Tag: trolling

IPE Update: A List Of Companies Subpoena’d By Twitch


It’s time to talk about Twitch again, and that means the Twitch v. John Doe lawsuit.

When last we left our heroes, Twitch had filed suit in the Northern District of California against one hundred John Doe defendants for federal trademark infringement, breach of contract, trespass to chattels, and fraud. The lawsuit targeted the antics of users who gained some notoriety earlier in the year for filling the Artifact category of Twitch will all sorts of vile material, including hardcore pornography and videos of real life killings.

This week Judge Orrick granted Twitch’s application for leave in order to file subpoenas against third parties, with the ultimate goal being to uncover the identities of the defendants in the lawsuit. Those third parties include:

  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Microsoft/Hotmail
  • Discord
  • Verizon
  • Comcast Cable Communications LLC
  • Contina, Charter Communications Inc.
  • Optimum Online
  • Suddenlink Communications
  • OVH Hosting

Third party subpoena recipients will have 30 days with which to serve the defendants with a copy of the subpoena and a copy of the order, and then the defendants will have 30 days to file any orders contesting or squashing the subpoena, after which the third party recipients will have 10 days to produce information responsive to Twitch.

In fancy terms, those who suspect or have a good idea that they may become a defendant in this lawsuit will have ample notice that they are in fact a defendant.

As always, MMO Fallout has provided the related docket at our expense in the Google Drive.

[NM] Assassin’s Creed Forums Struck By Trolling Over Skin Color


If you’re looking to rustle some jimmies or meme it up on the Assassin’s Creed Origin forums, you might want to think twice or risk the wrath of some overworked, twitchy moderators. The forums are undergoing an apparent fumigation after they were targeted by a collective of trolls and angry gamers responding to so-called “blackwashing,” alleging that Ubisoft is depicting characters in the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Origin as darker in complexion than some believe they should be.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins launches October 27, 2017 on PC, Xbox, and Playstation. The game serves as a prequel to the series, set in Ptolemaic era Ancient Egypt with the player taking the role of Bayek and the origins (get it?) of the order of Assassins and their rival Templar group.

The series has been criticized over its historical accuracy. Recent studies have shown that ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners (West Asia, Middle East) and that Sub-Saharan genes did not mix until more recent times, however the study notes that the genetic samples were taken from a single site and may not account for all of Egypt.

It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced.

Much of the spam on the forums appears to be users repeating various memes, with some trolling using harsh, offensive slurs. As a result, the moderators appear to be taking a heavy handed approach to keep up with the influx of posts, and the nature of the posts has led some to believe that the complaints are rooted in racist ideologies.

Top 5: Ideas Twitch Can Adopt To Curb Racism


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Today must be a day ending in ‘day,’ because Dreamhack has come and gone and the internet has once again shown itself to be a cesspool of racism and harassment. In the wake of people piling on to the Hearthstone stream to throw racist comments at finalist Terrance Miller, both Blizzard and Twitch have committed to reducing problematic behavior on the platform.

Is there ultimately any difference between someone who posts racist remarks with the goal of trolling/harassment and someone who posts them because they are genuinely racist? Probably not, both are equally disruptive and in need of being stamped down. Because MMO Fallout’s modus operandi is to help solve problems rather than just point them out, I’ve decided to compile a list of ways Twitch can curb harmful behavior.

5. Prevent New Accounts From Using Chat

This one is simple and links in with one or two other suggestions on this list. Many MMOs already do this to curb gold farming, where accounts are not allowed to use chat or access certain trade/communication features until after they’ve hit a certain level. It doesn’t stop the problem completely, but it does lower the ability of people to mass produce burner accounts.

How would this system work with Twitch? You could theoretically introduce a minimum waiting period anywhere from a day to a week or more before an account can access chat. Said waiting period could be removed with the inclusion of two-factor authentication.

4. New Chat Mode: Authenticated

Right now there are only a few chat modes available to Twitch streamers, from subscriber only to off completely. Since Twitch already has two-factor authentication, it wouldn’t be that difficult to implement a chat mode allowing subscribers and non-subscribers that have been authenticated to chat.

Two-factor authentication also means that you have an outside identity tied to the account, be it a phone number or the hardware ID of the mobile device. This would give Twitch the ability to ban all accounts associated with that phone number/device and prevent it from being used to sign up for a new account for a period of time.

Valve already does this with Counter Strike: GO, where a ban will blacklist that person’s phone number for three months and ban all accounts associated with it.

3. Turn Off Chat For Big Events

This is a copout and not suggestion that actually fixes the problem, but right now it seems to be one of the easiest conclusions. Look at it this way, with tens of thousands of people watching these events, is having them all in one central chat room really logical? Imagine packing an entire stadium worth of people into one room letting them drown each other out. Then have a team of ten people try and keep the conversation in line. Impossible, right?

As much as I’m sure event organizers don’t want to use them, there are already systems in place on Twitch to aleviate these problems. Slow chat, subscriber-only, turning chat off, all of these are useful tools. The moderators of Dreamhack even admitted that they made mistakes, with moderators overwriting each other’s decisions.

2. Shadow Bans

Simple, efficient, and taking a card from Reddit’s book. If you aren’t familiar with a shadow ban, it is a special type of punishment where the poster can see his own messages but no one else can. The problem on Reddit is that it becomes readily apparent rather quickly that you’ve been shadow banned, as all of a sudden your posts stop receiving up-votes and replies.

The program works more effectively when the user can’t gauge reactions or isn’t paying attention to them, which is why it is a good idea for Twitch. When someone is shouting into the void (or in this case wall of text moving at 100mph), odds are they aren’t looking for a response. Banning outright tells the player to create a new account, by shadow banning they can go on for hours without realizing that no one is listening.

1. Unify Bans

I like to think of this method as the nuclear option, it is probably the most effective method while simultaneously capable of causing untold destruction with widespread nuclear fallout. It requires a collaboration by a group of people whose opinions and judgement can be trusted.

In short, a recipe for disaster.

How far you want to go with this depends on how much you really want to stomp down bad behavior. For instance, should Dreamhack share bans across all of its streams? Should Dreamhack partner with other associations to share bans? Would regular streamers have access to the ban list? Who decides who is added to the list?

It’s certainly a question, one that requires a lot of thought and planning, but one that could work.

Can toxic behavior be controlled on Twitch? Let us know in the comments below.

MMORPG.com: Slander With Human Shields


You have been issued a warning by one of our moderators.

Warning Category: Trolling
Reason: Posting excessive negative comments or baiting others to respond in a negative manner is considered trolling on the MMORPG.com forums.

I have this problem over on the MMORPG.com forums, and that is whenever I make a positive post about Mortal Online, a moderator comes along and issues me a warning and deletes it. This phenomena doesn’t just follow me when I’m in the Mortal Online forums, but also on the other boards where trolling is frequent and positive voices are low. What does yank my chain, however, is that when I am replying to posts, be it the original poster or someone else in the thread, the actual inflammatory posts are very rarely removed. Someone makes a comment that Star Vault is likely collecting credit card numbers to use for identity theft when Mortal Online goes down? Fine. Calling them a troll? You’ve been issued a warning. In fact, just using the term “troll” in reference to someone else can net you a warning, regardless of the rest of your message.

So, I thought, perhaps the moderators are just misguided. Maybe the career trolls that roam the boards are friends with moderators. However, the answer hit me like a sack of bricks: United States Safe Harbor laws remove the liability of hosts from the actions of their users, so MMORPG.com can’t be sued for slander because someone on the forums, for example, wrote a thread claiming that a company was going bankrupt, using forged “insider” documents, and where the retaliatory posts displaying the true story were conveniently deleted. Meanwhile the website itself moves onward with their faux-passive aggressive writing, not outright trashing but just leaving the door open enough so that the point gets out.

Of course, like any enterprise, the real intent occasionally leaks out in a graphic and clear-cut manner, such as (and I’m just spitballing here), having one of your writers summarize his “I got hacked” rant by claiming that Blizzard is scamming its users by staging account theft in order to scare their users into buying authenticators.

I think Blizzard just staged the whole thing to squeeze some extra money out of me! Damn you Blizzard you slippery snake, I’m on to you. Everyone who is reading this is now wise to your scheme. Oh, I’ll buy your precious little “authenticator” just so you keep your grubby little mitts off my account you cheeky monkeys.

If there’s one thing MMORPG.com is, however, it is efficient. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to call someone out on a lie and have my post stand for more than a half hour after. If there is another thing MMORPG.com is, it is polluted. The community is disgustingly polluted by users who have no other agenda than to sit at their keyboards and make a few thousand posts calling this company a “scam artist,” or gloating about how they managed to perform a fraudulent charge-back and turned around, bought the game again, and performed yet another fraudulent charge-back.

MMORPG.com is a joke, and one that isn’t particularly funny.