Riley Hogan sent a message to William Henry Gates that said:
Dear Mr. Gates,
I've been the victim of online harassment now for almost a year. I feel like 2020 and technology being what it is, tech companies that run platforms such as Second Life, Twitter, Discord, etc should be better at assisting users with these issues. Recently, I gained the attention of Linden Lab CEO, Ebbe Altberg and he and I had a productive conversation, until he went through my tweets. He went from trying to use subtle fear tactics to get me to take them down to now denying me any help at all. His support team quickly shut down my tickets and now seem to be blocking me from further support. I'm not removed from Second Life, but the implications are that if I try to get further help, they will consider it harassment. My concern is that I was asking for my account name and unique ID of my account to be changed to get away from the harassment without losing the $20,000 investment I have in my account. Support continually suggests I just make a new account. They claim changing my name and ID would be concealing my identity from other users, but making a new account would do the same thing. The only difference is the potential revenue for Linden Lab of me restarting on a new account. I feel companies like this are more interested in protecting abusers to continue to profit from them while also profiting from victims looking to get away. What do I do? I can't believe that after my conversation with Mr Altberg that support would immediately block me from help?
I have a lot of respect for you and admire all the work you do for the world, especially in your advocacy of ending harassment and bullying.
