Spying on players

[mietze]

@AmishRakeFight has captured my general opinions on the matter.

If you are in a public grid space, I think you are choosing to give up a degree of control over who comes in/out of it. This seems intuitive to me, but obviously isn't to everyone, given how many people freak the fuck out at someone "crashing" into their scenes in public places. (And before it starts, I'm not talking about the people who don't bother to wait or read for context of what, if anything, of note is happening in the area--that's annoying, and those people tend to be those who don't even bother to read for context even in scenes that are +Events or to which they have been invited, in my experience). There is a not-insignificant number of people who believe that they can declare any public area off limits to others once they start playing there. If that's the culture of the game, then it makes sense that staff involvement or viewing would be problematic, because there's the expectation that all areas of the game are essentially private space, first come, first served.

I am old fashioned and still ask all people in a scene if I can post a non-event log. Even for scheduled +events, I prefer to give people a link to the live log (for my own sanity I prefer to keep up with things in real time as much as possible) partially so that those who are coming late or need to wander away for a bit can still have the info at their fingertips and partially as a disclosure that the scene will be logged. I didn't care about my own scenes being posted for a long time--until I unfortunately experienced a bit of alt-stalking that was very unpleasant, and the running commentary on personal scenes with others made me feel very uncomfortable, especially since it was done in an accusatory way. So I have a bit of empathy there for folks that don't necessarily want all their RP all the time logged and /displayed/ publically.

I never autolog. But I am pretty much the only person I know that MUSHes that doesn't. To me there's a difference between private logging and public display. For some people the threshold is probably "anyone I don't know about/didn't consent to being involved is turning my private RP public" for others it may be anything goes but auto-log posting, with everything in between. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to this, but I do think it's probably very important to be very clear about where that line is on /your/ game if you have one.

[Faceless]

@AmishRakeFight summed up most of my intended response pretty well. I see nothing wrong with staff, players, or anyone else invading a public scene. It is public after all. I enjoyed an old WoD game that would regularly do just that; staff could invade a public scene at any time to 'spice it up'.

My issue with "spying" is when some staffer decide he's going to sit Dark in the room with Jimmy and Betty Lou while Jim's elbow deep in Betty Lou, and rub one out. Another scenario: said staffer is snooping pages, getting nothing out of it in their attempt to obtain a Got'cha! Moment except some irrelevant private pieces of information about said individual or better yet the person that they are having a discussion with. It's creepy and when it inevitably comes to light because of whatever circumstances that may arise, will shatter a great deal of trust between player(s) and staff.

If I(and the majority of people) perceive a space as private; player home, pages... and that's about it, then I consider it private. If I'm on a grid, in an IC +event room, or other place typically considered public then I'm left holding the bag to conduct myself accordingly.

[surreality]

@Thenomain said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I've played on games with public +watch code on "hang-out" type locations and nobody cared.

Because watch code is done transparently. I've seen more people get upset about the friendlist/watch-for-login (aka The Other +Watch) than remote-room viewing, because you don't know who's stalking your logins.

The old +watch code on Reno -- +friends, I think -- would give you a list of who was watching for you. I don't think the current version does, but at least that was a thing.

That version went the way of the dodo when the +watch/all rubbed someone wrong. (Which essentially does what it says on the tin, it monitors every non-dark login/logout on the game.) Personally, I don't see what the big deal is about that specifically, as it strikes me as being more annoying than useful and nothing prevents someone from just adding everyone to their list anyway.

[Pondscum]

@Admiral said:

I hate it when I'm TSing and I get 'bow chicka wow wow!' paged to me by a staffer.

This is something that has actually happened to you? From the way you tell it, it seems it's not a one off? That's kind of fucked up behaviour and I'd expect that staffer punished/removed. If it's acceptable behaviour, I'd not be logging into the game again.

[Deleted]

It's complicated. Suffice it to say staff on that game used me for extensive bug testing of coded systems and sometimes just left the spying-mode active on accident.

[bored]

@Cirno said:

Considering that the NSA records everything we do online, it doesn't matter to me if people spy on me, especially since I do nothing that would invite suspicion.

If you can't do it in public, don't do it at all.

So, I never thought I'd be +1'ing Cirno, but, this is reality.

Everything you do online is logged to some degree, possibly temporarily, but often not. By your ISP and many other entities, some of them possibly clandestine. Unless you're living like an Eastern European child porn ring on a ridiculous web of proxies and other measures, your privacy is close to nil to begin with.

Now, whether the good outweighs the bad with player input being logged, the sudden privacy fetish people have is fairly naive. As a lot of bad games have shown, if wizards want to spy on you, whether they have built in tools to do it or just put some together on the spot, it's not going to be hard for them. They might have policies about it, but they can violate them, and you probably won't know they're doing it. It's hugely unethical, I absolutely agree, but it's INCREDIBLY easy and people should be realistic with that fact and the psychology involved. Throwing back to the NSA bit, while it has policy against agents to using their resources to spy on their ex-girlfriends, they catch them doing it all the time. If facing potential federal level legal consequences for this kind of behavior doesn't stop people, what is a MU ethics policy going to do?

So yeah, if you need privacy for your MU activities you might reconsider them as MU activities. It's also probably more realistic, from a game owner perspective, to be straightforward about the whole thing as well, say that it may be necessary to log some things for data gathering/security/whatever other reasons, and remind people that if they really do need privacy they should be mindful of the venue they choose.

[OrcRiot]

Just because the government does it, does not mean private parties can do it...If we're going to follow this bad analogy.

[Thenomain]

@bored said:

Everything you do online is logged to some degree, possibly temporarily

That data is "written" to RAM is how Blizzard won a lawsuit against a group who was manipulating part of the WoW data stream, I think to make automated gold farming acceptable under the WoW terms of service.

Re-defining terms like this is amateur hour.

I missed this one, too:

@Cirno said:

[...] it doesn't matter to me if people spy on me, especially since I do nothing that would invite suspicion.

This isn't the point of requesting privacy on a Mu*. It's to request that you not be put into a position where you are compromised, to assure that you have a reasonable expectation that people won't come barging into your life just to fuck with you...

@Admiral said:

I hate it when I'm TSing and I get 'bow chicka wow wow!' paged to me by a staffer.

This is the point of the expectation of privacy on a Mu*.

[bored]

@DnvnQuinn said:

Just because the government does it, does not mean private parties can do it...If we're going to follow this bad analogy.

Game owners absolutely can do it, and you will never know (well, until they page you 'bow chicka wow wow!', apparently). I assume you mean that they shouldn't do it, and I'm not disagreeing, but it's still head-in-the-sand level naivete to imagine your privacy is going to be protected on a MU. Thus the statement that you shouldn't be doing things you'd be upset if someone saw is objectively good advice.

People are shit, people will do shitty shit. You have zero expectation of privacy, regardless of what anyone tells you, because they're probably lying, or some staffer under them just doesn't give a shit.

[Thenomain]

@bored said:

it's still head-in-the-sand level naivete to imagine your privacy is going to be protected on a MU

It will be if I have anything to do with it. Negotiating control of your own experience in the world is acceptable. That George Herbert Walker Bush and others have convinced you otherwise doesn't make it true anywhere except inside your own head.

Or in other words, stop being stupid.

[bored]

Yeah, because games you have staffed on have never also had shitty garbage people staffers on them.

[Apos]

Pretty sure most people know there's an off chance someone unethical could violate their privacy. So they are like, 'I am going to engage in behavior I enjoy, and it would be embarrassing if it is made public, but it is worth it to me to do it', knowing full well it could embarrass them. Like TS. The same person might be very much not be willing to mention they just shot a guy irl and buried his body, since that's not embarrassing, their life is over, so the risk is very much not worth it. The word expectation is kind of overused here, when I really think the majority of people are like, 'Everything on the internet can be seen, and I hope the people running this aren't assholes, but I will take the risk they might be.'

[Thenomain]

@bored

Not with access to the dark flag, to the server, to even an alt list. And if I do? Then I take responsibility for the changes I want to see rather than sitting on my ass discouraging others from making or demanding that change. That change won't happen overnight or even ever, but it will open discussion which will make changes happen.

You kids these days, so defeatist.

[bored]

So you're claiming there were no bad staffers with Wizard bits on, say, TR?

It's well and nice to say that games could, theoretically, be run with perfect ethics and tight controls to enforce them, but it is not my experience that most games are run this way. We can strive for them to all be perfect, but in the mean time, I still think @Cirno's advice is, in this one rare instance, good advice. At least until the prophet Thenomain guides our hobby to a new era of moral perfection.

[Thenomain]

@bored said:

So you're claiming there were no bad staffers with Wizard bits on, say, TR?

I'll approach this question seriously when you ask it with less melodrama.

[bored]

I'm not sure what about the question is melodramatic. You seem to be making the very broad claim that your staffing (or at least, I'll assume favorably, staffing in a high position of influence/authority) would mean that these things would not have any chance of happening. You did staff on the reach, right? At a fairly high level of authority (I might be wrong about this, question is non-rhetorical)? And it did basically host a veritable rogues gallery of people from the WoD playersphere on staff? Correct me on any of these points.

Regardless of that, your prescription is not really consistent of my view of how MUs are run. I don't know if I've played where you staffed, but I've definitely played on games where there were ethical staffers. They always ended up with bad ones too. Explain it however you want, burnout and need for extra help, but 'just have a perfect staff with no one unethical possibly accessing wiz powers' seems like a non-trivial thing to suggest as a solution. It's an admirable aspirational goal, but not much more than that.

So I continue to feel that in the 'wilds' of actual MUing, where there is no guarantee some douche won't get their hands on a wizbit, its probably best that anything you type into the window be something you realize might well be seen by a third party.

[Cirno]

@Thenomain said:

@Cirno said:

[...] it doesn't matter to me if people spy on me, especially since I do nothing that would invite suspicion.

This isn't the point of requesting privacy on a Mu*. It's to request that you not be put into a position where you are compromised, to assure that you have a reasonable expectation that people won't come barging into your life just to fuck with you...

• What will be compromised if someone spies on me whilst I engage in Pretendy Funtime Gameplay? It's not like they're going to make off with my insurance information, my Social Security Number, and all my credit card numbers. What's at stake here?

• How will they fuck with my life? Go somewhere and post, "Ha ha! Cirno plays on a trash game for garbage people!"? People already do that here. Slit my throat in a dark alleyway? What could they possibly do that would impact my real-world life so drastically that I should consider it a grave concern?

[deadculture]

@Cirno said:

@Thenomain said:

@Cirno said:

[...] it doesn't matter to me if people spy on me, especially since I do nothing that would invite suspicion.

This isn't the point of requesting privacy on a Mu*. It's to request that you not be put into a position where you are compromised, to assure that you have a reasonable expectation that people won't come barging into your life just to fuck with you...

• What will be compromised if someone spies on me whilst I engage in Pretendy Funtime Gameplay? It's not like they're going to make off with my insurance information, my Social Security Number, and all my credit card numbers. What's at stake here?

• How will they fuck with my life? Go somewhere and post, "Ha ha! Cirno plays on a trash game for garbage people!"? People already do that here. Slit my throat in a dark alleyway? What could they possibly do that would impact my real-world life so drastically that I should consider it a grave concern?

Well, they breach your trust, to begin with, though you might already not trust them so it could be expected. And secondly, nothing they can't do already by having access to your IP address, I suppose.
EDIT: That was silly, disregard.

[Arkandel]

@Cirno said:

• What will be compromised if someone spies on me whilst I engage in Pretendy Funtime Gameplay? It's not like they're going to make off with my insurance information, my Social Security Number, and all my credit card numbers. What's at stake here?

• How will they fuck with my life? Go somewhere and post, "Ha ha! Cirno plays on a trash game for garbage people!"? People already do that here. Slit my throat in a dark alleyway? What could they possibly do that would impact my real-world life so drastically that I should consider it a grave concern?

It depends on your level of engagement, for starters. Doxing is an issue for instance if you trust anyone on a game enough to disclose personal real-life details of yours for someone else intercepting all that stuff to deduce where you work. Do you really want some of the borderline sociopaths in MU* contacting your boss with made up stories? I don't.

It's also about what you find unacceptable. Staff watching TS invisibly might bother some people, for instance. And even in-game information can be frustrating when it's taken through unfair means if you cared to keep an IC thing secret but it leaks out through OOC means.

Privacy is important. It's also not a big priority for many MU* runners - in fact for some it's forfeit the moment you log onto their game. If you're lucky they'll make the fact known in advance at least.

[Cirno]

Privacy in games is important to some, I agree. It's just that the Internet is inherently not very private, unless you are behind the aforementioned wall of proxies, and, anyway, I feel all humans deserve the right to privacy, so I don't disagree with that principle.

@Arkandel, considering how small and obscure my boss's company is, I wouldn't even be mad. I'd be faintly impressed that they managed to locate the guy in the first place. Totally understand what you mean, though.

By the same token, things are so bad around here, I would wager you a dollar to a donut that even if MUSHFace McCrazy rang my boss and said "Cirno eats tender infant flesh!", he would respond with, "Yeah, and who's gonna drive the work truck from site to site, kid? You?"