Monday, July 11, 2011

Fans Against Intolerance

A frustrating little situation that hurt me greatly given the subject of the nastiness.


The Fans Against Intolerance is an in-world group looking to stamp out nastiness and bullishness through discourse, information and community support.

But my blog post isn't directly about the linked issue - that's been dealt with directly - but more a wider issue, one of how intolerance is used within the digital world of Second Life, or how it's used "out of world".

There is a wider issue here: "avatars" of people in Second Life shouldn't be using external blogs to make attacks and accusations that couldn't be made in-world for fear of breaching Community Standards Clause 1 , which deals with unfair defamation. Linden Labs should be looking at discouraging this - even if they legally can't stop it - as it's reflecting on their product, and reflecting badly. This is a popular tactic.

I would be very happy (in a real fantasy world) if this became policy. You could still blog as your avatar, but only within the frame of Second Life's terms of service, given that identity is in some part, reflective of their product. Of course this could most likely never legally work, so bullies exploit this moral loophole. And that makes it something only the community can address.

Digital bullying needs to be stamped out, and that can only happen if people refuse to accept it.

If you're interested in joining this group in-world, click here: Fans Against Intolerance. There are surprisingly few active anti-bullying groups in SL, but several that have been attempted. I encourage you to support this.

4 comments:

  1. The nastiness of this weekend was totally avoidable, had concerns regarding how we were donating to the charity been dealt with in the correct manner. The correct manner would clearly be reporting the issues to the IFT and RFL and allowing them to investigate. Making allegations on a blog post, including a second allegation with no evidence whatsoever to support it, was designed to antagonise and smear - and was a cowardly act to avoid in world Second Life community standards rules.
    Both the IFT and RFL are satisfied with our intentions at the Scifi Con4. In fact the only people who aren't are those with something to gain by damaging our reputation. Coincedence? I think people are smarter than to think so.

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  2. hi, i read the link you mentioned and forget those drama queens! what you are doing seems alright (ooh, Ener approved, woohoo) and those other epople are just being antagonistic - one of the prices we pay for having a fairly open internet

    so the heck with them, they are only as important as the energy you put into them - kind of like gum on your shoe, annoying but it's only crappy disacrded gum =)

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  3. sheesh, sorry on the typos, i just wokke up! =)

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