Holy smokes, I am seeing a ton of peeps on "probation" ..

Just waiting for mine next, as I am royally pissed too. but damn, what did u guys say? lol

Some threads and posts got removed. What did they say? I have no idea, they all got deleted.

I've been against GGG's stance on not developing PoE 1 at all and have not received any moderation action...

I think that the people that are "on probation" have done something worse to deserve it, like harrassing GGG staff or spamming.

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Ondrashek06#5795 wrote:

I've been against GGG's stance on not developing PoE 1 at all and have not received any moderation action...

I think that the people that are "on probation" have done something worse to deserve it, like harrassing GGG staff or spamming.

You get "on probation" for breaking code of conduct and GGG's stance simply is not part of this. You can call the game and devs bad pretty much as much as you want as long as you don't go for personal attacks.

Also, another part of it is how many people actually report you and in which section you post. For example, the early access section is a lot heavier moderated while moderation for the PoE 1 section right now is basically non-existant.

I got hit with a 1 day probation for starting a 2-answer back and forth with the current playernumber thread that just exist to shittalk PoE 1 and called it "ragebait". The time between my answer and the "ban" was almost 5 hours.

See what I mean? Can't even criticize the removal or else it gets removed. Can't post any meme GIFs or links to GIFs of any political figures or else it gets removed for "discussing inflammatory topics".

And you bet that I'm risking a probation for this post, too. They really don't like this kind of criticism. Guaranteed this thread is under priority watch right now.

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Can't post any meme GIFs or links to GIFs of any political figures

That goes against their code of conduct as they are saying. It is for good reason, there is enough drama happening on the forum without external dramas being brought in.

From what I've seen over the years on the forum they are not heavy handed with policing it. There are hundreds of post criticizing the game currently that are not getting deleted. Posts on the help support forum currently are pretty full on, for good reason, but they aren't getting deleted from what I see. Maybe some are, I don't know for sure. I just think they are pretty lenient with what gets said on the forum, so long as it relates directly to the game.

Is there a way to post your criticism without using political memes?

(Also would like to point out that there is a lot of new players and some of them will be interacting with the forum. I don't think it is unusual that this would result in increase of people using the forum incorrectly and probation being handed out. Combined with their being some disharmony between the player base.)

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

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Can't post any meme GIFs or links to GIFs of any political figures

That goes against their code of conduct as they are saying. It is for good reason, there is enough drama happening on the forum without external dramas being brought in.

Except it isn't. There's nothing that says that you may not post a reaction GIF simply because it happens to include a political figure, i.e. Barack Obama's "wtf?" meme. There's also nothing inherently political about it. They are memes, and unless posted within political context, i.e. by adding a political statement, they do not qualify as political material.

If that were the case, all the posts using the "change my mind" meme should inherently be removed, as the person who originally made that format is a known domestic abuser and is generally considered a right-wing activist:

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Steven Blake Crowder is an American-Canadian conservative political commentator who is accused of verbally and psychologically abusing his wife [...]

[...] the outlandish right-wing radio host who was outed this week

Do you see the problem?

Instead, what they are doing by removing them is making an inherently political statement, as it could be considered prohibition of freedom of speech, and by only removing reaction GIFs of certain parties, they are inherently demonstrating a biased political stance. That is a flawed stance to take.

If reaction GIFs (and nothing more) weren't posted in political context or misused for political propaganda, it doesn't matter that the reaction GIF contains a political figure. Plain and simple.

Edit: minor correction

if you get posts edited or removed a certain amount of times you'll get suspended regardless of the severity of the rule broken and the rules are very ambiguous so mods can remove what ever they don't like pretty much

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CAPSLOCK_ON#7907 wrote:

the rules are very ambiguous

I feel like things got an order of magnitude worse when they added "needlessly negative comments" to the Code of Conduct. It's so vague it's functionally meaningless.

I see what you are saying, but I don't necessarily agree. It's not GGG's responsibility to police this down to the most nuanced degree. It's a platform for talking about the game. I think they should have full discretion over what they think is reasonable on the forum. They don't want politics on the forum, he's a political figure, I don't think it's a long bow to draw.

I understand the nuance you are speaking of, I just don't think there is any need for pictures of Obama on the POE forum, even if it is not directly political. Beyond perhaps if Obama was playing the game or involved in the community somehow. Reddit or other social media might be a better place for it.

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as it could be considered prohibition of freedom of speech

This is largely an American concept. This is a New Zealand company that is owned by a Chinese corporation. I think there is a lot of water to swim in. If it gets to the point of arguing freedom of speech on the POE forum, it is probably pretty far removed from playing the game. Not everyone agrees with the boundaries. They seemed to be overly sensitive on talking about AI this time last year in my opinion. It's their forum though, I think in general they are the best ones to set the limit of what they think is acceptable. They haven't put you on probation or banned you, they just removed the thing they don't agree with and indicated that they don't want anything like that on the forum.

I agree this sounds like a grey area and likely not offensive, but they have to draw the line somewhere, or else people keep pushing the boundaries.