A Second-Class Second Life?
Tony Walsh notes a post from Linden Lab VP for community and support Robin Harper in which she talks about a new system planned for identifying whether Second Life users are anonymous accounts that signed up under the new registration rules or have been “verified” by having paid money to LL at one point or another. Tony worries that making such information public will in effect create two classes of SL citizens and make it easy for residents (and LL?) to discriminate against one or the other. Note that there are already two classes of SL resident — Basic accounts, which pay no monthly fee to LL, and Premium accounts, which do pay for land. And that information is already public. Why that’s not sufficient is a bit unclear.
According to Harper, “We at Linden Lab accept the responsibility to give you the tools you need to both control your environment and develop trusting relationships within SL and with LL.” But trust, in its inter-personal sense, isn’t the same as verification. (Trust is the same as verification when you’re talking about identity-management software applications.) Pasting a “verified” or “unverified” tag on someone’s profile is not sufficient to let someone “develop trusting relationships within SL.” In fact, it will get in the way. The tag becomes an explicit endorsement of the person based on whether they’ve paid money to SL, not based on their behavior in-world, which is what residents are concerned about. All in all, it sounds like a clumsy patch for a problem that may or may not exist. The real problem here is that LL hasn’t decided whether its customers can be trusted to behave. Actually, the endorsement of “verified” residents, as Tony points out, implies that LL believes “unverified” residents can’t be trusted. More work is needed here.
Feeds
[…] But anyway, Linden Lab now told us that the registration scheme will not be reverted back but instead we will get some tools to handle the situation. What follows is a discussion about these tools and how they might create a two class system inside Second Life. I am reflecting posts here by 3pointd and Clickable Culture which both discuss the (more or less) recent post on Robin Harper’s blog. So she proposes there to add a field to the profile which shows if a person is verified or not which basically means if that person has paid money to Linden Lab, e.g. has a premium account. […]
I flat out refuse to even concider using the the ban option for unverified. To me that is tantamount to racial profiling and no better than hitler saying A german is not a german just because of his religion. LL has made a bad choice here by making a class option and giving its residents to ban no based on actions but poverty level… I have several friends who cant afford to pay, or dont have a manor to verify thier account financially… who play the game according to the standards SL has created. its not them that are the problem… its others… there needs to be another choice here besides LL’s version of class profiling… I sure as heck dont like having someone feel I am a better class of person than some of my guests simply due to my being verified. I think people should base that choice on my manor, my demeaner, and my actions, not by my profile stating I am “Verified”… Kinda makes me feel like my asset has been branded U.S.D.A. approved and branding in any form can hurt
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You do not have to pay money to SL to be verified. Credit card information is taken for identification and collateral against future charges.
With a basic no charge membership I am still verified.
While this may not be a perfect form of idintification it is still a link to someone in the real world.
This is not about LL deciding to trust its members. They are not stupid and know from the beginning that some members cannot be trusted.
While LL is disclaiming responsibility for rogue memters they are giving the members a extra bit of information to work with when deciding on transactions.
I think it isn’t a bad idea.