Tag: Wagner James Au

UPDATED WITH AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM LINDEN LAB: Linden Lab Is Investigating Serious (and Possibly Defamatory) Allegations Made Against Some Second Life Users and Companies, and Linden Lab Staff

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.

The Feb. 29th update includes a link to this New World Notes blogpost by Wagner James Au, who has been a longtime chronicler of 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.

News Watch: What I Didn’t Blog About in April and May!

I’m constantly on the look out for stories for the RyanSchultz.com blog, bookmarking anything and everything that I or my readers might find of interest—news and announcements about social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse (including the blockchain-based platforms).

At the moment, I’m so backlogged with my bookmarks, that today I’ve just decided to share many of them with you, in an effort to get caught up! Each would likely be the seed for a proper blogpost all on its own, but here each one will just get a sentence or two, a brief annotation only. Hope you don’t mind!

Ready? Let’s dig in!

Geekwire: ‘Second Life’ creator shares lessons learned from one of the world’s first metaverses (an interview with Linden Lab’s founding CEO, Philip Rosedale).

Businesswire: Razorfish Study Finds 52% of Gen Z Gamers Feel More Like Themselves in the Metaverse than in Real Life (Razorfish and VICE Media Group released findings from a new research study, titled The Metaverse: A View from Inside).

Road to VR: Virtual Social Platform ‘Rec Room’ Hits 3 Million Monthly Active VR Users (Rec Room continues to rack up some impressive statistics).

The Conversation: Can you truly own anything in the metaverse? A law professor explains how blockchains and NFTs don’t protect virtual property (a thought-provoking editorial by Indiana University law professor João Marinotti)

Medium: World War “M” and the curse of the Metaverse, by Avi Bar-Zeev (an editorial where Avi poses the question: If “The Metaverse” represents our digital future, who decides what “it” is?)

metamandrill: Interview with Founder Adam Frisby of Sine Wave Entertainment (an interview with the man behind both Sinespace and Breakroom)

NFTs are Legally Problematic (a 46-minute YouTube video featuring lawyer Steve Mould and NFT pundit Coffeezilla)

24/7 Crypto: Metaverse hotel for avatars to open in Decentraland next week: “The first ever metaverse hotel (*cough*cough*Second Life*cough*cough*) is being opened next week in Decentraland by Singapore’s Millennium Hotels and Resorts.”

TIME: 6 Lessons on the Future of the Metaverse From the Creator of Second Life (a good overview article, with the writer talking to both Philip Rosedale and Tom Boellstorff about the lessons learned from Second Life).

moOMNI: Around the Metaverse by DrFran Babcock (short but essential reading; Fran shares her thoughts about the community within the metaverse).

Road to VR: A Dating App for Meeting Avatars in VR Aims to Build Very Real Relationships (a review of the Flirtual matchmaking app)

XR Today: Sensorium, Humanity 2.0 Launch Vatican City Art Metaverse (Ultra high-end social VR platform Sensoirum Galaxy partners with the Humanity 2.0 Foundation to build a virtual gallery for Vatican City). “The company’s Sensorium Galaxy platform is currently in beta testing, with a launch date set for later in the year to expand its availability across devices, including VR headsets, PCs, and mobile devices.”

Road to VR: Meta to Merge ‘Venues’ Event Space into ‘Horizon Worlds’ Social VR Platform (starting June 6th, 2022, Horizon Worlds users will have direct access to live sports, concerts, comedy, and user-created meet-ups in Horizon Venues).

WIRED: This VR App Has Legs: Spatial adds support for full-body virtual avatars, giving realism in VR a step up (the Spatial social VR app now had a full-body option).

The Atlantic: Lessons From 19 Years in the Metaverse (an interview with longtime Second Life blogger Wagner james Au).

Medium: Web3.0 Must Be Destroyed (long, but well worth the read).

Harvard Business Review: Cautionary Tales from Cryptoland (interview with Molly White, creator of the website Web3 Is Going Just Great).

Current Affairs: Why This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire” (interview with UC-Berkeley computer science professor Nicholas Weaver)

Now that I’ve shared some of my most interesting finds with you, I hope that this list will tide you over until I can whip up some fresh new content for you! Expect more blogposts soon. (If people find these news roundups useful, I might continue to write them, as well as my regular blogposts.)

My Predictions for Social VR, Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse for 2022

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? You’re invited to be a part of the first ever cross-worlds discussion group, with over 600 people participating from every social VR platform and virtual world! We discuss, debate and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and all the companies building it. You’re welcome to come join us! More details here.

I was going to write up another entry in my ongoing Pandemic Diary series today, but then I read Wagner James Au’s predictions for 2022, and I suddenly realized I had neglected to write up my own blogpost, with my predictions for the next twelve months! So let me polish my crystal ball and see what comes up… 😉

Among Wagner’s predictions is this one, which I agree with 100%—make that 1,000%!

There will be a major scandal or controversy around one of the blockchain/NFT-oriented Metaverse platforms.

With NFTs beset by scams and NFT/blockchain-oriented metaverse platforms seeing low user numbers but extremely high investment and speculation, this is only a matter of time.  

It’s only January 12th, 2022, but I have already written about a number of questionable NFT projects which at best are crazy schemes, and at worst are outright scams! MetaWorld springs to mind as the perfect example of the latter (ALLEGEDLY, I hasten to add, although IN MY OPINION, I don’t believe there is any actual MetaWorld platform, aside from a prototype which was created years ago by someone who has since left the company to work for Somnium Space).

By the way, I have been reliably informed that, after an absence caused by the publication of this damning recent piece of investigative journalism by Engadget, Dedric Reid is once again active on Clubhouse, shilling MetaWorld in his own rooms and in other rooms about the metaverse on the still-popular social audio platform. He’s also relisted his (ALLEGEDLY, IN MY OPINION) worthless virtual land NFTs on OpenSea, after NiftyKit took the original listings on his website down when the original artist he stole the images from to illustrate his NFTs lodged a copyright complaint.

Despite all the negative press from the Engadget exposé and my series of blogposts about MetaWorld, Dedric continues undeterred. Someone joked to me via Discord DMs that Dedric Reid is the Elizabeth Holmes of the metaverse, and I laughed out loud because it’s such an apt, concise description! Harsh, savage, but accurate.

But on to other topics; I am tired of talking about Dedric Reid and MetaWorld (and frankly, whoever falls for his ALLEGED scam at this point is simply not doing their proper due diligence, IN MY OPINION). There’s a lot of actual progress being made by many legitimate metaverse companies building social VR/AR platforms and virtual worlds!

First, Facebook—sorry, Meta! I predict that Meta is going to have a very bumpy year ahead. The company was roundly criticized by the virtual reality community when they announced that. starting in October 2020, all Oculus VR hardware users had to set up accounts on the toxic Facebook social network. While Mark Zuckerberg, in his now-infamous Connect 2021 keynote, said that the company was looking at removing this requirement, I’ll believe it when I actually see it happen. Words are hollow, Mark; what matters are actions.

I predict that Facebook (sorry, Meta) is going to have a rough year

Meta is facing such a never-ending litany of complaints, scandals, and even legal actions that this is, once again, a very easy prediction to make for 2022.

Next prediction: there’s going to be a lot of activity this year in the fuzzy overlap area between games and virtual worlds, what I like to call the “metaverse-adjacent” space. Both games (e.g. Fortnite, Minecraft) and game platforms (e.g. Roblox, Core) will continue to add new features in an effort to become more like social VR/AR apps and virtual worlds. And, given their immense popularity, especially among children, tweens, and teens, many people will get their first taste of the metaverse via these games and game platforms, in much the same way as an entire generation got their start in the metaverse via Second Life.

Speaking of Second Life, in my predictions for 2021, I wrote the following:

And, indeed, 2021 was the first year in which VRChat began to consistently surpass Second Life in user concurrency figures (Rec Room did too, I believe). VRChat has been breaking new user concurrency records, leading up to and including New Year’s Eve 2021, as Johnny Rodriguez tweeted:

Last night, 88,700 people put on a VR headset and decided to join the VRChat New Years event to countdown [to] the new year. For reference, this is Husker’s Memorial Stadium [at the University of Nebraska], which fits around 86,000 people when completely full. VR is here to stay.

Turning back to Second Life, the coronavirus pandemic caused a temporary surge in usage (and the current Omicron wave might well prompt people to dust off their avatars and give it another try, too). I still estimate that SL has somewhere between 500,000 and 900,000 active users per month (that is, people who sign in at least once in the past thirty days). I really wish that Linden Lab would regularly release statistics like this, but if they are declining (slowly or quickly), I can also understand why the company would be reluctant to do so.

It doesn’t help matters that Second Life’s userbase skews significantly older than most other social VR platforms, virtual worlds, and metaverse-adjacent apps like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox. SL users are (literally) dying off! However, Second Life still remains popular enough (and a reliable cash cow) to keep merrily coasting along for many years. And with the deep pockets and good connections of the Waterfield investment group (of which Second Life is now a part), the future looks bright.

I wish I could say the same about Sansar, which from my (admittedly limited) perspective, seems to be circling the drain. I wrote the following post in the official Second Life community forums late last year:

I was part of Sansar since I was invited into the closed beta in 2016/2017, and I was there for the whole crazy ride. Sansar is now on life support (the company that bought it from Linden Lab, called Wookey, furloughed all of its staff recently, and I believe that they could shut down at any moment without warning). Being there from beginning to end, I still marvel at how Linden Lab thought they could build a new virtual world/social VR platform and just put it out there, and expect it to sell itself in this competitive marketplace for metaverse platforms. “Build it and they will come” might have worked for SL in 2003 but it sure ain’t gonna work nowadays. You have to PROMOTE yourself to get noticed.

Also, Linden Lab could have done a lot of things to try and entice SL users to a) visit Sansar and b) make them want to stay, build worlds, create content, and form a new community. Instead, what happened is that Second Life folks (rightly or wrongly) saw Sansar as something which distracted LL from its work on SL, and as a result most SL folks hated Sansar and refused to have anything to do with it, hastening its downfall in my opinion. It also didn’t help that Linden Lab made a bet that many people would be owning high-end VR headsets tethered to high-end PCs with good graphics cards, and instead the Oculus Quest wireless headset took off.

I still shake my head and wonder “what if?”. Say a prayer for Sansar, it needs it. 

Right now, Sansar’s best hope for survival in 2022 is for another company who wants to enter the metaverse marketplace to buy the platform from Wookey, much the same as Microsoft stepped in at the eleventh hour to snap up AltspaceVR.

Another prediction: we are going to see an increase in the number of companies providing services to metaverse platforms. Wagner James Au mentions the Linden Lab subsidiary Tilia, which provides financial services, in his blogpost which I linked to up top; I predict that they will land a few more clients this year. Another example of a company doing well in this niche is Ready Player Me, the avatar system currently in use in VRChat and over 1,000 other apps and games on VR, mobile, desktop, and web. Expect this nascent business-to-business sector to explode this year!

Well, that’s it for me, for now. I might update this blogpost with other predictions for 2022 as they come to me.

And I ask you, my faithful readers: what predictions are you making for the next twelve months? Feel free to leave a comment, or use the feedback form on my blog if you’d prefer to contact me directly. You’re also welcome to join the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, a cross-worlds community where over 600 people, with experience in various metaverse platforms, welcome you! Just click the button on the left-side panel of my blog as shown (image right). If you are connecting via a smartphone or tablet instead of your computer desktop, just click the three-bars menu button in the upper-right hand corner, then scroll down until you see the Discord widget displayed.

Matthew Ball and the Metaverse Road Map: A Fireside Chat in Breakroom on October 21st, 2021

In case you haven’t noticed, the metaverse is suddenly having a moment.

Ever since Facebook announced that they were repivoting to become a “metaverse” company, things have gotten a little bit crazy around here. As Tony Parisi writes:

In the wake of Facebook’s new positioning as a Metaverse company, execs at a multitude of tech and media outfits have put it front and center of their strategy, or are at least saying they have a Metaverse strategy. Leading the pack are game engine companies like my employer Unity and graphics chip powerhouses such as NVIDIA. These companies are laying the groundwork by delivering miraculous real-time 3D tech on a regular basis, and they are built on solid business models delivering significant commercial value. They will indeed be foundational for the Metaverse. But these days you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an ad agency or tech startup that has the word Metaverse in a strategy deck, too. Sensing a Next Big Thing, people don’t want to have to play catch-up like they did with the Internet or mobile. Mind you, the term Metaverse isn’t new, nor is the vision, despite various attempts at rewriting history. But now that His Eminence has given voice to it, the Metaverse exists by fiat. So let it be written; so let it be done. And everyone is pouring in.

At a time when the word “metaverse” is being flung around everywhere by everybody (including by quite a few johnny-come-latelies who really have no idea what they are talking about), it’s important to listen to people who who were around before this sudden hype cycle. Among those people is venture capitalist Matthew Ball, whose well-known article The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite, provides some thoughtful insight and perspective on the topic.

Matthew Ball (picture source)

And it just so happens that the next speaker scheduled in the Fireside Chats series is none other than Matthew Ball himself! According to the official announcement:

Sine Wave Entertainment is honored to welcome Metaverse visionary Matthew Ball for a virtual fireside chat within Breakroom, our metaverse platform for real-life events. Author of the influential “Metaverse Primer“, lead creator of the Ball Metaverse Index, his insights and investments have shaped the business world’s understanding of what he calls a “successor state to the mobile internet”.

Join us for a wide-ranging conversation with Matthew, co-hosted by two leading journalists of the Metaverse era [Gene Park of the Washington Post and Wagner James Au of New World Notes].

Topics to be discussed include:

• What are the key Metaverse trends to watch for in the next 5-10 years?
• Will it wind up being dominated by the Internet giants?
• Is there more to the Metaverse beyond entertainment?
• Where do blockchain and VR fit into the technology’s future?• How will the Metaverse remake culture and business?

You can register for the event here, through EventBrite (it’s free). It takes place on Thursday, October 21se, 2021 at 8:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time/GMT or noon Pacific Standard Time/PST. When you register, you will receive an email message with a special link you have to click on to load the web-based Breakroom app in your web browser.

It promises to be a fascinating discussion, and one you won’t want to miss!

This blogpost is sponsored by Sinespace, and was written in my role as an embedded reporter for this virtual world (more details here).