A reader who signs themself "LGBT+ anon" throws some important and necessary cold water on my tribute to virtual worlds as safe havens for LGBT people:
Virtual worlds are surely helpful to LGBT+ people, gender expression and more, and in general I agree, but since we are talking about safety and "safe havens" after this election, I think it's important a word of caution. Apart from some abusive people you could meet also in virtual worlds, I won't feel safe with USA-based Internet companies, as David Bell said, even less now and in the next years.
Second Life is an especially bad case: communication is still sent plain-text and it's logged, with anything you did and where you did go. They keep the info for long, also the employees access to those logs, your other data and your inventory. That's for tech support, but also to investigate abuse reports. For those purposes it is fine, right? Except it's well known… that US government agencies spied on virtual worlds, among which Second Life.
Now, think about all this under a hostile government. Yikes!
More from LGBT+ anon and my reply after the break:
And remember who is backing Trump now, it's not just Trump, Musk financed him, and used ex-Twitter to spew misinformation, he doesn't even care for his children and he's really against trans people; his trans daughter now wants to leave the United States.
Also on Second Life, even though you would be usually welcome, not all the users are LGBT+ friendly. Not counting trolls, anti-LGBT+ profiles aren't so rare, and they too spew misinformation and hate. Not just random avatars, but well established ones, some with their own land, Trump propaganda signs, also some community and several creators as well. A notorious vehicle builder was even calling for the death of woke people (she used a slur in place of people)… [an SL group] has been systematically harassed for years by their neighbors, until about 2021, you can ask them. Other dudes are less obvious at first, but then they tell toxic or hateful things. At one point, I decided to only go to LGBT+ places in SL.
But a popular place had to put a "no politics" sign, because some of this happened there as well. Certain SL residents, who are clearly not LGBT+ friendly, often engage in the forums, skirting the rules and making it difficult to discuss trans topics, which frequently leads to threads being locked.
On the plus side, as you said, in a virtual world, this stuff won't be algorithmically recommended based on your past views, but it is definitely present.
So, although virtual worlds are surely beneficial for LGBT+ people, I think it's important to stay careful. Now even more, on US-based virtual worlds.
This is all generally true. I'd quibble on the point about US government agencies "spying" on virtual worlds, as it was more like an initial look-see in the wake of 9/11 after credible reports that violent extremists were using Second Life and other virtual worlds to plan and communicate in; in any case, important to keep in mind that government agencies of all kinds around the world are monitoring all popular Internet services. Virtual worlds are probably on the lower priority list, since they're less mass market than social media platforms, and have more user friction both for bad actors and government authorities. (Their focus is more on Discord as opposed to online games/virtual worlds themselves.)
And unlike other Internet services, as I noted, the companies in the virtual world category have a more direct, special incentive to protect the privacy of its LBGT population, since they're such a large part of the user group. (Up to 1 in 5, if my VRChat survey holds up.) In my experience, virtual world company culture also tends to be highly LBGT friendly, and boast a disproportionately high number of LGBT people on staff — not just because they're usually based in the San Francisco Bay Area and other liberal parts of the US, but also because these employees tend to have heavy representation of people who are virtual world users themselves.
But all that to one side, LGBT+ anon is very right when they say there's much more to be done to make virtual worlds even safer safe havens, and above all: Stay careful, especially now.
Image from Cajsa's guest post, For the Trans Community of Second Life, the Virtual World is a Chance to Discover Their Real Life Selves.
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Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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