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Anti-AI Backlash in Second Life is Out of Control (Comment of the Week)
- Linden Lab Hiring Director of Strategic Insights to Help Grow Second Life, Identify Features / Products SLers Actually Use
- What Went Wrong With Horizon Worlds? Former Meta Devs Share Surprising Insights — And a Solution to Still Save It
- Watch: Upcoming Firestorm Viewer Comes With Powerful On-Screen Avatar Poser Feature
- BREAKING: Linden Lab Updates Second Life's Official Flickr Group to Leverage ONLY User-Made Images/Video for Future Marketing, Chair Confirms
- Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2025年2月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan
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Originally published on my Patreon
The description and rules to Linden Lab's official Flickr group for Second Life images were recently updated to emphasize that user-made images and video uploaded there may be used in future ad campaigns for Second Life:
By submitting your photos or videos (the “Submissions”) to the Second Life Official Flickr feed of Linden Research, Inc. (the “Company”), you acknowledge and agree to the following terms:
You agree to participate in the Company’s marketing campaigns program (the “Program”). As a participant of the Program, you hereby grant to the Company a perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, and cost-free right and license to use, distribute, or sublicense (through multiple levels), and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your Submissions, for the purposes of marketing, promotion, and/or outreach for and about the Second Life virtual world.
After top SL creator Bars Simpson noticed this change, I confirmed with Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager that the purpose is indeed to leverage SL user-made images for future marketing.
"It is correct that we only want to use Second Life content for future ads," Oberwager just messaged me. "And anyone who wants to submit ads, we will review and test." (Emphasis mine, as it bear emphasizing!)
This Flickr rules update, by the way, was led by SL social media doyenne Strawberry Linden.
This comes after a recent dust-up due to Linden Lab using AI/stock images and videos to A/B various messaging, in preparation for an official campaign, and community members subsequently outraged by the artificial depiction of the virtual world — especially when there's so much user-created content out there that's far superior.
"After talking to you about how people feel," Brad explains to me, "I had all our terms reviewed to make sure we did not violate anything if we used Second Life 'stock footage'."
That final point is important:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Tooku Fadlan shot this amazing pic at Luane’s World, a popular photo destination. [SLurl teleport link here] The sunshine beating down on the meadow suggests a hot summer day. The grass is bright green and the sky is blue and all is right with the world. And with this picture. Tooku uses the bikes and fence as a leading line into the picture creating a sense of energy even with everything is stationary.
For more from Tooku, click here:
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Originally published on my Patreon
After writing about Meta’s highly misguided $50 million bounty for developers to create content in Horizon Worlds, a former software engineer at Horizon Worlds reached out to me. They had read my latest book, where I devote a chapter to Meta’s many missteps in trying to build the Metaverse.
But this engineer had even more surprising details to share.
By request, I’m keeping their breakdown anonymous, but it rings true to everything other Meta employees past and present have told me, both on the record and off. For good measure, I also just gut checked it with two other developers who have recently quit working on Horizon Worlds. (Meta itself has declined to respond officially to my many requests for comment, beginning in 2023, after my book interview with Zuckerberg fell through.) And at least one of them believe Horizon Worlds can still be saved — read their solution at the end.
It's an important story to share. For one thing, it helps explain why Horizon Worlds is floundering, with far less active users than Second Life (now 21 years old), let alone VRChat and Rec Room, which are far more popular on Meta’s own Quest headset. Despite billions spent in development and marketing, including a literal Super Bowl ad, Horizon Worlds has roughly 300,000 users, versus Second Life's 500,000.
For another, it helps explain why the Metaverse "failed" in the general public's eye, since most people assume Meta was the leading developer of the technology.
I’ve always believed the fundamental problem is that Meta leadership never truly understood the Metaverse, and simply treated it like a 3D version of Facebook. In interviews for the book, it also became clear to me that most of the people working on Horizon Worlds weren’t themselves experienced or passionate about virtual worlds.
Indeed, in 2022, Meta leadership sent out an internal memo requiring employees to dogfood Horizon Worlds more (i.e. actually play it).
It was actually worse than that, this ex-developer tells me. Required to dogfood their own virtual world, the engineer tells me, many Meta staffers automated their dogfooding:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“Midnight in Paris” by Pedro may be the name of this gorgeous, exciting picture of the Eiffel Tower but it’s also the name of the Second Life sim where it was shot and of a Flickr group dedicated to the sim. I love how dynamic this picture is and it is just one of a surfeit of fantastic pics in the Midnight in Paris Flickr group. The sim is extraordinary and the pictures in the group reflect that. [To check out the sim, click here to teleport.]
For more from Paris in Second Life, click here:
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Linden Lab is now hiring a senior level director in charge of strategic insights:
We are looking for an experienced and analytical professional with deep expertise in leveraging advanced analytics to drive strategic business initiatives and operational efficiency. As the Director, Strategic Insights, you will utilize detailed data analysis, experimentation, statistical modeling, forecasting, and the development of key reporting tools and metrics to guide business decisions.
This is the first senior level hire by Linden Lab since 2021, when the company went in search of a VP of Engineering. And Philip Rosedale returning as CTO, of course.
The actual job description is somewhat vague, so I asked Linden Lab Chair Brad Oberwager for an example of what "strategic insights" would actually entail in this role.
"A hypothetical example would be learning how to make the mobile app better," he tells me. "Analyzing use cases and seeing what residents are using the app to accomplish, and then putting it into strategic planning."
And this is a pretty serious budget outlay for Linden Lab, since the salary is around $250,000/year plus benefits.
"We are investing in creating products that the residents want," Oberwager explains. "The more they use those products, like mobile, the more we invest in them.
The reason they need someone to lead strategic insights is that the features/updates that are most loudly asked for by the existing user community are not necessarily what grows overall usage:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Jane Bang celebrated her birthday playing Mario Kart with friends. It’s been over five years since I last featured Jane and she is still hanging with friends and having fun in Second Life. The title, “Party Like It’s 1999” takes us back to a time when the scariest thing was Y2K and the songs we loved weren’t played on “oldies” stations. Since that 2019 article, Jane has opened Space Cadet which specializes in poses and pose attachments so there are some vendor pics in her stream but her fun-filled pics continue.
For more in the life of Jane, click here:
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Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します
Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 