spirit Wingtips I have explained already in these comments and even ended up repeating myself, not to mention I had written most of this at the other suggestions before that were just like this one. Why don't you read them, and what Beatrice wrote, and my response to her. Or use ChatGPT to break it down for you if you didn't get my point.

According to Beatrice, "Timberwood" posts Youtube links in some of his spam messages. So does Youtube have to go to the blacklist? Or how do you want to use the filters to stop that guy?

If you haven't noticed, there is no downvote option on this platform, so if we don't agree with a suggestion here, we can't just downvote and move on, we need to make sure our opinion can be seen. Otherwise the way this platform works - in line with tendencies nowadays to only agree and be positive or shut up, or they'll try to silence you, like you do - it doesn't matter how irrational a suggestion might be, there will be only upvotes on it, instead of a balance of upvotes and downvotes. So even if there are 130 upvotes on something, that doesn't show how many people don't want it or don't agree with it, only those who voted for it and their alts. So while it's easy to just upvote something we like, we need to put extra effort into making our disagreement seen if we don't want something.

Everything else is there in the other comments. Scroll down and read them again if you missed my point entirely.

Drake1 Nightfire Wonderful. Imagine having to copy-paste gyazo links and everything else just because of this. We're really making progress lately.

Drake1 Nightfire That's great to know. As a Firestorm since day one user, I'll implement this in my own groups as soon as it rolls out, thanks!

spirit Wingtips Oh yes, that would be so great, it would definitely make setting up a new group so easy, having to look for that permission just to enable it, because someone loved restrictions and censorship so much they wanted links in group chat off by default. Hey, why don't we make this even better and turn off group chat by default? It tends to fail anyway and people rather use Discord now. You know what? Let's delete all groups that aren't land groups, too. There is no use for them anyway, people can join Discord servers and get updates from creators and communities there, or on Primfeed, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. And the top: Ban ALL links from SL . Not only group chat but everywhere. No clickies! Back to the 1980s, no hyperlinks. Not even SLurls. Use your landmarks or type in the coordinates every time! Down with the links, they're evil, they must be purged. Fear the links. Dread the links. Ban the links.

AlettaMondragon Resident you seem upset. sorry if this post has you upset, but with the multiple prolific posting of phishing links in MULTIPLE group chats something like this is needed. group owners get to CHOOSE to allow, Deny or Restrict Links. and these posts are NOT random and they are often RACIST in nature or the accounts reveal REAL LIFE information. This is NOT about censorship but about safeguarding users accounts.

spirit Wingtips I just don't want you to leave this work unfinished. Links are evil. They must be banned completely. Once there will be no links in SL anymore, there will be no abuse.

However...

What do you mean when you say these posts are often racist in nature? There are incredibly ridiculous fake ads like "NEW VISTA AO 50% OFF", "Angel necklace promo discount", "Free breedable mushrooms for the first 50, click now", etcetc. Once you see one, you can't believe anyone could fall for it, BUT THEY DO. How are those fake ads racist though??? I also don't think the ones with the "can you give me 100 Lindens?" have real info on their profiles, those look like random photos and addresses. Yes, they need to be dealt with. And do you think when you filter 4327 domains out, they won't make new ones? Or the ones that don't even use links, how will this stop those? Let's ban all links from SL and then you can see the problem won't be solved.

AlettaMondragon Resident You've clearly never seen the "john kirkwood" bile that that troll puts into group chats. He's always coming back with new accounts to goatse his random unhinged bigotry into any groups he can. He's just one of so, SO many trolls who do stuff like that.

Also, there's no need for hyperbole here. It's a simple feature request for group OWNERS to have the CHOICE to filter/ban links in THEIR groups. If you want to have a group where you can post links, make your own. Not everyone has the same time/ability to mod quickly enough to stop these bad actors before they harm.

No one is/should be expecting one feature to solve it all but apathy for new or simply mistaken users doesn't solve the problem either.

Breathe.

Weats Fairelander The Timberwood guy? That has been going on for several years, sadly, and it only proves that these troublemakers can circumvent bans very easily and return with new accounts literally every day. As far as I know there are no links in his messages though, so how is this relevant here?

Indeed you and Spirit are both right in that group owners should be able to decide what happens in their groups, but both of you as well as the OP seem to fail to notice the difference between that and server-side "no url" settings. Blacklisting malicious websites is good. Disabling "for good measure" by overly cautious (I just won't say paranoid... oops...) group owners or moderators is just stupid.

To answer Spirit's question, which I can't see here now but got the email about, no, I don't share spam links and I rarely share any links in a group chat. How would you know that though, you're not in any of the community groups where I usually chat.

Also trolling and sarcasm are not the same thing, but the people who don't understand sarcasm don't get the point without sarcasm either so it doesn't matter. I just can't take these suggestions seriously, especially not when it comes up here every week in mostly the same form.

There were also suggestions to make links plain text in chat. I knew platforms where urls were plain text and couldn't be clicked, so we had to copy and paste them into a browser. It's plain stupid and obsolete. I don't want to see that in SL. If I think a link is suspicious or I'm not interested, I won't open it. I simply can't believe this is so difficult for other adults and they fail at it. I mean, there are other things in life that are much more difficult to manage and we usually have to do so on our own, so how come they don't fail at those things but can't avoid not only clicking on fake MP links, but they willingly enter their login credentials there??? This is not apathy. I really want to help them. But we keep telling people to read the messages, read the links, see the difference between a genuine and a fake link and to use MFA, but they don't.

On the other hand, I'm only active in a few groups where we use links all the time, so the owners wouldn't disable them anyway. If you really think the problem is with posting links in general, what do I care...

AlettaMondragon Resident

Again, posting links is only PART of the problem. PART.

Not everyone has the same mental abilities/ tech savviness/ experience as you. They still deserve to enjoy Second Life, too. Methods (plural) that help protect them can help protect us and shouldn't be dismissed without (at least) thorough consideration by those able to make the requested changes.

We're not asking to suffocate the world in bubble wrap, just to allow people the ability to CHOOSE methods to help moderate their own groups. If you think it's "stupid", you can choose to make your own groups and/or stick to the ones you said you like instead.

I genuinely don't understand why you care when you have other options and clearly prefer them anyway. Enjoy your Second Life but don't go out of your way to deny others in their effort to do the same.

"If you think it's "stupid", you can choose to make your own groups and/or stick to the ones you said you like instead." = restriction

The whole point is that you want to impose restrictions on everyone regardless they need this "protection" or not. And Spirit wants that setting to be default in every group instead of being an option to enable it. Sure, give the option to group owners to enable such a filter if they so wish to have one. Don't make "disable all urls" default, though. That is where we started.

Of course not everyone has the same abilities. I'd think avoiding a scam, whether online, by phone calls or in person, is easier than to avoid getting hit by a car or train... then people are hit by cars and trains every day too. This reminds me of one of my dad's friends who is an electrician and like 80 now, but he is still competent when it's about anything in his area of expertise. He never cared about figuring out smartphones though, more than making and answering calls. So his daughter thought the best way to make sure he won't be a victim of scams, she blacklisted every number except hers and some other family members', not caring about his friends either. Yes, that's stupid. If he's still able to fix things, he is sure able to think for himself. This is the same thing here, overreacting and suggesting/taking measures that are either irrelevant to the actual problem or too restrictive.

The other thing that annoys me about the approach you people take in this situation is that "it is to help people who aren't able to do the bare minimum to help themselves". How noble. Many delusional people applauded the gacha ban a few years ago, saying that they had been suggesting it for so long, because it feeds addiction, it's a scam, taking advantage of people with a lack of judgment, prone to addiction, etc, and they thought they were finally justified when LL decided to disallow it. No matter we told them it had nothing to do with it, only the legal circumstances at the time with the online casinos trying to protect their monopoly. They were oh so loud that this was the right thing to do to protect people. Alright.

I laughed at it a lot when they lifted the gacha restrictions the moment the legal atmosphere settled down. LL has its own casino now, too. Unlike "skill gaming" regions, the Helios Casino doesn't even require payment info on file to enter and play. It was never to protect anyone from anything, other than LL from lawsuits.

Thank you for trying to tell me what I should think, though, "why you care when you have other options and clearly prefer them anyway." I can have my opinion and voice it just like anyone else, we don't need to agree, but I can disagree with these suggestions every single time someone brings them up again. I know, I know, it's 2026, the concept of freedom is so unnatural now for so many, it's only important when it's about criminals' rights. The rest of us apparently need to face technical and physical restrictions labeled as "protection".

AlettaMondragon Resident Timberwood used to throw in youtube links for various racist meme vids. It's possible that his source of vids got banned from the platform - these days he just posts inflammatory BS in all caps. He might turn to Grok to generate AI pics/vids that fit whatever screed he's pushing.

But, he's another problem entirely, that of LL not figuring out how to permaban a known troll who evades bans simply by creating new accounts. He's brazen (or stupid) enough to use the same name in all of them, too, which makes reporting him easy.

As for the link blacklist/whitelist 'feature' I don't quite understand why people are so vehemently against the idea. This is a group setting, the same as other settings that could be used to combat spammers. The fact that group owners don't use these settings (tiered permissions) doesn't seem to bother anyone but me, but that's because I worked in a field where security and permissions were the Bible of the job - you give people just enough privs to do their work, and set things up so that it's simple to take those privs away if they're no longer working for the company. The idea that we're being nannies for dumb users isn't the point here, it's to simplify and automate admin duties for group owners and moderators, who can then spend more time engaging with their groups, rather than playing perpetual whack a mole with scambots.

Beatrice Voxel Your approach is much more professional and agreeable (as usual) than all of these others who just go "disable all links because they're evil" because that's their level. I argue with their suggestions, not the actual implementation that developers might or might not realize sometime. About the implementation, my only problem is (again as per their suggestions) that they want this to be entirely server side. Why not a client-side file that gets updated with viewer updates, stored in AppData, that we could opt out of and clear or modify as we like. It's our own user experience, our own risks and responsibility, whether we want to see certain links and messages. What if I just want to see what kind of extremely ridiculous nonsense scams and links the stupidest people still fall for, like market-zxcvbn-place-thirdlivess etcetc, come on, you know that's not the point and mentioned it in your comment, but the others have this attitude that it is to "help and protect those who can't think for themselves". That, somehow, is more important to them than the problem that those who don't need this "help" will see some sort of restrictions that are completely unnecessary for us. Reasonable adults (reasonable might be less offensive so I edited it) don't need this. Interestingly we keep telling people inworld how they can stay safe and that's the best we can do, knowing how to protect yourself is the best way to protect yourself. If we save at least one person at a time from their own naivety or ignorance, that's already a good result.

If they implement these filters in a way that I can opt out and delete them the first time on my end and never see them again, I'll shut up. However especially when they tell me not to go out of my way to dictate someone else's user experience or their enjoyment of SL, they shouldn't interfere with my user experience and enjoyment either. Filtering any link or message out of any chat I receive interferes with my user experience and enjoyment of SL.

If Timberwood guy posts inappropriate Youtube or Grok content, they should be reported there too and hopefully those service providers take such content more seriously than LL. This also brings up the question, if he or anyone else posts Youtube links in his hate messages, should Youtube go onto those server-side blacklists too? I mean, interestingly nobody minds all the black supremacy and other racist content in SL that is labeled as "raceplay", everyone seems to be just fine with SL being full of it, that should be blacklisted somehow too. Or does this only go one way?

Weats Fairelander couldn't have said it any better

AlettaMondragon Resident The reason I advocate for server-side, instead of client-side, is that client-side moderation tools takes group management agency away from the group moderators/owners. As individuals, yes, we -should- be able to turn security features or warnings on and off as we choose, but when it comes to group moderation, that isn't really our choice in the first place. IF link moderation is implemented for groups, then we need to leave the management of that moderation in the hands of the group owners and their moderators.

Beatrice Voxel I have an example which might not be comparable to SL group chat, I think in principle it's the same but in a technical way it might be a far shot, so correct me if I'm wrong.

On Twitter/X the owner of the content or the owner of the space the content is featured in can put a sensitive content warning on posts. Moderators and the X AI can also put a sensitive content warning on anyone's posts based on reports and automatic detection. There is a personal account setting however to disable the sensitive content warning on your end altogether, so you never see the blurred cover and warning, while everyone else who didn't disable it will still see it. I think that's perfect.

If LL and FS devs make this filter system in a way that I can opt out of it entirely, that's fine, then I don't care what messages or links others won't see because of it, as long as any of us who disabled the filters altogether will see everything like now. So those who need this "protection" can be happy with it, those of us who don't think this is useful for us can disable it on our end and in theory everyone is happy. And that way group owners, moderators, and every user still have a choice and control over the content they want to allow or see, respectively.

Need to continue this below.

The way I understood this suggestion, unlike some others we both have read and commented on before, the point here was that the lists would be managed by LL and controlled server-side but each group would have the option to implement this in different steps, from OP: "No URLs at all," "Only whitelisted URLs," and "Everything except blacklisted URLs," with the latter set as the default."

So I think this way it shouldn't matter if the list itself is stored on a server and downloaded each time, or on our computers and loaded from there, since that doesn't affect the group moderators' options. The only downside would be that the lists would be updated less frequently, only with new viewer versions, however that is not necessarily true.

Then again, if we can just choose to opt out and still see everything without filters, and those who keep the settings will see what the group permissions allow, it can really be stored on a server and we don't need a file to mess with, even better.

If you say the problem is still that it would circumvent the group moderators' decision if we disable the filters on our end altogether... well yes, that's the point entirely. If we can't choose freely what messages we will receive from a group, some of us will leave those groups anyway.

AlettaMondragon Resident I see the appeal of being able to turn off filtering on a viewer basis. The idea is similar to platforms like Discord's 'spoiler tag' where text is hidden until you click to reveal it. Unfortunately, SL's group chat doesn't really support that feature... yet.

Again, I'm not approaching this problem from a user perspective. Groups are moderated already, under whatever rules the owners/mods dictate. People get muted/temp-banned for mentioning competing brands, or wandering off topic, perhaps they post a picture that wasn't taken at the group's home sim. We could spend weeks discussing all the rules that people come up with for their group management. Ultimately, it's their group, their rules. To become (and stay) a member, you agree to abide by those rules, arbitrary though they may be.

I look at spam moderation as just another 'rule', only one that has some server-side tools attached to it, not to catch people breaking the rules of the group, but to prevent them breaking the rules in a known-to-be-dangerous manner. It's like land rules for regions - if you let anyone rez what they want and post a rule "Griefers will be yeeted into the sun"... you'll end up yeeting a lot of people into the sun, because they'll break that rule and you'll get complaints and you'll catch them in the act. However, if you change the access permissions such that only a select few can rez anything, then you don't have to invest in an escape-velocity trebuchet in the first place, because you've blocked the griefers right from the beginning. There is no provision for visitors to say "oh I'd like it if I could be griefed, please" because it's not just affecting one person by choice, it's affecting everyone, choice or not. I see the group moderation problems in the same light.

Beatrice Voxel Well I can't see the group moderation in the same light. Land security is one of my specialties in SL. I have a lot of experience with it. I don't have that much experience as a group moderator, although I'm still a moderator in 2 groups and have seen quite a few interesting things I had to deal with as a moderator. And then I mostly focus on group chat in general from the member-side, especially because of the nonsensical rules in some groups you mentioned.

To me the big difference between land permissions and group chat permissions/rules imposed by moderators is that the land permissions are purely technical and have a direct, straightforward effect on safety. You disable rez in the everyone column, so random people, especially griefers, won't rez objects there. You disable object entry, and the parcel will catch objects like lost vehicles coming from other parcels, however due to a bug with object entry exemptions it will still be able to catch lost objects coming from other parcels. So you set autoreturn to a reasonable time too, and that solves that issue too. Each land permission has a direct effect on what it is supposed to control.

In group chat moderation, as the technical permissions are very limited, most of the moderation is really up to the moderators monitoring the chat and taking action when they think it is necessary. And they can't undo things that have already happened, like the spam messages. That's a problem indeed. We can only mute and ban the spammer from the group once the message is there, so the damage is already done in the case of these scam links. By the time we yell not to click on it, etc, some people already have, and they're eagerly typing in their login credentials on the fake login screen. I agree that it is a huge problem. We keep telling people how they can protect their accounts, and that is all we can do. Many don't listen. I understand it gets frustrating for many moderators and they want to be able to do more.

(Cont. below)

It is very important though that unlike land permissions where there's a technical and physical effect of your settings, a group chat, especially because it is a public platform, is also a matter of free speech. I know free speech is not important to a lot of people nowadays, to me it is very important. Don't get me wrong. Hate speech is free speech. Misleading others on purpose, scamming, verbally abusing others are also not free speech. However the owner and moderator-imposed rules in groups you brought as examples show that some groups are very restrictive in what they allow in their chat for whatever reason, some on the border of censorship. In a brand's update and support group it does make sense not to tolerate advertising other brands, but let's be reasonable, hissing at someone who just mentioned a competitor without even implying the competitor is better, is a huge overreaction. My main concern is that direct, extended tools to block certain messages, or links in the first step, also enables these excessive forms of moderation, beyond their helpful purpose to block dangerous links or hateful messages. There is a lot of us who don't take part in any group with excessive, unreasonable moderation because there is just no point wasting time trying to converse if we can't do it freely in a healthy way without the risk of oppression from a moderator or the owner just because they didn't like what we said. That being said, their only way to do this now is to yell at us, mute our group chat temporarily, or to ban us eventually if we keep pushing. I actually don't care, if I see any form of this in a group chat happening to anyone, I stop chatting there if I even did, and wasn't just reading, and after a few occasions I'll leave the group. If such people get the tools to block certain messages from being delivered to the participants of the group chat, that's a feature they can abuse very easily. If we can opt out of the filters altogether on our end, nobody can abuse the filter system and the group-side controls. It is that simple.

misstoriblack Resident What about the the alternative version that I provided?

"The alternative version of the idea, the feature could be disabled for everyone by default. However, when the filtering is disabled, the clickable link then shows the raw URL and not the alias. When the filtering is enabled, the clickable link would show the alias instead of the raw link and any non-whitelisted domains would only show plaintext unclickable urls."

This would seem to satisfy your concerns.

Send Starlight showing the link is enough, no need for any blocking feature. Especially if disabled by default. If disabled by default the people who might need it would not enable it.

As I said, a warning in the window asking if you wanna open in the embedded browser or your system browser is far enough.

misstoriblack Resident Well, we already have a popup window warning and the virus is spreading.

If it is an opt in feature, then I don't see how there can be any arguments against it. You literally don't have to turn it on and can ignore that the feature exists.

The reason that my alternative approach still protects users is that by default they can see the raw clickable link. While users who want the extra protection of not ever clicking such a link if it is potentially malicious can turn on the extra protection.

And, they'd still see the plaintext url when the filter system is enabled and can copy paste the url if they really want to visit it.

To me, this is like disliking that people use adblockers. It just doesn't make sense to be this against the idea.

Sorry if I come off a bit exasperated and annoyed in my reply I didn't realize I was going to have to defend the idea this extensively.