I would guess it's not, but they are afraid of the influx of requests. As we all know, there have been multiple avenues in the past for getting unfair bans of legit accounts turned around.
Their support system is flawed, but they fail to acknowledge that. It is a black box, which is weird for support for a company with so much games and players attached to them. Both Resistance and Enlightened players united for this.
This isn't specifically a public appeal for just the case of this agent though. It's an appeal about the more widespread issue of bans without prior warnings multiple agents have become the victim of. Clearly there is something going on and so far there's no dialogue possible with Niantic.
Other agents that still have active accounts are feeling that any time spent in the game might be lost time, as these bans that seem entirely random could affect any account sooner or later.
This, for more and more agents within the community, simply takes the fun out of playing such a once awesome game.
Niantic support is absolutely by far the worst support I have ever encountered, to a point where i was more frustrated by their responses then the actual abuse and herrassment I was reporting.
It's a shame that for these cases we need to bother vanguards (yes, one was contacted in this matter) that put up their voluntary time, need to make these forumposts etc. The ticket system is just awful.
This isn't your highscore they are throwing out the window. It's your player DNA, your events, your achievements, years of travel history, memories. All gone, without reason, without explanation.
I appreciate your input. An appeal had been filed as soon as I noticed my account had been terminated, several weeks ago. One of your fellow Vanguards followed that up and even requested a second review. Up until today I don't know why account was terminated. The official paths have resulted in nothing and I'm now persueing other means of getting the dialogue started. The community meanwhile is also requesting attention for my case and similar cases, as shown by this thread. I'm truly humbled by their support in this entire ordeal.
i don’t know Azarole but, due to my own 30 days ban, I am pretty sure of two things : Niantic and his system has a serious reason to ban my account. I’m also pretty sure that I don’t have any unfair action. I tried to report a bug but haven’t got any answer. I’ll suppress my account after the 30 days because I feel really sad about this story. I ask the support if it might be a problem with one of the overs application Whitch can access to my gps (many of them in fact because of making a lot of sport). I don’t have any answer. I think it’s pretty cool to see the community for #freeAzarole , hope it will be helpful
Niantic, please look into your anti-cheating measures, into the cheat detection systems, into the process.
We as the community don't need to know how they work. But we need to know they do work as intended, that is, finding the ones who spoof and cheat and leaving legit players alone, so we can all have fun and enjoy Ingress.
Niantic, you promote fairplay and being respectful with each other. These are exactly the values of the Ingress community, no matter the faction. It would only be fair and respectful to give the exact reason as to why you ban an account to the person owning that account. It would be fair to give that person the chance to react to this reason, to be given the chance to explain themself and to be listened to. It would be fair and respectful to listen to your community, to your customers, that spend a lot of their time, money and energy to, with, and for Ingress.
Niantic, stand up to your own values and #breakthesilence. Open up a dialogue with the community, acknowledge that there's no system without bugs. Please take out feedback, improve your systems and correct the mistakes such as false positive bans these bugs have caused.
Ingress is more than a game. Please let it stay this way. Please don't intimidate the Ingress community, your most loyal and honest fanbase, your customers, by random unjustified actions, by silence, by ignoring our feedback.
Niantic, please #FreeAzarole by unbanning his account.
Hey! Look! It's my face on there! Like everyone else here... I think the ban on Azarole is misplaced. I get the effort, I do. But this player is such an honest, loving player of whom this game has become such an integral part of his life... If it weren't for the game I wouldn't know him, and I'm so glad for the meetups and dinners we had. This is the (type of) player we (the community, and I think everyone working on the game with their heart) all do it for. Please lift the ban!
Mistakes can be made.. this is clearly one of them. I know Azarole as a player who plays fair and a friendly and much loved dude in our community (this thread makes that very clear I would say). Please undo this mistake and #freeazarole
This is an external independent dispute resolution. It’s not cheap ($200 US to file as an individual) but it looks like it would force Niantic to provide documentation supporting their claims, and it would cost Niantic more (your costs are capped at $200 and you could potentially get that back if you win).
I've only scanned over the document though. It’s not simple but may be worth it if any of the agents banned are comfortable with these kinds of processes.
Agreed. These ban waves are often completely random, a lot of genuine players are affected and on the other hand documented reports about the (bad) players that are known for disrespecting guidelines and fairplay aren't investigated or taken seriously.. this is not how things should be managed. #FreeAzarole and rethink your modus operandi Niantic, no one appreciates the current lack of efficiency.
Not even a warning, that's unfair to begin with. I have played with and know Azarole to be a fair player. So much history, just look at all the anomaly and event badges.
I would like there to be notification to any banned player of what the cheating allegations are.
This could be helpful whether or not the ban was fair.
1) Educates a player fairly banned
2) Allows a player unfairly banned to provide evidence of fair play, or at worst in the future to avoid what they believe to be fair play activity that risks a ban
#FreeAzarole; NIA, please let's reroute this Kafkaesque path astray into a grabbing of an opportunity. Take this chance to change things for the better, improve community involvement, NIA overall dialogue, and fair play all around.
Comments
More transparency is needed. Mystical bans won't make us happy to play. Who's going to be next?
#freeazarole
I would guess it's not, but they are afraid of the influx of requests. As we all know, there have been multiple avenues in the past for getting unfair bans of legit accounts turned around.
Their support system is flawed, but they fail to acknowledge that. It is a black box, which is weird for support for a company with so much games and players attached to them. Both Resistance and Enlightened players united for this.
This isn't specifically a public appeal for just the case of this agent though. It's an appeal about the more widespread issue of bans without prior warnings multiple agents have become the victim of. Clearly there is something going on and so far there's no dialogue possible with Niantic.
Other agents that still have active accounts are feeling that any time spent in the game might be lost time, as these bans that seem entirely random could affect any account sooner or later.
This, for more and more agents within the community, simply takes the fun out of playing such a once awesome game.
#FreeAzarole
Niantic support is absolutely by far the worst support I have ever encountered, to a point where i was more frustrated by their responses then the actual abuse and herrassment I was reporting.
It's a shame that for these cases we need to bother vanguards (yes, one was contacted in this matter) that put up their voluntary time, need to make these forumposts etc. The ticket system is just awful.
This isn't your highscore they are throwing out the window. It's your player DNA, your events, your achievements, years of travel history, memories. All gone, without reason, without explanation.
#FreeAzarole
I fully agree. Bans and warnings should definitely include the actual reason for that action.
Right now that is all we ask.
Tell #freeazarole what he has done wrong, or at least what niantic thinks he has done.
Than at least he can tell them what really happened, and that way they can work out things.
When will I get banned without warning upfront or explanation afterwards?
Now two people I met in person have been banned in the last few months.
#FreeAzarole #FreeComicmaniac
I appreciate your input. An appeal had been filed as soon as I noticed my account had been terminated, several weeks ago. One of your fellow Vanguards followed that up and even requested a second review. Up until today I don't know why account was terminated. The official paths have resulted in nothing and I'm now persueing other means of getting the dialogue started. The community meanwhile is also requesting attention for my case and similar cases, as shown by this thread. I'm truly humbled by their support in this entire ordeal.
i don’t know Azarole but, due to my own 30 days ban, I am pretty sure of two things : Niantic and his system has a serious reason to ban my account. I’m also pretty sure that I don’t have any unfair action. I tried to report a bug but haven’t got any answer. I’ll suppress my account after the 30 days because I feel really sad about this story. I ask the support if it might be a problem with one of the overs application Whitch can access to my gps (many of them in fact because of making a lot of sport). I don’t have any answer. I think it’s pretty cool to see the community for #freeAzarole , hope it will be helpful
Please unban agent azarole. Please review your algorithms, clearly something has gone wrong here. Thanks in advance to look into this.
#freeazarole
#FreeAzarole
#freeazarole #morethanagame
Niantic, please look into your anti-cheating measures, into the cheat detection systems, into the process.
We as the community don't need to know how they work. But we need to know they do work as intended, that is, finding the ones who spoof and cheat and leaving legit players alone, so we can all have fun and enjoy Ingress.
Niantic, you promote fairplay and being respectful with each other. These are exactly the values of the Ingress community, no matter the faction. It would only be fair and respectful to give the exact reason as to why you ban an account to the person owning that account. It would be fair to give that person the chance to react to this reason, to be given the chance to explain themself and to be listened to. It would be fair and respectful to listen to your community, to your customers, that spend a lot of their time, money and energy to, with, and for Ingress.
Niantic, stand up to your own values and #breakthesilence. Open up a dialogue with the community, acknowledge that there's no system without bugs. Please take out feedback, improve your systems and correct the mistakes such as false positive bans these bugs have caused.
Ingress is more than a game. Please let it stay this way. Please don't intimidate the Ingress community, your most loyal and honest fanbase, your customers, by random unjustified actions, by silence, by ignoring our feedback.
Niantic, please #FreeAzarole by unbanning his account.
Hey! Look! It's my face on there! Like everyone else here... I think the ban on Azarole is misplaced. I get the effort, I do. But this player is such an honest, loving player of whom this game has become such an integral part of his life... If it weren't for the game I wouldn't know him, and I'm so glad for the meetups and dinners we had. This is the (type of) player we (the community, and I think everyone working on the game with their heart) all do it for. Please lift the ban!
I started playing a month before azarole and I share many ingress and non ingress memories with azarole
When will I get banned without warning upfront or explanation afterwards?
when will I lose years of time and memories playing ingress, traveling around the globe, meeting so many new people and many more things?????????
please just start communicating in a normal way with the community’s otherwise you might find yourself with out a playerbase sooner rather than later.
#FreeAzarole #StopTheMadness #WeAreAfraidToKeepPlaying
#FreeArazole
Mistakes can be made.. this is clearly one of them. I know Azarole as a player who plays fair and a friendly and much loved dude in our community (this thread makes that very clear I would say). Please undo this mistake and #freeazarole
#Freeazarole❤️
Niantic TOS does include an arbitration process under section 13, which links to the American Arbitration Association from which you can find their process for consumers: https://www.adr.org/sites/default/files/Consumer_Rules_Web_2.pdf
This is an external independent dispute resolution. It’s not cheap ($200 US to file as an individual) but it looks like it would force Niantic to provide documentation supporting their claims, and it would cost Niantic more (your costs are capped at $200 and you could potentially get that back if you win).
I've only scanned over the document though. It’s not simple but may be worth it if any of the agents banned are comfortable with these kinds of processes.
Agreed. These ban waves are often completely random, a lot of genuine players are affected and on the other hand documented reports about the (bad) players that are known for disrespecting guidelines and fairplay aren't investigated or taken seriously.. this is not how things should be managed. #FreeAzarole and rethink your modus operandi Niantic, no one appreciates the current lack of efficiency.
Free Azarole
#FreeAzarole 🆓🈶
#FreeAzarole
Not even a warning, that's unfair to begin with. I have played with and know Azarole to be a fair player. So much history, just look at all the anomaly and event badges.
#FreeAzarole
#FreeAzarole
I would like there to be notification to any banned player of what the cheating allegations are.
This could be helpful whether or not the ban was fair.
1) Educates a player fairly banned
2) Allows a player unfairly banned to provide evidence of fair play, or at worst in the future to avoid what they believe to be fair play activity that risks a ban
#FreeAzarole; NIA, please let's reroute this Kafkaesque path astray into a grabbing of an opportunity. Take this chance to change things for the better, improve community involvement, NIA overall dialogue, and fair play all around.
Lol, even fb is transparent on why you get banned 😂
#FreeAzarole
Niantic, please take another look at this case!
#FreeAzalore
#FreeAzalore