this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
163 points (90.5% liked)

Privacy

29831 readers
740 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

If you notice your chat messages show up in the chat feed but don't appear on the streamers in-screen chat, you have been shadowbanned.

Twitch will still take your money for donations, subs, etc, but your feedback won't be seen by anybody but you. This shadowban does not appear in the appeals page and can be applied randomly and intermittently. You are never informed about this by the way. You'll likely be talking in a chat and assuming you're being ignored. Hop into a private tab and load up the stream where you'll be able to notice if your messages are missing in chat.

From my observations, there seems to be some type of algorithm/system that determines who to shadowban. I'm assuming it assigns extra points for factors like VPN usage, Linux, and adblockers. Once you've been shadowbanned, switching one of those three will not work to unban you until some arbitrary timer expires.

I'm posting this in case anybody else has experienced this and felt frustrated and isolated. You're not being ignored (unless you're a twat and are being ignored). You're just being punished by Twitch for being privacy conscious.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (20 children)

Twitch shadowbans public VPNs due to abuse/bots. The most common method for people to get around bans is to use a VPN -- now assume millions of viewers, and you've got an easy recipe for needing to stop that activity.

You're not punished for being privacy conscious; you're being punished for being roughly in the same realm as harassers, etc.

If you don't want to be banned, rent a VPS and set up your own private VPN for only you. The problem is that using Nord, Windscribe, etc etc is that you're sharing that VPN tunnel with hundreds, maybe thousands of people at a time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (15 children)

It's trivial for twitch to differentiate between users who are logged in and have verified accounts. Slapping bans by IP is archaic and lazy when you have more precise metrics to go by. And at the very least, they should make you aware that you are banned before accepting your money for their services.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Compromised accounts logging in from VPNs are a thing, and most Twitch users probably can’t be trusted not to be reusing passwords across literally everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maybe I'm missing something but you can tell a compromised account from a secure account by the user behavior, no? If an account is compromised the activity will be spam/harassment, etc at which point a ban on that account would happen. And compromised accounts could be accessed from a non-vpn Ip also.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

This. Ban by actual activity. None of this machine learning precog bullshit.

load more comments (12 replies)
load more comments (16 replies)