My friends can no longer check their mailboxes or talk to me. This is dumb, they are reporting everyone rn.
If your friends are receiving penalties beyond a squelch that is temporary. If they are getting silenced or suspended, that is a penalty handed out after reports are reviewed by an actual person, and it’s not automated. Make sure you and your friends are reviewing the rules and social contract you agreed to for access to the service.
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How is it being abused? If they are squelched (temporary action) or silenced (reports looked over and a GM decides the sanction should be applied), then they need to appeal if they feel it was incorrectly done.
People can report all the day long, but if they weren’t breaking any rules, outside of the temporary squelch, nothing would happen to them or their accounts, no matter how many reports were received.
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No, he is.
When you conflate a squelch with a suspension or a ban - that’s comparing apples to lasagna.
–Orlyia
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I wouldn’t put too much stock on that. In some cases, a ton of reports coming in all at once can result in a disconnect. We’ve seen in the past that someone is disconnected when a squelch is applied. The email the YouTuber got was the result of the investigation that took place after hundreds of reports were sent in all at once.
Silences are NOT automated. The ONLY thing that is automated is the squelch that’s applied in situations exactly like this. The fact it seemed like the email came in shortly after the disconnection is just pure coincidence.
Seriously, people really need to stop listening to YouTubers and streamers as they will twist the truth to rile up the community.
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easily, it happened all the time in classic and TBC. RMT farming guilds would mass report a player leading to a suspension if they had competition in a zone, or if you were an opposite faction killing those same “Bot” farmers. it only takes 15-20 people to get your account suspended, until you Appeal it then it takes days for a GM to respond to you.
You can test this yourself, form a raid have everyone report you, and youll get a suspension or silence. The only time an actual person reviews the actions against your account is when you go to appeal it.
40 people.
Doesn’t matter, the results are the same. There were many reports in a very short timespan, which brought it to Blizzard’s attention much quicker. This is also abuse of the reporting system, which can result in penalties not only for the people involved, but for the streamer/YouTuber that started it.
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It sounds like your friend was squelched, not banned/suspended. The squelch system is automated to help get to potential bad actors as quickly as possible, usually gold advertisers and the like that tend to negatively impact the game, but can apply to other potential chat violations.
If your friend believes that they were squelched in error they’ll want to submit an appeal.
4 Likes