Bots…. grrrr

Bots are one of the seven plagues of Second Life (we can do together a list of the other 6 in a post soon including a poll). Was exploring a sim, in the map there was a big group of people in one of the corners and decided to go there to see what was happening there. Arriving there all was empty, actually i was the only one i saw in the sim. Moved my camera to try to find the group of people and found a big black box in the sky with a group of bots, i was really the only one there.

There are some really good and creative uses of bots, from greeters or “mannequins” to artistic expression. But the main use seems to be (sadly) manipulating visits statistics. And that is bad… in all senses. First, they “lie” to the residents, making them think that is a good place to hang. Second, they distort the grid statistics, making all think there are more people on line. And third, they cause lag and reduce performance of the main servers. Actually nobody wins with them but the land owners.

I don’t expect Linden Lab to act against them, is not easy mainly because they use to be controled by “Third parties” software and is really difficult to know when a bot is being used to distort the statistics except if you go personally to check what they are doing. The ones that have the solution are some land owners themselves, there are better ways to attract traffic, like quality content, but it seems some don’t worry about the means when only one aim in mind.