My letter to support.
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I hope they’ll respond.
Jul 20, 2024
0
#3
Last u can see is “ I will be using forum users and forum related moderation simply because they are the easiest moderation to ...”
Good job fr, it's so much better than mine.
I might move it there in a bit
I sent it in a support request as well.
👏 😾
👍
I’ll post the second part now and if it also gets cut off I’ll post more parts
More parts ?Was it a letter or an essay
easiest moderation to follow and prove with evidence as to reasoning for consequences being handed out.
Firstly, I want to talk about the user BasixWhiteBoy. This is by no means an extremely old user, but he has nonetheless been active for a fairly long time. Recently, this user has faced a rapid series of bans/mutes, very few of which followed rules of fair moderation. Firstly, the initial ban still does not have a completely confirmed reason. After this user immediately filed a support request, they did not receive a response for over a month, before being told a vague answer about registration. Rule 1 was possibly broken from the accounts made following the closure of his first alt, however it should be noted that aside from this offence, which does not seem related to registration, these accounts never broke any other part of the ToS. The first of these accounts was reported by another user, who I will get to shortly, after Basix had a legitimate issue with another member, an issue which was ignored. Rule 2 is clearly broken here. Registration does not seem to be a legitimate cause for banning a user. Account restrictions being placed for longer than usual periods would be a more fair approach to moderating these accounts. Rule 3 however is brutally broken here multiple times. This user filed multiple support requests over a period of a month before any of them was answered, and even then it was answered vaguely. This is completely unacceptable performance for a company with 100 million users.
Later, this account would reopen their very first account, and be told by support that their issues were resolved. Shortly after, this user was muted for a week for no reason whatsoever. Nothing. This violates all 3 rules, as the user did not break any rules in this time. What’s more, their mute was then extended by another two weeks for no cause. This is completely unacceptable on its own, but then, when threads were created in protest of the lack of transparency, these threads were closed and deleted, once again with no reasoning. This indicates a severe bias in your staff team, and if I were you, I would keep transparency by looking into it.
Now let’s talk about another member by the name of breezehappysquirrel. This user was the user who reported the previous one that I mentioned earlier, and shows opposite issues to the other user, with the staff rather than being too harsh, this time ignoring her offences of the ToS. Firstly, there was a legitimate concern Basix had with this account, related to inappropriate chat messages in games and PMs. When basix voiced this publicly to try to make others aware of it, breeze reported him simply for him calling her out. While there is no objective proof that his claims are correct, a ban is a huge overreaction and violated rule 2 as I mentioned earlier. This should have been investigated, and the users should have been separated somehow, possibly by a forced block feature or something similar. Why the staff decided to just pick a side without any evidence is mind boggling to me. She would continue to show questionable behaviour on forums, such as lying about her alt (I’m pretty sure you have a rule against being non transparent about which alt is yours). Despite this, no moderation was exacted on her, while basix was constantly moderated and muted /banned over the same months despite being the same or less guilty of rule breaks than breeze.
Bias to any user is the most obvious form of discrimination, and should be unacceptable in any moderation team as large and affecting as yours. I hope you will consider these things, and make changes to your moderation approach and or team accordingly.
Firstly, I want to talk about the user BasixWhiteBoy. This is by no means an extremely old user, but he has nonetheless been active for a fairly long time. Recently, this user has faced a rapid series of bans/mutes, very few of which followed rules of fair moderation. Firstly, the initial ban still does not have a completely confirmed reason. After this user immediately filed a support request, they did not receive a response for over a month, before being told a vague answer about registration. Rule 1 was possibly broken from the accounts made following the closure of his first alt, however it should be noted that aside from this offence, which does not seem related to registration, these accounts never broke any other part of the ToS. The first of these accounts was reported by another user, who I will get to shortly, after Basix had a legitimate issue with another member, an issue which was ignored. Rule 2 is clearly broken here. Registration does not seem to be a legitimate cause for banning a user. Account restrictions being placed for longer than usual periods would be a more fair approach to moderating these accounts. Rule 3 however is brutally broken here multiple times. This user filed multiple support requests over a period of a month before any of them was answered, and even then it was answered vaguely. This is completely unacceptable performance for a company with 100 million users.
Later, this account would reopen their very first account, and be told by support that their issues were resolved. Shortly after, this user was muted for a week for no reason whatsoever. Nothing. This violates all 3 rules, as the user did not break any rules in this time. What’s more, their mute was then extended by another two weeks for no cause. This is completely unacceptable on its own, but then, when threads were created in protest of the lack of transparency, these threads were closed and deleted, once again with no reasoning. This indicates a severe bias in your staff team, and if I were you, I would keep transparency by looking into it.
Now let’s talk about another member by the name of breezehappysquirrel. This user was the user who reported the previous one that I mentioned earlier, and shows opposite issues to the other user, with the staff rather than being too harsh, this time ignoring her offences of the ToS. Firstly, there was a legitimate concern Basix had with this account, related to inappropriate chat messages in games and PMs. When basix voiced this publicly to try to make others aware of it, breeze reported him simply for him calling her out. While there is no objective proof that his claims are correct, a ban is a huge overreaction and violated rule 2 as I mentioned earlier. This should have been investigated, and the users should have been separated somehow, possibly by a forced block feature or something similar. Why the staff decided to just pick a side without any evidence is mind boggling to me. She would continue to show questionable behaviour on forums, such as lying about her alt (I’m pretty sure you have a rule against being non transparent about which alt is yours). Despite this, no moderation was exacted on her, while basix was constantly moderated and muted /banned over the same months despite being the same or less guilty of rule breaks than breeze.
Bias to any user is the most obvious form of discrimination, and should be unacceptable in any moderation team as large and affecting as yours. I hope you will consider these things, and make changes to your moderation approach and or team accordingly.
13 some of the post was cut off on mobile so I’m posting the cut off parts for mobile users
company with 100 million users.
Later, this account would reopen their very first account, and be told by support that their issues were resolved. Shortly after, this user was muted for a week for no reason whatsoever. Nothing. This violates all 3 rules, as the user did not break any rules in this time. What’s more, their mute was then extended by another two weeks for no cause. This is completely unacceptable on its own, but then, when threads were created in protest of the lack of transparency, these threads were closed and deleted, once again with no reasoning. This indicates a severe bias in your staff team, and if I were you, I would keep transparency by looking into it.
Now let’s talk about another member by the name of breezehappysquirrel. This user was the user who reported the previous one that I mentioned earlier, and shows opposite issues to the other user, with the staff rather than being too harsh, this time ignoring her offences of the ToS. Firstly, there was a legitimate concern Basix had with this account, related to inappropriate chat messages in games and PMs. When basix voiced this publicly to try to make others aware of it, breeze reported him simply for him calling her out. While there is no objective proof that his claims are correct, a ban is a huge overreaction and violated rule 2 as I mentioned earlier. This should have been investigated, and the users should have been separated somehow, possibly by a forced block feature or something similar. Why the staff decided to just pick a side without any evidence is mind boggling to me. She would continue to show questionable behaviour on forums, such as lying about her alt (I’m pretty sure you have a rule against being non transparent about which alt is yours). Despite this, no moderation was exacted on her, while basix was constantly moderated and muted /banned over the same months despite being the same or less guilty of rule breaks than breeze.
Bias to any user is the most obvious form of discrimination, and should be unacceptable in any moderation team as large and affecting as yours. I hope you will consider these things, and make changes to your moderation approach and or team accordingly.
Later, this account would reopen their very first account, and be told by support that their issues were resolved. Shortly after, this user was muted for a week for no reason whatsoever. Nothing. This violates all 3 rules, as the user did not break any rules in this time. What’s more, their mute was then extended by another two weeks for no cause. This is completely unacceptable on its own, but then, when threads were created in protest of the lack of transparency, these threads were closed and deleted, once again with no reasoning. This indicates a severe bias in your staff team, and if I were you, I would keep transparency by looking into it.
Now let’s talk about another member by the name of breezehappysquirrel. This user was the user who reported the previous one that I mentioned earlier, and shows opposite issues to the other user, with the staff rather than being too harsh, this time ignoring her offences of the ToS. Firstly, there was a legitimate concern Basix had with this account, related to inappropriate chat messages in games and PMs. When basix voiced this publicly to try to make others aware of it, breeze reported him simply for him calling her out. While there is no objective proof that his claims are correct, a ban is a huge overreaction and violated rule 2 as I mentioned earlier. This should have been investigated, and the users should have been separated somehow, possibly by a forced block feature or something similar. Why the staff decided to just pick a side without any evidence is mind boggling to me. She would continue to show questionable behaviour on forums, such as lying about her alt (I’m pretty sure you have a rule against being non transparent about which alt is yours). Despite this, no moderation was exacted on her, while basix was constantly moderated and muted /banned over the same months despite being the same or less guilty of rule breaks than breeze.
Bias to any user is the most obvious form of discrimination, and should be unacceptable in any moderation team as large and affecting as yours. I hope you will consider these things, and make changes to your moderation approach and or team accordingly.
Why the staff decided to just pick a side without any evidence is mind boggling to me. She would continue to show questionable behaviour on forums, such as lying about her alt (I’m pretty sure you have a rule against being non transparent about which alt is yours). Despite this, no moderation was exacted on her, while basix was constantly moderated and muted /banned over the same months despite being the same or less guilty of rule breaks than breeze.
Bias to any user is the most obvious form of discrimination, and should be unacceptable in any moderation team as large and affecting as yours. I hope you will consider these things, and make changes to your moderation approach and or team accordingly.
Bias to any user is the most obvious form of discrimination, and should be unacceptable in any moderation team as large and affecting as yours. I hope you will consider these things, and make changes to your moderation approach and or team accordingly.
That’s the whole thing
Quite a letter Will
I think that it's highly likely basix was muted because he posted something inappropriate. It could have been something he posted months back, that they only just now saw. He's just muted, not banned. There is nothing really to be done about it but wait. Hopefully he will be careful to censor himself in the future. Multiple mutes can result in a ban, and since he's already been banned his chances of getting his account back would be lower. The simple lesson here is to watch what you say. You kids need to be careful what you say on the internet anyway.
“This is going to be long, but I have a lot to say about the moderation of your staff recently. I think it’s fair for me to criticize this, as I have not frequently been reprimanded on this account, having received just one mute that I fully accept responsibility for. But other people have not had the same experience, and that’s what I’m here to talk about.
For starters, I think we should define what makes moderation fair. The most obvious point is that the user should have objectively broken the rules laid out in the ToS. This is the most obvious rule. The second is that the moderation team should decide the consequences based on the severity of the offence. A minor insult on the forums should not result in the same punishment as a prolific history of harassing users in multiple ways for example. The third, and I would argue most important, is that the user should be given a report of the reason for the punishment and how they can appeal and potentially avoid future consequences.
Recently, your moderation team has neglected rules 1 and 3 very frequently. I understand moderation is a tiring job, and not all of your moderation team is even on a payroll, but ultimately nothing excuses this disappointing performance. I have a few examples I will go through of this happening before. I will be using forum users and forum related moderation simply because they are the easiest moderation to follow and prove with evidence as to reasoning for consequences being handed out.
Firstly, I want to talk about the user BasixWhiteBoy. This is by no means an extremely old user, but he has nonetheless been active for a fairly long time. Recently, this user has faced a rapid series of bans/mutes, very few of which followed rules of fair moderation. Firstly, the initial ban still does not have a completely confirmed reason. After this user immediately filed a support request, they did not receive a response for over a month, before being told a vague answer about registration. Rule 1 was possibly broken from the accounts made following the closure of his first alt, however it should be noted that aside from this offence, which does not seem related to registration, these accounts never broke any other part of the ToS. The first of these accounts was reported by another user, who I will get to shortly, after Basix had a legitimate issue with another member, an issue which was ignored. Rule 2 is clearly broken here. Registration does not seem to be a legitimate cause for banning a user. Account restrictions being placed for longer than usual periods would be a more fair approach to moderating these accounts. Rule 3 however is brutally broken here multiple times. This user filed multiple support requests over a period of a month before any of them was answered, and even then it was answered vaguely. This is completely unacceptable performance for a company with 100 million users.
Later, this account would reopen their very first account, and be told by support that their issues were resolved. Shortly after, this user was muted for a week for no reason whatsoever. Nothing. This violates all 3 rules, as the user did not break any rules in this time. What’s more, their mute was then extended by another two weeks for no cause. This is completely unacceptable on its own, but then, when threads were created in protest of the lack of transparency, these threads were closed and deleted, once again with no reasoning. This indicates a severe bias in your staff team, and if I were you, I would keep transparency by looking into it.
Now let’s talk about another member by the name of breezehappysquirrel. This user was the user who reported the previous one that I mentioned earlier, and shows opposite issues to the other user, with the staff rather than being too harsh, this time ignoring her offences of the ToS. Firstly, there was a legitimate concern Basix had with this account, related to inappropriate chat messages in games and PMs. When basix voiced this publicly to try to make others aware of it, breeze reported him simply for him calling her out. While there is no objective proof that his claims are correct, a ban is a huge overreaction and violated rule 2 as I mentioned earlier. This should have been investigated, and the users should have been separated somehow, possibly by a forced block feature or something similar. Why the staff decided to just pick a side without any evidence is mind boggling to me. She would continue to show questionable behaviour on forums, such as lying about her alt (I’m pretty sure you have a rule against being non transparent about which alt is yours). Despite this, no moderation was exacted on her, while basix was constantly moderated and muted /banned over the same months despite being the same or less guilty of rule breaks than breeze.
Bias to any user is the most obvious form of discrimination, and should be unacceptable in any moderation team as large and affecting as yours. I hope you will consider these things, and make changes to your moderation approach and or team accordingly.”