[Fusion]

So a few days ago, my main Discord account (username fusion.blaster) was permabanned due to an inactive server I was in getting mass reported. I immediately began panicking given how many points of contact and servers I had on it (proof of getting permaed below).



Fortunately, about 5 years ago, the first time my account was ever suspended, I had made a backup account (made before the change to usernames from numbers) and I had joined the HLP server with it so I would know for a fact I'd still have access to the Discord. Logged back in, and HLP was one of the few servers I still had. I began rebuilding all the points of contact I'd lost, and got back into the swing of things on the Discord. Multiple people can verify I reached out to them, clarified what happened, and confirmed I was me, not a hacker or scammer trying to phish for information.

Initially I was able to see the general channels, which I shouldn't be able to see given members of the Discord mod team prohibited me from having access to after a spat over politics. A few days later the role to prevent me from having access is back on my account - no harm no foul, apparently. Few days pass, everything's good. I comment on a few FS related things, the only things I can talk about on the server due to the GC restriction. I wake up this morning, and see a DM from a friend on the HLP server asking me what I'd done. I ask him what he means by that, and he sends me this:



Now I haven't evaded any bans on the HLP Discord, forums, or what have you, so respectfully, what the hell was I banned for? I spent the past 2 weeks getting the backup account reactivated and working again, including getting back to work on campaign development and INF updates, just to wake up to the fact my backup account's been banned from a server it was in for literal years for doing nothing? As the subject of the thread says, what gives? No chance to explain anything, no chance to even defend myself from any accusations, just BOOM, booted out of the server over the claim I "ban evaded." I already went through this nonsense once before, so what do I have to do and who do I have to talk to now to get this ridiculous ban revoked and be able to reengage with the rest of the community?

[Nyctaeus]

We chatted a lot with Fusion about this matter in private enviroment and I believe the reasoning for this ban is invalid.

Mostly because the reasoning of Discord general moderation is completely invalid. Fusion claims to be inactive on the aformentioned server for years and given years of fruitful, cooperative and honest years of modding activities and social contact with him, I have zero reasons to disbelieve his claims. Aside engaging too lively in political conversations, I remember no acts of misbehaviour from Fusion over the years.

Looks like Fusion got simply backlashed by typical corporate-style damage control - bans given blindly, without much insight into actual matter, whatever to shake of the rust from them as fast as quickly as possible. Aside typical corporate reasoning, such behaviour is also driven by posible scope of the matter, involving hundreds of users... And corporate figures aren't known from subtlety.

If HLP Discord ban of Fusion's alt is just a subsequent actions of general Discord moderation, which is likely to be lacking real validity for aformentioned reasons, I appeal to Admin and Mod crew to reconsider their stance. Especially given the fact, that no attempt to contact Fusion have been made, therefore rendering this case completely nontransparent for the community and contradictory to current moderation standards.

If there are other reasons to for this ban other then "ban evasion" for a ban that should've never happened [Discord-imposed ban on Fusion's main account], I and other community members would like to know them.

[karajorma]

Not the final word on the matter but since I'm too busy to handle the issue personally, here's a quick summary of the moderator position on this.

Fusion - who has previously engaged in holocaust denial offsite -  was banned from engaging in and viewing offtopic discussion channels due to his use of racially charged combative language, incuding the use of a yiddish term "shabbos goyim"  in a way commonly associated with antisemitic conspiracy theories about jewish puppetry to explicitly state that israel was controlling the evangelical right. This language greatly upset jewish members of our community.

In the 8 months since Fusion was banned from viewing offtopic discussions, at no point was the existence of his alt account mentioned to moderators, despite channels he was banned from viewing being clearly visible in the sidebar. If Fusion was acting in good faith, he would have brought up this moderation oversight with us.

After internal discussion on the discord moderation channel, we decided that Fusion's pattern of pushing the limits of acceptable behaviour was too much and agreed to ban him.

[Fusion]

Not the final word on the matter but since I'm too busy to handle the issue personally, here's a quick summary of the moderator position on this.

Fusion - who has previously engaged in holocaust denial offsite -  was banned from engaging in and viewing offtopic discussion channels due to his use of racially charged combative language, incuding the use of a yiddish term "shabbos goyim"  in a way commonly associated with antisemitic conspiracy theories about jewish puppetry to explicitly state that israel was controlling the evangelical right. This language greatly upset jewish members of our community.

In the 8 months since Fusion was banned from viewing offtopic discussions, at no point was the existence of his alt account mentioned to moderators, despite channels he was banned from viewing being clearly visible in the sidebar. If Fusion was acting in good faith, he would have brought up this moderation oversight with us.

After internal discussion on the discord moderation channel, we decided that Fusion's pattern of pushing the limits of acceptable behaviour was too much and agreed to ban him.

My backup account was made over half a decade ago(its username reflects this given I never logged in to update it after Discord shifted from numbers to names). When I attempted to log into it for the first time in years(since March 27th of 2020, per my old DMs), I had to reset the account’s password and add 2FA. Immediately after my old account was banned, it had actually been so long that I thought I would have to make a brand new account from scratch because I was worried I’d forgotten the email I used for it and its password - thankfully not or rebuilding would be a hell of a lot harder. Put simply, I genuinely never thought about it because I never thought I’d need the account.

If this was an issue, I’m genuinely sorry I didn’t bring it up to members of the Discord’s admin team. Being completely honest, after past things I try my best to keep interactions with staff to an absolute minimum because I don’t want to cause trouble - the minimal posts on the Discord on my old account over the last few months and minimal interaction showcased that. I believe the only Discord staff member that has the account friended is chief1983, who didn’t ask any questions or say anything to me when I sent him a friend request two weeks ago after getting back on the account - shiv and Goober were the only two HLP people I sent friend requests to after getting back online that asked for some sort of verification that I was who I was and not a scammer. Honestly I don’t remember if I’ve said anything to any member of the admin team for months since the restriction was put on my account in the first place.

The backup account had been a member of the HLP servers for years prior to this and was visible in the server user list. It stands to reason that the admin team on the Discord knew it existed and presumably could still see it in the “offline users” list in the channels in question after the GC ban. If the fact the restriction role wasn’t applied to that account too 8 months ago was an issue, then again, I’m genuinely sorry I didn’t bring it up then, but I frankly never expected I would ever have to use the backup, hence why the last login was over half a decade ago.

I’ve certainly acted in good faith after managing to log back into the account, letting people who asked me know that my prior account was nuked and I was in fact me and not a hacker. I did my best to stay within the restriction’s parameters after the nuke to the best of my knowledge. I honestly thought that after the restriction role was added to the account a few days ago, that was it - status quo was returned, and everything goes on as normal. It honestly feels very bad faith to have gotten the role, carried on normally with no discussion or questions raised to me about the account for multiple days by anyone, then giving me a ban in the middle of the night that I wake up to along with a flurry of inquiring DMs. If this had been an issue that had been raised by a member of the discord staff when I relogged into the account, I would gladly have apologized then for having not brought it up and not made any fuss about the restriction being put on it - which I did not complain about after it was added to said account a few days prior.

If you’d like me to apologize for having not brought it up eight months ago, then for a third time, I again am sincerely sorry I didn’t since it would mean there wouldn’t be any issues today. I’ve followed the server rules, I’ve been a positive source of engagement with both fellow team members and players of the various campaigns I’ve helped and am helping work on(including with Jewish members of the community), and I would like to continue being a constructive part of the HLP community on its most active platform for the foreseeable future, now that I have a working account again and most things are recovered.

[Nyctaeus]

Not the final word on the matter but since I'm too busy to handle the issue personally, here's a quick summary of the moderator position on this.

Fusion - who has previously engaged in holocaust denial offsite -  was banned from engaging in and viewing offtopic discussion channels due to his use of racially charged combative language, incuding the use of a yiddish term "shabbos goyim"  in a way commonly associated with antisemitic conspiracy theories about jewish puppetry to explicitly state that israel was controlling the evangelical right. This language greatly upset jewish members of our community.

The decision to mute him from gendics is just and it's not what I question. Fusion proved that the's unable to restrain himself to the point of the overall discussion not degrading, so him being excluded from gendisc feels like appropriate way of punishing.

In the 8 months since Fusion was banned from viewing offtopic discussions, at no point was the existence of his alt account mentioned to moderators, despite channels he was banned from viewing being clearly visible in the sidebar. If Fusion was acting in good faith, he would have brought up this moderation oversight with us.

I disagree exactly here with the judgment of Fusion's behaviour done by moderation crew. Fusion often gets lost without clearly stated instructions and he's not not doing that guided by ill intent. Years of working with Fusion at multiple projects lead me to conclusion, that Fusion is psychologically not very intuitive and his action does not defaults to "magically right" when he's confused. I and other projects members had to guide him at his tasks multiple times because he was lacking the sense to figure out things by himself. It doesn't mean that the final quality of his work was lacking. It was often very satisfying.

This is backed by the fact, that he decided to approach the matter here in very confused tone, which I believe to be authentic. Fusion sometimes fail to comprehend nuance of the situation, but I have zero basis to assume, that his post is meant to mislead, manipulate or lie to anybody. He's just... Not very good at reading between the lines.

With no display of anykind of other pathological behavioral patterns [other then his politics stuff], moderation stance is contradictory with the rest of Fusion's behaviour, which is in like 95% non-offensive in all the other circumstances.

I do not feel like I'm going defensive towards Fusion, but I think the moderation stance is - with all due respect - not entirely objective and is short in terms of insight into person's psychology. I do not wish to add another "moderation is bad" voice to the pile. I do however want to put a highlight on a fact, that more work is possibly needed in this case, as it feels clouded and rushed.

After internal discussion on the discord moderation channel, we decided that Fusion's pattern of pushing the limits of acceptable behaviour was too much and agreed to ban him.

And that decision was made without any attempt to contact Fusion to at least notify him about the situation, nor even maturely and openly discuss how things really look like. Granted, Fusion could also approach the moderation crew by himself, but he told me today that he noticed a mute on gendisc channels also on his alt, so he assumed that no further action is needed. That is the default way he psychologically works, but I agree that this was also indeed his mistake... And hopefully a lesson for him how the information inertia works.

I see that both sides didn't act correctly: Fusion, by neglectfully assuming that no further actions are needed, Moderation - by half-blindly imposing a hard ban without any attempts of contact to clarify the situation and follow their own policy of transparency.

It's pointless to point the fingers at this point, as it's not too late to continue this matter and talk. I think it's worth it, because we still can avoid another drama that will plague the backstage of the community for months. Fusion has his flaws, but he's not High Max nor Mascott. I know the guy for years and while I don't consider him my greatest friend, I know he's definitely not evil.

[Grizzly]

I should mention here that ban evasion is explicitly prohibited by discord's own community guidelines. By using a different account after one of your own accounts has been permabanned, you are violating Discord's own rules.

Also, eight violations is seriously impressive, but not in a good way.

[Mito [PL]]

You could also mention about collective punishment being at least highly frowned upon in what we consider a fair society. Discord mass bans by association triggered by people having a community turf war are widely known by now... I see no moral or logical reason (other than rules lawyering) for punishing Fusion for the so-called "ban evasion" in this situation.

He came back with another account, got his permissions reestablished as they were by the staff, and that should be the end of it.


Speaking of, since I don't want to go around creating threads about it - hey guys, I'd like to make a ban appeal too. I've got the lot of my issues fixed up by now and a bunch of interesting stories to tell. I've asked qaz about it some time ago and he's been too busy to handle it.

[Grizzly]

My point is that Discord doesn't want anyone to create new accounts after the old one has been banned. So Fusion is at best just setting himself up to get banned from discord again. That's regardless of what HLP moderation decides in this case.

Also, hi!

[Fusion]

My point is that Discord doesn't want anyone to create new accounts after the old one has been banned. So Fusion is at best just setting himself up to get banned from discord again. That's regardless of what HLP moderation decides in this case.

At the time my first ever Discord account was banned, which was about a year or more before the initial instance of me being banned from HLP half a decade ago, no one said anything about the fact I’d made a new account to rejoin HLP, or implied Discord would ban me again. The backup account I have now was actually made specifically so if that account was ever banned, I would still be able to retain my connections to friends and servers, some of whom I only have a line to through the platform. Unfortunately I didn’t login to it for about half a decade so I lost about 80% of my servers and friends from the other account. Per my posts in the original thread where I appealed my first ban, I certainly didn’t hide that the account I was using was new or that my prior one had been banned by Discord. For six years, nothing happened to that account, so respectfully, to bring that up feels very disingenuous regarding the circumstances of what’s happened.

If anyone’s curious regarding the context of the account’s nuking, doctorate student friend of mine apparently got in an argument with someone who sent his goon squad to mass report the guy’s server. Nuked it, my account, his account, and a good number of his friends’ accounts. He invited me to the server years back because he’d made it and it was apparently where his IRL friends hung out on Discord.

Mito pretty much hit the hammer on the head on what happened. I saw this happen about a decade ago with a split on a political server - each of the groups basically destroyed each others’ servers and accounts thrice over. Difference between now and then was only the server owner got banned when a server got nuked, not a ban or suspension for all members, so people would reorganize in backups. Actually told my friend I wasn’t interested in joining any replacement server he made because I didn’t want to deal with any drama again on that end - I have a lot to do now(job, life, etc) and don’t have time to deal with server wars.

[shiv]

I can basically sign under what Nyctaeus said here (two sides made their mistakes):

I see that both sides didn't act correctly: Fusion, by neglectfully assuming that no further actions are needed, Moderation - by half-blindly imposing a hard ban without any attempts of contact to clarify the situation and follow their own policy of transparency.

It's pointless to point the fingers at this point, as it's not too late to continue this matter and talk. I think it's worth it, because we still can avoid another drama that will plague the backstage of the community for months. Fusion has his flaws, but he's not High Max nor Mascott. I know the guy for years and while I don't consider him my greatest friend, I know he's definitely not evil.

I deliberately keep the HLP Discord general/non-FreeSpace channels muted because I'm here to talk about FreeSpace, so I obviously didn't witness what happened when Fusion was banned from those channels. I'm not arguing against the reasons he was initially banned from general discussion, but I do want to argue about the current ban.

Should he have informed the staff about the account situation? Absolutely. Is the ban an adequate form of punishment? I'm not a moderator, but I don't think so.

From what I've heard so far, he stayed away from the forbidden channels after signing in using his old account. He behaved as he was told, respected the ban even without HLP server restrictions being enforced on his account, so I really don't understand why this wasn't taken into consideration.

A good judge doesn't rely only on a strict, mechanical interpretation of the rules. A fair judge also considers that Fusion didn't ask to have restrictions restored by his mistake, while continuing to behave appropriately and refraining from participating in channels he wasn't supposed to be in.

[Colt]

I can basically sign under what Nyctaeus said here (two sides made their mistakes):

I see that both sides didn't act correctly: Fusion, by neglectfully assuming that no further actions are needed, Moderation - by half-blindly imposing a hard ban without any attempts of contact to clarify the situation and follow their own policy of transparency.

It's pointless to point the fingers at this point, as it's not too late to continue this matter and talk. I think it's worth it, because we still can avoid another drama that will plague the backstage of the community for months. Fusion has his flaws, but he's not High Max nor Mascott. I know the guy for years and while I don't consider him my greatest friend, I know he's definitely not evil.

I deliberately keep the HLP Discord general/non-FreeSpace channels muted because I'm here to talk about FreeSpace, so I obviously didn't witness what happened when Fusion was banned from those channels. I'm not arguing against the reasons he was initially banned from general discussion, but I do want to argue about the current ban.

Should he have informed the staff about the account situation? Absolutely. Is the ban an adequate form of punishment? I'm not a moderator, but I don't think so.

From what I've heard so far, he stayed away from the forbidden channels after signing in using his old account. He behaved as he was told, respected the ban even without HLP server restrictions being enforced on his account, so I really don't understand why this wasn't taken into consideration.

A good judge doesn't rely only on a strict, mechanical interpretation of the rules. A fair judge also considers that Fusion didn't ask to have restrictions restored by his mistake, while continuing to behave appropriately and refraining from participating in channels he wasn't supposed to be in.

I'm gonna echo this too. The Discord search function also shows that he did not partake in any of the channels that he had been restricted from posting in with his backup account. Shouldn't the moderation team gotten in contact with Fusion when they reapplied the off-topic channel restrictions, or were they waiting for him to step forward?

It certainly wasn't sound judgement to not contact the mod team when he logged back in on the backup account. It is also reasonable to see why he didn't later follow up when he saw the restrictions reapplied, and assumed that was that.

Regarding the suspension (which afaik isn't even related to this ban in question), it's unsurprising that mass inter-server reports can cause collateral. If Fusion was caught in this crossfire, then Discord should be able to clear things up, and it'll be far easier to make them aware of it by having multiple people try to help him out by doing just that.