Gratuitous use of bots boost traffic
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Crush Cutie
Why are regions allowed to host dozens upon dozens of bot accounts to fake traffic scores when such behavior is clearly against ToS.
Some sims are almost at the avatar cap before a single real person has arrived with fields of fake accounts on skyplatforms and in hidden locations, all day, all night, day in, day out.
They are obviously not marked as scripted agents as the regions in question have astronomical traffic ratings yet not an actual soul in sight.
Is there some secret rule that regions owners are allowed to do this?
I will not show locations or name names. But this behavior is so endemic, I would be happy to give any Linden a guided tour of the worst offenders.
This phenomenon is actively harming the platform. When the busy places are ghost towns with faked numbers, the only conclusion anyone can come to is that Second Life is dead.
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Beckka Fredericks
Can we do something about limiting the bots, it makes us look like an empty platform/metaverse. The Users want to see an accurate representation of the SL Userbase. Not an army of bots at events. I get they have their use for stores and things like that, but using bots to artificially inflate traffic numbers needs to be stopped. We want SL to grow just as much as LL does. I always say that we have a unique relationship where we are more involved with each other than most of than most of the gaming community where we really do work together to create a better Metaverse.
Also it's time for the bonnie bots to go, they are putting .exe in their display name which is intent to disrupt and cause havoc. As someone who has been to defcon for years on years, I find that highly disturbing and have been flagging the accounts as unsafe when I see them.
SL Feedback
Merged in a post from LeoProspero Resident:
Title: Remove Bot Filled Locations from Destination Guide Listings
Details: The Destination Guide is a great resource to locate all kinds of venues in SecondLife, but there's a few locations listed in the Music/Clubs category and other general locations that are literally just filled with enough bots 24/7 to stay on the "What's Hot" list or higher in the category listings. You'll go to visit and find 25 - 40 empty avatars standing around a money giver, or 20 bots sitting at game tables or a skybox at random heights, but no one in the actual venue. I'm sure this has been going on forever, but new users bring this up to me a lot when talking with them as a point of frustration.
Venues that do stuff like this to boost their search or status on the Destination guide should be removed from the list.
Signal Linden
tracked
LeoProspero Resident
Signal Linden - My comment was merged to this post from the beginning of the year and its something that's come up numerous times just in the last few weeks. Any additional insights we can offer, locations, etc?
Gavin Felisimo
Residents can support 'blockage' of many of the bots who frequent our 'parcels' by simply blocking access to avi names with '
bot' / '
belle' , etc in the name. That may help to reduce some of the bot access... but, I like the "report" feature that is suggested here by Philip LindenRizzy Khaos
Second Life
IS
Dead and the funeral will be soon if nothing is done to resucitate it.Otoa Kiyori
I got an idea from this feed back and comments... behavior-based bot detection/activity scoring! 💡
The automated agent flag is only used by bot owners who like to use their bots for legitimate reasons with openness. I believe many bots do not want to follow the automated agent flag rules anyway (even though TOS mandates it and the AR category is in place) So simple avatar count is not a reliable or pragmatic indicator of activities
The behavior patterns of the bots are pretty clear (for now), and practically idle AFKers, IM-only people or look-around-only visitors are pretty much not contributing to the "activity" of the area just like bots anyways (thank you for the idea for a new experiment guys!)
primerib1 Resident
- Reports of "bots not marked as bots" need to be taken care of consistently, as it is against TOS
- There should be a cap to the max number of bots per region. Probably can be related to the size of parcels owned in that region.
- Non-bot avatars should always take priority: If a region is filled up by lots of bots, the next avatar entering should be allowed (temporarily exceeding max region capacity), but one of the bots must be kicked out.
3a. Conversely, if a bot tries to enter an already-full region, said bot must be blocked. If the bot keeps trying, beyond a certain threshold (say, 4 attempts the past 300 seconds) the bot must be forced into "cooldown box" and not allowed to TP at all for a certain time; if the bot keeps violating this, the cooldown time should be extended exponentially (1min, then 2 mins, then 4 mins, then 8 mins, and so on). The penalty gets reduced to a lower tier (e.g. from 32 mins cooldown to 16 mins) once per 24h unless the bot violates the limit again.
Philip Linden
Agree this is a real problem, and that we would be much better off if fixed. Crush Cutie I’ll take you up on a tour if you want to give me one.
What if there was a very easy way to report “suspected bot” which was handled by initiating a chat conversation / Turing test with the bot? Those not answering (and not marked as scripted agents) could be kicked or traffic removed, etc.
Fish TopHat
Philip Linden A good starting point is the top regions on the destination guide. I know for a fact places like London City have dozens of traffic bots all over the sky.
I just went there at 6:30pm SLT on the 15th and there are 37 traffic bots on the sim
LeoProspero Resident
Philip Linden I brought up a new topic about the use of bots to create fake traffic at venues on the destination guide and it was merged to this post from the beginning of the year. This has come up numerous times for me from new users just over the last few weeks, but also something I've experienced trying to find new places as well. You see a place on the Destination Guide showing 20+ and when you get there its a ghost town because its bots parked in a skybox, or alts standing around a free money giver. Any additional insights we can offer, locations, etc?
chrixbed Resident
There is a simple setting on an avatar account to declare it as a scripted agent. When you enable this setting, the traffic is not calculated, and people are informed that the avatar is a bot. For me, using bots is a fun way to have NPCs on a sim and add variety and interaction with other avatars. However, if bots are used to artificially boost traffic or deceive people, that is a concern and should be reported to Linden.
RestrainedRaptor Resident
I'm very concerned to hear that people are reporting these bots and nothing's being done. Do we need to write up another exposé article on Medium\.com before they listen?
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