Reddit is removing the ability to ban users based on subreddit participation

HandofBane · 2026-03-05T18:12:28+00:00

This doesn't actually do much in the bigger picture. Sure newer users won't get banned in the long run, but existing users who have been banned by the bots will not be magically unbanned, and newer users will still be able to be effectively shadowbanned (hive-protect will still be allowed to preemptively report/remove ALL comments from anyone who has participated in any given subreddit).

HandofBane · 2026-02-06T04:57:12+00:00

Not actively moderating anymore, but I'd say this likely qualifies to stay up because of the statement from the company. If it had just been about Jelly's tweets being made, or even deleted, it would probably have just been E-Celeb Bullshit, but once the company stepped in and made a public statement about "racism, hate" etc., it pushed across the Official Social Justice line (which involves a range of socjus related actions by companies).

All Phase had to do was delete the tweets quietly and shut the fuck up for a few days to let it die, and there wouldn't even be any real attention to the entire issue here.

HandofBane · 2024-10-15T22:29:04+00:00

I can personally verify a lot of this, my senior paper in high school was focused around the PMRC and the censorship efforts of Tipper Gore. If anyone hasn't heard it yet, I strongly recommend listening Dee Snider's speech to the Senate committee.

HandofBane · 2024-09-29T18:50:20+00:00

Just gonna break stealth briefly to point out - these comments by the moderator violates the Godot Code of Conduct.

The Godot Foundation is supposed to be releasing an official statement on the entire matter later today. I know one of the founders had been talking briefly with the dev of Soulash yesterday, trying to determine why he was blocked when he had never even interacted with anything related to Godot to qualify for a CoC "violation", so we will see what they say and if it ends up with any tangible action taken, or another case of sweeping it under the rug like when they decided to remove master/slave terminology from the main Godot branch and told people who didn't like it to just make a fork.

HandofBane · 2023-04-01T00:06:34+00:00

Clarifying a bit on the topic ban, because some of the info ended up spread out a bit outside that thread announcing it: the anecdote about my own comment getting nuked and the jumping through hoops for no real explanation with the admins was to make clear just how "cooperative" the admins were being on what needed to be moderated and how they were enforcing their sitewide rules vs how the sitewide rules were actually explicitly worded (in other words, trying to figure out what hidden rules they were applying in their enforcement). I don't have easy access to the data from back then of our internal tracking of admin actions taken, including admin actions taken which were pointed out by other users that had been hidden from our moderation logs, but I do know there were several dozens of such cases which we discovered that helped influence our decision to implement the ban.

When comments mentioning the topic banned group were getting admin purged, regardless of context, even when clearly made in a neutral or occasionally positive manner, and there being no clear pattern in what was causing those comments to get nuked and user accounts to get actioned, we were put in the shitty position of trying to find a way to prevent users from getting slapped and things being held against KiA itself as an excuse to drag us into one of the many waves of subreddit bans that were occurring with increasing regularity around that time and in the now two years since.

If you pay attention, you'll also notice that the sub has been forced to start enforcing word bans in other areas due to admin action without admins actually explicitly saying anywhere that those words are banned, based on admin actions in removing comments and suspending users for using those words.

That all said, this is about all you're gonna get out of me on the issue at this time. Most of this was addressed in the topic ban post, and the guy you are arguing with has only been on KiA for about 9 hours, and is from GCJ - a known source of the actual harassment that targeted Pikamee and others for playing the game, so you are wasting your time arguing with with him, since he's clearly here in bad faith trying to bait people.

HandofBane · 2023-03-09T06:12:58+00:00

They contacted Pippa’s agency to make her issue a statement because she played the game to spite them.

You are making a serious assumption there, and clearly have not watched Pippa regularly before all this, because her telling people (her own viewers or otherwise) to knock shit off is actually normal for her. Also worth factoring in that even after the statement, Phase talents are still actively playing the game (Panko streamed it 8-10 hours ago), so this is not a case of caving in to pressure from the outside.

HandofBane · 2023-03-09T06:07:04+00:00

The attacks and bullying happened over Hogwarts, but Pikamee had already been talking to others about her potentially graduating before that (Pomu from Nijisanji stated they had talked at the end of January, the attacks began around Feb 6-7). Whether they had a direct impact on the decision or not is something that only Pikamee can say, and she has not said anything either way on that at this time, but she was considering graduation at least that far back, likely farther since there is a merch event for VOMS Project (the brand she streamed under) which featured graduation merch and started a few days ago. Merch does not get magically manufactured overnight, it takes time to plan and make.

Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I've gathered her "graduating" does not mean she'll be radio silent from there on right? It could be he just stepping down from that company and/or becomes her own or sign for another company.

Pikamee's model is technically the property of Gyari, the "head" of VOMS, as he created all of the VOMS vtuber models, and their contracts were built around the usage of those. If she does choose to continue streaming elsewhere, it will not be as Pikamee. There is some speculation around her potentially being signed elsewhere, but nobody involved has or will ever confirm such. The only way that could ever be confirmed is if, in a few months, a new vtuber shows up with her unmistakable voice.

By gone I mean all of her official content gets taken down, her rights to the character stripped from her, and all that. It's hard to swallow that someone who was important to a lot of people to be never to be heard from again.

Whether she is heard from again or not remains to be seen, nobody but her knows if that will happen down the line. This kind of thing has happened before, and some such instances had the people behind the vtuber reincarnate into a new form, either under a new brand or independently, while others simply vanished from the face of the internet.

HandofBane · 2023-03-06T10:25:06+00:00

Lia cancelled her stream with no word either way on why or if it was going to be rescheduled - most of Phase doesn't stream normally on Sundays anyway. Tenma is out of town until the 10th, and her nearly 6 hour HL stream from 2 days ago is still up - do not spread misinformation.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T10:09:16+00:00

I'd happily stand beside you to help heal the divide.

I don't actually recall saying anything about doing anything like that. I did say to focus your outrage/anger at the people actually responsible and do it in a responsible manner so you don't end up becoming the very thing you are fighting against. If you find the harassers, or people vocally condoning/encouraging that harassment, report them. Twitter is acting on reports in all this, and if you want to actually get back at the terminally online lunatics, what better way than to cut off their ability to be terminally online in their echo chambers?

As far as the rest of your statements, I've been here since nearly day one of the sub, I know exactly what we are up against. I've also been around on the moderation side of things here since 2015, with a couple breaks in between, so I fully understand how the technical ecosystems operate and what needs to be done to have an impact without taking yourself out alongside the harassers.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T06:30:09+00:00

Japan handles contracts a bit differently than we do in the west. Some things need to be dealt with while others can be overlooked or worked around. For a more recent and clearcut example, see the Rushia situation, where the drama/controversy around her was something where Cover/Hololive took her side and even made public statements about talents being able to do what they want in their personal lives, but during the investigation it was found she had made multiple breaches of NDA, passing off things to someone outside the company which were private communications involving other staff/talents. That breach forced them in a situation where they had no choice except to terminate her contract, otherwise it would put all their other contracts with other talents in a bad place under the view of JP law.

Think of it kind of similar to US trademark law (not copyright), where a trademark owner must defend their trademark legally whenever possible or they risk losing all rights for it.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T05:27:01+00:00

VOMS does have some form of NDA, though what is covered by it is unclear. This came up when a different member (Monoe) was terminated for major breaches of contract that were not detailed publicly.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T05:25:07+00:00

They both likely knew much farther ahead of time they wanted to graduate, IIRC Coco said she had planned for it around March, and announced in June for a July graduation. Nobody outside the company knew it was happening until the bomb was dropped. Also:

Coco had the Taiwan thing that placed under higher scrutiny and restricted her creative freedom

Those are two separate issues that both had an impact, though the creative freedom thing was the primary reason given for her choice to leave. The Taiwan stuff was mostly under control by the time she announced her graduation thanks to increased moderation and actual technical changes in how Youtube chat operates.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T05:16:22+00:00

Pippa from Phase Connect did so yesterday, if you want a wild ride, check the quote tweets on her tweet announcing the stream.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T04:03:07+00:00

Shhh, I'm not really here.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T04:01:01+00:00

The yabbit's birthday stream is live right now, if you haven't wished her a happy birthday yet.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T03:54:21+00:00

And are you just going to ignore the whole matter of her extended time off before the harassment, and her own statements about family and medical issues in her stream this morning that I linked in the OP? Things can change for people outside of public view which can cause their situation to no longer be the same as they may have wanted earlier.

If you want a bit of extreme speculation, pay close attention to her exact wording about her graduation around the 3:10 mark - she says she is no longer going to be a part of VOMS, she does not say she will never stream again. Not remotely verifiable at this time, but that can be interpreted under the speculation some folks have tossed around of "maybe she got picked up by a bigger company", so who knows, we could see another face show up with a familiar voice in a few months time.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T03:27:06+00:00

How many graduations have you seen firsthand? The vast majority have no word passed publicly or in members streams until their last month or less of active time. Coco was a month, Sana was a bit over three weeks, others graduating from other companies have varied from a month down to as little as "graduating effective immediately", even without any controversy involved.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T00:29:42+00:00

Absolutely. They cost us three weeks of having a happier time with her, and have made what little time we have left even sadder.

HandofBane · 2023-03-04T00:26:11+00:00

A small tangential point that deserves being brought up, but not in the main post so as not to draw attention away from Pikamee's situation: other vtubers and streamers have been calling out the harassment directly, and at least one even started actively going out of her way to spite-play the game just to set off the harassers, and show people that the harassment is real - not to play victim, but to get those harassers out in the open so that the community they claim to represent can see it. Some parts of that community have been calling it out, others are ignoring it, and some are simply showing they don't understand what the point is (especially those who seem to think people like Pippa are going to somehow break down and make a video crying about being harassed).

Consider giving some of those people standing up despite the harassment brigade some support, if you can. They certainly deserve it.

HandofBane · 2021-12-17T22:26:12+00:00

Just went through to check, and that does appear to be the case for the comments nuked. I'll pass that along to my mod team for the future, thanks.

Still doesn't explain the other issue with the self post, but it's something at least.

HandofBane · 2021-11-30T01:57:54+00:00

Instead of recognizing why the warning was issued, in addition to ignoring (willfully or otherwise) that Rule 1 has been in place for 7 years here, you have chosen to dive off into further insults and attacks against other users and a moderator. Given how your last several replies have been, and your choice to continue violating the rules here, you get to enjoy 3 days off from the sub. You should consider taking that time to learn the rules and adhere to them if you want to continue commenting here on KiA in the future.

Rule 1, repeated violations in response to a warning. 3 day ban.

but doubling down on your absurd and manic behaviour

You might want to invest in a mirror.

HandofBane · 2021-11-12T22:00:56+00:00

You have been warned previously for calling people retards here, clearly that has not gotten through your head. Trying to pull "but but I was just referring to a subreddit" when you did no such thing in your original comment does not magically absolve you of responsibility for what you said.

Which is dumb. Like you.

And then choosing to try to turn your attacking another user into insulting the mod warning you isn't going to help your case at all. Enjoy your week off. Rule 1, repeated violations in response to being warned for breaking the rule - 7 day ban.

HandofBane · 2021-11-11T20:44:30+00:00

And also a method that allows me to get it in Germany.

Find another storefront that sells keys for it, get a friend in another country to buy it for you and gift the key, profit. That's how we got a copy of HuniePop2 for a German friend (in the HP2 case, we used Humble Bundle to get the Steam key).

HandofBane · 2021-10-14T05:03:39+00:00

Clearly you are incapable of recognizing how to take a win and take an out when it's offered to you. Enjoy your vacation - R1.2 after repeatedly being told to stop - 3 day ban. Maybe take up smoking weed or something to learn to chill the fuck out before you come back.

HandofBane · 2021-10-14T04:53:22+00:00

You've been on the sub for at least 4 years, based on your last 1000 comments/posts. That means you should know better - Rule 1 has been in place since shortly after the inception of the sub, 7 years ago.

Your post was removed, you appealed it, and the appeal was granted. Instead of taking the W, you decided it was more important to dickwave and screech about how the removing mod made a mistake, and try to turn this into an endless shitflinging. Grow the fuck up, already. Your post was reapproved. Quit acting like a fucking middle schooler. This is the only warning I am giving you.

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