layers of ground textures."

While Unreal's graphics are incredibly powerful, her Second Life version has an innovative feature that couldn't make the transition to Steam (possible spoiler ahead):

 

Siddean Speaks: Slink Creator on Closing Her Beloved, Highly Optimized Mesh Body Store -- And the Market's Uncertain Future

The Second Life fashion community was hit by some shocking new year's news, when Slink creator Siddean Munroe announced she was closing down her line of high quality avatar mesh enhancements for painful real life reasons:

Following two stressful years of pandemic which I am sure we have all been affected by in one way or the other, I suddenly lost my mother in September of 2021, my grandmother in January of 2022 and my cat Cleo in June. I have been unwell and enduring a lot of chronic pain. I have to be very honest, my spark has dimmed a little and I no longer have the energy to pour into this business like I once did.

I’ve done a lot of soul searching over the last 18 months and have come to the very difficult decision that for my own physical and mental wellbeing, I need to move on from Second Life. I am starting something new, and can only hope it will be half as much fun and as fulfilling as my time in Second Life has been.

This is also a blow to the technical performance of the Second Life community: Slink was one of the few leading mesh body brands that are well-optimized. When I last checked, many of the market leaders, by contrast, are grotesquely lag-inducing.

In any case, a mutual friend helped me reach out to Siddean, because I was curious about her future. She sent along these answers:

Metaverse Creator Finds Dances Trending on TikTok, Quickly Recreates & Sells Them To Sims 4, Second Life & IMVU Community

@phia.sims I’m Gonna Dance Dance Dance! 🔥 #secondlife #phiasims #fyp #wednesday #wednesdayaddams #addamsfamily #netflix #wednesdaynetflix #wednesdaydance #goth ♬ original sound - heyy

Remember that Wednesday dance I blogged last week? Turns out there's more to that story, and it's a smart way of leveraging and bridging social media and metaverse platforms.

"The dance I did was the routine that was trending on TikTok," creator Phia Sims tells me. "I created the TikTok (short) version instead of the original dance from the actual series. This was my reference video."

Then she uploads and sells that dance to various metaverse platforms:

"I create for The Sims 4, IMVU, and Second Life. They’re all successful but if I had to choose I would say that both IMVU and Second Life are the most successful."

Which is good, because making a trending dance like this in such a short time takes a lot of work:

"I create this by first studying and analyzing the trending dance. After that, I put a lot of key poses on different keyframes on the Rig through Blender. It’s VERY time consuming but worth it in the end because the results are amazing. Sales have been amazing so far. I’m noticing new users buying from me and I’m very much thankful that everyone love the dance as much as I do."

Maybe what Phia is doing is only new to me, but it's incredibly savvy. While there's some SL community on TikTok, she sees more Second Life activity via her Instagram: 

Yes You Can Dance Like Wednesday from Netflix in Second Life This Weekend

In keeping with Second Life's famous tradition of instantly riffing on the latest pop culture hotness, Phia Sims created an SL dance inspired by the one Jenna Ortega as Wednesday does in Netflix's Wednesday -- watch above, compare and contrast with the original below. (Cajsa was ahead of the curve on this one.)

Get it here from the Marketplace. 

Looks like Phia's version is just a short section of the whole zany 82 second thing, but that might be tough to pull off. 

Watch: This Sexy Platform Game is Actually an Ad for a Steampunk Brand in Second Life

In the platform game of Love, you only win when the final boss gets hugged. And while this looks like a fun iPhone game, it's actually an ad for Sky Pirates steampunk decor by D-LAB. Though come to think of it, this also shows how Second Life machinima is a great tool for pre-visualizing games and movies. 

It's by Teal Aurelia, who also created the acclaimed tribute to SL artists we watched recently. (More on her process here.) There was some debate on documentary versus green screen SL machinima (Teal's technique), and this is another demonstration of how green screen creates the opportunity to showcase great Second Life content in a new, high quality context.