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:

 

 

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:

The Community-Made Train Systems of Second Life Are Over 15 Miles Long -- Take This Map to Start Riding!

This is a pretty amazing map to the community-made train systems cutting across the Second Life mainland (click here for high res version, also available for free in the Marketplace), created by Rydia Lacombe, and updated from her 2021 edition. If they look longer and more complex than many real life train systems, you're right there -- they're longer, Rydia tells me, than the system in a major city in Scotland.

"Calculations in 2014 estimated that there was about 30 kilometers of track on the mainland. I would assume that this number is roughly correct - with the main line at least 12 km!" Rydia tells me. "This means that the SLRR Main Line is larger than the Glasgow subway system - which is fairly neat."

Anyone can ride these at any time, by the way -- just get a train (there's free models) drag it onto the track, and it'll snap to the rails, and you're ready to go. (Info below.)  I just took a leisurely train ride with a famous YouTuber, and can confirm it's a cool way to enjoy the rolling scenery while having a fun chat.

"I just like drawing maps," Rydia tells me, grinning. "I used to be told off in elementary school because it wasn't 'normal'. I just think it's neat."

There's also a broader motivation for her: 

London in Second Life Flooded With Mourners & Well-Wishers At News of Queen Elizabeth's Death; UPDATE: Added SLImage Tributes

As news of Queen Elizabeth's death spreads across the globe, mourners in the virtual world of Second Life have been converging into London City, a sprawling island devoted to the UK's capital. I have tried over the last hour to take photos of the impromptu memorial, but as avatars keep teleporting into London, the surroundings continue to be a blurry as actual London in the worst fog imaginable.

You can see them in the screenshot here, green dots indicating users from around the world, piling into the town square, where the British flag has been lowered to half-mast, and the audio stream has been changed from the usual Britpop music to somber songs played on piano and pan flute.

"May she be in God's arms half hour before the devil knows she's gone," announces a mourner in chat.

"There is music on the stream now," says someone who helps manage London. "I hope it is fitting. I'm raising a glass to Her Majesty The Queen!"

As is often the case, the serendipitous mourning is basically SLers gathering and chatting together in the wake of monumental offline news at a virtual world location with some mirror relationship to that news. (See also: Mourners outside the virtual recreation of the Eiffel Tower, after a terrorist attack in Paris.) 

And as also befits Second Life, the arriving mourners include Superman in a Batman helmet, a sentient dog, and a humanoid fox (not to be confused), along with various supermodels. Many or most are from the UK, but mourners and well-wishers from outside Britain are arriving too:

I Can't Stop Looking at Hilariously Quirky Posts from Second Life's Japanese Community on Twitter

今日も一日
Today is another day#secondlife pic.twitter.com/SXYQG81gT1

— Sanny Yoshikawa🌻🌻🌻 (@sannysquirrel) August 5, 2022

If you were to judge Second Life only by how it's mostly depicted on Flickr or Facebook, you'd assume it's a photorealistic fashion simulator. But among the Second Life users of Japan, many of whom congregate on Twitter, Second Life is just as much (if not moreso) a comically zany and quirky play space, where you're just as likely to, say, come across a giant circus hamster playing Pokémon GO.

"I think most Japanese SLers grew up in a quirky culture in real life," New World Notes' Japanese translator Sanny Yoshikawa tells me. (That's Sanny above, as the hamster.) "We played gacha or funny arcade games when we were little kids. Then we moved to Nintendo and PlayStation. Also, so many funny anime and TV shows were always beside us. I think we are native to quirky culture."

Sounds right to me. Now that I'm following hundreds of Japanese SLers on Twitter, my feed is blessed with adorably goofy and wacky images on the daily, depicting a Second Life that reminds me of its earlier, Bebop Reality days before mesh had moved the economy and culture toward high end fashion.

More on that topic another day, but for now, here's a glimpse of SL Japan, with some translation from Sanny when necessary. She helps explain, for example, why a buff naked guy with Gundam weaponry and a teddy bear helmet is wearing a salad on his crotch:

Tomorrow: Visit a Second Life Sim Devoted to David Lynch, Attend an Immersive Extravaganza as a Character from His Works!

Click here to teleport to a place where the birds sing a pretty song, and there's always music in the air. That's right: There's a whole Second Life sim devoted to dream world genius David Lynch, and there's a grand 7 hour event happening there tomorrow starting at 2pm PT. (All the details here.)

"Lynchland is not about roleplay," group leader Myrdin Sommer tells me, "but we do like to dress up as characters from a Lynch movie; LynchLand is a cool place to indulge David Lynch's eccentric persona so to say! And as a dress code we ask this from our visitors at events, but it is certainly not mandatory." But if you had the chance to turn your avatar into a character from a Lynch movie or TV show, why would you not?

"And that goes for everything in LynchLand," says Sommer, "The Bang Bang bar, The little church, the Blue Velvet Diner, The Mulholland Drive-in Cinema or the Lost Highway Motel, where we even have a room specially for David, so he can stay over when he is in ' town." 

And you never know when Lynch will be in the neighborhood: He just made a visit the Metaverse just a couple years ago.

More on LynchLand next week, meantime, here's some images from the LynchLand group on Flickr. (Warning, not all of them are worksafe viewing, not even when it's the Log Lady.)

Watch: Meta & Linden Lab Veteran Jim Purbrick Explains What New Metaverse Platforms Need to Learn from Virtual Worlds (Before It's Too Late)

Back when he was leading metaverse development at Meta last year, Linden Lab veteran Jim Purbrick kept telling Meta staffers to read My Tiny Life, Julian Dibbell's pioneering tale of a virtual world community and a trollish abuser within it. But the Meta team didn't prioritize his advice, and the inevitable happened: When Meta launched Horizon Worlds, it was immediately inundated with reports of sexual assault directed at female avatars.

This new video, from Jim's recent talk at The Mixed Reality Lab in the University of Nottingham, crystallizes the advice that Meta should have prioritized -- and hopefully, will be watched by anyone working on new virtual world/metaverse platforms, ideally before they launch.

"It is very tempting for tech companies to take things that are a lot of work, and worry about them later," as Jim puts it. "One of the phrases you'll hear often is, 'Hey, this is a nice problem to have. If our virtual world is popular enough that people want to turn up and cause mayhem, maybe our virtual world is successful and we can deal with it at that point'. The trouble is what you're trying to do with these rules and systems is to establish norms... If you wait until everyone is acting badly, it is incredibly difficult to turn that community around."

Sub-Orbital Galaxy Still Floating Above Second Life After 14 Years, Still Inspiring Virtual & Real Communities

Photo credit: Susietea Resident via Inspire's Flickr Group

Twelve years ago, Bonny Greenwood was floating in outer space on an asteroid doing tai chi to trance music when she struck up a conversation with a friendly passerby. (As one does.)

Then again this is a common thing to happen in Inspire Space Park, a suborbital galaxy that’s been floating high above Second Life since at least 2007 -- created, as the founders told me back then, “to make the perfect ‘chill’ place in SL that wasn't about sex, or ads”. (Watch me twirl above the galaxy below.)

It’s still orbiting above the virtual world, I am happy to report, and has very recently expanded to include an earthbound fantasy forest and steampunk-themed park. Click here to visit yourself.

It was co-created by Earth Primbee, and as a testament to the community that’s developed around Inspire Space Park over its lifespan, he is still after all these years able to cover land tier costs from donations:

“It is the feeling one gets when the music and scene combines,” Primbee muses to me. “Maybe you are dancing, doing Tai Chi, meditating, or orbiting and find that moment where it all comes together. It is a peaceful feeling. People need that and the people have insured it stayed. Became a home of sorts. A place where many have met for the first time. A shared place for them after.”

Inspire’s original co-creators have since moved on, and Primbee himself has largely turned over operations to three women. Which brings us back to Bonny, among the triumvirate of the galaxy’s new managers:

As Fifty Linden Fridays Launches Its 12th Anniversary Party, Its Founder Tells Me How an Internet Meme Led to One of Second Life’s Largest Groups

Barb photo by Catalina Staheli, edited by Kreao Kujisawa

Click here to join the 12th year anniversary of Fifty Linden Fridays, one of Second Life’s largest in-world groups. Expect a massive crowd, however, because with 52,530 active members, roughly 1 in 10 of SL’s entire user base is a member of FLF. 

Founded and still managed by an SLer named OMGWTF Barbecue -- or just “Barb” to those who know her -- this celebration is quite a culmination for a young woman who, back in 2006, joined Second Life simply to have some rude fun. 

Hence her notably wacky avatar name: