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> Every couple of months one of his friends will get banned for no reason. I know you want to trust your child’s friends, but “it happened for no reason” is ex

> Every couple of months one of his friends will get banned for no reason. I know you want to trust your child’s friends, but “it happened for no reason” is exactly what kids say when they don’t want to own up to the consequences of their actions. Obviously, you can only monitor your own child’s gameplay and not what their friends are doing on their own time. I strongly suspect there’s more going on than you realize. > It literally is as easy as fill out the form, user is automatically banned, no verification required. Microsoft is not actually enforcing anything. I highly doubt this. The Minecraft FAQ has this to say about it: > Will I get banned without my case being reviewed by a human? > No. Our team of human moderators handle player reports. This team is dedicated to Minecraft, and familiar with the community, platform, and lore. Our team reviews every report before any action is taken.

causalmodels 4y ago
> I highly doubt this. The Minecraft FAQ has this to say about it: This level of naïvety is somewhat endearing.
- RUN12 4y ago
  And yet far less naive than believing a group of 10 year-olds are being repeatedly banned for no reason with their chat off, instead of the obvious that when parents aren't looking they're being abusive to others in chat. Reminds me of the classic: > No, I wasn't looking at dirty websites, it was a virus!
  - causalmodels 4y ago
    Can you name a single moderation system that operates on this scale that will not automatically ban someone for getting mass reported? This is a fairly well known phenomenon.
    - RUN12 4y ago
      That's obviously not what's happening here though. I have plenty of adult friends who go on public and private servers and actively trash talk during games and have never been banned. And none of their friends have been banned. A small group of 10 year-old children aren't having a coordinated attack of hundreds to thousands of reports against them repeatedly over many months. Not to mention tacking on the requirement that instead of a bunch of 10 year-old children being - as they tend to be - offensive/testing limits when adults aren't looking, Microsoft is publicly lying to their customers (creating liability) and implementing an automated system so poor it doesn't so much as check if the reported user even uses chat. EDIT: To further substantiate what I'm saying, I just checked and you cannot submit a report without selecting the specific messages that relate to it. The UX requires that the individual messages are selected and cannot be submitted empty. The parent is at least being misled in thinking their child or their friends don't use the chat feature.
      - fxtentacle 4y ago
        having your internet connection disconnect is also a ban-able offense ...
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        Imagine you buy a Monopoly, D&D or MtG set. You don't have room to play it at home so your child goes to a game cafe to play it with friends. A sex offender is trying to cozy up to them. Who would you blame for that, Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast? Is allowing them to confiscate a game set (or cripple it so it can't be played with other people) the right solution? As a side effect, if you or your child are a bit inconsiderate during a tense moment of the game and someone gets mad back, with a press of the button they can block you from ever playing by reporting select words to game publisher. You will not be entitled to refund. Would you say that if this was not abused in a couple of months then it's definitely OK and we shouldn't worry about it? Minecraft was sold as a game set. There are paid official places you can go play it now, but buying the game set does not require you to use them. Do not mistake it with Roblox, that one is both a game cafe and a game set.
      - sgjohnson 4y ago
        Perhaps the server you’re playing on has a plugin that disables chat reporting?
    - boredpudding 4y ago
      In this case, the reports need to include messages by the person who is being reported. This is verified with private/public keys. To be mass reported, you need to be on a server with all the people who want to report you. Honestly, Mojang built this system well, and seeing Hacker News full of assumptions is really disappointing.
      - capitainenemo 4y ago
        People are recounting actual real instances of abuse. Both here and youtube creators. And it seems pretty plausible. This is basically enabling online bullying and lynch mobs. You only have to join one negative server to get banned from everything everywhere. I think this would be more forgiveable if it was an autoban from the place you were misbehaving, or if the bans were default limited in length without a detailed appeal process involving the person whose account was being stolen servers could opt out of the ban process so at least you could still play with friends at home.
  - PurpleRamen 4y ago
    If a company is repeatedly banning 10 years old without explanation, in a game where they know that 10 years old are common, then obviously the company is at fault. Kids are not adults, they are not responsible for their fails, and they can't learn without explanation. It doesn't matter whether they did something ban-worthy, they are kids..
- watwut 4y ago
  Having experience with all of following three: kids, minecraft online, kids playing minecraft online, no. If someone get banned unfairly with such frequency, they are either super extraordinary unlucky or just some of those kids do mess and trolling on the side.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Sure. But the kids getting banned may not be the kids doing the messing and trolling on the side.
    - watwut 4y ago
      The most plausible scenario is that they are. It is not like it would be difficult or required special knowledge to open minecraft and play with the chat on. 10 years old are fully capable of playing without chat with one friends group and with chat an hour later.
      - vintermann 4y ago
        A 10 year old can easily outsmart a cororation's bureaucratic, mostly automated chat reporting system. And once they have, yeah, fake reports will probably outnumber the real ones.
        watwut 4y ago
        Genuinely, nah. They are not that smart. Kids are not dumb either, but their are not sophisticated at all. They can lie, but very very few of them in any sophisticated way.
Underphil 4y ago
Do you play Minecraft? If so, drop your username right in here and we'll happily test that watertight FAQ for you.
- d-trieu 4y ago
  Sure, go ahead. My ingame nickname is Dat12.
- FPGAhacker 4y ago
  Underphil Aphqt
simion314 4y ago
My son was banned by Sony for 2 months, there were a few things Sony did wrong so they are now on my shit list 1 the bastards did not send me the parent any detaisl about the ban, just a extremely vague reason so I have to guess all possible reasons (maybe chat, maybe screenshots shared in chat, maybe Sony devs fucked up with native languages, maybe my son tells the truth and it was that guy that demanded Fortnite gifts otherwise they will report them and get them banned 2 Sony did not let me appeal, or ask for details, fuck you Sony, you lost a customer 3 at that time I had a 12 months subscription that is required for online play, so the banning robbed me for 2 months subscriptions. IMO, I believe my son , that it was a troll, Sony lost a customer , they could avoided this if they could show me exactly the "crime", I could then educate my son if he used some "bad word" (we are not native speackers so he might not know that some word is dangerous, soem can use it but if you get reported you are screwed)
- JetAlone 4y ago
  Good for you. Corps that walk all over us should keep losing their customers, and we should support the little guys to the best of our abilities.
curiousgal 4y ago
> what kids say when they don’t want to own up to the consequences of their actions. Oof. They're kids. Cursing here and there is not the end of the world.
- RUN12 4y ago
  Minecraft does not ban users for profanity. The list of ban offenses is currently: Hate speech, sexual content and soliciting improper contact, real life threats, exposing the personal information of others, posting links to malicious software, impersonating staff, cheating/exploits (this includes anything that would negatively affect another person’s gameplay experience), general commercial spamming Profanity is considered the responsibility of specific server moderators since it's a low-level offense that's virtually impossible to police in a game like Minecraft. They're trying to avoid the notoriety recently obtained by Roblox for being a place for adults to exploit children.
  - neiman 4y ago
    > Minecraft does not ban users for profanity. The list of ban offenses is currently: Are you quoting reality of a FAQ? I don't believe the FAQ rules of Microsoft much more than I believe 10 years old kids.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    > impersonating staff If my own experience years ago is any indication, this would create so many ban options it’s not funny. 10 year olds love pretending to be more than they are.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
fxtentacle 4y ago
I have a group of 30+ friends who play minecraft, use a separate TeamSpeak server and they also regularly talk about getting banned without obvious reason. And I was once banned from Dota2 for "intentional feeding" which I guess is just a fancy way of saying that the others in my team expected my skill level to be higher than it was. These online ban systems really are random. And typically the "moderation" is fully automated. I predict soon GPT3 will write the message to inform you.
- bathory 4y ago
  I have spent more than 10’000 hours in DotA 2. You do not get banned for a single game no matter how bad you perform. It has to be on a very regular basis, and even then you probably first get put into low priority matchmaking as your behavior score drops. Banning accounts usually only applies to cheats or buying and selling accounts.
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    You are technically correct. I got limited into a different matchmaking system than my friends. But the end result was that I couldn't play with them anymore.
rieTohgh6 4y ago
> Our team of human moderators handle player reports. I have exactly 0 trust in such statements after Amazon's "New world" fiasco. I mean, it technically might be processed by human, hired from 3rd world country and paid next to nothing but it doesn't change the result: large number of reports was enough to ban people, no one check if those reports made any sense. Nor if they were all made by enemy clan.
indrora 4y ago
I can say the faq is a lie right now. I had a spare minecraft account I migrated a while back. As an experiment, I had three friends of mine report the account for profanity. Any text field that could be filled was filled only with garbage or the name of the account This is an account that hadn't logged on since verifying that the account got moved over, and that was long before the global moderation tools were made. Within the hour, it was banned. When I tried getting to support, I gave up. They are not using humans.

causalmodels 4y ago

> I highly doubt this. The Minecraft FAQ has this to say about it: This level of naïvety is somewhat endearing.

RUN12 4y ago
And yet far less naive than believing a group of 10 year-olds are being repeatedly banned for no reason with their chat off, instead of the obvious that when parents aren't looking they're being abusive to others in chat. Reminds me of the classic: > No, I wasn't looking at dirty websites, it was a virus!
- causalmodels 4y ago
  Can you name a single moderation system that operates on this scale that will not automatically ban someone for getting mass reported? This is a fairly well known phenomenon.
  - RUN12 4y ago
    That's obviously not what's happening here though. I have plenty of adult friends who go on public and private servers and actively trash talk during games and have never been banned. And none of their friends have been banned. A small group of 10 year-old children aren't having a coordinated attack of hundreds to thousands of reports against them repeatedly over many months. Not to mention tacking on the requirement that instead of a bunch of 10 year-old children being - as they tend to be - offensive/testing limits when adults aren't looking, Microsoft is publicly lying to their customers (creating liability) and implementing an automated system so poor it doesn't so much as check if the reported user even uses chat. EDIT: To further substantiate what I'm saying, I just checked and you cannot submit a report without selecting the specific messages that relate to it. The UX requires that the individual messages are selected and cannot be submitted empty. The parent is at least being misled in thinking their child or their friends don't use the chat feature.
    - fxtentacle 4y ago
      having your internet connection disconnect is also a ban-able offense ...
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      Imagine you buy a Monopoly, D&D or MtG set. You don't have room to play it at home so your child goes to a game cafe to play it with friends. A sex offender is trying to cozy up to them. Who would you blame for that, Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast? Is allowing them to confiscate a game set (or cripple it so it can't be played with other people) the right solution? As a side effect, if you or your child are a bit inconsiderate during a tense moment of the game and someone gets mad back, with a press of the button they can block you from ever playing by reporting select words to game publisher. You will not be entitled to refund. Would you say that if this was not abused in a couple of months then it's definitely OK and we shouldn't worry about it? Minecraft was sold as a game set. There are paid official places you can go play it now, but buying the game set does not require you to use them. Do not mistake it with Roblox, that one is both a game cafe and a game set.
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
      Perhaps the server you’re playing on has a plugin that disables chat reporting?
  - boredpudding 4y ago
    In this case, the reports need to include messages by the person who is being reported. This is verified with private/public keys. To be mass reported, you need to be on a server with all the people who want to report you. Honestly, Mojang built this system well, and seeing Hacker News full of assumptions is really disappointing.
    - capitainenemo 4y ago
      People are recounting actual real instances of abuse. Both here and youtube creators. And it seems pretty plausible. This is basically enabling online bullying and lynch mobs. You only have to join one negative server to get banned from everything everywhere. I think this would be more forgiveable if it was an autoban from the place you were misbehaving, or if the bans were default limited in length without a detailed appeal process involving the person whose account was being stolen servers could opt out of the ban process so at least you could still play with friends at home.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  If a company is repeatedly banning 10 years old without explanation, in a game where they know that 10 years old are common, then obviously the company is at fault. Kids are not adults, they are not responsible for their fails, and they can't learn without explanation. It doesn't matter whether they did something ban-worthy, they are kids..
watwut 4y ago
Having experience with all of following three: kids, minecraft online, kids playing minecraft online, no. If someone get banned unfairly with such frequency, they are either super extraordinary unlucky or just some of those kids do mess and trolling on the side.
- vintermann 4y ago
  Sure. But the kids getting banned may not be the kids doing the messing and trolling on the side.
  - watwut 4y ago
    The most plausible scenario is that they are. It is not like it would be difficult or required special knowledge to open minecraft and play with the chat on. 10 years old are fully capable of playing without chat with one friends group and with chat an hour later.
    - vintermann 4y ago
      A 10 year old can easily outsmart a cororation's bureaucratic, mostly automated chat reporting system. And once they have, yeah, fake reports will probably outnumber the real ones.
      - watwut 4y ago
        Genuinely, nah. They are not that smart. Kids are not dumb either, but their are not sophisticated at all. They can lie, but very very few of them in any sophisticated way.

Underphil 4y ago

Do you play Minecraft? If so, drop your username right in here and we'll happily test that watertight FAQ for you.

d-trieu 4y ago
Sure, go ahead. My ingame nickname is Dat12.
FPGAhacker 4y ago
Underphil Aphqt

simion314 4y ago

My son was banned by Sony for 2 months, there were a few things Sony did wrong so they are now on my shit list 1 the bastards did not send me the parent any detaisl about the ban, just a extremely vague reason so I have to guess all possible reasons (maybe chat, maybe screenshots shared in chat, maybe Sony devs fucked up with native languages, maybe my son tells the truth and it was that guy that demanded Fortnite gifts otherwise they will report them and get them banned 2 Sony did not let me appeal, or ask for details, fuck you Sony, you lost a customer 3 at that time I had a 12 months subscription that is required for online play, so the banning robbed me for 2 months subscriptions. IMO, I believe my son , that it was a troll, Sony lost a customer , they could avoided this if they could show me exactly the "crime", I could then educate my son if he used some "bad word" (we are not native speackers so he might not know that some word is dangerous, soem can use it but if you get reported you are screwed)

JetAlone 4y ago
Good for you. Corps that walk all over us should keep losing their customers, and we should support the little guys to the best of our abilities.

curiousgal 4y ago

> what kids say when they don’t want to own up to the consequences of their actions. Oof. They're kids. Cursing here and there is not the end of the world.

RUN12 4y ago
Minecraft does not ban users for profanity. The list of ban offenses is currently: Hate speech, sexual content and soliciting improper contact, real life threats, exposing the personal information of others, posting links to malicious software, impersonating staff, cheating/exploits (this includes anything that would negatively affect another person’s gameplay experience), general commercial spamming Profanity is considered the responsibility of specific server moderators since it's a low-level offense that's virtually impossible to police in a game like Minecraft. They're trying to avoid the notoriety recently obtained by Roblox for being a place for adults to exploit children.
- neiman 4y ago
  > Minecraft does not ban users for profanity. The list of ban offenses is currently: Are you quoting reality of a FAQ? I don't believe the FAQ rules of Microsoft much more than I believe 10 years old kids.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > impersonating staff If my own experience years ago is any indication, this would create so many ban options it’s not funny. 10 year olds love pretending to be more than they are.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

fxtentacle 4y ago

I have a group of 30+ friends who play minecraft, use a separate TeamSpeak server and they also regularly talk about getting banned without obvious reason. And I was once banned from Dota2 for "intentional feeding" which I guess is just a fancy way of saying that the others in my team expected my skill level to be higher than it was. These online ban systems really are random. And typically the "moderation" is fully automated. I predict soon GPT3 will write the message to inform you.

bathory 4y ago
I have spent more than 10’000 hours in DotA 2. You do not get banned for a single game no matter how bad you perform. It has to be on a very regular basis, and even then you probably first get put into low priority matchmaking as your behavior score drops. Banning accounts usually only applies to cheats or buying and selling accounts.
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  You are technically correct. I got limited into a different matchmaking system than my friends. But the end result was that I couldn't play with them anymore.

rieTohgh6 4y ago

> Our team of human moderators handle player reports. I have exactly 0 trust in such statements after Amazon's "New world" fiasco. I mean, it technically might be processed by human, hired from 3rd world country and paid next to nothing but it doesn't change the result: large number of reports was enough to ban people, no one check if those reports made any sense. Nor if they were all made by enemy clan.

indrora 4y ago

I can say the faq is a lie right now. I had a spare minecraft account I migrated a while back. As an experiment, I had three friends of mine report the account for profanity. Any text field that could be filled was filled only with garbage or the name of the account This is an account that hadn't logged on since verifying that the account got moved over, and that was long before the global moderation tools were made. Within the hour, it was banned. When I tried getting to support, I gave up. They are not using humans.