Strong Content Warning: This article discusses child abuse and contains blurred explicit images.
Second Life users are in a frenzy over this article, published on Sunday, which details how a key member of parent company Linden Lab was participating in virtual sex content containing child avatars. Patch Linden, AKA Eric Nix, his husband, and several other high level members of Linden Lab staff are accused of enabling child abuse content to flourish in their privately owned virtual residences, ignoring explicit content involving virtual children, and creating a deeply toxic working environment at the company.
I think the difference here from GTA is that this is a shared virtual world where the actions of players shape the society inside the game. If they’re creating a society where stimulated child abuse is shrugged off as just someone’s private life (even though it’s essentially public to everyone on second life) then I wouldn’t want to participate in that society, and if I worked for the company making second life I wouldn’t want any part of it.
