Remove automated community wide ban system

[Shreddy]

Currently when more than one game discussion ban is active an automated community wide ban kicks in, the last one I had was for six months which means a steam account that has limited functionality (can’t edit profile etc). This would be great if it were Steam employees who were working to an objective standard and bans were given out fairly based around that but unfortunately anyone who has community discussion section on steam (even if they don’t sell or giveaway any games) can give out these bans that can very easily lead to an automated ban being given out.

Take Psyonix and their game rocket league for example, Rocket league isn’t sold on steam, it isn’t even given away, yet because they have a community discussion section they can give out bans. I’ve received and had overturned several permanent bans from this forum with the last being for mentioning Easter and some other events that Psyonix spends a month at a time promoting in game and on their forum. I mentioned these in a thread made by another user who was asking why the Easter event that has featured since launch was removed but other political based events are left in game. I voiced my opinion that Easter was a good event and that the other political events they promote are hateful and would be better not in game. A Psyonix employee went through the thread and permanently banned everyone who was in favour of the Easter event or was critical of the political events with the ban reason being “mentioning religion or politics” (keep in mind Psyonix announces their political events in game and in the forum and leaves their announcement threads open for comment….so they must break their own rules). I went through all this with valve support and they agree that Psyonix acted unreasonably and overturned the ban however that doesn’t stop the automated system from kicking in and giving the steam account a community wide automated ban that can last months or even longer.

For an account to be banned from the entire community when they are a paying customer who has spent thousands and the company that caused the ban doesn’t even sell games on steam this should be required to be verified by a real human being who works for valve rather than an automated system that will see loyal customers punished and rogue devs getting to ruin the platform.

EDIT 01-08-2023: this thread itself has now demonstrated the exact bias I was talking about, yesterday I was banned from steam and this thread deleted after a political activist parading as a moderator took issue with the objective facts pointed out in the thread. I was banned for 24 hours and this thread deleted before a senior employee at valve was able to take a look and restore the thread and remove the ban. We need a better system than this and to the low quality moderator who tried to silence it: grow up.

EDIT 01-08-2023: Another rogue mod locked the thread and banned me, this required a senior valve employee to unban me and unlock the thread for the second time in two days. It's clear that there is a major problem with the community ban system in general not just the automated system. Once again to the mod who tried to ban me: grow up.

EDIT 11-08-2023: One week ago I received a 52 week community wide ban for harassing players in this discussion, after a week of arguing with support and them being completely unable to produce any evidence of player harassment I have now been unbanned for a third time over this thread. I would like to thank everyone who contributed here but moving forward I will no longer be participating as it's clearly seriously jeopardising my account, I sure would love to know whats so upsetting about this discussion that they have tried to silence it and ban me so many times, it seems like a reasonable suggestion to me.

[The Commendatore]

Tanoomba の投稿を引用：

Please Stop Stalking my Posts の投稿を引用：

whats more simple then angry steam forum user who has moderator privilages?

Other angry Steam forum users breaking the rules?

Stop, that's makes too much sense.

[Boblin the Goblin]

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

Please Stop Stalking my Posts の投稿を引用：

whats more simple then angry steam forum user who has moderator privilages?

That, and/or a forum user that is friends with someone with moderator privileges

Ah yes, the Steam Shadow Cabal.

[Brian9824]

SlowMango の投稿を引用：

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

That, and/or a forum user that is friends with someone with moderator privileges

Ah yes, the Steam Shadow Cabal.

Sadly too many people feel the need to ignore facts and logic in favor of a good lie. Just as sadly others will believe anything they read online and think its fact when its nothing more then a delusion repeated by people who are desperately trying to excuse their bad behaviour and justify their repeated bans that support keeps telling them is justified.

Instead of accepting their own behaviour they weave a story where this magical group of users somehow manipulated the volunteer mods, and now manipulate the paid mods and support to continue to harass them, and only they can shed light on it.

Its steams version of QANON.

[Tito Shivan]

Please Stop Stalking my Posts の投稿を引用：

whats more simple then angry steam forum user who has moderator privilages?

Hanlon would like to have a word with you.

SlowMango の投稿を引用：

Ah yes, the Steam Shadow Cabal.

Needs a more catchy name. And some headquarters in a volcano island

[AROCK!!!]

The Commendatore の投稿を引用：

Tanoomba の投稿を引用：

Other angry Steam forum users breaking the rules?

Stop, that's makes too much sense.

Not when you consider the large amount of bans being overturned and deleted posts/threads being reinstated by STEAM support.

Kind of pointless and hollow to claim users are being banned for breaking the rules when support repeatedly says otherwise, and when certain users blatantly break the rules without anything happening.

[Brian9824]

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

The Commendatore の投稿を引用：

Stop, that's makes too much sense.

Not when you consider the large amount of bans being overturned and deleted posts/threads being reinstated by STEAM support.

Kind of pointless and hollow to claim users are being banned for breaking the rules when support repeatedly says otherwise

Sure it does when you consider the amount of users, posts and bans being done in a day. Large amount of moderation will result in a large amount of mistakes, even if those mistakes are a small percentage of the total moderation.

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

and when certain users blatantly break the rules without anything happening.

Sounds like in those cases you just don't properly understand the rules and keep wanting people you don't like being banned ...

[Tito Shivan]

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

The Commendatore の投稿を引用：

Stop, that's makes too much sense.

Not when you consider the large amount of bans being overturned and deleted posts/threads being reinstated by STEAM support.

Consider it's largely the same group of people the ones issuing the bans and overturning them when a support ticket is made.

[Zoopy]

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

Not when you consider the large amount of bans being overturned and deleted posts/threads being reinstated by STEAM support.

Kind of pointless and hollow to claim users are being banned for breaking the rules when support repeatedly says otherwise, and when certain users blatantly break the rules without anything happening.

The occam's razor explanation would be that the people issuing the bans are just doing a really bad job, just like paid moderators on many other platforms.

I highly doubt the paid moderators are even participating in the forums in any personal capacity.

[Zoopy]

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

Sounds like in those cases you just don't properly understand the rules and keep wanting people you don't like being banned ...

They're not wrong in that case. Support does often simply do nothing about people blatantly breaking the rules. After this thread got locked earlier this week, a user from this thread followed me to another unrelated thread to continue the argument there and insult me, and Steam support never responded to my report.

And stuff like that happens all the time. On the MW2 forum I saw homophobes posting stuff like "f*ck LGBTQ" and calling gay people degenerates without getting banned. It's obvious to anyone who cares to look that Steam support don't always action rule-breaking content.

[Brian9824]

Zoopy の投稿を引用：

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

Sounds like in those cases you just don't properly understand the rules and keep wanting people you don't like being banned ...

They're not wrong in that case. Support does often simply do nothing about people blatantly breaking the rules. After this thread got locked earlier this week, a user from this thread followed me to another unrelated thread to continue the argument there and insult me, and Steam support never responded to my report.

And stuff like that happens all the time. On the MW2 forum I saw homophobes posting stuff like "f*ck LGBTQ" and calling gay people degenerates without getting banned. It's obvious to anyone who cares to look that Steam support don't always action rule-breaking content.

Support doesn't primarily punish people, they reverse mistakes from moderation, but its VERY rare for support to engage in actual moderation. I did report one person to support who for instance had a thread where he was stalking a user and constantly posting links to every thread he made and kept bumping it and adding more and they deleted his thread because that was an extreme case of a user REALLY blatantly breaking the rules and stalking people.

[Zoopy]

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

Support doesn't primarily punish people, they reverse mistakes from moderation, but its VERY rare for support to engage in actual moderation. I did report one person to support who for instance had a thread where he was stalking a user and constantly posting links to every thread he made and kept bumping it and adding more and they deleted his thread because that was an extreme case of a user REALLY blatantly breaking the rules and stalking people.

Steam Support sometimes moderates individual game hubs when the developers don't want to moderate them themselves. It sounds like it's not the same group that responds to tickets, which is where it gets confusing.

Most of my bans nowadays say "you have been banned by a member of Steam Support". Then I go to Steam support, open a ticket and the ban usually gets overturned for being excessive or not making sense.

[Brian9824]

Zoopy の投稿を引用：

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

Support doesn't primarily punish people, they reverse mistakes from moderation, but its VERY rare for support to engage in actual moderation. I did report one person to support who for instance had a thread where he was stalking a user and constantly posting links to every thread he made and kept bumping it and adding more and they deleted his thread because that was an extreme case of a user REALLY blatantly breaking the rules and stalking people.

Steam Support sometimes moderates individual game hubs when the developers don't want to moderate them themselves. It sounds like it's not the same group that responds to tickets, which is where it gets confusing.

Most of my bans nowadays say "you have been banned by a member of Steam Support". Then I go to Steam support, open a ticket and the ban usually gets overturned for being excessive or not making sense.

AFAIK that is MODERATION that moderates the game hubs, not support. A lot of the confusion around that though is when moderation takes action it says "notification from a member of Steam Support " when its really moderation. The issue is Steam doesn't differentiate between the two there, so people think its someone in support which is a totally different company then the moderators.

[Tito Shivan]

Zoopy の投稿を引用：

Most of my bans nowadays say "you have been banned by a member of Steam Support".

The paid mod accounts have always had the "Steam Support" level of status. They're not support staff though.
(They're also the guys dealing with your ban-related support tickets, BTW)

[craig234]

There are times game 'moderators' do it badly.

I've run into it a couple times. One is that on Overwatch, there were a number of 'bad behavior' players who would click 'report', and cause an automated system ban.

That led to a permanent ban, and Blizzard support - where you're supposed to be able to have a person correct that - was terrible, and did not.

I went from a longtime Blizzard supporter to nearly boycotting them for it.

The other was one game forum here on Steam, which I'd mention for them to have a little accountability, but it would probably just be publicity for them, so maybe not.

[AROCK!!!]

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

Not when you consider the large amount of bans being overturned and deleted posts/threads being reinstated by STEAM support.

Consider it's largely the same group of people the ones issuing the bans and overturning them when a support ticket is made.

Which makes the situation more ridiculous and supports what I and others have been saying about the broken moderation.