Filtering Alts From Stock Exchanges: A Call For An Alt API

One of the main issues that plagues the trustworthiness of Second Life stock exchanges: alternate avatars. For example, if you look through the spreadsheet of major investors and Directors of businesses which I posted here (a snapshot, mind you, probably not accurate now), there is a serious question as to whether some of these avatars are the same person. For weeks now, I have been getting messages who think that two or more names mask the same person on these stock exchanges. There is no way to be sure, there is no way that one can even assess the chance that one person is manipulating different stocks and bonds.

This can't be helped, mainly because Linden Lab does provide for alternate avatars - and alternate avatars are handy things to have. Most people I know have at least one, and it works well - until they start using these avatars to form a basis for stock exchanges which exist outside of SecondLife - allowing for [w:insider trading] as well as other things that are questionable. While tolerable in SecondLife, alternate avatars pose a liability to the trustworthiness of Second Life exchanges.

What can be done? Not much, really, but a step to make it less easy to use alternate avatars in these stock exchanges would be to allow the stock exchanges an API which allowed them to only allow one avatar per person to be involved in the stock exchanges - an [w:API] that eliminates the ability of people to use avatars with the same or similar identification and payment information to be involved in third party websites that use Second Life identities. For example, avatars without payment information should not be permitted to trade in stock exchanges for reasons of transparency - and avatars with the same information who appear differently can easily game a system and create more problems for the stock exchanges themselves.

It is imperfect, of course, as payment information can be changed per avatar. And there is little business case for Linden Lab to get involved in these issues - but there are community interests which could be easily facilitated, making it less easy for people to maintain an illusion that they are separate entities. It is time for the gaming of the 'game' to be less possible, somehow.

If stock exchanges are to be taken seriously in Second Life, issues of transparency such as alternate avatars desperately need to be addressed. If there are other thoughts on this subject, leave a comment below. Maybe there are better ideas out there. :-)

Myself? Too many alts for me to be serious about stock exchanges at this point, and that does include exchange owners as well. How stock exchanges address this issue, amongst other issues of transparency, will be interesting to watch.