Punish Traffic Fraud By Removal from Search
I think I've got a winner with this feature proposal: make traffic fraud a TOS violation, accept abuse reports on it, and punish it by removing offenders from visibility in SEARCH.
I think a week of enforcement, and the landscape will be changed dramatically. If the Lindens can put in administrative enforcement of ad farms/extortion, they can do this -- it is far less labour intensive, and with a very effective punishment, far more effective than merely banning this or that alt of an ad farmer.
The usual suspects on the JIRA have shown up to pick on the proposal, harrying it to death with non-essentials, like its category, or pretending to support it while devilishly introducing an unrelated concept (the ability to filter traffic results, from Gordon Wendt, who speciously claims this is like i-tunes).
I've proposed labelling and restricting bots -- I think that's worth following up on as well. Others have proposed all kinds of ways of dealing with traffic fraud, usually by removing this metric completely. As is known, I vehemently oppose the removal of traffic metrics. In a free and open society, you never remove information that helps inform consumers. The gaming of this information display doesn't obviate that social need. The gaming of it is exaggerated, and there are ways to address the gaming without killing the system. The system isn't "old-fashioned" or "a game itself" because unlike the impersonal Internet, where you can't see the nature of what comes on your page and bots and click-farms abound, in 3-D interactive Second Life, most of the avatars are still people, and their choices to travel from one "page" or lot are still more visible and meaningful.
Search/all is not affected to any great extent by traffic infusion because the Lindens have tweaked it so that other metrics, like picks (also gamed, but not as much) or landmarking or who-the-hell-knows (their formula is secret) are used to push up results to the top. I have no idea what the formula is, although traffic is likely some component, but picks, sales, search ads, classifieds may all play a role. I used to be the number one return for the word "rentals" in search/all, which seemed curious to me because I don't have as large a business as some -- perhaps I just have more natural picks being older and spread out. Now, NinjaLand has overtaken me, and who knows why, I'm no. 4. That is, the site that says FREE LINDENs is above me, but that is an example of "gaming.'
Search/places *is* affected -- although I always make the point that it isn't as affected as all the screamers claim.
If you want to get rid of traffic fraud, get rid of traffic fraudsters, not traffic.
If you endlessly claim you can't recognize and regulate bots (a thesis I don't accept), you can still regulate fraud through the use of bots, which sites like technorati.com and others will do -- they don't accept for promotion a site that is merely a click farm or link farm.
A week of not being in search at all and not being visible will be persuasive, I think, in getting people to cease the use of free accounts to log on as bot brigades infusing traffic.
Once an AR is received on a bot box, a Linden manually examines it. First, the traffic figure itself is the first sign of trouble. There are few lots that can organically collect over, say, 20,000 traffic. Only by taking 70 accounts and keeping them permanently logged in 24/7 could you go over to 50,000 (someone will be able to come up with the exact figure based on reasonable actual traffic by organic beings using their avatars).
Then if they see there is traffic injection through bot boxes, bot brigades, campers, etc. they can send one warning. A repeat violation will then lead to removal from search that week. It means overriding the checkoff box for the $30 search. That seems like a simple enough administrative routine.
Once a few dozen of the culprits in the main key words are completely non-visible in search, the more merited traffic remains.
Of course, the literalists and Haskelists come forward to claim that such a request -- to end traffic fraud the way responsible technical and other website refuse to promote link farms -- is somehow a witch hunt against real people who might behave like bots. Why, logging on as much as I do, but leaving my character AFK until the bell rings from a customer could be mistaken as bot activity! And someone who wants to get clever and disguise their bots can dress them and group them and give them random things to say that will likely end up being more intelligent than some of the stuff the organic beings do and say on the grid.
Still, all that's exaggerated nonsense, just like those SEO exploiters always come up with exaggerated nonsense to defend their click farming. It can be dealt with -- and should, in a 3-D interactive world.
I sent a link to this proposal to Jack Linden and asked him what he thought -- obviously he couldn't get to it yet but he did say that the Lindens are methodically going through a list of things to improve the mainland and the problem of bots/camping and traffic injection is indeed on that list, although the form the Linden resolution will take isn't known.
He said next up is "land cutting" and this would be a policy, not a technical solution. I think that's great, and I think eliminating the continued threat of extortion that remains all over the grid in the form of those cut and price-jacked parcels is all to the good, and does not at all affect the legitimate free land market. If someone values their 512 for $50,000 and thinks you will value it, they can put that price on it. That's very different than someone cutting up that 512 and sticking a variety of prices on it, from $100 to $12999, to hold you hostage to their possible nuisance build or ad or griefing that might ride under the radar of the new policy.
If technohippies are not longer in charge at the Lab, as rumour has it, then we can expect the Lindens will limit bots in some way. I don't think they will remove them or ban them or charge for them, unfortunately, because they love them too much. But they do have to grapple with the issue of regluating non-human activity.
A constant refrain we hear from bot-protectors is that non-human activity is beneficial to humans. Why, um, bots play Shakespeare characters, help people get invitations to groups, play NPC roles, perform chores to manage properties, etc. But...helping humans is something that humans should get to determine, not just *some* humans.
And that's what keeps happening with bots. People keep pretending that they are somehow delinked and autonomous from their original human coder. They aren't. They are merely the concretization of the will of one coder, or group of coders. Why does the will of one set of human beings automatically, like a machine, like a weapon, get to prevail over another set of human beings? Obviously, all human beings affected should get to have a say in how these manifestations of the will of *some* human beings are allowed to prevail over *all*. That's just common sense in a liberal democracy. I fail to see why we need to abdicate the responsibilty to impersonal forces, and I fail to see why any one human being's will is exempt from the Turing Test, whatever clever machinations their will's manifestion can engage in.
Interesting to see this since just yesterday I received an official warning which reads as follows:
Residents may not use land as a means to harass other
residents, restrict the freedoms or movement of another
Resident or disturb the peace in a region with visual spam.
Please limit your guest number so that other residents within the same
region can have their guests as well.
One of my renters runs a very popular sex club in Nieun which by the looks of it has been filling up the sim with naked avatars and men with plywood boxes on their heads humping thin air.
It's all very sad that the sim is full and all that but I try to be very hands off for my mainland renters, letting them pretty much get away with murder. That being my main selling point I'm reticent to try to "fix" the problem. Regardless, it's not entirely clear what can be done. Make the club less popular somehow? Just eject people when more than 35 turn up?
I suppose, ironically, I'm being falsely accused of using bots to increase traffic to the detriment of other users of the sim. Unless it's a violation to simply run a popular location. I don't know. But either way, right now, people like me are getting punished for bringing too many avatars to mainland sims and so it seems that "traffic violations" are against the TOS under the heading resource abuse or at least one Linden's interpretation of it. If that's the case, is it really necessary to introduce another rule? I'd far prefer a technical solution to the problem but for mainland at least they could just enforce the existing, sufficiently vague one about resource abuse with progressive warnings, suspensions, bannings etc as they normally would.
Posted by: Elanthius Flagstaff | January 07, 2009 at 10:15 AM
Um, yes, Elanthius, eject avatars when more than 35 turn up. You don't get to hog that entire sim's avatar slots on your own parcel. That's absurd. Since the Lindens haven't tied avatar space to square meters, we are forced to get along this way. And yes, that means you restrain yourself so that your neighbours can get home *to land they paid for*.
Once you had two competing tenants on YOUR land with one threatening to leave if you didn't solve this problem, you'd get it.
If your tenant uses bots to make traffic, all the more reason to cut back their overuse of the available avatar slots. It's a no-brainer.
Most of the time, these clubs are not naturally popular. If they don't use bots, what they do is constantly TP in friends or even strangers, and some people don't resist. It's a racket.
The Lindens are absolutely right to start prosecuting this, as it has been a huge bane of the mainland.
I spent more than a year locked out of use of my land of some 26,000 meters on Refugio because of the asshole Barbie Club on a lousy 4608 m2 that routinely filled the entire sim up with their guests, which they Shanghaied more often than not. Why should that be?
I patiently kept ARing, and using every method of my own, including having people come and sit on the sim to hold the spaces open, it's absurd. I was forced to close my mall, and reduce the cost of my apartment rentals there due to this hijacking of the sim by these selfish assholes, who remained hijacking that sim even after they bought their own island.
It's especially grievious when you hear the history of this: the Barbie Club was in fact once my TENANT on this sim, and they then went and bought land firesaled by a notorious griefer when she was banned, and moved on to this parcel of their own, from which the proceeded to harass me for nearly 2 years (and still do so).
The Lindens should not tolerate situations like that. Anyone less hardy than me would have been forced off their land and forced to firesale it and capitulate to assholes who couldn't be bothered to go get their own full sim, or stay on their own island.
The Lindens could easily fix this by saying that if you want to use up 35-50 avatar slots routinely, buy a full sim. And accept these ARs and ban those who refuse to comply. This isn't about becoming "less popular" and OMGODZORS impinging on the fuck-you hedonism of these clubs except in so far as to guarantee OTHERS THEIR God-given fuck-you hedonism on their land. That's all.
The Lindens could also fix this by zoning.
The only way to concentrate little minds wonderfully is to take them out of traffic. That ends visibility, and the sales from vendors they need to pay tier for their clubs and malls. End of story then.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 07, 2009 at 10:37 AM
The only solution to the problem of fraudulent behavior is elimination of accounts that openly and blatantly engage in fraudulent behavior.
And this is not something we shall see from Linden Lab unless Linden Lab undergoes a major rehire process replete with polygraphs to find out who has been engaging in fraud.
Never going to happen. Not at Linden lab nor anywhere else for that matter.
Linden Lab wants concurrency numbers up so they historically encourage traffic falsification. This problem is squarely upon the shoulders of Mark Klingdon and Mark Klingdon is the one and only person people need to refer to when discussing blatant Traffic falsification in Second Life. He either eliminates it or stands as a corporate endorsement of unethical behavior. There is no gray area in between in which to obfuscate one's position.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | January 07, 2009 at 10:39 AM
You can't tie agent limits to parcels. You could cut up the parcels into all kinds of small sizes, and theoretically not be allowed even 1 extra agent based on land ownership. Theoretically, a sim can hold 128 512s. If there were 128 different owners, no one would be allowed to have guests and more than 40 of them being home at the same time would be a problem.
It is something that needs to be managed through zoning or some other policy. Clubs are businesses too - what can be done to balance the needs of that business without putting too much strain on its neighbors?
Posted by: Ginnevra Allen | January 07, 2009 at 02:03 PM
I know that, Ginnevra, and I said that. Read what I wrote. I didn't say you could tie agent limits to parcels.
Duh.
And as I've said a million times, the Lindens already overbook on this system, like an airline, by having a theoretical situation that fortunately doesn't play out in practice, whereby 128 people might all wish to reach their 512s at once.
So duh, sorry to deprive you of your feeling of superiority for the day.
Clubs should be zoned. The problem is that if they forced all the clubs on to one mainland sim, no one of them could succeed, with the others competing for avatar slots. That's why it's ludicruous.
Clubs that are most abusive are the cheap, tacky kind jamming on small parcels. The first thing that many empty-headed new people think to do in SL is make a club. I know, I was one myself one, and the first thing I did was make a club, too, on a parcel where I, too, put 30 avatars in contests and such, and no doubt drove my neighbours wild, too.
It's what anyone will do when given the parameters to do so. So the Lindens have to allow ARs on the basis of overuse of resources. There isn't any other way.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 07, 2009 at 02:53 PM
I voted for this.... As mentioned..
People are forgetting one SERIOUS ISSUE...... LAG, SIM PERFORMANCE, MAX allowed avatars in a sim. We have had "bots in a box" cap the amount of people in a sim and shut it off. Yet now the Lindens seem to ignore these abuse reports and this SIM ABUSE continues. It degrades the usage for others who share the sim, such as not being able to log on to their HOME location because some moron thinks that be having a load of bots in a box is going to lure people to their store.... the irony being that they can't even get their because they have capped the sim out when 10 more avatars enter the sim. It degrades the mainland experience.
Linden Labs has said over and over in blogs that they want to improve the mainland experience. They should take this feature suggestion seriously.
Rather than promote a business in an ethical fashion , some people have taken to "gaming search" as the only means of adding credibility to their crap products or crap club. There are many people that have designed products that stand the test of time and do not need any bots to draw people to their business.
Posted by: Blaccard Burks | January 07, 2009 at 03:52 PM
I don't write for feelings of superiority, Prokofy. Stop projecting.
All I did was expand upon the concept of tying the agent use to land ownership, which is that thanks to the potential number of owners in the sim, and the amount of land ownership in a sim can't be the deciding factor about what's "fair."
I didn't suggest that all clubs be zoned in one sim. That wouldn't work. But relegating all clubs to specific zones scattered throughout the mainland may work better, or
Honestly? The ideal solution may be to have all forced onto private islands. Even a small club with almost 0 traffic at any given time can kill a sim if they book a live musician with a large following. Should they be AR'd for the once-in-a-blue-moon maxing out of the sim? I've been to small mainland clubs where that has happened. What's "fair" in this situation? A private island would be able to manage this kind of situation far more easily.
Posted by: Ginnevra Allen | January 07, 2009 at 04:18 PM
Elanthius, Nieun is a disgrace, how on earth your tenant has got away with that for so long is a mystery, there's no need for a new policy to address that issue, it's a shocking abuse of resources.
As for traffic fraud, it's never going to be fixed, although taking the piss can be fixed with a policy, traffic is always going to be controversial and subject to interpretation.
Posted by: Ciaran Laval | January 07, 2009 at 05:57 PM
Elanthius, truly, it's appalling to have sim-hogging happening on a rental. You can make a policy to stop that, even if the Lindens can't -- except oops, they are changing and apparently making a policy and it just got filed on you. So tell your tenant to stop force-TPing their friends and making people sit AFK, and remove any camping devices, and let other people come home.
Unfortunately, there isn't a solution like "move to a private island". Kids maxing out sims with their 4096 for which the pay only $25 a month are not going to suddenly start paying $250 a month. They aren't going to be allowed to just pay $75 a month on openspace sims, either!
But once the Lindens figure out how to bill for avatar presence like that, to bill for CPU cycles used despite your meter size, they will end this. It will kill clubs. That is, it will kill the gadzillion clubs that don't have very many visitors, and enable only the strong to survive. You tekkies love Darwinism -- apply it where it is needed.
Of course they should be AR'd for the once-in-a-blue-moon maxing if they prevent other people from using their land! That ought to be self-evident. That it isn't is yet more indication of the entitlement-happy generation.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 07, 2009 at 07:32 PM
I'm happy to report that Joshua Nightshade agrees with you.
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/23236-prokofy-creates-jira-issue-i.html
He also insists his wanting to use a bot to model one of his low-prim robot avatars rather than just rezzing it in-world has nothing to do with traffic. He dost protest a bit much.
Posted by: Anya Ristow | January 07, 2009 at 08:02 PM
A club absolutely can move to a private island. The island owner can regulate club activity far better than Linden Lab can, and the club still exist only on that 4096. I'm not saying it should be an island full of clubs, but I can see an estate managing the activities by limiting the amount of large events and kicking people off the island if need be.
You're pro-business, Prokofy. Why shouldn't a small club have a shot at growing by getting big names? It's a conflicting goal.
Posted by: Ginnevra Allen | January 07, 2009 at 09:02 PM
Got something from it.
http://dress08.com
Posted by: w | January 07, 2009 at 09:54 PM
Good call Prok! I've been hoping for a way to end the incredible amount of resource hogging and traffic gaming for a while now, never thought to post a JIRA for it though (I rarely think to post things to the JIRA, even for technical problems considering how often they get ignored or just devolve into a bitch-fest.) but I'm glad you thought to put one in, you got my vote.
@Anya...
Was that really necessary? Pointing out the thread where many of us, not just Joshua, are showing support for this is one thing. Your citing of Joshua here is an obvious (personal) dig at him taken here because you weren't getting anywhere in your efforts to 'prove him wrong' in the thread. Seriously, if you're going to take potshots at someone, at least have the testicular fortitude to do so on a venue in which they can respond.
---
I apologize to you Prok for veering off subject there, and again, good show on the JIRA, thank you.
Posted by: Fox Stirling | January 07, 2009 at 10:29 PM
Sorry, Prok. I should have read the JIRA comments before posting. You apparently already knew about Joshua.
Posted by: Anya Ristow | January 07, 2009 at 11:10 PM
Ginnerva,
Few island owners are going to move in a club, that they try to have exist among residences or event stores. Landlords hate clubs. Not only do they cause lag, but they inevitably spark constant griefing problems, fights, issues, attempts to sub-lease to other vendors, blah blah. I refuse to rent to clubs. I'm totally done with them, as are most landlords. Please, spare me the stories about "good" clubs. There are few, if any "good" clubs.
I don't understand what is meant by "big names". But I fail to see why clubs on a 4096 get to extend out their patrons to take up the entire sim. Capitalism, business, and commerce do not mean privileging one set of business rights against another, or pitting enterprise against consumer. The rule of law is what makes capitalism work, and when it fails it's because the rule of law fails.
Joshua is an attention whore. That's all.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 08, 2009 at 12:04 AM
No way would I put a busy club amidst residences unless they were cheap apartments. But I've seen certain organizations tout live music and stuff as part of their rentals, because it's something to do. Some people like living near busy areas.
Regardless, if I were an estate owner, and the club would bring traffic, I would put a small 4096 club amid non-event holding shops on a purely commercial sim. Most clubs don't generate that kind of bone-crushing traffic anyway, and those that do typically have their own sim.
Posted by: Ginnevra Allen | January 08, 2009 at 11:18 AM
I guess I'm taking a beating over my comment which is fair enough. Really my point wasn't so much about how I should be able to put 40 avatars on every parcel. My point was that SL already are treating excessive traffic as a TOS violation and chasing it down and that I kinda sorta approve even though it's slightly detrimental to me personally.
Anyway, I know it's like spitting in the wind but to clarify a few points. The club I refer to is not a dance club, it's one of those creepy free sex places with sex related vendors up all around. All the avatars in it are legitimate visitors, not bots, not teleported in by the owner or any other kind of fake traffic.
I agree with some of you. Although this place could probably afford it, if they were to move to a private estate it would have to be an entire island because no estate owner would let them use a part of a sim. The rest of the sim would be permanently unusable and unrentable. I don't know how SL can support clubs like this that take up a lot of resources in a small amount of space. I don't see any other way around it than just not allowing popular places to get away with owning 4096, 8192sqm or whatever on mainland. Force them al out onto their own private estates maybe and if they can't afford it tough.
Posted by: Elanthius Flagstaff | January 08, 2009 at 12:11 PM
I went and voted this up, and added a few comments to the Jira as well.
Mainland *could* be metered based on land ownership per sim, and on a flexible basis at that which would accommodate small groups hanging out and larger events without breaking very often.
Imagine that your ownership of land allowed you a share of the sims maximum avatar count. A small parcel might only grant you one avatar, a half sim would give you 20. But these would be *minimums*... if the sim was not crowded, you would be allowed "more than your fair share".
As the sim did fill, the caps would start to lower. If the sim has 20 avatars, the "one avatar" cap would be "expanded" only to two. As it approached 40, it would lower to the one: the minimum.
These would be limits on *entry* as well, so existing avatars would be permitted to stay.
It wouldn't be perfect, but it would keep a tiny club from consuming all of the resources, and as more people "came home" to none club parcels, the cap on the club would be lowered so as people leave but more can't get in, some form of sharing would be happening.
There are still obvious ways to game such a system, but it would take far more work than simply teleporting the hapless to a parcel. It would make the abusers more accountable as well, because gaming would be more obvious. (For example, if someone made a bunch of tiny plots and put one person per plot... that stands out.)
Posted by: John Lopez | January 08, 2009 at 01:40 PM
sims can only reasonably accommodate 40 avatars. Linden Lab needs to set that as the maximum. Oh yes people would get mad.
Oh wait pre windlight the sims could handle 100 avatars. maybe Linden Lab needs to erase that error of judgement and go back to the pre windlight code.
They won't. So they need to drop the hard coded max to 40 period.
This means 1638 meters per avatar. A 1024 parcel would not accommodate an avatar. You would have to make the minimum parcel size 1638 square meters. I would love to see LL try to implement this.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | January 08, 2009 at 01:59 PM
Ann, if your comment was addressing the idea I proposed of *soft* limits, than a 1024 parcel would be able to support an avatar... unless the sim was (very nearly) full.
Which is how it is today anyway, except without *any* fairness to when people can access property and when they can't.
Any system that does "timesharing" (yeah, I guess I'm old) worked like this anyway. That is why late night coding became part of the industry standard: you could get more than your "fair share" because there was little load then.
Sim owners (well, responsible ones) schedule events to avoid conflicts over the avatar limits. This would simply be an automated attempt at being more fair about hitting the ceiling than today.
Posted by: John Lopez | January 08, 2009 at 02:13 PM
How to improve the mainland:
Get rid of the pretentious nits bitching about the load, Sim use and other issues presented by someone starting up a mall, club or store on the Mainland.
Aside from two places, there is no zoning in the Linden Owned sims: You want zoned sims? Rent the ability to place one on the grid yourself or wait for Linden Lab to catch up .... and do not bitch unless you are fully prepared to foot the bill to get the malls, clubs and stores their own sims.
Posted by: Sean Williams | January 08, 2009 at 02:25 PM
The problem I see here...
Is people are getting caught up with numbers issues.. All the BS about avatars per m2 per whatever is silly. You miss the point. BOTS ARE NOT PEOPLE. I would rather see a sim filled up with REAL PEOPLE behind the avatars using the sim rather than BOTS hogging the sim. If 40 people are on one 1024 parcel and they are real.... awesome work. The bot issue is being skirted around by numbers and people loosing sight of a proposed change to a serious problem.
Posted by: Blaccard Burks | January 08, 2009 at 02:32 PM
There is no problem. Prok has recommended a noble policy. Linden Lab needs to adopt and publish a clear unambiguous policy about resource abuse, traffic falsification, and unethical/fraudulent behavior in general.
The only way they will stop traffic falsification is to disconnect traffic from search and they are not going to do any such ethical thing nor are they going to deal with a real policy and associated enforcement so it is really a moot argument.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | January 08, 2009 at 03:52 PM
Hmmm, I made the mistake of not making it clear that avatar load and bots are distinct issues in my mind... I think forcing bots to be marked as such and allowing user's to exclude them from their land and excluding them from traffic statistics addresses *one* problem: that of bots.
The other suggestion is one to address another, orthogonal problem: the unfair distribution of sim resources. Bots can cause that problem, yet are distinct from it in that the problem remains that even without bots the discos and other high traffic areas can steal the usability of a sim from the majority land owners.
Disconnecting traffic entirely doesn't seem a good solution. Search engines have been able to detect and mitigate "gaming" for years (with various false steps along the way). Linden Lab needs to do the same: punish those that game the stats, thus improving the usefulness of that stat.
Posted by: John Lopez | January 08, 2009 at 04:56 PM
Show of hands on how many people think Linden Lab is capable of unbiased objective policy enforcement wherein no favoritism would be exercised?
None? The usual situation with any company and it's revenue streams.
The only solution is to disconnect traffic from search.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | January 08, 2009 at 05:15 PM