In the official Second Life blog a few days ago, Linden Lab announced a new official Second Life viewer had been released, one with some features as a result of inventory feedback.
The newest Second Life Viewer release is here, and this one is extra special because so many of its features come directly from community feedback. Thanks to the requests and contributions shared on GitHub and through our feedback portal, this update delivers improvements you’ve been asking for.
Second Life Viewer 2025.06 adds an Inventory Favorites system, improves
avatar behavior, restores full mouselook pitch, enhances chat and mesh
upload tools, and refines environment controls. It includes various bug
and crash fixes. Read on for more details!
Named 2025.06, the viewer promises new features, including "Inventory Favorites," hiding the Linden Dollar balance (intended for video streamers), a "zoom in to self" option, improved privacy options, the option to timestamp photos, mesh inspection tools, chat and voice enhancements, fixes to allow avatars to move more smoothly, environment and rendering options, and more.
As a reminder, these changes to not yet affect the Firestorm viewer, which is the preferred viewer by the majority of residents.
To read more, Click Here.
I’ve been a resident of Second Life since March 2004, and after being banned earlier this year, I feel I must speak out. What started as a platform for creativity and connection has become a shadowed landscape of corporate expedience, state influence, and systemic suppression.
ReplyDeleteLinden Lab’s acquisition by Spirit Investments, a firm with known conservative Catholic affiliations, changed the company’s trajectory. What had once been a space celebrated for free expression increasingly mirrored pressures from outside authorities, including U.S. federal oversight of social media platforms. These pressures intersected directly with Linden Lab’s virtual currency operations—its Linden Dollar economy and past involvement with third-party cryptocurrency exchanges—which made the company particularly sensitive to regulatory scrutiny. The result was a corporate environment that prioritized shielding itself from state interference over protecting its users.
My own experience starkly illustrates this shift. As a vulnerable transgender user, I found myself targeted in a conflict with another resident, who identified as a U.S. defense officer. Despite my attempts to resolve the issue peacefully, Linden Lab sided with the officer, ultimately banning me. This was not an isolated enforcement of policy; it was part of a pattern in which the company accommodated powerful interests, leaving marginalized users exposed and silenced.
The situation escalated further when I attempted to address my concerns directly with Linden Lab’s Atlanta, Georgia, customer service office. Our visit was entirely peaceful, fully compliant with Georgia consumer protection laws, and we even provided our contact information in good faith. Yet we discovered that the staff had already turned our details over to law enforcement, who contacted us hours later claiming we were in “hot pursuit.” What should have been a transparent, accountable dialogue became an exercise in intimidation. This systemic stonewalling demonstrated that Linden Lab treats engagement from users not as a right, but as a liability to be neutralized.
Taken together, these experiences reveal a disturbing pattern: Linden Lab, once a pioneer of online freedom, now functions as a shielded corporate entity that bends to external pressures, quietly accommodates state actors, and sidelines the voices of vulnerable users. Spaces like Luskwood, once celebrated for creativity and inclusion, exist within this ecosystem, inevitably shaped by the company’s silence and the unspoken hierarchies of power it tolerates.
For those of us who have lived in these worlds for decades, the lesson is clear. A platform that allows covert state influence, enforces policy selectively, and escalates disputes to law enforcement is no longer a haven for creativity—it is a tool of compliance and control. Linden Lab must confront these failings openly. Until it does, users must recognize the structural forces at play and understand that the promise of freedom in Second Life is fragile, contingent on the whims of corporate and state power, and too often denied to those who need it most.