Linden Lab has announced a new era for its Second Life virtual world environment where users are allowed greater customization and creative control over their virtual experience. Part of the move is to allow users more control over adult content.
Linden Lab has announced a new era for its Second Life virtual world
environment where users are allowed greater customization and creative
control over their virtual experience. A first move includes the
ability to filter adult content on the Second Life environment, which
already requires users to be at least 18 years old.
Indeed, company officials said by enabling users to filter content
by adjusting their search settings, Linden Lab is able to preserve the
founding principles of Second Life while evolving the medium to better
serve the needs of its growing and increasingly diverse community.
"From the beginning, Linden Lab has led the way in the development
of virtual worlds and has set the standard on many cultural and social
issues involved with virtual communities," said Mark Kingdon, CEO of
Linden Lab, in a statement. "Preferences and community standards vary
tremendously across industries, countries and cultures; our goal is to
retain as much of the freedom as possible while continuing to push the
medium and our platform forward. We made this decision, and defined and
developed this program based on the direct requests and feedback we
received from the Second Life community. As we continue to grow, it is
crucial that we maintain the diversity of user-generated content while
providing enhanced controls to support a wider range of uses."
The new Second Life initiative includes:
??Ã The definition and
implementation of a three-tiered rating system - PG, Mature or Adult -
that will be used to identify content and set individual preferences
for Residents. Definitions of each of these maturity ratings are available on Second Life Support Center.
??Ã The implementation
of a new account verification system. In order to access Adult regions
and search results, Second Life users will need to verify their
accounts in one of two ways: a) by having payment information on file,
or b) by using Linden Lab's age verification solution, provided by
Aristotle.
??Ã The setting of
maturity ratings for all regions, classifying them as PG, Mature, or
Adult. Mature remains the default setting for all Second Life users.
Access to Adult regions will be restricted to Residents with verified
accounts.
??Ã The migration of
adult-oriented content from the Second Life mainland to a newly created
continent. A timeline and specific details on how the migration will be
managed and implemented is being finalized in consultation with those
affected and will be published later in Q2.
??Ã The filtering of
search results according to maturity ratings and content preferences.
Search results using Adult keywords will appear only for Residents with
verified accounts.
This will provide a more predictable experience for Second Life
users, a group that contains a blend of consumers, companies and
cultures from around the world.
Meanwhile, Linden Lab will soon make available version 1.23 of the
Second Life Viewer available as a release candidate (RC), the company
said. This iteration will have a series of controls that will enable
Residents to set maturity levels for regions, set individual
preferences and filter search accordingly. To help enforce, manage and
measure the success of the program, Linden Lab is implementing several
automated processes to supplement its existing abuse reporting
procedures.
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