Day: January 27, 2011

Maturity ratings change in the Marketplace

Posted on by Inara Pey

It would be nice to get an E-mail on this, rather than having to trawl the forums in the off-chance of finding it – especially given the overall significance.

Please, LL, sort out your bloody communications with users! And why wasn’t this set to happen ahead of the merger?

Hi all,

As  many of you know, the teen grid was shut down on Friday. This week, we  will be rolling out some changes in Marketplace to ensure Residents  under 18 will not be exposed to adult content. Here is a quick summary  of what changes will be occurring.

Phase 1: 1/27 Release
On  Thursday, the Marketplace will move to the General, Moderate, and Adult  content levels already in use in the Viewer. Just prior to this release  (starting on Wednesday), we will be running a process that will add a  content level to existing items. Once the release has been completed,  you will be able to review the ratings set on your Marketplace listings  by viewing your inventory: there will be a new column “Maturity” showing  what level the item falls into. Search will now support viewing general  or moderate/adult content. Please view the updated listing guidelines (link points to the current guidelines) on Thursday for more details.

Note  that, in addition to automated process to migrate listings, it will  continue to be possible to flag listings. Please take some time after  the new guidelines are posted to review your listings and make sure they  comply. People will be able to start flagging listings based upon the  new guidelines on Thursday (though I do not expect that we will see much of this right away), so the sooner you can do this, the better!

Phase 2: by 2/28/2011
Before  the end of February, Marketplace will be updated to allow setting  maturity level preferences at a more granular level than is currently  supported, such as allowing Residents to view moderate content without  adult content included.

Why was this done in 2 steps? Timing, pure and simple. We  wanted to ensure we had the proper controls in place as soon as  possible for the teens entering the main grid. Phase 2 will provide  further refinement.

A quick update on Maturity is on the agenda for the Marketplace Office Hours on 1/26.

Regards,
Brooke [Linden]

ADDENDUM- 27 Jan

It appears someone at LL was listening, as an E-mail containing the above was circulated today…

Storm, meet teacup …?

Posted on by Inara Pey

People are getting a little bent out of shape around the idea of being “outed” on Facebook as a result of the “new” web-based Profiles.

Now, I’ll say up-front that I don’t like Facebook. I don’t like Zuckerberg’s attitude that amounts to people wanting a degree of privacy around their private lives are somehow “less trustworthy” than those who put the entire mundanity of their lives online (or more pointedly, on Facebook).

BUT.. that said, this whole thing is coming over as something of a storm in a teacup in many respects. The issue in question is that an SL user who has a Facebook account went to his SL web profile and clicked the Facebook LIKE button and – quelle surprise – it linked his SL web Profile to his Facebook account. Ummm… well, what else did he expect?

Whether or not he was signed-in to Facebook at the time is irrelevant – and it is certainly not a reason to go screaming about the “wrongness” of the Profiles. Let’s face it – these buttons crop up everywhere; they are there for Facebook users to record things and places they like. Cookies are used so that information can be collected, recorded and displayed without the need for people to constantly log in and out of Facebook in order to do so.

As such, the user got precisely what he indicated he wanted: his SL Profile linked to his Facebook account and RL identity. No one outed him but himself. As Darren Caldwell points out in the thread:

This is because You clicked “like” on your own Profile. 

Only You can link your SL profile to your FB profile.  Other people clicking “Like” on your profile will not link the two.

And even then – he really didn’t “out” himself at all.

All he actually did was create a link between his avatar’s Profile and his real life identity on Facebook. Unless both contain information that specifically links one to the other, anyone else looking at his Facebook page will simply see that he happens to “Like” someone called “Perrie Juran” who is a Second Life user.

To claim that LL, in including these buttons, are putting people’s privacy and anonymity at risk smacks a little of histrionics. Certainly, it’s not a reason for people to decry the new Profile system.

That said, I would have preferred it if the Facebook and Twitter buttons were something that we could opt-in to and display on our Profiles, rather than being presented as a fait accompli. This latter point is apparently now being addressed according to comment from Fredrik Linden in a comment on JIRA WEB3494 – although I have yet to see any sign of an ability to remove the two buttons in question on my Profile. In the same JIRA, Yoz Linden has indicated the 1st Life tab is not longer displayed on the web Profiles – which is a good move – and hinted that it may not be back out of respect for people’s privacy.

A lot of finger-pointing is going on here, but at the end of the day, this is something of a two-way street. While Linden Lab may be acting somewhat precipitously in providing these buttons, equally those opting to use, say both SL and Facebook – as with the user generating the above thread – really should take responsibility for their own actions, both in using the tools and, frankly, in what they put in their Profile.