Hidden Policy banning users if they Upvote a Review.

[Providence 777]

I was urged by Steam Support to make a thread about this issue:
For those of you who might not be aware, Steam has a hidden policy where you can be banned for voting on a user review for a game.

The most recent incident of this happened just last month of this year:
https://www.pcgamer.com/over-2400-steam-users-had-their-accounts-restricted-for-marking-a-negative-review-as-helpful/

Yes you read that right, you are held accountable for the content of other users, if you thought a review was helpful, you can be banned for that. This policy is not communicated to users. And before you brush this off as a one time anomaly, this actually isn't the first time this has happened.

This happened in October 2021:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/tsH0T/account-ban-for-liking-a-review-on-steam-got-a-response-from-support

Again in August 2022:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/wmqtiz/getting_a_ban_for_upvoting_deleted_content/

And once more in November 2022:
https://community.chrono.gg/t/steam-account-alert/25422

For the sake of argument, lets pretend that it's not unethical to have a hidden policy that will ban users for pressing a button in the UI they encourage you to press, and retroactively ban you years later when they suddenly decide that user content violates their guidelines.

Ok, fine, Valve's castle Valve's rules, fine, just don't ever mark any review as being helpful, and you won't get banned. And I'll go back and remove all my past upvotes, But there's just one problem...

There is no mechanism for users to remove their past votes

This is a big issue, every single review you've interacted with, is a ticking time bomb that could go off at any point and get you banned. And as demonstrated with the most recent incident of this, what you upvoted doesn't have to break any of Valve's vague rules in their Community Guidelines, it can in fact, be perfectly adherent to Valve's rules.

Also remember, that reviews can be edited at any point, if someone's account gets stolen, and the reviews get changed to promote some Crypto scam retroactively, you're not notified that the review was changed, and you're still on the hook for upvoting it, and valve will ban you for that.

As users, we have no way to defend against this exploit, Steam allows us no mechanism to remove our votes, and we can be punished at any point for a review we found helpful YEARS ago. Is this not a type of entrapment? This is on par with steam's current policy of banning users for discussing political, religious, or adult topics, in game hubs where the featured game's content is ABOUT politics, religion, or adult themes.

You can be banned for discussing a games content, in it's own hub, or banned for finding a game review to be helpful. What purpose do these features serve if they're functionally just bait to get users banned?

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Yeah, most of us know.

Theyre only banned from voting on things as far as I know, and it has a timer.

[Providence 777]

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Yeah, most of us know.

Theyre only banned from voting on things as far as I know, and it has a timer.

Depends on the user, if you've already gotten banned by a dev who was trying to erase criticisms of their game, that ban is stacked on your account, and a review ban can escalate to a more serious ban.

There were a number of users who had got a steam wide community ban from this incident.

Remember that a lot of us have very old accounts that are over 10 years old, any bans that happened in those early days are still referenced and used against your account for future bans no matter how minor.

[davidb11]

Not a good look to completely misunderstand why this happens.
Also, a review ban cannot ever increase the power of a ban, nor can it cause a community ban.
EVER.

They are completely seperated.

[Mailer]

So join the previous thread on this: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/6756004301611279059/

The system blanket restricts every account involved with upvoting a review because users repeatedly get their accounts stolen, allowing malicious actors to direct multiple compromised accounts to rate on any review they want.

With a 30-day restriction to voting this abuse cannot be repeated as often, and it is the mildest of inconvenience towards any legitimate users thinking the review was legitimate enough to be voted on before it got removed.

Why you are comparing this to outright getting banned in game hubs or discussion forums makes no sense whatsoever, since the upvoting restriction is not even remotely comparable to that.

It has about the same repercussions as a pat on the back does on you. Absolutely nothing.
Perfect for a flamboyant news story, but not even worth riling anyone up about.

[Crashed]

Don't upvote meme, spam, or otherwise abusive reviews and your likelihood of getting banned will be a lot lower.

[Providence 777]

Originally posted by davidb11:

Not a good look to completely misunderstand why this happens.
Also, a review ban cannot ever increase the power of a ban, nor can it cause a community ban.
EVER.

They are completely seperated.

they are not, users have had to reach out to steam to have their community bans overturned over this incident.

please don't come in here and cause confusion, I have friends who were affected by this, and there were users who legit couldn't even post to talk about this topic due to an abrupt community ban. After valve resolved this for those users, they could finally post in the relevant forum thread to discuss their experience.

[Providence 777]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Don't upvote meme, spam, or otherwise abusive reviews and your likelihood of getting banned will be a lot lower.

I wasn't banned over this.

Read the articles, users were banned for something that didn't break any rules, as valve admitted.
This wasn't user error, this was Steam Support and moderator error, which is far more frequent than people care to admit.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by Providence 777:

Originally posted by Crashed:

Don't upvote meme, spam, or otherwise abusive reviews and your likelihood of getting banned will be a lot lower.

I wasn't banned over this.

Read the articles, users were banned for something that didn't break any rules,as valve admitted.
This wasn't user error, this was Steam Support and moderator error, which is far more frequent than people care to admit.

I'm just saying for anyone who is afraid of getting banned, to reduce the likelihood.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Banning for up-voting is a separate ban and requires a separate action then simply banning the review, though it is done en-mass.

It is intended to stop up-voting by bots, typically for reviews that were used to advertising scam and phishing sites.

I have never heard, nor seen, it cause a community ban. It simply prevented users from up-voting, for a period of time, and sent a warning to the user(s).

[Providence 777]

Originally posted by Mailer:

So join the previous thread on this: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/6756004301611279059/

No, I was asked by Steam Support to make a thread here about this when I informed them of the problem that we can't remove our past votes.

If they want a policy where they'll ban users for pressing a button on their hub, while that might be absurd policy, and unfair, it doesn't become outright unethical until you disallow users from removing their past upvotes to avoid getting banned the next time they have another error and mass ban people.

Originally posted by Mailer:

The system blanket restricts every account involved with upvoting a review because users repeatedly get their accounts stolen, allowing malicious actors to direct multiple compromised accounts to rate on any review they want.

With a 30-day restriction to voting this abuse cannot be repeated as often, and it is the mildest of inconvenience towards any legitimate users thinking the review was legitimate enough to be voted on before it got removed.

I understand the logic, but it's still unethical to punish users in any way over this, literally no other service does this.

Originally posted by Mailer:

Why you are comparing this to outright getting banned in game hubs or discussion forums makes no sense whatsoever, since the upvoting restriction is not even remotely comparable.

It has about the same repercussions as a pat on the back does on you. Absolutely nothing.
Perfect for a flamboyant news story, but not even worth riling anyone up about.

Because bans escalate, and add up leading worse bans in the future, and this was already experienced by a number of users when this happened, it's silly to ignore what happened.

Review bans are still community related conduct, and contribute to your ban history.

[Providence 777]

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

Banning for up-voting is a separate ban and requires a separate action then simply banning the review, though it is done en-mass.

It is intended to stop up-voting by bots, typically for reviews that were used to advertising scam and phishing sites.

I have never heard, nor seen, it cause a community ban. It simply prevented users from up-voting, for a period of time, and sent a warning to the user(s).

then read through the article and follow up with the posts that lead to the various threads of users affected by this.

This has even happened to a youtuber before this became a bigger incident.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Providence 777:

then read through the article and follow up with the posts that lead to the various threads of users affected by this.

This has even happened to a youtuber before this became a bigger incident.

I have first hand experience with the system and how it works. Spent over 8 years as a volunteer global moderator here, on Steam.

Sounds like the issue is more then what is being said. Could be users having it happen multiple times over a short period of time, may cause an automated ban. Something that may happen if an account is compromised and was used to up-vote many scam/phishing reviews.

Could also have been a separate reason for the community bans that simply happened around the same time.

[Providence 777]

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

I have first hand experience with the system and how it works. Spent over 8 years as a volunteer global moderator here, on Steam.

Sounds like the issue is more then what is being said. Could be users having it happen multiple times over a short period of time, may cause an automated ban. Something that may happen if an account is compromised and was used to up-vote many scam/phishing reviews.

Could also have been a separate reason for the community bans that simply happened around the same time.

The incident that affected the most people took place when a user made a review criticizing a game's anti-cheat for being invasive and staying on your hard drive operating sending telemetry even after uninstalling the game.

the review was marked as helpful by a few thousand people, but someone reported it for "scam" or something, and valve uncritically took that report at face value, didn't read the review properly, and banned the author of the review, and banned everyone that upvoted it. And users were disproportionately affected by this ban, not everyone got the same ban over this incident because every user had different account standing at the time of the ban.

[Aachen]

Originally posted by Providence 777:

…. the review was marked as helpful by a few thousand people, but someone reported it for "scam" or something, and valve uncritically took that report at face value, didn't read the review properly, and banned the author of the review, and banned everyone that upvoted it. And users were disproportionately affected by this ban, not everyone got the same ban over this incident because every user had different account standing at the time of the ban.

Is this meant to be a paraphrase of that first pcgamer article you linked in the OP?

[davidb11]

Sorry, but it is impossible to claim that this ban from upvoting reviews causes a community ban.

THere is zero evidence of that, and you are literally the first person ever to claim otherwise.
And no, your "Friends." Are not evidence.

The review ban is AUTOMATIC.
It cannot be triggered by humans.

IT is done instantly when they determine that the review is a bad one.