Linden Lab is investigating serious (and potentially defamatory) allegations made against some Second Life users, the company, and Linden Lab employees.

I follow several Second Life YouTubers using Feedbin (a handy tool I wrote about here. What I like about it is that it allows me to organize what I watch and doesn’t have to deal with YouTube’s infamous recommendation algorithm).

Last night, I saw a video of a Second Life user who announced that he was stepping down from SL and why. The video description includes a link to an anonymous article published on Medium on February 24, 2024, and updated on February 29. This article makes very serious and shocking claims about several Second Life users and companies, some of whom are employed by Linden Lab, the company that created and operates Second Life.

The February 29th update includes a link to this. Shinsegae Note A blog post from longtime Second Life chronicler Wagner James Au:

Confirmed: Linden Lab is investigating serious allegations recently posted on social media, sources say.

Recently, the Second Life user community has been disturbed by serious but unverified claims posted on various social media channels regarding the operations of Linden Lab.

I can now confirm from at least two very reliable sources that the company is indeed investigating these claims – both the accusations themselves and whether there was any intent to defame them.

This is all we can report at this time.

Wagner links to a discussion of this issue on Reddit’s r/secondlife subreddit here. Neither Wagner’s blog post nor the Reddit thread have links to the original Medium article, unlike the Second Life YouTube video that first led me down this rabbit hole. ~ no The claims made in the article are very concerning, but please share them here because they are unsubstantiated, potentially defamatory, and the author of the article appears to be hiding behind an anonymous name and photo. (Medium placed a warning on the post: “The following content has been reported as a possible violation of Medium’s rules and is being investigated,” and the post may actually be removed from the website entirely.)

However, the impact of the Medium article is already spreading. It appears that some Second Life users (such as the content creator who first brought this situation to my attention via a YouTube video) have decided that the allegations are serious enough to leave the platform, even if only temporarily.

And this morning I discovered that one of the Second Life stores I regularly shop at made the following announcement through their store group:

hello. Our vendor system has changed so your existing gift cards will no longer work with the new vendor. To receive a new gift card for a new supplier, please send us a note card (note card only) containing the following:

Your username (no display name)
The name and credit of any gift cards you have

I’m planning to replace it, but I have too many gift certificates, so please wait a little longer. It’s scheduled to last until March 31st.

I will now check the announcements from my various SL store groups to see if others are taking similar action. This has the potential to be a major mess (as if it isn’t already). It was at this point that I realized that I couldn’t ignore this issue and that I had to write about it today, as this controversy has the potential to have a serious impact on Second Life users, communities, and businesses.

And like Wagner, this is all I can report now. Linden Lab appears to already be looking into the allegations, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens and what they have to say about all of this. I hope and pray that this does not become a witch hunt. ~ no I’d like to update my historical list of Second Life controversies and scandals.

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