Web/Marketplace Features

When a seller believes that a review violates the guidelines, they can flag it for moderation. Linden Lab then checks the review and removes it if the violation is confirmed. Until last year, this process worked reliably and within reasonable delays. However, over the past few months, customer support response times have grown dramatically. This slowdown directly affects Marketplace review moderation, leading to delays that no longer make sense. Based on my experience, the average wait time is now around three months. As a result, insulting, defamatory, misleading, or completely off-topic reviews — often a combination of all three — can remain publicly visible on a product for months before any action is taken. For many merchants, Marketplace reviews are already a significant source of stress. But with the current moderation delays, the system has become deeply unbalanced: sellers are exposed for months to harmful comments that should normally be removed quickly, while having no actionable way to protect their brand or business during that time. The review system is essential, but only when it is supported by timely and effective moderation. In its current state, it no longer fulfills its purpose and creates unnecessary harm for merchants who rely on the Marketplace for their income. Given the current situation, the most reasonable solution is straightforward: until moderation can operate again within acceptable timeframes, the review system should be temporarily disabled entirely. This is the only way to prevent lasting, unjustified damage to merchants while ensuring the integrity of the Marketplace.

Whenever a customer tries to buy a product that they have already purchased in the past, AND the product's "Automatic redelivery" flag is set to "allowed", instead of charging the customer, simply redeliver the product instead with a message to the customer. This should also apply to those products purchased as a gift: 1) if the original purchaser tries to buy the same product to the same gift recipient: redeliver with a message. 2) if the gift recipient tries to buy the same product they received as a gift: redeliver with a message. 3) if someone else tries to buy the product as a gift and the recipient already has it: redeliver with a message. Yes, there is a nice big banner on the product page about already purchased the item, but sometimes people get distracted, or the product was in cart already, and duplicate orders happen and creates extra work for the merchant. The Caspervend product (and I'm sure other vending products do as well) have a duplicate order check that auto-refunds the customer if they try to buy a product they have already purchased in the past through that system. The Marketplace should have similar safeguards.

EEP are a important part of the SL experience now. Could we get a category for them under Home and Garden or some other place? Right now they are all over the place and more difficult to find than they should or need be.

I hardly need to mention that there's a lot of feelings about ai-generated content, and LL has already heard quite a lot of feedback about it from residents. I'd like to suggest a thing we can do about it! Let me first admit that no solution is perfect and that an AI-using-creator could compile, train, and operate AI indpendently without the tech I mention below. But, the 99% use-case is that people generate content using ready-made solutions, and an enormous number of these ai-generating business have committed to a measure of transparency and accountability that I want to mention. If a person generates AI content--marketplace images, for example--using Midjourney, OpenAI (chatGPT), NanoBanana (Google Gemini), Firefly (Adobe), Runaway AI... or any of the myriad next-tier platforms implementing stable diffusion 3, then ALL of these tools automatically embed a content credential into the work. Cropping, resizing, or trivial modifications to the work do not alter the credential. Only significant human-made alterations to the content of the image result in the credential being changed. The presense of a content credential does not, I should note, mean "made with AI". It means "there's a content credential here." It's important because all major genAI tools do generate a credential that describes the origin of the work as a GenAI tool. The content credential carries a modification history with it. This means that even the creator of an original, handmade work could embed a Credential, and if their work was taken and modified by AI, then the credential would list out both versions. Again, all major genAI tools use this. The credentials are already there today. The credentials are not a value judgement, and they are not an ethical judgement. They are already within the ai-generated content, and they help us see what was done with a piece of content. The customer/end user makes the value judgement for themselves. LL has seen that customers want to know. The information is already within the file. The platform just needs to expose that information. A simple "CR" tag (using the established logo made with the c2pa standard) on the corner of any image on the marketplace, with a hover-tip to explain the content credential would go a long way. Further, adding a property for texture assets generated for use within SL itself would be a nice next-step (but less trivial to implement). For more info about the industry-wide standard C2PA (Coalition for Content Protection and Authenticity): https://c2pa.org/ The specification is avaialble here: https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/2.1/specs/C2PA_Specification.html This isn't a fun, easy feature but it feels like an important feature.

Many creators rely on a completely separate listing for a different color, pack (fatpack, browns, blacks, etc.). This makes searching for clothes, hairs, etc. much more difficult as many of the search results are a variation of the same item. I’d also like to see existing color and variation listings automatically merged into a single listing. This would help reduce clutter in search results and make it easier to find the right product. These could be underneath the product pictures in a horizontal list of thumbnails that includes the color/variation name, and that variants price.

Please add a required bool while creating a Marketplace listing that asks the creator to disclose if AI generative tools were used in part/all of the products creation. Add this bool to the 'Do Not Show' section of the Marketplace search filter. Allow listings to be reported if they do not honestly disclose this. ---- For the health of the market we need the use of AI tools to be disclosed by creators. I would prefer personally that no AI generation be supported. I understand that tolorance of it is an effort to avoid censorships slippery slope, and is complicated by the sheer variation of AI tools that currently exist. But regardless of opinions or complications, it's existance cannot be ignored. So lets focus on what can be done, by giving some power of choice to the consumer instead. Users should be provided a way to choose products with or without AI generation while shopping, and naturally creators who choose not to disclose or to lie should face the same reportability and moderation as any other creator that would choose to lie while listing. The moderation half of this should not necessarily focus on trying to prove the use of AI gen tools, it doesn't actually need to. Creators who have done the work to provide support and actually prepare the AI generated content for its use in SL are unlikely to warrent being reported, and should not need to lie about the useage anyway. It is products that blatantly lack support, have egregious LOD & LI values that would be inclined to lie, and would want to be reported by users, this is the same for ANY product currently listed. If you buy it, and you don't get what was described, it should be reportable, the same goes for AI generated products, AI generated should not get a pass because you have to 'prove' something first, when the fact remains that you didn't get what thought you bought. So do not focus on "did you use a tool?" focus on "can you fix & support the product?" If it can't be supported, then disclose it was made via AI generation and move on. This is a similar complication to full perm and gacha resales, but also ripped models, copybot etc, in they will all lack support due to not being made directly by the creator of the listing. There is a big difference between fullperm & gacha resale vs ripping & botting, and that difference is honest disclosure.

Maybe this is really hard, but I don't know why the DEMO ITEM isn't one of the fields included in the QUICK FILL form. I just added/updated Demos to several dozen items--all of which had multiple versions (like color, or PBR/non-PBR) but the same Demo--and that field would have saved several hours of work.

Let's invent a label - something simple, like "GenAI was used in whole or part in this object's manufacture" and then /require/ creators/vendors to label all of their relevant sales items with it. Let this label also be a tag or flag as part of an object's or sales vendor's properties, so that Residents don't have to struggle to know if an object is GenAI-"containing." Let this also be a tag or flag on the MP and in any other searchable interface where it makes sense to exist, so that Residents may include or exclude GenAI items in their search results. GenAI is not going anywhere. The ethics of its use are a separate matter. But Residents have a right to be informed of the tool's use in the creation of their purchased items, just as we have a right to know whether a food IRL has been genetically modified. Let Residents be advised of the use of GenAI to create purchasable goods, and thereby purchase according to their own preference. Please disregard, and accept my apology, if this issue has already been discussed/addressed. Thank you.

So going into this, I want to disclaim that I myself am not against AI. I personally have used it before, and will do so in the future. A specific chat AI helps me regularly with solving problems. However, I am against people intentionally misleading people about content, and polluting search results with content made in mere seconds, and find it no different than spam. If I made something that randomly generated randomly colored squares on a white canvas, and listed it a dozen or so times, it'd be seen as spam. Additionally, this issue was brought up in the SL Discord marketplace chat. I've moved it here so that it can get more recognition and visibility to LL. Personally, I believe that a policy worded like so would benefit everyone in the long run (canny has messed up some formatting here, so it looks like it has no line breaks, these have been substituted with "---" for readability) Content that is the sole generation of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or otherwise Generative Content, except in the cases where the generator was written for the sole purpose of generating a specific element, may not be listed on the Marketplace as-is or as the focal point of the content that is listed. --- AI images must never be used to generate listing images, and must be presented as the content appears in SL. Overlays, such as permission information, price, branding labels, or sales labels, are permitted as much so as they do not mis-represent the content that is being advertised. --- Examples of forbidden listings: * In singular or collection, AI generated content as a texture, image, mesh, sound or other type of asset, as the sole content being listed. * A AI generated image in a picture frame. * A museum prefab filled with AI generated images as a "ready to go" model. * A object that plays randomly generated AI voice clips. * Attempting to pass off or mislead people that AI generated content as original, hand crafted content. * A listing which shows a AI enhanced product preview. --- Examples of allowed listings: * A house that has a AI generated poster in it, where the poster is not the selling point of the house. * A museum model that has some AI generated images, or is focused on the topic of AI generated content. * A NPC, that among other features, plays AI generated voice clips. * A model that has AI generated textures, where the model is not AI generated. --- Listings that make use of 50% or more in it's creation must be clearly labeled as using AI generation or assistance in the listing description. Interpretation of what counts as "50% or more is" left solely to Linden Lab. Listings that use AI but under the 50% threshold are recommended, but not required, to disclose that AI is used in some capacity. In summary, it forbids listing of content on the marketplace, free or for sale, that is entirely AI generated, requires disclosure of AI generated content when AI does a majority of the work, and guards against some loopholes. This probably (as in, very likely. I feel this is implied, but just in case) isn't needed, but: Because this will probably get passed by the lawyers, I hereby grant all permission to Linden Lab to use or transform the above work in any way, without attribution or compensation. Linden Lab has the opportunity to deal with this now before it gets too out of control. Only a handful of residents would be in violation of this policy. This also only applies to marketplace stuff, not in-world content.

The new Marketplace overhaul looks well but I can't help but notice there is no community or category to cover child avatars. Virtually, every nonstandard avatar is represented in the community's section. You have anime, fantasy, furry, gor (is that still a thing?), tiny, vampire, streampunk, sci-fi, and Goth, but no child avatar. We are a large part of the Second Life community, maybe larger than some of what is listed. I would like to request that you add a category and/or a community to the new marketplace page for us.