Mark Bot accounts different from human controlled avatars
tracked
Coffee Pancake
Second Life as a platform is unique in that it is user driven and user built.
There should be no doubt that when approaching an avatar that it's directly controlled by a human.
While it is undeniable that scripted agents provide utility and amusement, they should not exist in any form that allows them to be confused with a human controlled avatar. Ideally there should be no task in SL that needs fully fledged antonymous scripted agent to accomplish and LSL needs to be expanded to remove these edge use cases.
Survey and traffic bots are an annoyance, likely privacy breaching and often operating in ways that break ToS.
Self identification of accounts as bots has broadly been a failure and cop-out on the part of Linden Lab. LL need to be marking bots as bots automatically. It doesn't even need fancy AI to accomplish. Metrics such as teleports per hour, time spent in the same location, viewer channel, etc etc etc.
Confusion over what is behind an avatar has created a trope in SL that unresponsive avatars are in fact bots, that clubs and venues aren't occupied by individuals, the direct implication being that SL isn't a real place made and populated by real people.
No one wants to waste time trying to be be social with a bot.
AI chat bots are novelty and not a substitute for real people.
At the very least name tags should be flagged in some way that makes it obvious an agent is scripted in some way. Participation in local chat should be equally differentiated. profiles should be limited, etc etc.
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Spidey Linden
Merged in a post:
Green dots on Bots
Eren Padar
Check the Map or Mini-Map. Green dots all over. Most of them are bots. Bleh.
I'm looking for other PEOPLE, not robots. Perhaps bots could be marked in squares rather than dots... and some other color than bright green. As it is, there is no way to distinguish them from normal avatars. Such bot markings should be the default setting; we have enough "options" to set in the viewers as it is. (Learning curve is straight up. Pity the Newbs trying to learn this system.)
Spidey Linden
tracked
Issue tracked. We have no estimate when it may be implemented. Please see future updates here.
Vincent Nacon
The problem is not everyone willing to mark their accounts as bots. There's a bit of cat and mouse game going on.
Eren Padar
Vincent Nacon You could be right in this. In such a situation, LL should find a way to auto-recognize bots and force their identification on the map as bots. I'm thinking bots have a different enough behavior from avatars that this should be a fairly straight-forward process.
Eren Padar
Otoa Kiyori A Capcha system as you state would cause extra log-in hassles, and as far as I know would not be helpful. The log-in of "bots" is identical to the log-in of regular avatars. So a capcha system would be bypassed immediately.
The problem is that bots (unlike animesh) appears exactly the same on the mini-map. But their behavior is different (repeated actions over and over again, or just stand around and don't move until interacted with). Linden Lab would know more about that than me. Or they could just make bot identification a requirement. "Is this a bot?" with severe consequences if someone sets out a "fake person" without notification for the map.
I dunno the best solution, but I get so tired of entering a sim with 20 or 30 green dots... only to find out they're ALL bots just to attract traffic figures or some role play game I don't wanna play. ; )
My preference: that bots not appear on the map at all... and that their last name be REQUIRED to be "Bot" or "NPC".
Bleuhazenfurfle Resident
+1 to bots being marked as such on the mini-maps and viewer avatar list and stuff… not sure I want them highlighted on the name tag, though, unless it's fairly subtle (not overly obvious — don't want them standing out
more
than non bots). Maybe putting a bots name in italics or something…But… How are LL likely to mark
me
…? I'm certain I appear to be a bot (one of the non-moving kind, as opposed to the ever-roaming type) as far as they could tell… And it's not uncommon for some bots to be periodically taken control of. Not a big problem, sure I could just harass support to get the flag cleared, but still… False positives are going to annoy people too (and in fact, already has done).Also, I don't know why profiles should be limited — show they're a bot in the space used for payment and other status, but otherwise…