FIRST, AN APOLOGY: My work life and my personal life have both been rather hectic, even chaotic, lately, and I have not had much time to blog. Often I come home from work, and I just lie on the sofa, absolutely exhausted. (Sometimes I escape into my beloved Second Life for an hour or two, as a welcome refuge from the sometimes-overwhelming changes taking place in my real life.)
Among the many changes that have taken place, the entire science library where I work (collections and staff) has been moved to another library at my university. I still haven’t even fully unpacked all the moving boxes in my new office space!
And I am once again suffering from a pinched nerve in my neck, which at its worst leads to numbness and tingling running all along my right arm and hand, which obviously limits the amount of time I can spend at the keyboard. I am currently visiting a physiotherapist twice a week to get that fixed!
Thank you for your patience while I navigate yet another set of changes and challenges in my life. I will be back when I can.
Death Row Designs
Believe it or not, most SL businesses have been operating against the TOS, and unfortunately, there is no current way for SL to resolve this issue. Additionally, the risk of losing years of work overnight without warning is very real. We recently faced this threat ourselves and can attest to its seriousness. Please join us in changing this and help our community ensure a more secure and compliant future.
—Jaimy Hancroft, owner of Death Row Designs
Last Thursday, Jaimy Hancroft, the owner and operator of the Second Life home and garden decor store Death Row Designs, received a very unpleasant surprise:
I am writing to bring up a severe issue that has recently affected my business, Deathrowdesigns (DRD), which has been running since 2008 in Second Life… Just recently, Second Life finally got around to cracking down on TOS infringement of account sharing and deleted our entire marketplace listing – over 2000 listings down the drain. They kept our account on hold, without any warning or reason. This has put a severe dent in our operations.
Despite pointing out that Section 4.1 of the TOS mentions the possibility of obtaining written permission for sharing an avatar, support has consistently denied us a clear path or process to obtain this consent. We’ve received messages implying that sharing the account in any capacity will result in termination, which feels particularly targeted, especially considering other businesses appear to operate without similar scrutiny.
Although my account is now released to me and me only, I cannot function or do business alone. DRD has well over 10,000 customers and over 3000 items that we manage. Handling all of it single-handedly really just isn’t an option, and manager solutions are just not there.
It’s just not possible for me to operate DRD on my own. I have my actual sister and our amazing CSR, Charlotte Bailey, without whom we wouldn’t have been the success we are today.
Where Jaimy and his sister have gotten into trouble is that they were sharing a single Second Life avatar/account to run their business, which is a situation that is not uncommon among SL stores that grow beyond a certain point, and employ multiple people. Linden Lab has rules against account sharing, but these rules can sometimes make it difficult to operate a money-making business in Second Life. Jaimy is feeling upset and singled out for punishment by LL, and I can’t say that I blame her. It is possible that somebody with an axe to grind (perhaps a disgruntled customer or even a business competitor) reported that she was sharing her account with her sister, simply to get her store into trouble.
There seems to be some confusion regarding not only the Terms of Service, but also our process for dealing with account sharing.
I am not going to debate the policy itself, or the process for addressing it. However, I would like to point everyone to Section 4.1 https://lindenlab.com/tos and more specifically, call to attention this portion of the Terms of Service.
“You may not sell, transfer or assign your Account or its contractual rights, licenses and obligations, to any third party (including, for the avoidance of doubt, permitting another individual to access your Account) without the prior written consent of Linden Lab. Linden Lab reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to manage and control the number of Accounts that you may establish and maintain.”
Now for the issue of our process for dealing with account sharing. Termination is not the first step taken when it comes to someone found to be sharing their account. We place a temporary hold on the account for the security of the account owner. Once we have been in contact with the account owner, we discuss the above policy to ensure they understand before the account is released.
I understand business owners and content creators have concerns regarding this policy. The original poster has created a feedback post that everyone can participate in here: https://feedback.secondlife.com/feature-requests/p/allow-business-accounts-to-share-access-responsibly. I can not stress enough how this is the best way to get assistance with more tools and options for business owners to be able to better manage their business, without putting the security of their account at risk.
Since we are not going to continue to debate our Terms of Service, or the process for which we enforce it, I am going to close this thread, but I do strongly encourage you to participate in the feedback discussion at the link I provided.
As a long-time business owner in Second Life, managing operations efficiently is crucial. Recently, enforcement of the TOS on account sharing led to the deletion of our entire marketplace with over 2000 listings, severely disrupting our business. Death Row Designs (DRD) serves over 10,000 customers and manages more than 3,000 items, making single-person management infeasible. I propose creating a system for obtaining written consent to share business accounts among trusted individuals, specifically for business operations. This would help businesses like ours continue to thrive without compromising account security. Additionally, it would ensure compliance with the TOS while providing a practical solution for businesses that need to share account responsibilities.
You can learn more about Death Row Designs from their website and their very active Discord server, and you should also know that they are having their annual Summer Sale, where you get 50% of your purchase price automatically refunded for almost everything you can buy at their in-world store. The sale runs from June 15th to 30th, 2024.
UPDATE June 18th: I have been in touch with Jaimy Hancroft, and she tells me that Keira Linden, the Manager of Support Operations for Linden Lab, has been in touch with her, and told her that she is currently working with other departments within LL to find a solution.
Below is an excerpt from Jaimy’s response to Keira, which she very kindly shared with me:
To be frank, the TOS [Second Life Terms of Service] is quite ambiguous, and I believe you’re aware of this. The official SL wiki pages are filled with references to account sharing for projects, such as:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Managing_business_projects_in_Second_Life “Again, if an employee leaves, make sure to immediately change passwords of any accounts to which they’ve had access. And ensure their account is removed from all appropriate groups and land access, so they have no access to your business’ content and accounts in Second Life.”
While these pages may be outdated, regular users rely on them for relevant information. It is problematic having this info at SL ‘official’ wikis while the TOS seems contradictory. If TOS states the need for consent in account sharing, should not the way to grant this consent be provided in the first place? As expressed by your support, “Support cannot provide this permission you’ve requested, and there is not currently a way to obtain this consent.” Which is a complete stone wall.
I do understand the need to protect account security, but then, there has to be a balanced approach where business operations should continue in their legitimate way. This could involve establishing dedicated business accounts with enhanced security features, creating a transparent and documented process for obtaining consent, or implementing a feature similar to the Bot agent status, as suggested by many on the portal.
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.
Also, please note that we are talking about child avatars, not real-life children. 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). For those who are 13 to 15 years old, they can only access Second Life through an affiliated organization (e.g. a school), and will be restricted to the private estate of that organization. Only avatars approved by that organization will be able to enter these private estates. For further information, please see the Linden Lab official policy on Teens in Second Life.
Therefore, we are not talking about actual children (i.e. those younger than 13) in SL, and given the restrictions, there are few teenagers (aged 13 to 17) in Second Life; we are talking here today about adults (people aged 18 or older), who choose to be a child or teenage avatar in SL. Read on for a discussion of why some people might choose to do this.
UPDATE May 6th, 2024: Please note that the community forum moderators, in trying to wrangle this very long thread, have messed things up, so that any links in this blogpost to particular comments will likely fail! I have updated the link in this blue box, but I do not have time to go through and fix all the links to that thread in this blog post.
This ToddleeDoo child avatar, which I have owned without problem since June of 2017, will become illegal content on June 30th, 2024, under the new May 2nd, 2024 Second Life Terms of Service. While I agree wholeheartedly with these changes, I disagree with HOW they are being implemented and, as a result, I have made this avatar an adult woman instead (see below).
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…
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.
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:
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 likebefore May 2nd, 2024:
And this is what she looks like now, afterMay 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.”
This (adult) Bakes on Mesh skin (shown here on the new Senra Jamie mesh avatar) is an example of the new requirement that all child/teen avatarrs in Second Life after June 30th, 2024 must have baked-on (i.e. unremovable) underwear.—no exceptions.
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.
Are Child Avatars of any age still permitted? Yes. This remains unchanged.
Can Child Avatars continue to interact with those representing Adults?Yes. This remains unchanged.
Are there any new restrictions on the kind of RP that Child Avatars can engage in? No, although any RP must now be in Moderate- or General-rated regions. “Family” RP, for instance, is still permitted. This remains unchanged.
Are there new restrictions on where Child Avatars can be?Yes. Adult-rated areas are characterized primarily by the fact that public sexuality and/or violence is permitted within them; because Child Avatars are not (and have not, for some time) been permitted near public sexuality, they are now restricted from entering Adult areas. This represents a change to old policies.
Are there new restrictions on what Child Avatars can wear?Yes. Child avatars are no longer allowed to be nude, and must, beginning in July, wear skins with baked-in “modesty layers.” They must also not wear clothing or attachments that represent or that accentuate the genital areas. This represents a change to old policies.
Are Child Avatars allowed to be present around nudity? No. This represents a change to old policies.
Have the penalties for which Child Avatars are liable should they contravene these rules changed?No. This remains unchanged, although there are a few new categories for which penalties can be assessed (see Adult regions, and nudity, above.)
Has the way in which abuse reports lodged against Child Avatars are judged by LL changed?No. This remains unchanged.
Has the appeal process for ARs changed?No. This remains unchanged.
Has there been any change in ability of landowners to restrict the access of Child Avatars to their land changed?No. This remains unchanged.
Most of this remains unchanged. Again, this all seems to me very doable, surely, although some clarifications from LL (particularly with regard to the modesty layer) would be appreciated.
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?
ToddleeDoo is one of many Second Life content creators who are scrambling (with precious little detailed guidance from Linden Lab) to meet new changes to the SL Terms of Service, within less than two months.
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:
Vanity fair as Octomom (pre-mesh, except for her head; these 8 babies were 34 prims each!)
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 bitter, jaded, and cynical tonight. Ironically, this is exactly when I would most want to log into Second Life to be a carefree little girl, who skips along wherever she goes, and sometimes chooses to fly up, up, and away, clutching a batch of big, brightly-coloured helium balloons…just to get away from it all for a few moments.
…and frankly, it kinda pisses me off that I’m probably not going to be able to do that anymore (or at least, not be able to do it without jumping through a whole lot of hoops). I still think it’s best to give up on the whole virtual childhood thing, at least for me. Like I said, it’s just not fun anymore.
UPDATE Sunday, May 5th, 2024, 7:26 a.m.: I just woke up, brewed a pot of coffee, and sat down to the So what changed in the Terms of Service? thread on the Second Life Community forums—only to discover that it was now 120 pages long! I got as far as page 76 before I went to bed last night, so it looks like I have a busy day ahead of me. Better pour myself a strong cup of black coffee and dive back in!
I’m a bit worried about the flood of ARs, not so much that it will affect many innocent child avatars (I doubt it will) but because the Governance budget is going to eat into Development, advertising, etc., just when those could otherwise benefit the platform’s future.
It might help if, in addition to explaining the whole elaborate AR appeals process (useful) they also issued a reminder that falsified ARs have consequences for the reporting account. Not to discourage people from reporting true violations they found personally offensive, but ARs as instruments of inter-resident conflict really can’t be tolerated.
(I’ve given up on making the argument many pages ago, but I still feel the Lab has unrealistic expectations about the effect of whitewashing the naughty bits of child avatar skins. It may have some benefit as a communications device, “Don’t touch the smooth parts or Sister Agnes will take a ruler to your evil little fingers”, but it’s not going to make Governance’s job all that much easier.)
By the way, there’s already been speculation that griefers will, yes, abusethe Second Life Abuse Reporting (AR) system (which has been in place for many, many years) to mass-report child avatars just because they hate child avatars. Some people have posted stories of this happening in the past. Of course, all this does is tie up resources which could be better used elsewhere, as Qie Niangao states.
There seems to be a lot of kibitzing going on over the specific words and phrases being used in the rules, and people are poring over it for any scrap of loopholes. Some issues that need to be specifically addressed (in direct words) in the FAQ are…
Change uses of the word “Layer” to “Panel” or “Patch”.. This is causing confusion as to whether the use of system clothing ‘layers’ are an acceptable alternative to having a modesty patch on the skin…
Similarly, change usage of the phrase “Baked onto” if you do not mean to imply that Bakes-On-Mesh Layers are an acceptable solution. Perhaps a better phrase is “Rendered or painted directly on the skin’s textures”, if that’s what you mean to imply…
Are grey crotch triangles and/or nipple-cover pastie style circles acceptable, or must this be an apparent clothing item? Do ‘girl presenting avatars’ with fully flat chests have to have bras? Is there an apparent age point where one is and isn’t required? Is a C-string style cover acceptable, or do child avatars need actual panties painted on? Are thongish panties or high-cut briefs compliant, or does everyone need knee-length boxers?
What specifically must be covered? It’s an uncomfortable question to ask and answer particularly from the corporate world of worries of sexual harassment, sensitivity, etc, but there must be no ambiguity here, for child avs and asset creators. Where is the line here?
…
Some folks seem to be getting the idea that this rule only applies to content creators, and that child avatar users themselves have no direct compliance requirements. I personally think it’s pretty clear, but I have 18+ years of experience in reading LL’s announcements. Child avatars can’t be forced to personally modify their skins, because child avatars largely don’t make their own skins, they buy them. The creators need to update their assets, the child avatars need to use compliant assets by June 30. This needs some clarification.
Personally, I felt that last part was very clear: adults roleplaying as child/teen avatars must have bodies and skins compliant with the new ToS by June 30th, 2024 (it’s even mentioned in the Child Avatar FAQs, which I have quoted earlier).
UPDATE Sunday, May 5th, 2024,9:13 a.m.:Theresa Ravenheart wrote about the detailed questions she submitted to the Second Life Community Roundtable, which will be taking place on May 20th, 2024 (more information here on that event). The recent changes to the Terms of Service will no doubt be a topic for discussion!
I submitted this to the Community Roundtable form on May 20th. If your avatar(s) fit into these categories: cartoons, kemono bodies, anime heads, adults in DD/lg or MD/lg dynamics, adults who enjoy dressing kawaii or youthful, individuals who use pet names like Daddy, Mommy, or babygirl, feral humanoids and animals, MLP, or any other adult avatar that could be questioned as “child-like”, I recommend that you also submit inquiries to the form regarding how this might affect you, so we can receive clear answers.
While I personally do not use child/teen avatars or associate with them, I do empathize with how this situation may impact them, potentially resulting in the loss of their identities and a significant portion of their attire and appearance.
My question to LL: My inquiry pertains to the recent updates on policies regarding Child Avatar and ageplay. How will this affect consenting adults who utilize adult avatars but affectionately refer to each other using terms such as Papi, Mami, Daddy, Mommy, babygirl, or babyboy, either due to their BDSM dynamic or simply as endearing pet names? It seems that even though they are adults and behave accordingly, there might be a concern of them being identified as child-like based on subjective criteria. As stated in the new terms “In some cases there may be an element of subjectivity as to whether an avatar (or other image) appears to be a minor. Objective factors which will be used to decide include whether an avatar has childlike facial features, is child-sized, has clothing or accessories generally associated with children, and whether, based on the circumstances, an avatar is speaking or acting like a child (“My Mommy says…”)“.
Given that we present ourselves as adults, utilizing adult avatars with adult features and behaviors, will there be repercussions for using common pet names?
Additionally, what about adults who incorporate items like pacifiers or diapers into their avatar aesthetics for various personal reasons—would this be considered inappropriate due to its association with child-like attributes?
Childlike can be a lot of things, holding a teddy bear, wearing roller-skates, dressing kawaii and girly, having your hair in pigtails, and on an on. Defining “childlike” in the context of adult avatars would greatly assist in understanding where boundaries lie.
Furthermore, how will these policies impact adult users who use feral avatars that may possess genitalia?
Determining the age of a feral animal avatar, such as a dog, horse, cat, or dragon, presents its own challenges.
Consider the communities centered around My Little Pony (MLP) adult avatars. While MLP may be perceived as childlike, what about adults who utilize these avatars in adult-oriented settings, comporting themselves as adults? They inhabit cartoon avatars but exhibit adult behaviors.
The same applies to communities revolving around Sonic Mobian, Kemono, Anime, and other adult cartoon avatars.
Establishing clear guidelines is essential to prevent misunderstandings. Subjectivity in judgments risks account penalties, hence the necessity for precise and measurable regulations.
I honestly think that this thread would die down if LL simply showed us a picture of what the modesty panel will/should look like. They have yet to do so letting residents make up in their head how bad it will be. Not a responsible way to rollout a major change, if you ask me.
I am now on page 99 of this thread, with another 25 pages to go.
UPDATE May 6th, 2024: Well, I am glad to report that the flurry of activity over the weekend has died down a bit. I’m still monitoring the thread (it’s now at 166 pages and still growing, albeit more slowly). Scylla Rhiadra said:
The new rules also protect child avis. And empower them.
And I do think that this is a point that sometimes is getting lost in the kerfuffle over the May 2nd Terms of Service update. These measures were updated in order to protect those people who choose to represent as children or teenagers in Second Life, where they are sometimes the target of creepy people. It also more clearly spells out what is considered unacceptable behaviour, which can be reported using SL’s Abuse Report feature, for action to be taken by Linden Lab. So it also empowers child avatars.
What I have found upsetting and troubling is just how vindicative some people have been in the comments section in this particular thread. On Saturday evening I posted:
Child avatars can’t even express their sadness about these changes (while agreeing with them) without getting attacked.
Everything has become a hothouse of rancorous, acrimonious, divisive debate, with little thought, feeling, or empathy for the content creators and child/teen role players who are most directly impacted by these changes. Express sorrow and you’re instantly branded a pedophile apologist. No wonder Coffee and Madi know of people who are packing up and leaving.
I predict a very rocky road ahead for SL and LL over the next couple of months.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that one of the many avid commenters on this thread, a child avatar named Madi Melodious, has made a handy panic button, which is a scripted HUD attachment which you can get for free from the SL Marketplace here. She describes it as:
A simple hud that monitors the maturity rating of a sim and compares it to the rating that you have it set for. If you accidentally teleport or enter a sim whos rating exceeds the huds setting, it will automatically teleport your avatar to s safe zone of your choice. The hud also monitors the sims rating you are in and will take you to safety if the rating changes while you are there.
So, if you are a child or teen avatar, you might want to pick up Madi’s Panic Button and wear it, in case you accidentally find yourself in a SL region rated Adult (where child avatars are now banned). The default settings for the HUD are as follows: the Sim Rating is set to Moderate, the Teleportion mode is Auto, and the default Safe Zone is the WelcomeHub. All these settings can be changed by the menu, which you can obtain by pressing on the HUD for two seconds or longer.
I have bought and tested this device, and it works flawlessly. Thanks, Madi!
Also, Tommy Linden (in charge of the Governance team at Linden Lab) posted this message to the thread about an hour ago:
Good morning!
You all posted quite a bit over the weekend! I just wanted to let you know that we are still working on more updates to the FAQ that will be added over the next couple of days. One of the things that we will be adding is an image to help provide clarity on the modesty layer.
I am very happy to hear that Linden Lab is listening to us, and that they will supply an image to help guide content creators who need to add a modesty layer to their bodies and/or skins.
UPDATE May 8th, 2024: Tommy Linden (in charge of the Governance team at Linden Lab) finally closed the discussion thread at 251 pages, with the following final comment:
I come with some updates, and what will be the final comment on this thread before I close it out. I want you all to know that I personally have read every single post in this thread, and I appreciate that for the most part, everyone tried to keep it on topic, and as a productive conversation. I know many other Lindens have been doing their best to follow along on this thread as much as possible as well. I also want to give a thanks to Dyna and Quartz for helping to keep this thread on track and civil.
We have updated the FAQ, it now contains images that demonstrate what we expect the modesty layers to look like. In addition, at tomorrows Governance Office Hours we will have models there displaying the modesty layers. We hope this provides some additional clarification regarding our expectations around what the modesty layer should look like. We have also added questions to the FAQ that we felt would be beneficial after reading through everyones feedback both on the forums, and in tickets… If we determine that more things are needed to be added to the FAQ, we will absoluately do so.
If you feel like you have more feedback to provide, you can always submit a support ticket, or if its a feature request, you can do so via our feedback portal https://feedback.secondlife.com/.
Last week, we announced an update to our child avatar policy in Second Life, and since then, we’ve received numerous questions and requests for further details. We understand the importance of these updates to our community and encourage everyone to keep consulting the continuously updated Child Avatar FAQ for answers to your queries.
Additionally, we invite all community members to join the Governance User Group on Thursday, May 9th, 2024, at 2pm PT. This meeting will provide further insight into these updates, including a presentation of what the new modesty layer could look like, ensuring clarity and compliance across our virtual world.
The decision to update the child avatar policy was not made lightly. It involved weeks of meticulous discussion and coordination across various departments at Linden Lab, with the Governance team at the forefront. Our goal was to balance the diverse needs and expressions of our community with the necessity to maintain a safe and respectful environment for all users. This delicate balance reflects our commitment to providing freedom of expression while ensuring that Second Life remains a welcoming space for everyone.
By taking these thoughtful steps, we are committed to enhancing our community’s experience, ensuring that Second Life continues to be a platform where creativity and expression can flourish within a framework that respects and protects every resident.
Unfortunately, I am at home sick, with a pinched nerve in my 60-year-old neck, and I was asleep in bed much of the day, so I missed today’s Governance User Group meeting. However, I have no idea that Inara Pey or another SL blogger will report on that meeting, so when I hear about it, I will let you all know! Here’s a video of today’s event:
One interesting quote from the Governance meeting today, which someone shared on the forums, was from Keira Linden, who said:
The other concern in regards to the modesty layer is how it will impact existing content. To be clear, we are requiring skin sellers to have the areas shown in the images use a modesty layer on the skin files. However, for existing content, bake layers and alphas can be a viable temporary solution but we would STRONGLY encourage everyone to move to a more permanent solution.
So, it sounds as though LL is willing to entertain the idea of using Bakes on Mesh and/or alphas as an interim measure, until modesty panels can be implemented by body and skin makers. This is good news for me! Maybe I don’t have to ditch my ToddleeDoo child avatar after all, since she has BoM underwear.
FINAL UPDATE May 24th, 2024: I did attend the Second Life Community Roundtable held on May 20th, 2024 (YouTube recording), where many questions about the Terms of Service updates around child/teen avatars were asked by SL residents, and answered by Linden Lab staff. It was made clear that Bakes on Mesh (BoM) underwear is not sufficient to bring an avatar into compliance with the new ToS, because it can still be removed. So I will be going ahead with my original decision to give up my ToodleeDee avatar, and convert her to an adult woman.
Another thing that happened recently involved the Second Life channel on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, a 700+ member Discord associated with this blog, where we discuss, debate, and argue about (as the tagline of my blog states) “news and views on social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse.”
A member posted links to a couple of articles that appeared to be a follow-up to the original Medium article that sparked this whole controversy in the first place (which I talked about here), with new, potentially libellous accusations against some of the same people.
Once this was brought to my attention, I removed the links from the channel, and stated:
I am changing the rules on the RyanSchultz.com Discord as of today. I know that I have written, at length, about the sexualized ageplay controversy in SL on my blog, but I am now going to ask all of you, from now on, to please stop posting new sexualized ageplay links (often with new allegations) to my Discord server. Please post such links, and take these further discussions, somewhere else, thank you. I was willing to allow this discussion up until today, but I think at this point it’s just throwing gasoline on the fire. Thank you.
As a result, the person who had posted the links became very upset (because he felt he had been singled out), quit my server, and has apparently blocked me from messaging him (although we still do share some Discord servers in common). Today I posted the following message to everybody on my Discord:
I believe that the person who posted the articles in the second-life channel which contained allegations which were potentially libellous, has quit this Discord and has blocked me from messaging him at all. While I am deeply disappointed at his actions, and it is a very awkward situation for me because we both live in the same city, we have met in person, and might actually see each other in real life at future events,I still think that I made the right decision in removing the posts he made. As I already mentioned, I will be writing a new rule for this Discord that there will be no further discussion about sexualized ageplay in Second Life on the RyanSchultz.com Discord.
So, one of the unexpected ripple effects of the anonymous author who wrote that original Medium article, is that I have now lost somebody whose work I admired, and that I considered a friend and fellow metaverse colleague. I have actually met this person in real life, since they live in my city, which is going to make any future interactions (which are likely to happen, since we both are interested in virtual reality) somewhat awkward.
However, I stand by my decision to forbid any further discussion of sexualized ageplay on my Discord server. My server, my rules. And frankly, I will be very happy if I never have to bring up this topic again on my blog.
I follow a number of Second Life YouTubers using Feedbin (a handy tool which I wrote about here; what I like about it is that I can organize my viewing, and not have to deal with YouTube’s notorious recommendation algorithm).
Last night, I watched a video from a Second Life user who announced that they were stepping away from SL, and why. In the description of the video was a link to an anonymous article which had been published on Medium on Feb. 24th, 2024, and updated Feb, 29th, which makes some very serious and disturbing allegations against several Second Life users and companies, and some people employed by Linden Lab, the company who makes and runs Second Life.
Confirmed: Linden Lab Investigating Serious Allegations Recently Posted to Social Media, Say Sources
In recent days the Second Life user community has been roiled by serious but unconfirmed allegations posted on various social media channels regarding Linden Lab operations.
I can now confirm through at least two highly credible sources that the company is indeed investigating these claims — both the accusations themselves and whether they have defamatory intent.
That’s really all that can be reported at the moment.
Wagner links to a discussion on the matter over on the r/secondlife subreddit on Reddit here. In both Wagner’s blog post and the Reddit thread, unlike the Second Life YouTube video which first led me down this rabbit hole, there is no link to the original Medium article, and I will not be sharing it here, because although the allegations made in the article are highly troubling, they are not proven, they are potentially defamatory, and the author of the article appears to be hiding behind an anonymous name and picture. (Medium has flagged the article with the warning “The following content was reported as a potential violation of Medium’s rules and is under investigation,” and the article may indeed be pulled completely from the website.)
However, the ripple effects of that Medium article are already spreading. It would appear that some Second Life users (like the content creator who first alerted me to this situation via their YouTube video) have decided that the allegations are serious enough that they will be leaving the platform, even if only temporarily.
And this morning, I noticed that one of the Second Life stores I regularly shop at, has announced via their store group:
Hello, we changed the vendor system and old gift cards will not work with the new vendors. To get a new gift card for the new vendors, I need you SEND ME A NOTECARD (only notecards) with this:
YOUR USERNAME (no display name) NAME OF THE GIFT CARD YOU HAVE AND ITS CREDIT
I will be replacing, but it’s a lot of gift cards to do, so please be patient. I will be doing it ONLY until MARCH 31st.
I will now be checking the group notices of various SL store groups I belong to, to see if any other stores are taking similar action. This has the potential to become a serious mess (as if it weren’t already). It was at this point that I realized that I was not going to be able to ignore the issue, and I would have to write about it today, since the controversy does have the potential to significantly impact Second Life users, communities, and businesses.
And, like Wagner, that’s really all that I can report on for now. It would appear that Linden Lab is already investigating the allegations, and we will simply have to wait and see what happens, and what they have to say about all this. I hope and pray that this will not become a witch hunt, and I do not want to have to update my historical list of Second Life controversies and scandals. And I am feeling just absolutely sick at heart today.
UPDATE March 5th, 2024: Well, I just checked this evening before bed (almost exactly 48 hours after I first read it), and the anonymous article has been taken down from Medium, now giving the following error message:
Error 410: This post is under investigation or was found to be in violation of the Medium rules.
Please note that I had briefly linked to (and quoted from) another well-known Second Life blogger who had posted two lengthy blogposts about this whole kerfuffle, but then I realized that they had actually linked to the article on Medium, so I quickly removed the link to (and quote from) their blog from this post! In their opinion (and they had a LOT to say), this was a smear campaign against the people and businesses named, but I also removed the link to their blog posts because they actually named the people and companies who were being discussed in the article, and I did not feel comfortable doing that. (You’ll also note that I very carefully did not identify, or link to, the person who created YouTube video I previously mentioned, that led me down this dark and twisted rabbit hole in the first place.)
In fact, I am now second-guessing myself, wondering if I made the right call to write about this at all. There’s also been a lot of back-and-forth on the subject on the Second Life subreddit post I linked to up top, where the moderators have done an excellent job to not allow any discussion of the dark, indelicate details of this particular incident, while still talking about the issues in a more general, non-specific way (much as I have tried to do, although I’m not 100% certain that I was successful).
This is not the first time when the lines between a hobbyist blogger and a journalist get awfully blurred. I have learned in the past that things I write here on my blog have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are painful, both for me and for the people, places, and companies I write about. At the same time, this is a blog about (as the tagline states) “news and views” in social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, and it could be argued that this is news (albeit very depressing news, regarding a subject that is clearly illegal and punishable by law, if it is found to be true).
And that’s the whole point of this: IF this is true. At this point, all we have are allegations, which (because of people like the YouTube creator who I won’t name, Wagner James Au, myself, and the other blogger who I won’t name), have played a part in disseminating information about this situation (if not the specific details themselves). Where do you draw the line?
Where do you draw the line when reporting on potentially immoral and/or illegal behaviour? (photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash)
UPDATE March 20th, 2024: This afternoon, Linden Lab’s Executive Chairman, Bad Oberwager, released the following official statement, which I am reproducing in full below:
I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to the Second Life community. Thank you for being part of this wonderful world and giving us the time to carefully assess our situation after we became the subject of a blog post that has the potential to cause harm to our dedicated community members and the virtual world platform that so many people call “home.”
The post contains a complex mix of accusations regarding Second Life, and it questions our strong dedication to maintaining a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all members of the Second Life community.
Our Response to the Allegations
At the heart of the blog post were unsettling accusations about sexualized, virtual avatar ageplay, including alleged violations of our community guidelines. I want to be clear: we have a zero-tolerance policy against sexualized ageplay. The safety and integrity of the Second Life platform are paramount to us, especially concerning the protection of minors.
We will continue to enforce our existing governance policies and community standards and we are proud of our collaboration with law enforcement and organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to combat child exploitation. These efforts underscore our commitment to a safe online environment.
With that said, I want to acknowledge that we can do better; this has been a harsh wake-up call for us that we need to take tangible actions to improve Second Life’s governance policies and protective features that benefit the entire community.
Our Actions Moving Forward
I promise you that we are taking this very seriously. Very. Full stop.
I promise we hear you. We know you’re angry and you’re confused. We are working to do our best to resolve your concerns and restore your trust in us. These are complicated issues and we want to do things right. We will make mistakes along the way. I wish I could say we will not, but we will.
As owner of Linden Lab, I have initiated a thorough investigation, both internally and with external partners, to review whether or not there have been any violations of our company and community policies by employees, contractors, or community members. While early preliminary internal investigations suggest that some of the accusations are unfounded, I want to make sure that we get additional investigative support externally to ensure that the process is fair and thorough.
One of our top priorities has been to ensure the safety of our residents, moles, employees, and families. There are real people behind the avatars, and it has been important to confirm that nobody was in actual physical danger.
Additionally, I am taking proactive steps to review and revamp many of our policies, including a comprehensive review of our Community Standards, Content Guidelines, and Ageplay Policy. Any violation detected will be met with swift enforcement actions to protect our community. We’ll be sharing these revised policies in the coming weeks and, critically, we are turning to the community to help us shape the future of how governance operates within Second Life.
Our Commitment to You
Second Life remains a vibrant platform for expression, creativity, and connection. I and the Second Life team are deeply committed to protecting our community and ensuring that Second Life continues to be a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for everyone. Your trust is our priority, and we pledge to work tirelessly to maintain and enhance the integrity of our virtual world.
I appreciate the patience and support of our community as we navigate this challenge. Together, we will emerge stronger and more united in our mission to build the best possible virtual world experience.
Brad Oberwager Linden Lab Executive Chairman
Please note: I haven’t had time to fully read and absorb everything in this official statement, but I did want to share it as an update to my original blogpost.
Those of us who are veterans of Second Life (and I have been a part of SL since spring of 2007) tend to forget the steep learning curve which tends to perplex newbies, and often leads to many of those new users to give up somewhere along the onboarding and orientation process, walking away from SL and never coming back.
Well, as it happens, I am sitting in and auditing a new graduate-level interdisciplinary course this Winter 2024 semester at the University of Manitoba, where I work full-time as a science/agriculture librarian. The course, co-taught by a computer science professor from the Faculty of Science and an interior design professor from the Faculty of Architecture, is titled Building Virtual Worlds: Users, Techniques and Tools.
Here’s a quote taken from the course syllabus:
The course will investigate the tools and techniques used to build virtual worlds for both 2D and 3D platforms. Students will be introduced to a variety of different virtual world platforms used for coworking, socializing, education, exhibitions, and meetings/conferences. Students will work in interdisciplinary teams to learn virtual world building tools and create various types of virtual spaces across multiple assignments and projects. Critiquing of the spaces created, and the tools used to create them, through both environmental design and human-computer interaction lenses, will be an ongoing aspect of the course, aimed at helping students develop a holistic understanding of virtual world building.
I have been invited to lecture the class about Second Life, as an example of a 3D virtual world platform (an invitation which I accepted with alacrity!). I’m also acting as the in-class Second Life expert and resource person, who will be helping the students get up and running in Second Life, which leads me to the purpose of this blogpost.
Linden Lab (LL for short) has spent quite a bit of time—and money!—over the past year to improve the onboarding process for new Second Life users (notably, creating a brand new Welcome Hub staffed with experienced volunteers to assist newbies, and introducing the Senra line of starter mesh avatars).
So, given all this recent work by LL, and in order to provide some up-to-date, step-by-step instructions to the Masters and Ph.D. students taking the Building Virtual Worlds class at the University of Manitoba this semester, I have decided to write up this blog post (which of course, also benefits any readers who are curious about Second Life, who want a guide to get started with the least amount of fuss).
Ready? Let’s dive in. We’re going to do this step by step, in four steps:
Create a Second Life account (and style your starter avatar)
Download and install some Second Life viewer software (Firestorm)
Run Firestorm, enter Second Life and go to the Welcome Hub for an orientation and to get extra help if you need it
Explore Second Life using the Destination Guide
Even just limiting it to these 4 steps, this is a long, looong blogpost, made longer by the fact that I am trying to write it for people using a variety of web browsers and using different operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. I also have made an attempt to explain how people who speak languages other than English can change the default language of both the Linden Lab website, and the Firestorm software.
I want to express my heartfelt thanks to those people who volunteered to go through a draft of these step-by-step instructions and provided valuable feedback, which has largely been incorporated. Thank you!
Step 1: Create a Second Life Account (and Style Your Starter Avatar)
IMPORTANT NOTE: You will see the screens in the order listed in these instructions if you are using Firefox (on Mac and Windows 10/11) or Microsoft Edge on Windows 10/11.
However, if you are using the Safari or Chrome web browsers (on a Mac), or Chrome on Windows 10/11, you do not get the Choose your starting avatar page after pressing the Join Free button. Instead, you get a Provide your account information page, which looks like the Complete your registration page pictured below, excpet that there is no avatar displayed on the page, and there is a Continue button instead of a Create my account button! So, depending on what browser you are using, you might see the two main sign-up screens in reverse order. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A heartfelt thank you to the beta testers of these instructions (notably Flame Soulis and passTheKutechup from the 720-member RyanSchultz.com Discord server), who uncovered these differences. I have zero idea why the sign-up screens for new users are presented in a different order, depending on your web browser and operating system!
In my opinion, this is just bad and unnecessarily confusing user design on the part of Linden Lab (and it makes writing up step-by-step instructions just that much harder!).
To use the virtual world of Second Life (SL for short), you will first need to create an account. Any avatar(s) you create—in fact, everything you own!—will be tied to that account, so this is an important first step.
Visit the official Second Life website at https://secondlife.com/, and click on the purple Join Free button in the bottom-left–hand corner of the screen, as shown here:
QUICK TIP: Second Life has users from all around the world, and you do not need to use Second Life in English! Click on Language in the menu in the upper right corner of the Second Life starting webpage to go through the sign-up process in one of nine languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Turkish, Russian, or Japanese.
Don’t worry if your language/culture is not represented on this menu; SL is full of so many different cultures and communities, that you will easily find a place to speak your native tongue! Also, you will be able to set the default language in the Second Life client software you use—but we’ll get to that in a later step.
You will be presented with a screen titled Choose your starting avatar, which looks like this:
On the left side, you can choose from one of a dozen different male, female, and non-binary body shapes. Notice that there are four tabs there: in addition to the body shape options (under the head-and-shoulders icon), you can select a skin tone (the colour wheel icon), an eye colour (the eye icon), and a hairstyle (the head with hair icon). Play around with these options until you find an avatar shape, size, and skin/hair/eye colour combo you like.
On the right side, you can select clothing to dress your starter avatar. There are four tabs: tops (the shirt icon), bottoms (the pants icon), dresses (the dress icon), and shoes (the shoe icon). Click through all the options and try different outfits on, until you find something you feel comfortable wearing while strolling around Second Life! Please note that all clothing and shoes can be worn by all body types, so if you want to be a masculine avatar rocking a dress, you can!
In the centre, you see what your avatar looks like right now, so you can instantly see the results of any changes you make on the left and right menus.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please note that, if you are accessing this screen on a laptop or on a narrower computer monitor, you might instead see 8 tabs on the left-hand side, with the avatar display on the the right (see image, right). The tabs and icons work in exactly the same way; it just looks a little different.
Thank you to my beta tester passTheKetchup for pointing this difference out!
QUICK TIP: See the little dice icon in the upper right-hand corner of your avatar display in the centre panel? Click it to completely randomize your avatar’s looks!
Give it a try; you might accidentally come across a random combination that you like!
Once you are happy with your starter avatar, click on the blue Continue button, located at the feet of the avatar display in the centre panel (see below). Don’t worry; you’re not stuck with any particular avatar appearance! In fact, it is very common in Second Life for people to change the way their avatar looks to other avatars frequently. It’s actually quite common for men to have female avatars, or women to have male avatars.
You will see the following screen, titled Complete your registration, where you will create your Second Life account. You will need to select a username and password, as well as provide a valid email address, your birthdate (you have to be at least 16 years old), and a security question with an answer, which will be used by support if for some reason you forget your password.
QUICK TIP: You will find that, after 20 years of operation, that the Second Life username options are pretty much completely picked over, so don’t be discouraged if you find your preferred usernames are not available because somebody else beat you to it! If the username you picked is already in use, you will get a red ban icon and the message This username already exists. Please try another (see image, right).
Also, please note: once you have chosen your username, you can only change it by paying a fee (US$49.99 for Basic accounts). So pick your username carefully!
While SL usernames must be unique, you’ll later have the option of setting up a display name, which can be anything you want (up to 31 characters, with at least one alphanumeric character; you can include most Unicode script characters, spaces, and some punctuation). Other avatars may have the same display name as you. More information on usernames and display names can be found here, including how to set up your display name.
Please remember that you are stuck with whatever case (uppercase, lowercase) you type into the Second Life username field (e.g. velma, Velma, VELMA, veLmA), and your SL username will be displayed to other avatars, along with any display name you choose, in a little sign over your head when in-world. Also, you can change your display name once per week.
Once you have picked a valid username, and filled out the rest of the required fields, click on the blue Create my account button as shown below:
At this point, Linden Lab will try to upsell you to pay for one of three different kinds of premium (i.e, paid-for) account. Just scroll down to the very bottom of the screen, and click on the Select Basic button at the very bottom (see red arrow in the diagram below). A basic account is free, and you do not need to provide a credit card.
At this point, you will receive the following message:
Now, go into your email (for the email address you provided when you registered), and check for an email from Linden Lab, with the title Please Verify Your Email Address for Second Life (check that it didn’t land up in your spam folder). Click on the link provided in the email within 24 hours to verify your email address.
Step 2: Download Second Life Viewer Software
PLEASE NOTE: You must install a Second Life client (viewer) program to run SL on your desktop computer or laptop. You cannot run Second Life in a web browser. There is (as yet) no mobile client for SL, although Linden Lab is working on one.
Now, if you clicked on the Download Second Life button from Step 1, it will have downloaded an installer program for the official Second Life client (or viewer) software for your Windows (or Mac) desktop computer. (From now on, I am going to use the word viewer, which is what most people using SL call it.)
However, you do need to know that most people who use Second Life do not use the official Second Life viewer. Over the past 20 years, many third-party software developers have made a number of alternative SL viewer programs (here’s a full list). Sometimes, a new viewer was created to meet a specific need. For example, the Black Dragon viewer is most often used by people who want to take the highest-possible quality pictures and videos in Second Life, and has a number of special features often used by SL photographers and machinima makers. Another client, Radegast, is a non-graphical client designed for low-performance computers, and it is especially popular among the visually-impaired community in Second Life.
The most popular viewer program for Second Life is called Firestorm, which is created and supported by the Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc., which describes itself as follows:
The Phoenix Firestorm Project Inc. is a non-profit, incorporated organization whose mandate is to improve the user experience in Second Life and other virtual worlds by providing an advanced open source viewer with greater features, options and interface flexibility than the standard offering by Linden Lab. The project has approximately 80 volunteers working for it and are managed through departments divided up as Development, Support, Quality Assurance and Gateway. We provide live support 24/7 in nine different languages inside of Second Life through our support groups and on the web via our issue tracker.
After using the official Second Life viewer for many years, about a decade ago I switched to Firestorm, and it is the viewer that I strongly recommend you install, even if you are new to Second Life. It’s easy to use, and has features which are not in the official Second Life viewer.
IMPORTANT: Make sure that you only download the Firestorm viewer from the official Firestorm viewer website at https://www.firestormviewer.org/!
“Firestorm” viewers from other websites are known to contain viruses and malware, and are to be avoided. Be especially careful about any viewer which promises you things like “free Linden dollars” (the in-world currency used in Second Life), or the ability to copy other people’s possessions (copybot). More information here.
First, go to the Firestorm Viewers download page at https://www.firestormviewer.org/choose-your-platform/. Click where is says Download Firestorm Viewer for Second Life. Please note that you want the version of the software for Second Life, not the one for Open Simulator (which is a spearate virtual world).
On the next page, click the icon for your operating system: Windows, Mac, or Linux (yes, you can run Firestorm on Linux, something you cannot do with the official Second Life viewer!):
Windows Install
Note that most Windows users will install the version for a 64-bit computer with more than 4 GB of memory (although there is a version for less powerful computers). If you want, you can even download older versions of the softeare, but most often, you will want to download and install the latest version of Firestorm.
Download the Firestorm installer file to your hard drive. Then find the installer in your downloads directory, and run it to install the Firestorm viewer. You will be prompted to select the language of the installer: English (the default), German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, or Japanese. Then you will accept the Vivox Voice System License Agreement (this service is used for voice chat in Second Life).
Then, you will be prompted to select the directory on your hard drive where you want to install Firestorm (I usually just leave it as the default, although you can choose to install the viewer in another directory). Click the Install button.
You will be asked if you want to create an entry in the start menu (I usually say yes). Then the installer does its work, pausing only to ask if you wish to register Firestorm as the default handler for virtual world protocols:
I always answer “Yes,” because I want Firestorm to load automatically when I click on a Second Life address (often called a SLURL, short for Second Life Universal Resource Locator) on a web page, in a text chat, in a post on a Discord server, etc. An example of a SLURL is the address for the new Second Life Welcome Hub (a place which we will discuss in Step 3):
(If all has gone well, you will receive a message that the installation of Firestorm has completed, and you can click the Close button (and, optionally, start Firestorm):
Mac Install
If you are a Mac user, the download is a .dmg file, when you open it, you get the following app window:
To install the app, all you have to do is click-drag the Firestorm-Releasex64.app into the Applications folder icon. That’s it for the install, you can then close the Firestorm Installer window. (Thank you to passTheKetchup for these instructions, as I am not a Mac user!) Then, to run Firestorm, open your Applications folder and double-click on Firestorm-Releasex64.app.
Step 3: Enter Second Life and Go to the Welcome Hub
If you chose to immediately run Firestorm in Step 2 (or if you just exit the install and choose to run Firestorm later), you will be prompted to enter your username and password from Step 1 at the log-in screen (see the green arrows in the picture below). Leave the third box as Last Location (which is actually kinda meaningless, since it’s your first time!), and click on the orange Log In button. That’s it!
Since this is your first time, before you can start exploring, you will need to agree to the Second Life Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, yadda yadda yadda:
Check the box next to the statement that you have duly read all the fine print, and click on the Continue button.
QUICK TIP: For more information about the Firestorm viewer, there is no better place to get it than from the official Firestorm user guide, which can be found here: https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/. It’s an absolute wealth of information!
QUICK TIP: And, if you wish, you can use Firestorm in a language other than the default English! Just press Ctrl-P to pull the Preferences window, stay on the General tab, and select your preferred language using the Lanuage drop-down menu: English, Azerbaijani, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, or Japanese. Remember to click the OK button at the bottom of the Preferences window to save your selection. You will then need to exit and restart your Firestorm viewer to use the new language (see the Exiting Firestorm section at the bottom of this blogpost).
Your new avatar will automatically land in a randomly-selected new user orientation region, along with other new avatars (and the occasional troll, so watch out!). It will look something like this (the orange clouds are avatars that haven’t loaded yet in your viewer, so you can’t see them fully).
One of the things that you will have to get used to in Second Life is that the landscape and the other avatars—even yourself!—might load in slowly, and in bits and pieces (the slower your network connection and the more complex your environment, the longer it takes to load). This is just the way things normally work in Second Life, as opposed to, say, a game like Fortnite, where you might have to wait several mintues for the gameplay area to be fully downloaded and set up before you can enter. Nope, not here! You just get plopped right in, while everything and everybody loads around you!
QUICK TIP #1: Notice that every avatar has a name over their head (if there are two names, the top name is the display name, and the bottom name is the actual Second Life username—refer back to Step 1 where we talked about that). If there are three names, then the topmost name is a group name, like Second Life Mentor (see Step 3, below).
QUICK TIP #2: Most people in Second Life use the four arrow keys (↑↓→←) to move around, but if you are one of those people that are used to using the WASD keys to move around, you will have to make one small change in your preferences (please see the above diagram when following these step-by-step instructions):
First, look at the tabs along the top of the Firestorm viewer, and click on Avatar (it’s the first one on the left). This will open the Avatar menu. Near the bottom, look for an option called Preferences, and select that (the shortcut keystroke for this is Ctrl-P, which is what I use all the time rather than digging through the menus).
This opens the Preferences window, which has a column of tabs along the left-hand side. Look for the tab that says Move & View, and click that. You will see a listing of options on the right-hand side of the Preferences window, with five tabs across the top. Click on the Movement tab (it’s the middle one of the five tabs), and check the box next to Pressing letter keys affects movement (i.e. WASD) instead of starting nearby chat.
Then be sure to click the OK button at the bottom of the Preferences window before you exit, or else the change won’t be saved. After this, you can use your WASD keys to move around instead of triggering the online chat in Firestorm.
Now, you can choose to stay where you landed and use that orientation, or you can choose another one. However, I would very strongly urge you to go through at least one new user orientation! In fact, Linden Lab has set up a brand new Welcome Hub, staffed with volunteers who are experienced Second Life users, who can answer your questions and help you get started. So I recommend that.
The Second Life Welcome Hub
Now, you might have landed in the new Welcome Hub already! But, it’s probably more likely that you haven’t. So here’s how to get to the shiny, new Welcome Hub, step by step (see the following diagram which illustrates each of these five steps):
First, look at the row of buttons running along the bottom of your Firestorm viewer screen, and click on the button with the magnifying glass icon. This will open a window called Firestorm Search, where you can search for places, people, groups, and events in Second Life. (You’ll be using it often.)
In the Firestorm Search window, there are tabs across the top. Click on the fourth tab, labelled Places, since you are look for a specific place.
In the search box (under Enter search terms:), type in “welcome hub” (without the quotation marks; for some strange reason if you keep the quotation marks in, it doesn’t work!). Note that you will need to press Enter/Return to do the search.
From the list of places on the left side of the window, click on the one that says Welcome Hub (or Welcome Hub Social Plaza, which is the space right nearby).
A picture and a brief description of the Welcome Hub will appear. Look for a Teleport button underneath it, click on it, and away you go!
Congratulations, you have just done your first teleport in Second Life! You’ll soon become quite used to the Firestorm viewer screen briefly turning black, and that signature whooshing sound, as you teleport around from region to region. We’re going to be doing a lot more of that in Step 4.
Once you arrive at the Welcome Hub, look for a crowd of people (or orange clouds, if you have a slower loading connection). In particular, look for the people in the crowd who have a sign over their heads saying Second Life Mentor. They are the volunteers who can help you if you have questions.
Now, the only possible problem is that I have told you to download and use the Firestorm viewer, and the mentors are probably expecting you to be using the default, official Second Life viewer—but you’ll find that most of the common tasks you will do are pretty much the same between the official Second Life viewer and the Firestorn viewer, so you shouldbe okay (crosses fingers).
Most of the Second Life Mentors will be familiar with Firestorm as well (it’s by far the most popular viewer), so they should be able to help you, and of course, there are many things about Second Life that are not Firestorm-specific. For example, perhaps you want some recommendations of newcomer-friendly places to go, or live music events to attend, or public sandboxes where you can work on your building skills. Or perhaps you just want to know how to move around, how to run and jump, how to communicate in text and voice chat, and how to sit down and stand up! (See also the section on the Orientation area at the Welcome Hub, a few paragraphs down.)
If there are no mentors nearby, you can always page one by clicking on this device (just look for a bright green circular button on a short pedestal, as shown here). These mentor pagers are scattered throughout the Welcome Hub. When you click the green button, a blue screen will pop up in the upper right-hand corner of your viewer, with the option to let one of the mentors know that you need assistance. Please click on each of the images in the picture gallery below to see them in full size:
Feel free to wander around the Welcome Hub, there’s lots of helpful information to help you get started in Second Life. My personal recommendation is to start by going through the Orientation section (ask a Mentor for directions, or just look for the large blue Orientation sign). Just follow the blue arrows on the floor to go from station to station, and you will pick up the basics in no time!
Once you have gone through the orientation, pay a visit to the Second Life Academy:
QUICK TIP: Second Life uses both voice chat and text chat, but while text chat is universally used, voice chat is only available if the region owner has turned that capabilty in the location you are in. So don’t be too surprised to find that you are using text chat more than you are used to! This is because SL is full of older people who were around well before voice chat was available, and who just got into the habit of using text chat to communicate (unlike, say, VRChat, where voice chat is much more common).
If you want to talk with other Second Life users, you can use the Second Life Destination Guide (see Step 4) to find voice chat-enabled areas. In fact, if you scroll down the Destination Guide screen, there is a category called Voice Chat Hot Spots in the left-hand column (see the red arrow in the attached image). Just click on the link to see a list of regions where you can make use of your microphone!
Step 4: Explore Second Life Using the Destination Guide
The best way to get a feel for Second Life is to go exploring, teleporting around from place to place. And the best way to find great places to visit is to use the official Second Life Destination Guide, which is found at https://secondlife.com/destinations (please note that you will be asked to sign in with your newly-created username and password; this is because you will then be able to teleport directly from any entry in the Destination Guide to the corresponding region in Second Life).
What I like to do is have Firestorm already running, then open my web browser, and sign in to the Destination Guide. Then, whenever I find a place I want to explore, I click on the title to go through to the full entry, and just hit the big purple Teleport button. A teleport link automatically opens up in Firestorm, for me to click on. It will look like this in Firestorm. Just hit the Teleport button and go!
Along the left-hand side of the screen in the Destination Guide is an alphabetical listing of broad subject categories (some of which have subcategories). Click on a link to see what regions have been assigned that category/subcategory by the compilers of the Destination Guide. For example, if you click on Bars, Pubs, and Restaurants, you get a list of places to visit, each with a picture and brief description. Just click through to find a fuller description, and a handy Teleport button.
See the little numbers underneath each picture, next to the people icon (the green arrows in the picture below)? That gives you an indication of how many avatars are at that location. Useful information to know if you are looking to meet new people! (Keep in mind that this is a new feature, and it is not always accurate.)
Another new feature is that you can now do keyword searches of the entire Destination Guide. Just enter a word in the search box in the upper-left corner, and it will pull up entires which mention that word. For example, a search on “dinosaur” pulls up three regions, with the searched word highlighted in yellow (note that it can take a minute for keyword search results to appear, so please be patient and wait for all the search results to load):
So, why not spend your first few hours in Second Life exploring the grid? The worst that can happen is that you get totally lost, and you can use the step-by-step instructions I gave you earlier to get back to the Welcome Hub!
QUICK TIP: Second Life regions have one of three maturity ratings: General, Moderate, and Adult. By default, your newly-created avatar can access General and Moderate regions, but not Adult regions. If you try to teleport into a region with an Adult rating, you will get the following message (see first image, right). Also, you will not be able to search for Adult-rated regions in the Destination Guide.
To change your account preferences to include Adult regions, press Ctrl-P to open the Preferences window in your Firestorm viewer, stay on the General tab, and click the drop-down menu under the heading I want to to access content rated: (it’s right below the Lanuage settings; please see second image, right). Select General, Moderate, Adult, then click the OK button to save the change.
Please note that an Adult rating on a Second Life region does not necessarily mean it’s an R or X-rated region! For example, the beautiful northern Italian village region of Basilique has an Adult rating, because in addition to being a scenic tourist spot, it also rents out houses to tenants, who may wish to set up beds and other furniture with adult animations, to use in the privacy of their rented homes. 😉
Click on Avatar in the top-level row of menus in the Firestorm viewer to open the Avatar menu (it’s the first menu on the left). At the very bottom of the menu is an option called Exit Firestorm. Click that.
The keystroke shortcut to do the same thing is Ctrl-Q (on Windows; I believe it would be Command-Q on the Mac).
The one I use the most often is just to click the X in the upper right-hand corner of the Firestorm viewer. You will be prompted to confirm you wish to exit Firestorm. (Again, this is probably slightly different for Mac and Linux users.)
There’s so much more than I can cover in one blog post, and this is already a mini novel, but that should be enough to help you get started as painlessly as possible. See you in world!
