Re-evaluate content policy regarding bestiality.
Miro Fairelander
It's time to address an elephant in the room of SL that has been growing unchecked over the years.
There is a lot of explicit bestiality content on Second Life that, at the moment, does not seem to violate the Terms of Service in any way. (Or, if it does, it's not being enforced at all.) Now, when I say "bestiality", I am not referring to furry adult content. I am specifically talking about human avatars being depicted in sexual acts with quadrupedal and usually non-sentient animals like dogs or horses.
I'm going to be extremely blunt here when I say this content is detrimental to the Second Life community purely because it shows up uninvited. If you're looking for new places? Searching "roleplay" often shows these bestiality sex sims. Same if you're looking for "furry" places. Hell, even if you enjoy sex sims, that doesn't necessarily mean you want to see depictions of bestiality.
It comes up in marketplace searches too. Today, searching "furry" by newest on Marketplace returned a flood of AI-generated (some rather photorealistic) bestiality porn as well. Searching "monster" has also yielded similar results in the past, and if you use any kind of animal/quadruped avatar and want to find content for it? Good luck, because you'll probably run into bestiality content if you search the name of your avatar, unless you disable adult content for the search.
My point is that you don't need to go looking for this content. Because of tag spam, and a lack of a blacklist on MP or place search, it's very easy for this (or other extreme content) to show up in results no matter what you're searching.
I have to admit I'm confused as to why ageplay is a big no-no as per the TOS that is taken very seriously (which it should be, of course!) but realistic depictions of bestiality go unmoderated and unrestricted, despite it being an illegal practice in many regions in the world and is widely regarded as animal abuse.
I think it's long overdue that Linden Lab reconsider the content policy on this type of content, or at the very least, allow us to blacklist it so it's not easy to stumble upon. I would prefer it to be banned from the platform outright, I do not think it has a place here, but I would be satisfied with some kind of blacklist system and/or a "quarantine" of bestaility and other extreme content.
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Mizuki Shade
I created another thread as an alternative suggestion to address this ones problem, rather than asking LL to ban something inworld and require lots of active moderation, instead improve search so users can curate their own experience. https://feedback.secondlife.com/feature-requests/p/overhaul-search-and-traffic-to-improve-discovery-and-stop-bot-abuse
Lone Wanderer
Definitely a difficult issue. I find NSFW feral content, and with it bestiality, abhorrent. However, we bump against the issue then of deciding where the line should be drawn.
What if they're intelligent and can speak? What if they're fantastical and have 3 heads? What if they're alien animals? What if they're unrealistically large? What if they're green and have a rainbow tail? What if they're basically a dog, but have a human head? What about werewolves, lycans? Silly examples perhaps, and I didn't even mention the harkness test.
I think some are correct in stating that in banning one type of content, there will always be a next on the hit list. It's also essentially certain that other content deemed acceptable would be hit in the crossfire.
I think a couple of pragmatic solutions without bringing out a banhammer would be:
-a better tagging system both in world and on marketplace, with more (possibly crowdsourced) tags, and an ability to have a personal banned tag list to stop seeing certain content. (perhaps pre-filled with common 'bad' tags for new users, so that that content becomes opt in).
-an adult+ rating for search inworld and on marketplace, covering things more taboo than 'vanilla adult', perhaps optional rather than enforced by LL themselves, moderated no differently than adult. I can see a lot of people making any kink content wanting a distinction anyway from standard adult SL.
Others here have echoed similar sentiments to me both more thoroughly and eloquently. SL is all of us, I'm grateful to see some similarly minded individuals <3.
Soap Frenzy
The only change that needs to happen is the ability to mark listings as "containing sensitive content" with an explicit Opt-IN setting that is disabled by default. This would solve the issue.
Arwyn Quandry
If you don't wish to see this content on MP when looking for furry or quad animal items, uncheck the Adult box in your search.
Miro Fairelander
Arwyn Quandry Some of us are perfectly fine with normal or "vanilla" adult content, but don't want to see depictions of illegal acts or other extreme out-there fetishes.
I don't see why wanting to see some adult content (remember; "Adult" on SL covers a very broad range of topics) means we must put up with seeing this as well.
Spitewick Resident
Arwyn Quandry That is not a solution. Countless (humanoid, furry) mods are marked as Adult because of the presence of nipples on the ad pictures. That would filter those out, and would make the MP unusable.
Archer Blep
Absolutely no. I don’t want you deciding what offends me. Likewise I don’t want you deciding what doesn’t offend me. You can wax on all you like about how something offends you but don’t try to include others in whatever crusade this is.
Rathgrith027 Resident
No. Actually, not just no - Hell no. Blacklists, fine, but a ban - absolutely the fuck not.
We already have to deal with the three ring goatfuck of Governance banning anyone who dares be petite, be a femboy, or be an anime avatar that doesn't fucking tits as big as mine on the basis of 'muh ageplay'. We don't need people who dare wear animal avatars or at worst, furries, getting shitcanned because of this.
Need I remind people of the 2024 Scandal of the year when, yes - Linden Lab found Patch et al weren't involved - BUT - that ageplay activities still took place on SL! Shocker! People do this shit behind closed doors, away from prying eyes, where Linden and Lovejoy Brigadier alike can't see it!
It's almost as if... banning things doesn't fucking work! All it does, is produce a chilling effect, and push the stalwart underground. And what's more - it seems to me that people, especially the Helen Lovejoy Brigade here, seem to think that people engaging in these kinds of acts actually think people would engage in them in real life - a stereotype so toxic to the human condition that if I could sacrifice my very being to eradicate the ideology from existance, I would.
I know a lot of people, on other platforms, who do these things, and some who do these things on SL - who would never dare engage in them IRL. These people don't want to actually diddle fucking kids, or get railed by a horse. Please, for all that is good on this grid, learn how to seperate fantasy from reality.
I wish you people would fucking understand that. Maybe then we could eventually put these aggressive ageplay bans to bed, too.
Miro Fairelander
Rathgrith027 Resident I strongly believe the "femboy ban wave" was nothing but a rumor and/or bad dubious exaggerating when they were clearly in the wrong for other reasons.
I have always had androgynous avatars including "femboys" and not once have I got into hot water for "looking young." Neither has anyone else I know. It's really easy to not look suspiciously childlike.
It's also really easy to tell a furry (bipedal, behaves like a human) from a non-sapient realistic animal being depicted in sexual acts with human avatars.
Pazako Karu
Miro Fairelander Maybe from your perspective but all of a sudden anything in a kemono body was banned from all adult sims, regardless of their attempts at making it look adult enough. Anything under 5ft tall was scrutinized and often, eradicated without notice. This has been softening over the past few months, but it was terribly aggressive last year. A lot of this was because those around were 'at fault' with the old Linden ToS, which they thankfully changed to fault the fake minor instead.
Lucky Clover
The reason this was brought up, the AI generated garbo-spam in tags, is valid. Almost all people selling a single texture per listing are doing stolen art, uncredited screenshots, or now AI, and it is legitimately just spam. That's it's own issue though.
The issue itself here, I agree where if it's 'photo'realistic, it should be removed, but also, it already is. IRL images and anything hard to distinguish as not being IRL are already against rules as far as I know. The issue however is that if this does get banned, there won't be a good guideline everyone can agree on. Realistic animals? all ferals on humans? dragons on humans? centaurs? would a wolf avatar with realistic fur treated differently by the TOS than one with a cartoony texture on it? do those MLP avatars get forced into being G rated sims?
There's already an issue with the ageplay rule where a lot of people who are short or flat chested are either worried about, or are directly bothered by others for being 'child avatars', just because they're existing in adult spaces next to some hulks and megaboob avatars over 7 feet tall. I've seen a reddit thread where a irl dwarf (little person) was concerned about their avatar and the comments just told them (no gender mentioned) to have a beard or something. Content bans like this do unfortunately affect everyone, especially when no one knows where the grey area even is.
Not only do I feel like the same issue might repeat here, but it reminds me about how a very long time ago, the issue of bestiality content in SL was raised and LL's response was, essentially, banning any stores related to it. This ended up being.. adult furry stores. fully anthro-oriented furry stores. Some appealed the bans, some shops are gone forever. One of them in particular had a very nice skybox shop on an alt, and I miss them sometimes.
Lucky Clover
I heavily think that marketplace needs a global blacklist feature, ideally with pre-set words (words already in the blacklist when you first load it up, things like bestiality and scat or whatever, some sites do this) that you have to Remove to see them, instead of having to add them manually. The blacklist being site-wide so it reaches inworld searches would be cool too.
Something like a new rating would help as well; general, moderate, adult, Kinky, for example, though word choice would have to be worked out. Having a higher rating for 'adult but a bit out there' is something a lot of sites do too now, and SL could really use that. There's a lineup of other kink sims people probably also want banned, despite being very popular on platform, and distinguishing them from 'regular' adult sims would improve QoL.
The main issue with banning this content would be lack of solid public boundaries for what counts as it, and high risk of bans especially for furry stores happening. The 'issue' with adding the often-requested blacklist and possibly a new maturity rating is just deciding which things might count as 'extreme' enough to set aside in it's own area ("quarantined") or made a blacklist default.
I think at the very least, better self-moderation tools for the content you see is higher priority here, as it's QoL for everyone across all kinds of subjects, before specific things like this should be brought up again.
Discussion about limitations of what adults can rp aside, the sweeping bans of unrelated stores from the last time this was even considered... makes me not really trust this being implemented well, if this went through.
Vaelissa Cortes
Lucky Clover I remember that beast ban scare, the theory was either somebody at LL didn't get the policy memo and went on a bit of a crusade, or a bunch of shops got falsely reported but of course I can't know for sure. From what I saw personally most accounts and content was restored, but folks who weren't active in SL didn't appeal and have stayed banned.
What folks pushing to have it banned need to understand is that it isn't a simple matter. There's about two decades of content that are either connected directly to bestiality, or could be adjacent to it that LL would have to deal with somehow. There are countless user accounts that are either either directly connected to it (content creators, RP characters, groups with thousands of avatars), or that could be seen as adjacent to it that would also have to be dealt with. That is a LOT of people to be upsetting, people who were well within what was allowed for the entirety of Second Life's existence but would now suddenly be losing their accounts seemingly out of nowhere. To say this would be a big problem is putting it lightly.
Then you have fantasy creatures that are animalistic, are werewolves okay but not feral? What if the werewolf runs on all fours? This comes back to furries of course, do all of them suddenly have to have completely human genitals and can't use crawl or doggy style animations? What if somebody takes a feral wolf avatar and decides to make it walk biped and wear a shirt, is it only considered bannable bestiality if it normally walks on all fours?
As of posting there are 47 watchers, 57 upvotes, and 40 comments yet this isn't being tracked and there's not a peep from LL. Anyone thinking there's going to be a change in policy isn't reading the room, there's just too many problems and too much potential damage to SL's dying numbers to touch it. As I said before, conservative types will always be looking for the next thing to ban, those who aren't interested can just look the other way. Second Life survives on its adult content and fantasy escapism, this isn't the place to be clutching pearls. What we need in this kind of situation is improved moderation for in-world and marketplace search. That way what other consenting adults are doing in private doesn't have to offend anyone because they saw something related to the activity.
Rathgrith027 Resident
Vaelissa Cortes Preach, girlfriend. The Lovejoy brigade in all its forms poses a threat to our home. We should draw the line at legality. Not what they want.
GabrielQuillon Resident
The problem with content bans is once you let one in, it begins to multiply. "I don't want to see it/like it so it should be banned" is juvenile. Grow up and accept there are things in this world you'll see and not agree with.
Rathgrith027 Resident
GabrielQuillon Resident Agreed. I'd much rather people engage in virtual depravities than harm people and animals with real ones.
Spitewick Resident
GabrielQuillon Resident This isn't just a matter of "not agreeing with" it. It's a matter of getting flashbanged with genuinely disturbing content where there SHOULD be filters to protect users who don't want to see it. I will not be treated like my having boundaries is a matter of taste.
Beatrice Voxel
I'll chime in as a dominant, with a few submissives who all have had specific kinks and squicks. Normally I don't kink-shame, but bestiality is something I absolutely do not abide.
Having a sub roleplaying as a dog, and being
ahem
bred by them creeped me tf out. I am a dog mom, I love my two furbabies. So the idea of someone encouraging a canine to mount them was just abhorrent to me, mainly how it affects the dog's behavior around other people. That was the animal cruelty part (the submissive is getting into it on her own merits, however it shakes out, is Her Problem, that's what being a thinking empathetic intelligent being is all about). Needless to say, I showed her the door when all this came to light, as apparently there was a RL component also? yeah. Not cool.Now... that said... is it illegal in all parts of the world? No. Should it be? Likely, but that's up to each jurisdiction to determine. Until that point, while I can't condone this kind of kink in my presence, I've got no say in how people comport themselves elsewhere. Likewise, on SL, people engage in a LOT of things that in RL would be grounds for criminal charges - dolcette, forced insemination, extreme bodymods, even lactation (one of my faves) can go into involuntary humans-as-livestock play really easily.
SO, while I don't think we should ban this, I do think it needs to be properly screened. There's a large number of people who do like to roleplay as animals, both in a PG sense and an adult sense. As long as the adult play is on sims of an adult rating (NOT moderate) and shops list their wares as adult category, we should be in a good spot.
LL needs to enforce this, of course - as has been noted, someone searching for standard PG Teegle stuff shouldn't run headlong into furniture used for a horse to mount a human or vice versa.
jonanthan McMillan
i think it should have content warnings, especially on mp. But then again, snuff sims and shooting sims also should have warnings in case you wander in. Trigger warnings are a good thing. This can be done with signs and on screen text when you cross a certain line, or a forced entry area with large signs. Banning, i think is unnecessary and not what sl is all about.
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