Linden Lab Is Investigating Serious (and Possibly Defamatory) Allegations Made Against Some Second Life Users and Companies, and Linden Lab Staff

I comply with various Second Life YouTubers utilizing Feedbin (a handy tool which I wrote about here; what I like about it’s that I can set up my viewing, and never should cope with YouTube’s infamous advice algorithm).

Final night time, I watched a video from a Second Life consumer who introduced that they had been stepping away from SL, and why. Within the description of the video was a hyperlink to an nameless article which had been revealed on Medium on Feb. twenty fourth, 2024, and up to date Feb, twenty ninth, which makes some very severe and disturbing allegations in opposition to a number of Second Life customers and firms, and a few folks employed by Linden Lab, the corporate who makes and runs Second Life.

The Feb. twenty ninth replace features a hyperlink to this New World Notes blogpost by Wagner James Au, who has been a longtime chronicler of Second Life:

Confirmed: Linden Lab Investigating Critical Allegations Not too long ago Posted to Social Media, Say Sources

In latest days the Second Life consumer neighborhood has been roiled by severe however unconfirmed allegations posted on numerous social media channels concerning Linden Lab operations.

I can now verify via not less than two extremely credible sources that the corporate is certainly investigating these claims — each the accusations themselves and whether or not they have defamatory intent.

That’s actually all that may be reported in the meanwhile.

Wagner hyperlinks to a discussion on the matter over on the r/secondlife subreddit on Reddit here. In each Wagner’s weblog put up and the Reddit thread, in contrast to the Second Life YouTube video which first led me down this rabbit gap, there is no such thing as a hyperlink to the unique Medium article, and I’ll not be sharing it right here, as a result of though the allegations made within the article are extremely troubling, they don’t seem to be confirmed, they’re doubtlessly defamatory, and the creator of the article seems to be hiding behind an nameless title and movie. (Medium has flagged the article with the warning “The next content material was reported as a possible violation of Medium’s guidelines and is beneath investigation,” and the article could certainly be pulled fully from the web site.)

Nevertheless, the ripple results of that Medium article are already spreading. It might seem that some Second Life customers (just like the content material creator who first alerted me to this case through their YouTube video) have determined that the allegations are severe sufficient that they are going to be leaving the platform, even when solely quickly.

And this morning, I seen that one of many Second Life shops I usually store at, has introduced through their retailer group:

Good day, we modified the seller system and previous present playing cards is not going to work with the brand new distributors. To get a brand new present card for the brand new distributors, I would like you SEND ME A NOTECARD (solely notecards) with this:

YOUR USERNAME (no show title)
NAME OF THE GIFT CARD YOU HAVE AND ITS CREDIT

I will likely be changing, nevertheless it’s a number of present playing cards to do, so please be affected person. I will likely be doing it ONLY till MARCH thirty first.

I’ll now be checking the group notices of assorted SL retailer teams I belong to, to see if every other shops are taking comparable motion.* This has the potential to grow to be a severe mess (as if it weren’t already). It was at this level that I spotted that I used to be not going to have the ability to ignore the problem, and I must write about it at present, because the controversy does have the potential to considerably influence Second Life customers, communities, and companies.

And, like Wagner, that’s actually all that I can report on for now. It might seem that Linden Lab is already investigating the allegations, and we are going to merely have to attend and see what occurs, and what they should say about all this. I hope and pray that this is not going to grow to be a witch hunt, and I do not wish to should replace my historical list of Second Life controversies and scandals. And I’m simply feeling completely sick at coronary heart at present.

*UPDATE 11:23 a.m.: Prokofy Neva, in a typically lengthy blogpost about this situation written on Feb. 26th, 2024, has this to say:

An attention-grabbing impact of this unproven story is that many retailers are switching out of Caspervend; asking brazenly on the boards for options; or pleading with clients to not boycott them in the event that they nonetheless use Caspervend as a result of it’s too laborious — or not less than too time-consuming — for them to alter out of.

Prokofy has (as per standard) rather more to say, and is of the opinion that this case “up to now seems to be an elaborate smear.”