Kitely, Facebook, Virtual Identities and Convergence
I decided that I wanted to try Kitely, but presently it only supports Facebook as the login authentication mechanism. Something (perhaps common sense) told me not to use my RL Facebook account, that would be mixing real-life (RL) and virtual identities, so I considered this a prohibitive requirement.
Since other methods are “coming soon”, I waited a month or two hoping to see it appear, but it has not, so it was time to reconsider my waiting and look at alternatives. I didn’t want to wait any longer to try it, so one alternative was to create a Facebook account for my virtual identity. I was worried about Facebook selling this information to others, so I created a new email account specifically for Facebook use only, with “facebook” as the name (to the left of the ‘@’ sign).
Facebook has been disabling accounts virtual identities, as that undermines (pardon the pun) their ability to datamine valuable information which can then be resold to other interested parties. They require that you put in your RL information as part of their Terms of Service. This leaves virtual identities out in the cold. I ignored that; I just needed this account for Kitely. I also wasn’t going to upload a RL pic for them to use their facial recognition software and reveal my RL identity, so let them try to identify my account as virtual. It’s just a mostly blank account, with everything RL filled in except my name.
All of this strict and careful planning went out the window on the next step. While creating the Facebook account, it asked me if I had accounts for Skype, Twitter, etc. I had a virtual identity in Skype, so I thought it would be safe to associate that virtual identity with my Facebook virtual identity.
Yes, safe for me. But not for my friends. Facebook started suggesting that I friend a bunch of Facebook people — about one hundred (I didn’t count but it was a very long list). And here is the kicker: it was suggesting my virtual friends, using their RL names.
Now, I did know a few of those RL names already, but others I knew only because I had gotten an real email from them with their RL name in the email address. Either they let down their guard and trusted me, or didn’t realize the From: name on the email was revealing. But if I had not received those emails, I would not have known their email addresses. Facebook didn’t care, it matched their email addresses against the Skype accounts, and offered them to me as possible friends. And in the case of others, where I didn’t recognize their names at all, but I did recognize their general appearance, age, sex, home location, etc.
I considered those to effectively be privacy violations on the part of Facebook. My various accounts have friends, and while the different services offer ways to communicate with them, they tend to hide their actual email address from me. Facebook is using that information to connect different accounts on different systems, in this case my Skype friends with Facebook identities.
So here is where convergence has failed us: Facebook was offering to connect my virtual friends in Skype with their RL identities in Facebook.
I declined to add those people as friends in Facebook, because I didn’t want to connect their RL identities to my virtual name, so that if someone googles me, they find the Facebook account, look at the friends and bam!, they have RL identities of my SL and InWorldz friends.
If I accept the cross-over between RL friends and my virtual account, a stalker seeking one of my friends suddenly has a critical link to their RL info, through me.
This again is why we have to be careful with our RL identities. It is why the use of RL-only services such as Facebook are completely unsuitable for virtual worlds like Kitely, InWorldz, or Second Life.
Kitely is the only one that completely requires a Facebook account for access. This needs to change as soon as possible.
Due to Facebook’s terms of service restrictions, and their attempts at possibly unwanted and unintended identity convergence, I strongly recommend you avoid any connection between your virtual worlds and Facebook, and obviously that includes using it for Kitely.
Yes, I think the sooner I leave FB the better…though it's not that easy to do.
I do not trust FB. I do not trust ANYONE really. This was known in the dinosaur ages on the net because we anticipated modern developments (sadly, pessimistically).
COMPARTMENTALIZE. Different emails/profiles, consistent internally, for different purposes. DO NOT LINK. #ancientwisdom
This is a step in the right direction, but specific to WordPress.
http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2011/06/17/wordpress-users-register-with-your-avatar-name-beta/
What I don't get is why it is so difficult for add a form on the Kitely web site that prompts for name and password. Perhaps that existing tight FB integration is actually the problem here, causing that to be a more complex change. Oh well, it will be done eventually.
Hi Jim,
I completely understand your frustration, you are far from being the only one who has problems with how FB takes liberties with people's identities.
We enable you to define who will be allowed to access your Kitely worlds. The complexity in adding just name and password for login authentication is that an email address by itself does not provide us with enough information to let you define who will be able to access your worlds unless we also add functionality to let you create and manage groups inside Kitely.
That is why we intend to first add Twitter as a login alternative to FB. Twitter has no issues with avatar identities and it provides us with information to let you define groups without requiring us to create internal group management functionality.
Eventually email/password login will be possible as well but as our development resources are currently very limited we need to focus on solutions that we can implement quickly.
I hope you will bear with us until we become usable for your needs.
I've always been following Miso's ancient rule. I wouldn't dream of linking my avatar to my RL failbook.
Jim —
They tell me that they'll be rolling out alternate logins mechanims in the fall, starting with Twitter.
They will have to redo some of the functionality. Right now, with Facebook, you can allow access to your Facebook friends, or just members of a particular Facebook group, to your regions.
This is very convenient for real-world organizations — book clubs, that kind of thing, that want to have virtual meetings and like using Facebook.
I love the promise of easy to setup and use regions, however I'm afraid the more I dig into Kitely, the more unsuitable it seems for the current users of virtual worlds.
Maria, I don't see how "real-world organizations" would be the target market for Kitely. Perhaps it's the customer base they want in the future, but with Facebook as a first step, they are effectively limiting their marker to that subset of potential users. And during a beta period, where their base is likely to be almost entirely early adopters, the customer base that I believe they do have is virtual avatars from virtual worlds. So I'm somewhat dismayed by the Kitely policies that apply significant limits those avatars.
If I wanted to offer to show Maria my region on Kitely, what must I do? From what I gather from the FAQ, we must be friends, on FACEBOOK. Not just in my viewer friends list. Which I can't add using a search for people, and can't search for other places on Kitely.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but from an OpenSim point of view, Kitely isn't actually even a grid. It's inappropriate for Maria's monthly stats to list Kitely in any form of ranking compared to other grids, because it's actually a collection of independent single-region grids, which happen to be hosted and managed by the same team, but are otherwise completely independent.
Furthermore, in reading the FAQ to try to determine how to TP someone there, I was shocked to find this policy gem:
Q: "What must I do to qualify for Kitely's free trial promotion?"
A: "Your Facebook account must include your real picture, full name and at least 20 Facebook Friends. Test accounts are not eligible."
In other words, Kitely is currently not open, or not free, to avatars. Even though I took the unusual step of creating a Facebook account specifically to access Kitely, that's actually against this policy. And even if I used my RL information, even that's not good enough, I'd have to have at least 20 friends. Which means I can't create a Facebook account specifically for use on Kitely.
When support for Twitter accounts is available, will it also have the same restrictions against using a Twitter account that corresponds to an avatar? I don't actually have a Twitter account for my real-world identity. Does that exclude me from Kitely, as my current Facebook participation excludes me (on multiple levels)?
Requiring all Kitely users to use RL information rather than avatars goes against many of the principles of virtual worlds. And requiring that RL information to have 20 friends raises several (datamining/spam) red flags. Why is there a minimum number of friends if my FB friends list is not going to be abused in some way? It makes me seriously question things at Kitely.
The restrictions on Kitely just seem way to arbitrary and nonsensical. And for some reason, I get the impression they've got some sort of back-room deal with Facebook.
oh gloriosky. this was seen coming by a lot of people. thank goddess i never linked my RL identity to my Facebook one.
You only needed 20 FB friends to qualify for the additional offer of Kitely Credits – that has now been removed. See explanation here. http://blog.kitely.com/2011/06/15/updated-signup-bonuses/
Okay catkins, is that what the "free trial" refers to? I thought it was my account period, i.e. access during the beta period. If it's only for bonus credits, then yes the 1000 credit top-up clearly supersedes that. In that case, the FAQ may be confusing readers — or at least this one! — as it seems to clearly indicate a RL account is required (and friends). Hopefully that is just old info and avatars accounts are welcome.
Hi Jim,
As catkins correctly stated, the info appearing in our FAQ about the requirements for receiving free Kitely Credits is outdated (thank you for pointing that out, I'll correct it in our next site update). Our updated KC allocation policy and the logic for the previous one is explained on our blog (see http://blog.kitely.com/2011/06/15/updated-signup-bonuses/ ).
When you create (or edit) a Kitely world you can specify who will be allowed to enter it. That can be just you, your Facebook friends, anyone with a Facebook account or the members of a Facebook group you belong to. If you choose the later option then any person in the selected Facebook group will be able to enter your world regardless of whether you two are Facebook friends.
Kitely's own terms regarding usage are amongst the most flexible of all grids, we allow both children under the age of 13 and adult content on the same grid (but in separate worlds). Our terms of service are also avatar friendly, we don't require the use of RL identities and actually never did – as evident from the avatars that have been on our grid from the first day we were discovered and from the fact that we've repeatedly and knowingly given avatars additional free KC. The unfortunate limitations that Facebook imposes regarding RL identities are not mandated or enforced by us but rather by Facebook itself. This will no longer be a problem once we provide alternative login options (for more info see this post on our blog: http://blog.kitely.com/2011/04/29/terms-of-service/ ).
All the worlds in Kitely are on the same grid and use OpenSim in grid configuration, they are not standalone OpenSim instances as you incorrectly stated. The only thing currently preventing you from teleporting (from inside your viewer) from one Kitely world to another is an existing technical limitation resulting form how we start inactive worlds. This will be resolved in the future. In the meantime, you can enter other users' Kitely worlds by going to their World Page and pressing the Enter World button. You will appear with your avatar and your inventory as you would in your own Kitely worlds.
I apologize if some of the text appearing on parts of our site is outdated. Our blog, TOS, Privacy Policy, FAQ, support forums, Facebook page, and twitter stream contain quite a few words and we sometimes overlook updating old entries to correspond to updated policies.
If you give Kitely a second chance, I think you will find we are not as malicious as you currently believe us to be 🙂
Ilan, thanks for that info! My apologies if it seemed I was implying Kitely was in any way "malicious", as that was certainly not my intention. I was not really deterred by what seemed like outdated rules on the FAQ; I assumed they had changed or were not going to be enforced as long as the majority of Kitely users were coming in as avatars from SL and other virtual worlds. (I don't even know if it's true but I would speculate that it is.) I think what you are seeing in my comments is the frustration of not using Facebook or even Twitter for coordinating my in-world experiences, not using either for groups and not wanting to use either for controlling region access.
As a virtual worlds pioneer myself, and as a veteran software developer, I also recognize that many features aren't available as early as the software development groups would like, so I can appreciate the plans to change things in the future. However, I am probably in that category of user who will continue to be discouraged by Kitely until there are more native services, such as being able to define a native Kitely user account, and not use Facebook or Twitter to control access.
I still don't consider Kitely a grid for technical reasons; but I also don't really consider OSGrid to be a grid either, so you are in good company. 🙂 I consider the requirements of a grid to be:
1) connected regions, offering teleports, region crossings, searches for user and places, friends, groups.
2) hosted by the same server managers, in at least roughly comparable server conditions.
OSGrid won't qualify for my definition of a grid as long as users can run their own servers out of their own basements, and it seems Kitely has a long way to go before it can shake the constraints of Facebook. To a user, it does not share the aspects of a grid , from what I can see so far. I do recognize that this is all my personal view of a grid, and that others don't share the same definition, but nonetheless until more is brought in-house, it's difficult for me to think of the regions as connected. It's good to hear that it is running in grid mode however, and that hopefully they share the same grid servers (UGAIM component instances).
All of this may be a misunderstanding on my part. Perhaps I couldn't search and find users and places in my attempts for some temporary or newbie misunderstanding reasons. Perhaps there are ways to achieve more in it's current form, or these abilities are simply "capped" functionality for now while changes are being made. That would be great, but in the meantime it means Kitely is not able to offer an environment that would be suitable for me, and it seems to me that my desires for Kitely would be similar to many of the other avatar users from existing virtual worlds.
Hi Jim,
Kitely is using plain OpenSim running in grid mode using the ROBUST setup (see http://opensimulator.org/wiki/ROBUST ).
As you've stated, and I completely agree, our current accessibility is still lacking for many people who want to be able to use our system. Our goal is to allow you to use Kitely virtual worlds in the ways that you want and not try to force you into accepting how we think you "should" want to do so. In order for this to be more than just empty words we will need to implement many additional features that you, and others, have mentioned. We intend to do so as soon as possible.
That said, many of the things you had mentioned that you would want to be able to do inside Kitely you can already do, just not necessarily in the ways you tried to do them.
Interesting. Thanks for posting! 🙂
Please could you add my blog to your blogroll:
http://danielvoyager.wordpress.com/
Thanks.
Thanks Daniel, and how did I miss having your blog in my list? I guess set that up a long time ago, and it doesn't get much tender care. Added!
Hi Jim,
As promised, I've updated our FAQ and the answers in our forums to more accurately describe our current policies. Please see the Kitely FAQ starting from: http://www.kitely.com/#!faq#does-kitely-offer-a-free-trial-period-for-trying-out-my-own-virtual-worlds
Thank you again for bringing this to my attention.
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