Strong Content Warning: This article discusses child abuse and contains blurred explicit images.
Second Life users are in a frenzy over this article, published on Sunday, which details how a key member of parent company Linden Lab was participating in virtual sex content containing child avatars. Patch Linden, AKA Eric Nix, his husband, and several other high level members of Linden Lab staff are accused of enabling child abuse content to flourish in their privately owned virtual residences, ignoring explicit content involving virtual children, and creating a deeply toxic working environment at the company.
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Calling this child abuse is what’s fucking disgusting. This is adults role playing with fucking digital renderings. Literally no children involved. Go clutch pearls elsewhere
Yeah, personally I have strong issues with “daddy” roleplay where the girl / woman obviously acts, talks and dresses like someone underage or even a little kid (commonly referred to as age play). But I also accept that what they do is their business and no one is harmed. I also strongly object to scat play and animal play but once again. Their business and no one is harmed (well, scat play can be iffy… But it’s consensual and you’re “harmed” by BDSM or boxing in a much more direct manner).
In essence I see this as really no different than allowing GTA where you play as a thug with the ability to slaughter innocents with impunity. It’s all fantasy and we (the majority) don’t believe it actually increases the likelihood of you doing it for real in any meaningful way. Same applies to all forms of roleplay, virtual or in real life.
As such this is just daft fear mongering and as you say dilutes child abuse in a way that can move resources away from protecting / helping actual kids to stopping safe and consensual adult roleplay. Which is very counterproductive.
I think the difference here from GTA is that this is a shared virtual world where the actions of players shape the society inside the game. If they’re creating a society where stimulated child abuse is shrugged off as just someone’s private life (even though it’s essentially public to everyone on second life) then I wouldn’t want to participate in that society, and if I worked for the company making second life I wouldn’t want any part of it.
Sure, but as opposed to real life you can just not participate. And you can quit if you work there. Let them do their thing if that’s what they want, no one is forced to participate or watch.
They specifically called it “child abuse content”, not “child abuse”. This seems perfectly valid, no?
By the way, just because these are digital renderings does not mean that there is no harm. Seeing such content can still be harmful to past victims. Just try to put yourself in this situation: imagine just playing some video game online, and suddenly being exposed to people recreating traumatic experiences from your past. Not only that - you also discover that the creators of the video game are involved & actively enabling such content. Seems completely messed up to me.
By the way, just because these are digital renderings does not mean that there is no harm. Seeing such content can still be harmful to past victims.
This is true of literally everyone and any one. Anyone can be victimized by anything and be traumatized by seeing it. That’s not a reasonable argument to throw around accusations of child abuse.
They specifically called it “child abuse content”, not “child abuse”. This seems perfectly valid, no?
No, this is not valid. MAYBE if they added “fictional child abuse content” or something, but even that would be misleading. There’s no child, so it can’t be child abuse, and thus can’t be child abuse content.
Okay, this article thing is like three million pages long; is there actually any child abuse content being thrown at people? Is there any way to see this stuff without being into it? I don’t understand how this is suddenly a problem now if it’s like, you’re walking around your virtual neighbourhood and BAM, CSAM in your face! Kinda seems like somebody would’ve noticed before now so I’m wondering if there’s some clarification I missed by not reading past the first couple of pages.
Heh, I’ve read it all… I used to go onto SL like 15 years ago 😬
is there actually any child abuse content being thrown at people?
Unclear. The proof they give are drawings, and the possibility of adding IRL photos as avatar textures.
Is there any way to see this stuff without being into it?
Apparently yes. It claims the areas are not age restricted, and while some content might appear only when a whitelisted user is present, the content, and any avatar interactions, would be visible to anyone in the same place at the same time.
I’ve read it all
Hero! <3 Thanks for digesting this for me/us :3 Also your avatar is friggin’ adorable ^.^
I don’t really have anything to add, though. Better access controls seems sensible; grooming and trafficking are claims easily and often made (maybe they shouldn’t be, hm!) and hopefully are just BS.
Edited to fix my ^.^-face :3
👀 Yikes.
Accused of:
-Enabling imaginary CSAM involving no children to “flourish” (?) in their virtual houses
-Ignoring that someone considers their virtual play only involving adults to be disgusting
-Creating a deeply toxic working environment within a companyOne of these things is most definitely a problem if true!
Also not quite convinced the full article doesn’t have other problems. It has a smell.
The whole article smells a lot… but other than the toxic environment, it also claims other problems:
- Removing age controls
- Grooming
- IRL human trafficking
If true, those are punishable pretty much everywhere.
The part about removing ban lines from an invite-only explicit area, would also be quite suspicious.
Wow, that’s some wall of text. Between the language used (royal “we”?), the severity of the accusations, the mention of a smear campaign against “the authors”… why is that thing on Medium, instead of on police reports?
The livelihoods of too many people depend on Second Life
Maybe they shouldn’t, they’re the original NFT peddlers before NFTs went blockchain.
The whole thing reads like a hissy fit between some internal factions. I’m also kind of surprised SL is still a thing, I thought it went free/self-hosted with alternative clients and grids many years ago.