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.
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.
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 😬
Unclear. The proof they give are drawings, and the possibility of adding IRL photos as avatar textures.
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.
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.
While I don’t think any trauma survivors will run into any of this without seeking it out, SL’s official stance of “we will not tolerate any child-related sexual activities” is starkly contrasted by the behaviour the article mentions. Someone from Linden Lab knowing about this stuff definitely makes me question that Second Life actually enforces their rules.