I want to make it clear that, while I agree wholeheartedly with the changes Linden Lab have made, which are discussed in this editorial, I disagree with HOW these changes are being implemented by Linden Lab, and particularly with the June 30th, 2024 deadline, which I feel does NOT give businesses and individuals enough time to prepare for the impact of these changes.
I also feel that Linden Lab has failed to provide sufficient details to affected content creators and users, many of whom are now scrambling to accommodate the May 2nd changes to the Second Life Terms of Service within less than two months. This could have been handled better.
This blogpost is an update of sorts to the one I made exactly two months ago, on March 4th, 2024, about the allegations made by an anonymous writer who posted a detailed article on Medium, outlining serious allegations against a number of people, including employees of Linden Lab, the company that makes Second Life.
The allegations revolve around a very specific crime called sexualized ageplay (virtual pedophilia), which has been a serious, bannable offence in Second Life for well over a decade and a half. In 2018 on this blog, as part of list of controversies and scandals during the long history of Second Life, I wrote about previous ageplay-related scandals in SL and how Linden Lab responded in 2007:
The virtual pedophilia uncovered by two different news reporters in Second Life was a public relations disaster of the highest order for Linden Lab…
About the same time (2007), a German TV news program uncovered more shocking behaviour…
Linden Lab responded to the crisis by creating an official Ageplay Policy, where people involved in ageplay and virtual pedophilia activities were banned from the platform.
On May 2nd, 2024, Brad Oberwager, the new owner of Linden Lab since 2020, made an offical blog post, titled Enhancing Our World Together: Important Updates for the Second Life Community. You should click that last link to read the statement in full, but if you don’t, here’s the salient part that relates to the allegations made in the anonymous Medium report which, as I have said, involved sexualized ageplay using child avatars:
Our priority has always been to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for all while preserving the freedom of expression that makes our virtual world so special. That’s why we’re working to further enhance the safety and protection of the Second Life platform. These efforts include strengthening some of our community and employee policies as well as evaluating improvements to our age verification process.
One area of ongoing scrutiny both internally and externally concerns child-presenting avatars. We recognize and want to acknowledge the vibrant community of residents who enjoy roleplaying as such, and we also feel that it is crucial to reinforce our stance that sexualized ageplay is strictly prohibited. Today, we are updating our Child Avatar Policy to ensure a clear separation and to safeguard all community members. We know that this update has the potential to cause confusion or concern in our community, so we’ve prepared an FAQ which we will continue to update as questions come up.
We recently posted our initial response to community concerns about alleged violations of company and community policies by employees, contractors, and community members. Since that time, we have conducted multiple thorough investigations to look closely at whether there were specific infractions or problematic interactions that needed us to take action.
The investigation determined that all Lindens and contractors have stayed in compliance with our own community guidelines, as well as unwritten, ethical guidelines. I do not make this statement lightly, and I know there will be plenty of discussion. What I can say is that there is no incentive, monetary or otherwise, for me to mislead the community. At some point, the community has to trust that we, the Lindens, do well when the community thrives. We may make mistakes along the way, and we know that our community will engage with us when we do. Second Life is an enormous virtual world and we have to walk a very fine line between policing and preserving freedoms while also protecting the future growth and health of Second Life as a platform that respects diversity and creative expression among our community.
The findings did highlight opportunities for improvement. As a result, we are making updates to our internal policies to raise the standard for how Linden employees should respectfully engage with community members. This addresses multiple forms of engagement including how we present ourselves, how we interact with the community (even in moments of conflict), and how we minimize the perception of conflict of interest and favoritism in our interactions. Additionally, there have been specific actions we have initiated or finalized:
- Updated our Child Avatar Policy
- Updated our internal Policies and Procedures
- Implemented personnel changes
- Initiated management improvement programs
- Committed to Community Roundtables (see below)
- Committed to increased transparency and accountability
All weekend, I have been following a fast-growing thread on the official Second Life community forums, titled So what changed in the Terms of Service? (now at 105 pages and still showing no sign of slowing down or stopping). Trying to keep up with everybody’s opinions is like trying to drink from a firehose at full blast. I went to sleep last night at page 52, and when I lay down on the sofa and opened up the thread on my trusty iPad, it had grown to 102—and added another 3 pages as I was writing this blogpost!!!
I’m going to make an attempt to distill the discussion here, but keep in mind that this is still a fluid situation, some people have very strong opinions about how Linden Lab is going about this change (myself included), and I suspect that I am going to have to make quite a few updates to this blogpost!
I think the one change that is probably going to cause the biggest uproar among content creators and child role players is the new rule that child (or child-like) avatars now must have a baked-on modesty layer on their body’s skin.
Store owners have two months to make changes. However, I don’t see ToddleeDoo (for example) bothering to update any older versions of their body skins, and there are probably going to be a lot of SL users that remain ignorant of these changes, and still using older versions of child bodies and skins that (according to the FAQ, I just checked) will be in violation of the policy.
I have an alt with a ToddleeDoo Kid head and body, which I pull out maybe once or twice a year (I used to use it more often, and in fact I had made arrangements to leave that avatar to someone else in my will).
The last time I signed her in was to pick up the free LeLutka Noel head last December. I’m glad I had the foresight to do that, because I’ve decided today that, rather than try and update the skin on that ToddleeDoo body (which is many years old and probably no longer even supported by the store), I’m just gonna ditch the child avatar completely, and make her an adult. In fact, I just did that before signing on to read this thread! No more child avatars for me.
Fun fact: there were running battles for YEARS between content creators and management over at Sansar because ALL skins (even adult ones) had to have baked-on modesty panels! Of course, nobody really cares anymore, because Sansar is limping along on life support, but I wanted to remind everybody that we here in SL should not be complacent about our nudity (and sexual) freedoms! All it would take is a single change of ownership, and all that could change.
I suspect that many people who have little-used child and teen avatars are going to decide to do the same. It’s simply not worth the risk of having that account banned if you are AR-ed for not meeting these new body and skin requirements.
i want to make it clear that I agree wholeheartedly with banning child avatars from Adult regions and from places like nude beaches, as well as all the other changes announced today. I’m also somewhat in favour of the baked-on modesty panel idea for child bodies and skins, but it’s going to be a hard sell in certain quarters, I fear.
So I have decided to ditch my child avatar completely, rather than try to deal with the hassle of trying to upgrade her before June 30th, 2024, especially since I only log her in once or twice a year. I’ve redone her as an adult woman.
This is what April Mayflower looked like before May 2nd, 2024:
And this is what she looks like now, after May 2nd, 2024:
I replaced her ToddleeDoo head and body with the LeLutka Noel head and the Senra Jamie body respectively, both of which were free (Noel was a free gift last December, in an event I blogged about here). I now have a Senra Jamie avatar who I can use when I need to model any free apparel or footwear I pick up as a freebie, so for me, it’s not a total loss.
Among the new May 2nd, 2024 rules for child avatars (as outlined in the official Linden Lab policy titled Clarification of policy disallowing ageplay), is that child avatars must never be nude, and they are enforcing this by forcing child/teen avatar body and skin makers to have a modesty panel: “Child avatar content creators are required to add a modesty layer which is baked into child avatar skins or bodies, is not transparent, does not match the skin tone, and may not be removed.”
Furthermore, according to the newly-created Child Avatar FAQ:
Q: I already have a child avatar that does not have a built in modesty layer. Can I still use that since I purchased it already?
A: No. Going forward, child avatars will be prohibited from being fully nude.
In other words, my child avatar will be prohibited after June 30th (or more specifically, would be liable to be the subject of an Abuse Report which could lead to me having my 16-year account banned), not because she is nude (something she never was), but that she could potentially be made nude.
It turns out that other virtual worlds, such as IMVU, have very clear and simple guidelines about what is and is not appropriate, and even provides pictures. SL? Not so much.
For example, below are IMVU’s images. Why the hell didn’t Linden Lab create something like this to share with content creators, preferably before changing anything?!?? This lack of details and specifics, when Linden Lab should have been on-the-ball and prepared before pulling the trigger on the Terms of Service changes on May 2nd, 2024, is causing no small degree of upset and confusion among content creators and those who own and use child avatars (the overwhelming majority of whom have absolutely nothing to do with sexual ageplay).
One person reported that the ToddleDoo creator, like so many child and teen avatar body and skin creators, was scrambling to meet these new requirements, without much guidance from Linden Lab:
Part of the issue is the rules for what the modesty layer should look like haven’t been given out. The creator at TD was expressing this yesterday in their Discord. She received no notice from LL [found out through the announcement, I believe.] She was working on trying to implement a fix that wouldn’t break content [or at least as little as possible], and was ready to start, but has been given no guideline on what to cover. So if even the creators don’t know what this layer should look like, where are we?
Upon hearing this news, I became angry, and I responded on the forum thread:
What it means is that few child/teen body and skin creators are going to be able to provide solutions for the customers in time to meet the June 30th deadline.
This whole business has started to feel like an almost panicky, knee-jerk response from Linden Lab, who should have provided some more guidance to content creators BEFORE announcing these changes.
I’m actually feeling really cranky at the moment. So LL isn’t going to budge on the modesty panel requirement, and I’m not going to budge on upgrading my outdated ToodleeDoo avatar. Therefore, I’m giving up on having any child avatars. I am DONE. I just feel sorry for the content creators and child/teen role players negatively impacted by this, who have little to no time to prepare. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some creators follow the lead of Zooby, and exit the child avatar market altogether.
Zooby did have a line of baby and child avatars, which they apparently decided to stop selling very recently—a decision made, some people say, in the wake of the allegations made in the anonymous Medium article I mentioned earlier. (Hell, if I were them, I would have done the same thing. Linden Lab’s somewhat hamfisted, knee-jerk approach to these allegations is not inspiring confidence among content creators at the moment.) They still sell a line of animesh baby attachments, and some speculate that these, too, might be required to have modesty panels, even though they are not avatars per se, but scripted objects.
In this tangential discussion, there was a brief moment of hilarity when I shared that I had once, as a joke, once made an Octomom version of Vanity Fair, using some free prim babies I had picked up from a store which had mistakenly listed them for sale for L$0. Of course, somebody immediately asked to see Vanity as Octomom, so I dug around to find a picture to share:
We all laughed, but the fact remains: Linden Lab may decide to extend its rules to apply not only to child/teen avatars, but any object that looks like a child or teen, which could potentially be used (or rather, abused) for ageplay. These prim babies, which still linger in Vanity’s overstuffed inventory, might be headed for the pixel bin!
I mean, it’s no skin off my nose, but for the myriad businesses which cater to an adult audience roleplaying as children or teenagers in Second Life, these changes (with the associated lack of clarity over details), mean that this is not utterly outside of the realm of possibility.
My opinion is that Linden Lab is eventually going to have to make a choice: keep adult and sexual content and ditch child/teen avatars, or keep child/teen avatars, and ditch adult content.
Anyway, stay tuned! As I said, I wxpecct I will be making many updates to this blog post as the situation continues to evolve (and that 100-plus page thread on the SL Community Forums continues to grow).
UPDATE 8:39 p.m.: Perhaps nothing illustrates just how strongly people feel about this topic is than these two completely different responses to the same comment, posted within minutes of each other on the SL Community Forums yesterday.
Luna Bliss said:
I don’t think I’d call it a “punishment”, but if I was forced to change my avatar in major ways because there was sexual abuse in the world, I’d feel like there was something kinda wrong with me…like my way of being or self was at fault somehow. It’s not logical, I know, but I can see why child avatars are feeling they’re not quite okay now, and being targeted unfairly to be the solution for something they never caused.
I think you’re the only one who has actually managed to put into words how I am feeling. In principle the modesty layer is a good thing as it will keep us safe, but the fact we need it makes me feel sort of dirty, like I should be ashamed, or I’ve done something wrong, even though logically I know I haven’t. I won’t go into details, but like many kid avis I did not have the best childhood growing up and so being a kid avi in SL and having a loving family has been a way to heal.
—brodiac90
LittleMe Jewel responded:
I totally get it. [In my opinion], it is the same as when women in [real life] are told to dress a certain way if they don’t want to be raped. A rapist is the one that is wrong, not the ones that might be raped. Similarly, the pedophile is the one in the wrong, not the object of their attention.
But one user was having none of it:
What is wrong with barring people who run child avatars from adult rated sims and content? What is wrong with demanding that people who run child avatars take care that they do not display a sexualised child? What is wrong with demanding that they keep their profile clean of links to adult content and sites? What is wrong with demanding that people running child avatars stay away from adult activities and content?
For whom is the mandatory modesty layer a punishment? Certainly only for those who prefer to have none and these are the ones with an obvious interest in the sexualised display of a child, to themselves and to others.
—Vivienne Schell
And Luna Bliss (who started all this with her comment) responded:
I never claimed there was anything wrong with any of these remedies you cite. I only described the way in which some of the changes and extreme focus on these matters are affecting how some child avatars feel. Knowledge and feelings sometimes differ, you know, and can even exist at the same time under this difference. Scroll up to see what Brodiac90 said.
People who don’t use Second Life might not be aware that SL has strict age requirements. You have to be 18 years of age or older to access all areas of Second Life (if you are 16 or 17, you can create an account, but you are restricted to regions rated General). Therefore, we are not talking about actual children in SL; we are talking about adults (people aged 18 or older), who choose to be a child or teenage avatar in SL. Some even seek out other adults who roleplay as their parents. And the reason why some adults would choose this are varied. Some people are attracted to the idea of being a child again, a sort of do-over. I can see how someone who had a less-than-stellar childhood would be attracted to that prospect.
However, the current discussion and debate makes child avatars feel like they are being targeted, and the fact that they cannot even express how sad they feel about the necessity of these changes without being reprimanded and even attacked saddens me greatly.
Perhaps now you will understand why I no longer feel comfortable as a child avatar in Second Life; it’s just not fun anymore. It’s all become so HEAVY lately. Second Life has existed for so long because it was an escape from messy, painful, heartbreaking reality. People become children again in SL, sometimes to heal wounds from their own real-life childhoods, but even that innocent quest is getting tarnished in the current hothouse of rancourous, acrimonious, divisive debate.
I have a sinking feeling the next two months are going to be a very bumpy road for Second Life, and Linden Lab. And I wish I could say that I have 100% confidence that Linden Lab is going to do the right thing here, when they are no doubt feeling the pressure to do something (or, perhaps, to be seen to be doing something).
Wow, I am feeling cynical tonight. Ironically, this is exactly when I would most want to log into Second Life as a little girl, who skips wherever she goes, and sometimes flies away holding a batch of big helium balloons…
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