Inappropriate in-game conversation
I'm a long-time player who recently came back to the game, after years years of absence.
I accepted an invitation to ride with a barcode yesterday, we were linking our way through Mason county, I opened up the in-game chat to give some players a hard time undoing our work. What I saw shocked me, those same players have been threatening acts of violence on one of the people I was playing with and other players.
Where is Niantic and why are they not giving these people some sort of permanent ban for this? Are there not filters that catch this?
The player I was with flipped out and called the Mason county sheriff, I thought it was inappropriate response, until I got home and did a little research about acts of violence and online bullying.
What's the right answer? Get the police involved, soft bands, temp bands, permanent ban from Niantic?
I definitely had to agree with individuals playing with said it was a definition between threatening **** **** and violence.
The half-hearted apology after somebody probably got on his case floored me. Was one player using somebody else's account to write all that?
Comments
Block the account in the app, report them via the support bot and just move on.
Niantic can’t monitor every conversation worldwide in real time. Provide the evidence screenshots in the support bot (not here). Open a ticket for Inappropriate Gameplay, report the agent(s) and then move on with your life.
Niantic (should) investigate this and will issue appropriate response, whether it be Comm-ban or a full-on account ban.
If after blocking the agent the inappropriate behavior continues, for example harassment via an alternate account, harassment IRL, etc then you may need to get law enforcement involved.
The absolute WORST thing you can do is respond to them in Comms, as well as publicly call them out here in the forums (ex, your screenshot) as Niantic may be forced to take actions against your account (or anyone else’s who responded in Comms) and not just the original Agent.
See TOS https://nianticlabs.com/terms/en/, Player Guidelines https://nianticlabs.com/guidelines/en/.
The Support Bot can be accessed in-app, by going to the in-app Settings - Help Center - Go
What does he mean with barcodes?
In the days of Redacted, players would create account names with combinations of uppercase "I" and lowercase "l". It was difficult to discern which letters were which at a glance, so it was hard to tell these accounts apart. They were called "barcodes" because they were just rows of parallel lines, like "IIlllIlIlIIlIl".
This isn't so much an issue with Prime, which added a little curve to lowercase "l"s to make them stand out.
At this point, I'm not even sure why Ingress still has comms. Nobody uses it for anything legit, and it ends up being toxic messy stuff anyway.
Block and report.
Ingress COMMS is regularly used for useful inter-factional conversations, but it's like any game. There are always people who take things too far and can't keep their mouth shut about how they "really" feel.
It's just one aspect lost to abusers by lack of sanctioning.
People will tell you that "Niantic will issue appropriate response after your report, whether it be Comm-ban or a full-on account ban."
Actually it's extremely difficult for an inappropriate COMM speaker to get a full account ban. Example:
https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/13982/niantic-support-please-stop-conniving-brainsick-f-words-speaking-players-in-ingress-comm#latest
The truth is Niantic will issue a response of any kind to that player after collective reports from you and other players (5 at least, 7 recommended) were made while it's Niantic that defines "appropriate" not us. Make sure you block him before reporting, and unblock him periodically to see if he violates again and if so keep reporting.
And for full clarity, @LuoboTiX won't block people, which is part of what Niantic looks for. So it's easier if you block the person first.
well that's a big problem, if niantic looks at blocked agents instead of what they've clearly written on comms. that must be why people who post **** threats on comm are still playing no?
If you're going back and forth with someone, and not blocking them, clearly you aren't as offended as it might seem. Blocking someone immediately prevents them from contacting you in game. End of story.
They take threats seriously, but they also expect players to be proactive about it.
Yes, "Block and report" is never a solution, because it does not guarantee effective report.
"Block, collective report, repeat" until the player no longer dare do COMM bad things is.
I haven't seen anything about Niantic taking an official position on if you must block someone before reporting, but I would recommend doing so, so that you aren't harassed. I would NOT recommend group reporting of an incident however, it will only clog up support with duplicate reports and slow everything down.
It's literally in the support article:
We also strongly advise that you Block Agents in COMM before submitting a report. The number of times an Agent has been blocked is one of the indicators we use during our review.
yes, but I wouldn't say that this means you MUST block someone before reporting, I do recommend it, but it is not a requirement even from their article
Niantic has official position on the matter that they recommend that you do it, because they take it into account. It's not a requirement sure, but as I said, it's part of what Niantic looks for.
I'm confused, how does this change me stating that there isn't an official stance on if you must? Or is this just a discussion to argue?
I never said it was a requirement. I said it was something they looked for. You contradicted me saying they have no official position. I showed you the official position?
I think perhaps you should reread what I wrote. It was not a contradiction of what you said, it was its own statement completely separate from yours.
Ok then.
It's a great thing to do because all you would be doing from that point on is "feeding the troll"
Semantics or whatever, it's just something to do if you want to maintain any sanity.
It's how we find the toxic players
You don't need comms to spot toxic behavior. Any community chat is enough to see it. It is not required for a player to interact with opossing faction to know about toxicity.
Such suggestion is obviously made on the basis that the player does not have much actual experience of reporting.
I would NOT advise any players to follow this suggestion. Collective report but not ab.use of report is very important.
If only 1 player reports something, sometimes it would be ignored but he/she would be told that "appropriate actions" are done.
More players report and then Niantic would definitely take it seriously and do a manual review on what happended there.
And it's "Recommended" to block someone in the COMM on the table but actually it's a requirement in general practice because if players do not block them before reporting, Niantic Support would merely tell them to block them first. It's reasonable. If anyone don't even block some problematic players, does that mean they do not feel disturbed and was the matter really serious and was reported players really problematic?
Can you explain what you meant when you say collective reporting? One ticket w/ multiple agents reporting, different agents reporting on their own w/ no prompting, or reaching out to agents to make multiple reports on a single incident.
@LuoboTiX You really seem to know exactly how Ops operates, despite it being reiterated by Niantic that mass-reporting will only slow down the process and is not a means to ensure an account is banned.
Ops will always recommend blocking an account if the harassment occurs on comms, regardless if the player has already blocked the offending account or not.
You really seems to think Ops would read every report manually carefully, while players keep making new posts complainning that their reports of for example Super Obvious Spoofing were ignored and tickets got closed with canned template responses. Canned template is not a means to prove that the report was really reviewed or reviewed carefully.
A brand new example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/mzq2hg/the_alltime_most_blatant_wintrading_with_an_alt/
Thus, it's very important for reports to get really reviewed by NIA OPS. I support all kinds of efforts to achieve that, including doing reports collectively but not mass-reporting in an ab.usive way. This may or may not raise its priority but is the best way that reporters can resort to.
How could blocking an agent affect the situation if the agent actually approaches you in the real world, and then CHARGES you, running across the street, to do who knows what? I have video, but since I didn't contact the police at the time of the incident, and was more concerned with getting away from harm, they(the police) are doing nothing. I am now taking steps to arm myself so that I can protect myself if I get assaulted again.
Sorry, don't see the point in this.
1.) If you're going to post a comm please edit out the IGN's.
2.) If you have a problem with something said in comms please send it to Niantic we can talk about it here but we can't do anything.
3.) Police would most likely not take this seriously. Your showing them something that's happening in a game that's out of there jurisdiction.
4.) Again if you feel like it you could show Niantic. It's unlikely there would be any ban (on either side) this is an adult game.
If you think you are not behaving inappropriately, call the police. Get something like a document or record. Send the document to Niantic Support and report the corresponding player of "hara.ssment on the field". 30-day ban would be issued in some case on the player who they think really did the hara.ssment (probably is or probably is not the player you mentioned).
I think the policy of taking action based upon how many people have blocked an agent, is a stupid policy.
You may have someone who posts endless bile, but is blocked by very few - or no one at all.
The policy should be about what has actually been written and reported. Rather than how many people have blocked that person.