SL Relationship Ethics – Anonymity, Timezones, & Spybots
by Alphaville Herald on 05/09/07 at 11:26 pm
Ethics Roundtable Topic One
by Victorria Paine
Following the Op/Ed I wrote last week about appropriate ethics in our virtual environment, this is the first of an occasional series of articles focusing on one specific ethical issue at a time – something that I hope will allow for more in-depth discussion of each topic.
I’ve decided to start with the issue of virtual relationships, simply because they attract so much attention, both inside SL and in the various hot button debates here and in other blogs and forums. But before I start, I’d like to define what I mean by “virtual relationship”. What I mean by that term is a relationship that began in the virtual world, and plays itself out in the virtual world.
So when I speak of “virtual world relationship ethics”, what I mean to discuss are ethical questions relating to those virtual relationships themselves, and not the interface between these virtual relationships and any relationships that the avatar’s typist may have in the material world. Those kinds of issues – such as spillover impact of virtual relationships on material world ones – are important, but are different from what I want to address here. Here I want to focus on ethical considerations intrinsic to the virtual relationship in itself, without regard to material world spillover concerns – a significant and important topic best left for another discussion.
I also think that many of the aspects of a virtual relationship – communication, honesty, trust, reliability, loyalty and the like – are essentially similar to what one might expect in a material world context, so I won’t really be addressing them. Instead, I’d like to talk about a few areas that are particular to virtual world relationships to open up the table for a discussion about some of the issues presented by them.
anonymity and independence
One significant aspect of the virtual world is the enhanced degree of anonymity and independence that the medium permits. This raises issues, it seems to me, in the areas of trust, honesty and loyalty, among others. One obvious and often discussed example is the possibility for a typist to “play” as an avatar that is quite different from her/his material world persona.
Another issue is the ability to be anywhere instantly, or to be someone else, instantly, and thereby avoid either detection or any kind of monitoring. Some of the ethical issues that I can see posed by this, among others, are: (1) is it ethical to conceal one’s material world identity behind an avatar, and if so under what circumstances?; (2) is it ethical to have commitments to another avatar, but “break” those commitments using an “alt” avatar that they do not know about; or, as a related question, is any such activity under an alt avatar even relevant for possibly “breaking” a commitment made on another avatar?; (3) is it ethical to even *have* an alt avatar that the other relationship partner does not know about?; (4) is it ethical to use spybots to keep tabs on your virtual relationships for one reason or another, without their consent?
It may be easy enough to answer some of these in an intuitive way (e.g. spying without consent is “bad”, hiding is “bad” if you are deceiving the other person about something, using an alt is “bad” if you are lying about it, etc.), but there are permutations of the above scenarios that can make things less clear cut. For example, someone may be using alts simply because their “fun” is to experience things differently, and it is a “different SL” for them as their alt. Is there an ethical justification to expect someone to restrict herself like this in a virtual context? If so, why?
timezones and monogamy
Another issue that is unique to a virtual world is the ability for everyone to come together at once from all over the world, regardless of time zones and the like. At first blush, this seems like a good thing, and in fact it can be a very good way to bring people together from diverse regions who would in all likelihood never otherwise meet. However, the fact that people are mingling together in different time zones – sometimes wildly divergent ones – can create ethical issues that aren’t always obvious.
For example, is it ethical to expect (or, in some cases, demand) emotional and/or physical monogamy in a virtual world relationship where the partners are 5, 8 or 12 time zones apart, and can only see each other rarely? Is it ethical to expect this in a way that will impede one or both persons from having their own needs met, emotionally and otherwise? Is it even ethical to enter into a SL relationship with someone who is many time zones away when you know you won’t have the time overlap to devote to the relationship to help it grow and mature in a way that someone in the same time zone, or a more proximate one, might? Is there a “selfishness” line here that can be crossed, or is it all wishful thinking in any case?
These are only a very few of the issues that come immediately to mind concerning a couple of the more obvious permutations of life as we experience it in virtual realities like SL. I am sure there are many others. My intention is to raise at least some of the issues so that they can be aired and discussed and passed around among those who are interested in these issues. I don’t foresee that we will reach a consensus about them (that seems far-fetched). But, by exchanging ideas about them, perhaps we can grow in our own understanding of the ethical questions that surround our behavior in the virtual world, and maybe even challenge some of our assumptions about our own behavior and ethics.
Faerie
Sep 6th, 2007
…”(1) is it ethical to conceal one’s material world identity behind an avatar, and if so under what circumstances?”…
Excuse me??? Are you serious??? This is called “preserving one’s privacy” and “being sensible”.
Are you suggesting that we should give our real word identity to everyone or just those we have a “relationship” with? Either way you are exposing yourself to being stalked, harrassed, black-mailed etc.
In RL – do you walk around giving out your home address and telephone number to everyone you meet? Of course not. Why not – because IT IS DANGEROUS, that’s why. It’s even more dangerous to give that information out in SL where the audience is truely global and the potential for harm is globally larger.
This whole article sounds like an attempt to justify the new “verification” regime. Do you work for LL? Are you a man in RL?
LINK MAH BOI
Sep 6th, 2007
YAY I LUV DIS MAG!!!!!!! GREAT ARTICLE, MY FAVORITE PART WAS ABOUT TEH FURRIES. WHAT A DIVERSE GROUP……WHO WUD WANT TO SPAM DEM? LULZ
DF
Sep 6th, 2007
It all depends on one VERY simple issue: What do you want from an SL relationship?
If it’s just to have fun on SL, and nothing more IRL, then none of these matter. Monogamy, having Alts, etc, don’t matter in that case.
If you want a RL relationship… Go to a dating bureau and don’t waste time with SL. 9 out of 10 people you might start dating on SL will be totally UNLIKE their AV in RL, and the last one will be lying and will have a wife (or husband) and kids IRL.
As a sidenote… The use of spybots, for whatever reasons, is or should be against TOS as a breach of privacy. Aside from that, if you think you need to use spybots to keep tabs on your SL hubby… You need a whack with the reality hammer and think hard on why you think you need to use them.
ANY relationship is based on trust. If you don’t trust your hubby/boyfriend/whatever in RL or in SL, the relation is defunct to begin with, and there’s no need to go spying. Break it off now.
Victorria Paine
Sep 6th, 2007
“Excuse me??? Are you serious??? This is called “preserving one’s privacy” and “being sensible”.
Are you suggesting that we should give our real word identity to everyone or just those we have a “relationship” with? Either way you are exposing yourself to being stalked, harrassed, black-mailed etc.
In RL – do you walk around giving out your home address and telephone number to everyone you meet? Of course not. Why not – because IT IS DANGEROUS, that’s why. It’s even more dangerous to give that information out in SL where the audience is truely global and the potential for harm is globally larger.
This whole article sounds like an attempt to justify the new “verification” regime. Do you work for LL? Are you a man in RL?”
Eh, I was raising the question, not answering it.
The question that is often posed relates to the perception of some SL residents that people who ue an AV to “hide” themselves may be, in the eyes of some, “lying”. The question I wanted to raise for discussion — and not answer — is what people think about this ethically. And I wasn’t referring to any verification scheme, or handing out material world contact information to virtual world friends — I am against the verification scheme, for what it’s worth, and I agree that it is very unwise to disclose RL contact info to people you meet on the net. To be honest I can’t reasonably see how you could have gotten a different impression from what I wrote.
But what I was referring to, rather, are, for example, the gender-benders, and other people who have a radically different SL persona from what they have in the material world. Is this ethical behavior? Under what circumstances? In many of these situations the issue remains, for many people, an ethical one as to how much to disclose — or not — to others in the context of a “relationship”.
Again I’m not suggesting “uniform rules”, but merely soliciting a discussion about different ideas for what personal guidelines people would follow themselves in certain situations, and why.
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“If it’s just to have fun on SL, and nothing more IRL, then none of these matter. Monogamy, having Alts, etc, don’t matter in that case.”
Really? Why is that? It’s ethically okay to lie, cheat and steal if it is for “fun”?
My own perspective is that SL is its own reality, and that even if a relationship is 100% staying in SL (as every one of my own is, because I have no interest in taking a SL relationship into the material world), there are still personal ethical questions involved. In no way do I agree that just because a relationship is staying in SL, all bets are off on any behavior and everything is ethical. There are people behind the AVs. Personally I prefer to treat them as people and not as toys.
HALEY Salomon
Sep 6th, 2007
IT IS VERY EASY TO HAVE YOUR HEART BROKEN IN SL , ALL IT TOOK FOR ME WAS HIS WIFE TO SAY STOP ,,AND 2 PEOPLE WITH RL HAPPY HUBBYS AND WIVES ,,WHO FLIRT IN SL ,,, BUY LAND .. ARE BEST FRENDS IN SL ,,,WELL ,,, NEVER FALL IN SL LOVE ,,,I WILL NEVER FALL AGAIN H.S.
shockwave yareach
Sep 6th, 2007
If I wanted my RL to be a part of my virtual life, I’d have a profile up on Yahoo personals… SL and RL are two different things and I don’t want them to cross in my life. Who and what I am in SL is far different than RL and I don’t want any confusion over the matter. I treat people the same in both places, but I see no need to reveal my true self to anyone I meet in a video game. If you can’t deal with my desire for an escape area removed from the stress and problems of real life, then don’t hang out with me because you, like the executives of American Apparel, just “don’t get it.”
Morgana Fillion
Sep 6th, 2007
I’m not sure if I understand why you’ve ruled out the crossover ethics of being monogamously involved in RL but also getting into romantic involvements in SL as being subject matter for a discussion of SL relationship ethics, but do raise the issue of being one gender in RL but another SL.
Either there is cross over or not. If the premise is that SL ethics can pretend that SL is the only life their is, then it doesn’t matter if an avatar’s typist is male or female, noncommitted or married with ten kids. The typist doesn’t ‘exist’.
If it matters at all, then each are equally valid concerns for the person involved with that avatar. Maybe I don’t care if you’re male or female. Maybe I don’t care if you’re married or not.
But either way, it’s not ethically sound to take that decision away from me out of concern that I may well decide not to be involved with you if I knew.
No, you don’t have to give up personal details with me to find out… try having a conversation with your potential SL partner to get a fix on where they stand. Add in questions about whether or not in-world alts are to be regarded as the same person or not.
Ethically, any relationship requires having concern for what matters to the other person. Doesn’t necessarily mean you have to agree or abide by their rules – but it does mean that you have to take the time to find out what their assumptions are and do them the courtesy of letting them know where you can’t or won’t abide by them so that they can make a reasonable decision about whether or not they want to be with you on those terms. Conning them so they won’t make a choice you don’t like is where ethical concerns come up in all these cases.
Morgana Fillion
Sep 6th, 2007
I’m not sure if I understand why you’ve ruled out the crossover ethics of being monogamously involved in RL but also getting into romantic involvements in SL as being subject matter for a discussion of SL relationship ethics, but do raise the issue of being one gender in RL but another SL.
Either there is cross over or not. If the premise is that SL ethics can pretend that SL is the only life their is, then it doesn’t matter if an avatar’s typist is male or female, noncommitted or married with ten kids. The typist doesn’t ‘exist’.
If it matters at all, then each are equally valid concerns for the person involved with that avatar. Maybe I don’t care if you’re male or female. Maybe I don’t care if you’re married or not.
But either way, it’s not ethically sound to take that decision away from me out of concern that I may well decide not to be involved with you if I knew.
No, you don’t have to give up personal details with me to find out… try having a conversation with your potential SL partner to get a fix on where they stand. Add in questions about whether or not in-world alts are to be regarded as the same person or not.
Ethically, any relationship requires having concern for what matters to the other person. Doesn’t necessarily mean you have to agree or abide by their rules – but it does mean that you have to take the time to find out what their assumptions are and do them the courtesy of letting them know where you can’t or won’t abide by them so that they can make a reasonable decision about whether or not they want to be with you on those terms. Conning them so they won’t make a choice you don’t like is where ethical concerns come up in all these cases.
Second Lulz Vigilante
Sep 6th, 2007
“For example, is it ethical to expect (or, in some cases, demand) emotional and/or physical monogamy in a virtual world relationship where the partners are 5, 8 or 12 time zones apart, and can only see each other rarely? Is it ethical to expect this in a way that will impede one or both persons from having their own needs met, emotionally and otherwise? Is it even ethical to enter into a SL relationship with someone who is many time zones away when you know you won’t have the time overlap to devote to the relationship to help it grow and mature in a way that someone in the same time zone, or a more proximate one, might? Is there a “selfishness” line here that can be crossed, or is it all wishful thinking in any case?”
Monogamy? Admittedly I don’t understand these virtual “relationships” because I’ve never wanted one. But there’s definitely no practical reason for monogamy in a virtual relationship. Can a cheating av pass herpes to another av? No. Can a cheating femme av get pregnant and not be sure who the father is? Not in any real sense.
Virtual relationships are just that…Virtual. This even goes for casual friendships online. It ain’t real unless you start hanging out/dating/whatever in RL.
Victorria Paine
Sep 7th, 2007
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
A few more responses ….
“I’m not sure if I understand why you’ve ruled out the crossover ethics of being monogamously involved in RL but also getting into romantic involvements in SL as being subject matter for a discussion of SL relationship ethics, but do raise the issue of being one gender in RL but another SL.”
That’s a fair question. The distinction I would make is that in the first instance, the question quickly becomes the ethical nature of the SL behavior in terms of the material world relationship: in other words, it quickly becomes a discussion whether it is ethical vis-a-vis the material world relationship to engage in x/y/z activity in SL. That’s different, it seems to me, from the question of gender bending because there is no “material world relationship ethic” involved in that specific question — it’s really a question of how that information (and its disclosure or non-disclosure) impacts the virtual relationships. So while I take your point about cross-over, I see the two situations rather differently in ethical terms.
“But either way, it’s not ethically sound to take that decision away from me out of concern that I may well decide not to be involved with you if I knew.”
I more or less agree with this. The contra view — which I think is that every person has a right to their own fantasy life in SL no questions asked — seems a bit self-serving to me because it fails to take into account the context of other typists present in the form of their avatars and how that interaction in itself raises ethical questions beyond the level of self-actualization.
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“Monogamy? Admittedly I don’t understand these virtual “relationships” because I’ve never wanted one. But there’s definitely no practical reason for monogamy in a virtual relationship. Can a cheating av pass herpes to another av? No. Can a cheating femme av get pregnant and not be sure who the father is? Not in any real sense.”
No practical reason, but there may be an ethical one — or not.
“Virtual relationships are just that…Virtual. This even goes for casual friendships online. It ain’t real unless you start hanging out/dating/whatever in RL.”
I respectfully disagree. Virtual reality is, in its essence, a form of “reality”. It isn’t “material reality”, but it is real in that the interactions you are having are real, the emotions involved are real and the like. Therefore I see it as a valid environment for posing these types of ethical questions.
Miss No I'm Totally A Girl Really Wanna Cyber?
Sep 8th, 2007
Kill yourself. Please. You are the cancer eating the heart of humanity.
Victorria Paine
Sep 8th, 2007
“Kill yourself. Please. You are the cancer eating the heart of humanity.”
2/10.
Mabb Dilweg
Sep 9th, 2007
“Virtual relationships are just that…Virtual. This even goes for casual friendships online. It ain’t real unless you start hanging out/dating/whatever in RL.”
I also respectfully disagree. I don’t conduct my (good) friendships in SL at arms length like that. I have friends in SL that I care about deeply, yet I don’t know what they look like IRL and have no contact with them outside SL except for an emergency contact email address. They are no less precious to me for that. As far as I am concerned, my friend is the avatar and the person that comes across in SL. Period. It’s very real to me. For example, someone I only knew in SL recently died in RL. Many people were extremely grieved. She was a lovely person, and fun to be with. We will miss her terribly, even though most of us had no idea what her real name was, or what she looked like outside SL. We got to know her through SL and cared for her a lot.
There are still people behind the avatars, who feel and can be hurt. SL relationships have to be based upon trust and the agreement of the boundaries between RL and SL or even between alts and mains. If both parties agree that was happens these disctinctions are not relevant, fine. This might extend to whether the people behind the avatars are single or not (IRL) or even to gender. As long as both enter the relationship with eyes wide open and in agreement on the boundaries, then the ethics are clear.
Its deception, either about SL alts, behaviour when the other person isn’t around or with regard to RL details that have been deliberately withheld or lied about, that is unethical in my opinion.
Hinca Iddinja
Sep 11th, 2007
Presenting yourself differently then u r in SL cannot be considered deception as it is in rl!!! Here u present yourself in whichever way you like, and deserve to be treated accordingly. So all u frustrated newbie males stop asking things like ” how old are you in rl” and “are you really a female”. I address the newbie males in particular, because they tend to think these issues are very inportant apparently. Or maybe the joke’s on me and they’r all girls lke me, lol.
ST Barzane
Sep 13th, 2007
Thanks for your interesting writings, Victorria.
I would like to encourage you to take these lines of thought a bit further.
How about the questions concerning intimacy in SL. Our RL urge to be intimate with a partner raises some questions in the context of an SL relationship. In RL we want to be intimate for reasons such as ‘being comforted’, ‘lust’, ‘expressing our feelings for our partner in a physical way’ etc. This is interesting in the context of your article, since our avatar’s body is so different from our real life body. By clicking on an erotic poseball our avatar’s body becomes even more distant from our RL body, since it’s movements are now controlled by the person who has programmed the animation. I personally don’t have any other (SL) erotic experience, other than a cuddle, but even there, I found it very alienating to watch my avatar move in a manner that left much to be deserved. It seems to me that this is a consequence of the ‘mind-body separation’ that SL induces. Through words, pieces of my mind can be transferred to a partner, but my RL body is left behind the keyboard. Any physical intimacy between avatars is thus bound to be totally mental of nature, allthough the screen may be suggesting otherwise.
You seem to be pinpointing at values such as ‘honesty’ . The separation of mind and body raises issues concerning these values. Are we honest to our partner and above all to our selves, when we click on an erotic poseball? If ‘expressing our feelings for the one who is steering the other avatar’ is a motive for doing that, I would answer NO for the time being.
(you seem to be deeply into ethics. Have a go at Don Ihde’s book, Bodies in technologies’, he adresses these issues)
thanks for sharing your thoughts with us in this rough flat world.
ST (The Netherlands)
Karl Reisman
Sep 16th, 2007
The problem is that Emotions are real even if the environment is not and a lot of relationship counselors in RL caution against people who even though have platonic relations with co-workers, they become more emotionally invested in them than their spouses, causing all of the same issues as if they were banging each other. Emotionally as you are engaging with another live human at the far end of a keyboard the feeligns and thoughts are as real as the appearances of the AV aren’t. Things even on old Text based Multi User systems, with no graphics generated strong feelings. It could be that for some that an SL relationship separate from RL could cause the same sorts of problems an RLaffair could.
Karl
JJ
Sep 19th, 2007
I have a very broad question to ask here – “what are the overall Ethical and Security concerns with SL?”
teresa
Jul 11th, 2008
Can I ask a question from this site regarding relationships?