By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor
ostiabs, sparklespice and kristedesl lounging about their sim PetPlay with a giant Rez Day board.
So I wondered who was behind bonniebots, the grid-scraping venture that has the forums all riled. The site speaks for itself -- it is grabbing a lot of stuff that people don't feel should be amplified on the World Wide Web even if it is "public". And it's also publishing a lot of INACCURATE data.
The "Top Merchants" is based on a scrape of the "What Customers Are Buying" box on the Marketplace.
The web site makes absolutely no reference to the PEOPLE behind this, not their SL or RL names. Only the BOTS are shown with names like bonniebots95. There's a link to Lou Netizen's site, but that doesn't mean he's involved -- his site is a generic site about bots.
The Lindens don't require bots to be marked in anyway inworld, although their names and slumped posture can be giveaways -- and they really should mark them both on the profile and the map in a different colour. But for some reason not clear to us at all, the Lindens have gone full-bore pro-bot and anti-data-protection on this issue, closing thread after thread after thread after thread (last count was 4), with now a Word From Our Sponsor from Patch, who has been away from the forums for quite some time, to my mind.
Patch needs to read the threads he and his staff are closing. Bonniebots isn't so much about information WE provide; it's about information LINDEN LAB provides on its own website, about our profiles and our shopping habits and land we have abandoned or decided to visit. LL displays this; not us. They have allowed their service to be aggregated and amplified in ways that are inaccurate and misleading and it is now out of their control. They need to rein this in in the worst way.
I thought a good place to start was to go to this idiotic Rez Day board on a sim named "Petplay" (arrgggh). I don't need a board inworld that tells me my birthday -- do you? I can see it on my profile. I hate venues that grab your profile to display to show you've been there -- after first asking permission (this took a fight back in the day). I couldn't care less about my "privacy" on the Internets and I'm a very public blogger. But I don't feel I need to contribute to the profile scrape insanity which only adds lag and annoyances to a sim. Don't have those, people. Everyone hates them.
This is a GIANT version of that stupid profile-grabber, with numerous people's profiles whose rez day it happens to be -- because bots are going around and grabbing this PUBLIC info -- they didn't come on the sim.
I clicked on the board object in "edit" to see who was the owner, as I figure that would be the bot wrangler:
Answer: sparklespice Resident with the display name "Dog", owner of a furry supplies store.
Caution: At first I couldn't be sure that he and others on site were involved, but having been in SL lo these 18 years, I have a feel for these things and I'm going to take a WAG and say: it's them. Listen further.
I marvel that no one on the forums asked this question and I seem to be the only one asking it on Twitter. Who runs this site?? It DOES NOT SAY ANYWHERE.
Come on guys, this is basic stuff. If someone scrapes all the grid's data and does -- whatever -- with it, they need to present themselves with at least their main avatars, preferably their RL contacts, explain their business. It's not enough to claim they aren't selling the data -- THAT IS NOT THE POINT.
It's not enough to say "oh, it's public". Because what's happening is that it's being AMPLIFIED AND WEAPONIZED. When THAT happens in SL, we have a right to protest. Nobody thought when they signed the TOS and read the privacy policies that their annual sales data and their raunchy profiles would go into Google and be read by RL bosses or spouses or whoever can cause havoc in an avatar's life. So let's not be children here. AGGREGATIONS and AMPLIFICATION is the issue, NOT the mere act of scraping what is there, as the odious Theresa says, for them to "put their mouths under and catch the drips."
I'm hardly surprised knowing how these capers go that "Dog" is a BDSM practitioner who favours sites where he can be put on a leash and be mistreated -- and as always, he has allowed his "lifestyle" to leach out from his private life into the public domain and held us all hostage to his bot-scraping. No thank you. Where's the "safe word," Master?
Hey, can we all focus on YOUR profile and picks, Big Guy? Sure we can!
Within seconds after landing on PetPlay, the following conversation ensued, and then I felt a giant paw on my back kicking me from the sim. I think it's safe to say these are the people behind Bonniebots -- that they are not practicing their "Be Excellent to Each Other" idiotic geek mantra on anyone who asks normal questions about their operation -- and even if they are NOT the people actually running the site and the bots, they're related. Because: Rez Day Board.
And now hilarity ensues:
[17:01] osti (ostiabs): Prokofy! I can't believe you're here. I read all your insane tweets about the Bonnies.
[17:01] Dog (sparklespice): Welcome!
[17:01] Prokofy Neva: Yeah, I was trying to see if you goofs had your main accounts anywhere
[17:01] Prokofy Neva: which you don't put on your web site
[17:01] Prokofy Neva: and my tweets are accurate, thank you
[17:01] osti (ostiabs): You're an insane motherfucker.
[17:02] osti (ostiabs): I'll say that for you.
[17:02] Dog (sparklespice): snapshots!
[17:02] Dog (sparklespice): ??
[17:02] Prokofy Neva: so gosh that doesn't sound like you're being excellent to one another!
[17:02] ღ ƇƛƧƧƖЄ ღ (kristadesl): I can give you a picture you dont have to cam on me.
[17:02] Prokofy Neva: oh well I like to get candid shots : )
[17:02] ღ ƇƛƧƧƖЄ ღ (kristadesl): Not candid when I can see you looking
[17:02] Prokofy Neva: so you took the avatar profile search down guys?
[17:03] Prokofy's New Mountain Retreat - All Welcome, Rowling (196, 253, 70):
Are these people Scottish? "Bonnies"....
That last bit means "teleported home". My current home -- a sim riddled with Sith Obelisks -- for now -- is open to the public.
You can read my tweets on this subject here and I don't see anything "insane" about them because I'm not yammering on about the "privacy" angle. We don't have privacy in SL or on the Internet. I have a different point to make, as I noted on the forums. These people were neither elected or acclaimed. This is yet another grid-wide power-grab by one group which the Lindens have blessed for whatever internal business/political reasons they have. It's wrong.
It's entirely disingenuous, however to claim this is "public data" when in fact it's a context where on the Lindens' very site, it shows a profile -- but not groups and other tabs, and offers you to click on a bar and LOG IN. You have to be a registered member. Not everyone wants their avatar profile in Google's giant maw. And again, data about sales and visits and abandoned land is displayed by the Lindens, not us, in a context where we do not expect the PROXIMITY of ourselves to that data to be exposed.
Interestingly, since the break-out of the forums furor, the Avatar Search function on the Bonniebots site has been "down" for 2 days, sparking speculation that it is "removed". I don't see that it's "removed" -- they may only be waiting for the furor to die down.
Abandoned Land
Just tootling around today to a dozen of the "abandoned land" sites, particularly on sims where I have land, I found them inaccurate. They purport to give you a SLURL to land you on abandoned land; they don't, sometimes they land on my current owned land with tenants on it, or on a Linden road, or under water. To be sure, there might be abandoned land on that sim, but then you have to hunt for it. The amount of meters is wrong in some cases; the info is outdated. I suppose that's because the map itself is not operating in real time but can be hours -- days -- behind.
I found the device mildly helpful to find some bits and bobs I had overlooked (who has the time to spend all day going 16 m by 16 m through an entire 65336 m2 sim?!) to try to pre-empt the Sith Lords or the other asses of SL with ambitions to spread their e-peens over the grid and deprive them of that glee -- before the Lindens sell them the land, which they do.
Top Spots
Looking at the "top spots," I found them to be the usual gaggle of BDSM lots and "Skilled Gaming" where it is not always possible to tell the traffic bots from the real people. I don't know why Linden Lab is encouraging this -- it's nuts. Their Destinations is curated and decent, and not only in the "G" sense -- they take you to high quality destinations with Things to Do. What Bonniebots turns up are the sinkholes of SL which will make newbies or returnees leave.
Top Merchants
The "top merchants" has people really riled up because it's misleading -- the data scrape is open on the Marketplace, but they aren't merely duplicating it. They are aggregating it and representing it as "14-day sales data" and making a Leaderboard -- of the type we had at the dawn of SL, showing who had the most Lindens and the best pos-rates as they were known. The Lindens retired that ages ago as it was a conflict vector.
Like they also ceased publishing the economic data they once were happy to roll out, like how many premiums there are etc. Bonniebots is misleading.
Inaccurate and Misleading
I'm amazing that Patch couldn't figure out with just a half hour's perusal of this site, such as I and others are making, that this site does not do LL or the SL public a service.
o The data is inaccurate for "abandoned land" -- there are better-functioning HUDS for sale on the MP
o the Top spots are adult avatar traps
o The "Top Merchants" info is misleading as sales inworld or even MP sales scientifically gathered aren't included -- the "What Customers Are Buying" is only a SAMPLE.
Anything that enables one ambitious group of people to take over the publication of economic and land statistics which the Lindens themselves decided to cease publishing years ago simply can't be "harmless" or "good". The process by which the Lindens agreed to this and then vigorously championed it on the forums, silencing even the most polite and normal questions is odd, to say the least. What's up?
And with their sassy talk and booting a reporter from the sim, these people have proven handily that they are the typical bad-faith goons we always deal with on the grid when these "grid-wide" projects are foisted on us by techies (like the pods or programs to cross sim seams).
It seems never to have occurred to these millennials that even a one-line disclaimer about the clearly PARTIAL merchants' information was in order.
Now let's come to ostiaabs, who appeared to be "the brains behind the business" and the better dressed. Is he this suspended account?
It's not a common name.
He's in the "pet adoption" business as well.
Ostiabs partner was also on site, with some RP game tag babbling over her head. Her name is: kristadesl
Out of the three loafers on the Rez Day PetPlay sim, she was the only one with an actual profile describing bonniebots -- information which "may be public" but which is NOT ON THE WEBSITE at this hour.
Note that only one of these creatures (there appear to be dozens zipping around the map) will talk to you -- and perhaps isn't a bot, after all.
While the Lindens may have talked to these honchos, we didn't know who they were until I went to look.
kristadesl also favours BDSM Pet Play.
This Land is My Land, This Land is Not Your Land
You're welcome to form your own judgement about all the silly things on these people's profiles -- they're kids. I'm old. These people look to be younger than my own kids. I don't care what other people do IN THEIR OWN BACKYARD.
When they come into MY backyard and other people's backyard, I care.
Their style of BDSM is the sort of uneducated bubblegum inch-deep mile-wide crap that likely makes the kind of old refined masters of this "lifestyle" wince and shake their head. Of course they can do WTF they want on their land.
But they aren't on their land. They're on our land. They're on Linden land. Scraping data that is public. But then aggregating and amplifying it in ways that cause conflict, stress, misinformation, confusion, anger, forums fights, drama and all the rest.
I personally wouldn't bother to ban these creeps from my land -- they might change the account names constantly anyway. I totally get it that my "privacy" --which was shattered with the help of top FIC personas and the Lindens in the IRC and on the forums 18+ years ago -- is not at issue. I don't share Coffee Pancake's views on a great many social matters, and I don't think she or any person in her community is harmed by this as such.
I think it's more about the Lindens once again essentially awarding a franchise to their little friends. That wouldn't be so terrible if they picked good friends. They didn't here.