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Privacy vs. Transparency in Valley of the W-Hats

Posted Wednesday, September 20th, 2006, at 10:28 am Eastern by Mark Wallace
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W-Hat build from Something Awful immigrants in Baku sim of the virtual world of Second Life
Factory in Baku sim, where the W-Hats churn out alleged griefers (click for larger image on Flickr)

In the wake of recent attacks on the virtual world of Second Life, it only makes sense that Linden Lab should move against those it holds responsible, banning them from its world. But the action raises serious questions about community, privacy, transparency and even art, as well as the delicate task Linden Lab faces of maintaining its service while also attempting to build a “world.” One of those may have to fall by the wayside, and you can guess which it’s likely to be. [UPDATE: See below for response to an earlier email I sent to Linden Lab asking for more detail. A heartening response at that.]

According to Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale, speaking in an audio Town Hall meeting Tuesday, LL has banned no less than 60 Second Life accounts it connects with the Grid attacks perpetrated earlier this week. Apparently, many if not all the accounts were associated with a loose group of Second Life residents known as the W-Hats. [NOTE: This is not a formal SL group I’m referring to, but simply the collection of people who are associated with the W-Hats and the SA forums.] Present in SL for at least two years, the W-Hats were originally immigrants from the forums at Something Awful.com, and have generally specialized in a unique form of hit-and-run griefing in Second Life that usually consists of outlandish builds that the vast majority of residents would find offensive, but which the W-Hats usually defend with some pomo-ironic commentary. Some of their members, however, are among the most talented builders and scripters in SL, and it’s hard to imagine that all of them are griefers.

Their presence in SL is in line with their presence in other games. In EVE Online, for instance, they play a similar version of the game — i.e., one they’ve made their own, involving outlandish stunts and software exploits wherever possible. Though the pomo-babble with which they defend themselves is at times hard to stomach, it’s certainly interesting to see the forms that the W-Hats’ meta-game takes, which are often quite creative. In Second Life, the game has often been one of causing as much disruption as possible, including harming some residents’ businesses. We’ve covered W-Hat exploits in the Second Life Herald for some time now, and there have been so many that it’s easier just to link the search page than a few individual stories.

There’s apparently been good evidence for some time that a number of W-Hats have been responsible for a number of incidents on the Grid. Linden Lab hasn’t released that evidence out of privacy concerns, which is probably fine. Not as fine is the fact that LL rarely releases such evidence to those accused of a transgression. People are often banned for no apparent reason, and given no chance to appeal. Appeals that are made often draw no response. As Philip points out in the Town Hall, the population is growing much more quickly than the company’s ability to staff up to handle community issues. In fact, there’s little reason to think that community management will scale in this case, since there is almost no other case in which it scales very well.

But Linden Lab could at least rise to the level of service of a game like World of Warcraft. WoW often bans many accounts at a time for being involved with gold farming and real-money trading in its virtual world. When this happens, the company puts out a press release or makes a statement on its Web site stating how many accounts were banned and why. We’re forced to take their word for the truth of the situation, but their claims are rarely outlandish, so that’s not hard.

In the case of the W-Hat ban, however, it’s difficult to imagine that 60 people were involved in the producing self-replicating objects on the Grid. [UPDATE: Linden Lab claims in response to an email that all 60 accounts were involved in attacks on the grid (see below). I’m going to choose to believe them.] There may have been other “crimes” involved, but so far Linden Lab hasn’t said what they might be. Or were the 60 avatars banned simply by association or because they were all members of the same group? Who knows? I have a question in to Linden Lab (I don’t imagine they’re awake yet out there), but I’m not terribly hopeful of an answer; when I’ve contacted them in the past for this kind of information, they’ve always come back saying, “We can’t reveal that out of privacy concerns.” I do just want to take a minute to call bullshit on that response, though. I’m not seeking any information connected to any individual account, but only want to hear what the collection of crimes is that this collection of accounts is being accused of. Who knows, perhaps I’ll get my answer this time. [UPDATE: Indeed. Philip Rosedale replies to my email by noting that “we had a good deal of information showing that all these accounts were directly involved in multiple grid attacks. It wasn’t a ‘guilt by group membership’ thing.” That’s a response I find heartening. I’d love to see that kind of thing go on the Web site or police blotter when it happened.]

One thing that muddies the waters here is the conflict between platform and community. For a community to thrive, a far more open approach to governance must be taken. Because enforcement of the Terms of Service is so wayward and because so little is revealed in the police blotter (where the most serious crimes do not even appear, according to Philip), residents of Second Life have little idea of what is and isn’t actually allowed, and how exactly to conduct themselves. Behind their screen of “privacy concerns,” Linden Lab can go about governing their world as whimsically as they like, without ever having to answer questions about how exactly things are being handled. Even so, it’s worth pointing out a couple of recent police blotter listings:

On Monday, a resident was suspended for seven days for wearing a “KKK outfit, yelling Seig Heil and waving confederate flag.” This was apparently in violation of the “intolerance” section of SL’s Community Standards:

Combating intolerance is a cornerstone of Second Life’s Community Standards. Actions that marginalize, belittle, or defame individuals or groups inhibit the satisfying exchange of ideas and diminish the Second Life community as whole. The use of derogatory or demeaning language or images in reference to another Resident’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is never allowed in Second Life.

While certainly in bad taste, morally repugnant and highly offensive, it’s not clear that KKK robes and Seig Heil chants should be grounds for a suspension. Certainly, waving the confederate flag is a perfectly acceptable activity, no matter how much one might disagree with what the confederacy stood for.

On Tuesday, a resident was suspended for 14 days under the “disclosure” clause of the Community Standards, which forbids revealing details of a resident’s real life that the resident him- or herself has not made public. But in the police blotter, the suspension was for “revealing apparent real-life info.” It’s the “apparent” nature of the crime that’s troublesome here.

Philip Rosedale has spoken in the past about the need he sees for “social engineering” on the Second Life grid — i.e., training residents in the proper way to behave. At some point, he’s said, Linden Lab will step back from that task, once the community is on the way to some kind of social contract the company approves of.

But inconsistent and non-transparent policing of the community will not get the job done. Even leaving aside the question of whether the task is possible to accomplish at all, it seems clear that a more well defined and transparent enforcement policy would be needed for such an undertaking to stand any chance at all. And in any case, if Second Life is to become a kind of 3D extension of the World Wide Web, its population will soon grow so large that it will be nearly impossible to police in the manner LL uses at the moment.

The truth is that Linden Lab’s insistence on seeing Second Life as a “world” is probably hampering its evolution. At some point soon, the company will have to step back from its interest in what kind of world SL will become, and truly let its users decide. That, after all, is the proposition made in the “Your world, your imagination” slogan of which LL is so proud. The fact is, though, that Second Life remains very much the company’s world. Unfortunately for LL, that’s not how things work online these days. As we move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3pointD, control is passing more and more into the hands of the users, who are only too happy to take on the responsibility of providing tools and content for their online lives — and even for policing themselves, when given the freedoms and tools to do it. Gatekeepers in various forms remain a necessary part of the environment, especially where problems such as griefing and server attacks are concerned, needless to say. But even so, there’s a level of transparency that’s necessary — not because we have some abstract right to it, but only because it helps achieve the goals Linden Lab claims to have, of inculcating acceptable modes of behavior in the population.

If we’ve done something wrong, tell us what it is. As things stand, it’s as if avatars are being “disappeared.” That’s no way to build a thriving society.

Agree? Disagree? Grief? Suspend? 3pointD is never quite sure whether we’ve got our finger on the pulse over here, so we welcome your thoughts and correctives.

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