Double standards

Just over a week ago, I published a commentary in the official SL blog accusing Linden Lab of double standards. At the time I was heavily critiqued in private by a member of Linden Lab for doing so.

To be fair, the LL rep concerned had a point: in making my comment, I had been overly critical of one person, where the problem is more endemic to Linden Lab as a whole. I duly modified said post to make it more generic.

But… the crux of the post remains valid. The Adult Content changes do smack of double standards. For example:

• People repeatedly ask why Linden Lab won’t engage on open communications with the user base to ensure everyone is properly informed of the upcoming changes ahead of time – say by putting out a mass e-mail of the subject….but Linden Lab respond that users don’t like receiving “spam” emails from them…
• ….yet when it comes to the “good news” on Homestead prices, or putting the word out about the Land Expo, LL has no hesitation in sending out “spam” e-mails to users far and wide…

(I use inverted commas around the word “spam” because that is the precise term used by a member of Linden Labs when defending their position of not informing the user base about the AC changes in a more open manner.)

At the start of the AC farrago, LL made a big play of the fact that the changes were aimed at extreme sexual and violent [my emphasis] content within SL. Yet as time ticked on, the “violent” element became more and more of a passing mention, while the “extreme sexual” term seemed to somehow come to mean almost any sexual activity within SL. And if you want proof of that, just check out the words known to have been restricted by LL.

Now we get another demonstration of the double standards – and where do we find it? Well, none other than at Linden Lab’s own “Land Expo”, which features, among other things, combat roleplay, and where the following picture (with thanks to Prokofy Neva) was taken.

Extreme Violence promoted by LL?

Yup, a “body” sliced in two and trailing blood and entrails. This to me is extreme violence. It is also something (even tho pixelated) I’d rather not come across in my “predictable” SL wanderings – but to Linden Lab, it is perfectly acceptable and apparently needs no safeguards – unlike sexual content, which by-and-large completely avoids such graphic and violent depictions but which is still censored nonetheless.

Two words: double standards.