If you notice your chat messages show up in the chat feed but don’t appear on the streamers in-screen chat, you have been shadowbanned.
Twitch will still take your money for donations, subs, etc, but your feedback won’t be seen by anybody but you. This shadowban does not appear in the appeals page and can be applied randomly and intermittently. You are never informed about this by the way. You’ll likely be talking in a chat and assuming you’re being ignored. Hop into a private tab and load up the stream where you’ll be able to notice if your messages are missing in chat.
From my observations, there seems to be some type of algorithm/system that determines who to shadowban. I’m assuming it assigns extra points for factors like VPN usage, Linux, and adblockers. Once you’ve been shadowbanned, switching one of those three will not work to unban you until some arbitrary timer expires.
I’m posting this in case anybody else has experienced this and felt frustrated and isolated. You’re not being ignored (unless you’re a twat and are being ignored). You’re just being punished by Twitch for being privacy conscious.
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Do you have anything more than assumptions to go on for the reasons? If you only assume those are the reasons you shouldn’t announce them as a big headline item.
Your question is a good one. I’m not the one who downvoted you fyi. To answer your question, it is absolutely a personal anecdote based on my own experimentation. I’m sure others will add their own experiences. Based on my experiences there’s no doubt about twitch shadowbanning based on VPN use. I’ll admit I don’t have a basis for Linux and adblockers being a part of the equation, but I made it clear in my original post that those were assumptions.
To further speculate, I have an idea that the shadowban may actually be triggered by somebody using the same VPN server doing something that triggers it, affecting anybody else on that server. I can’t possibly provide evidence for that theory, but it would explain the seemingly random nature of the shadowbans.
VPNs seem a fairly common reason. I am mostly curious how you came to the conclusion that Linux use was a factor since that is not a common ban reason.
I’ve only experienced a shadowban while using ubuntu. I switch between all the major operating systems on the same twitch account and with the same vpn service/servers. The bans have only been initiated while on linux, although they did follow over to the other OSes until some type of timer was passed.
This follows what some online shopping services do, which is to assign weights to certain user metrics and if a set threshold is crossed it rejects your payment or otherwise blocks you from a transaction. So VPN+MacOS might work but VPN+Linux matches some type of metric fraud systems associate with criminals.
You probably got swept up in the Suspicious User heuristics that Twitch uses now. Mods and Broadcasters should still see your chats. Message a moderator of the channel and explain the situation. They can remove your account from the shadowban from that channel.
It probably means lots of users from that VPN’s gateway IP have been reported/banned/manually added to the Suspicious User restriction list.
I doubt it has anything to do with Linux, and I guarantee it’s not a move to flip you off for trying to guard your privacy as an innocent person.
The issue is that a lot of the things you can do to hide your identity online are the same things people doing bots or harassment do, because they work.
So, their system learns that pattern and when you match it you get caught up. There is no good way to tell users apart when doing offensive security like this, other than waiting for accounts to start spamming the n-word in chats and ruining the stream experience, which is the thing this system is mean to prevent.
Don’t get caught up in privacy paranoia - there are much bigger fish they’re trying to fry than someone who just doesn’t want ad networks tracking them.
For what its worth, I have seen the same thing with a VPN. Sometimes changing servers will work. They also flat out block logins if they don’t like your browser settings.
I just gave up on using the site. If they tell you you don’t need protection, YOU NEED PROTECTION.
Not OP but: It may not be assumptions but personal anecdote. I guess it takes concerted effort by significant number of individuals to find out if this is happening.
The corporate world is really clamping down on VPN use. VPNs for me for not for thee is their motto.
Only the ‘free’ services. I bet amazon.com won’t ban you from shopping on vpn.
They make it a whole lot harder, asking for photos of ID and selfies and bank statements directly from your bank, etc.
Amazon specifically. Unsure about other sites.
Not just the free services, they’re all doing it.
logs in while connected to VPN
spends 15 minutes identifying fire hydrants, traffic lights, and stairs
Use ipv6, they should be untraceable/ anonymous for non state actors.
They won’t be able to what is and isn’t a vpn.
We just need to cut grandma off those expensive ipv4 addresses
Don’t use Twitch
Got an alternative that isn’t youtube?
Touch grass /j
If you don’t care about privacy that much, which I assume you don’t because you use Twitch, Kick is the only alternative I can recommend. Everything else either is dead, is in another language, or has no good content, which sucks because some of them had good privacy policies. Monopolies are dogshit.
Weirdly, when I was on an affected VPN and had a Twitch account, I could still stream. Just couldn’t use the chat on my own stream. It makes no sense whatsoever, and the main effect it has is just to make users angry with them when they discover they’ve been shadowbanned for no rational reason.
The shadowban I am pissed about is Reddit. The comments would appear for me just fine, but not visible outside of my account. Given that I have pretty much only commented about very neutral, even childish topics - I blame my email, which is on my own domain.
Just another plank in the floor that is “why I don’t use Twitch” (most of the planks are ‘fuck Amazon’)
They’ve been shadowbanning VPN users for years. It’s not a policy I expect to change.
I recently stumbled across an open-source frontend for Twitch called SafeTwitch, I really like it.
Can’t you still connect to twitch chat via an IRC or XMPP client? Or did they axe that feature?
Pretty sure that still works. A few tech streamers like Vedal rely on that for their stuff to work.
You can get through the shadow banning by sendubg multiple copies of your send request a number of time equivalent to 1 terabyte. Only works if you do it for each comment.
Out of curiosity, have you tested the shadow ban with a non-web Twitch client, like a phone app or an IRC client?
This happens to me if I have my VPN on from my phone app.
I have not. I try to avoid apps if I can.
Fair enough. Just so you know, though: F-Droid has open-source Twitch apps requiring minimal permissions, and last time I checked, you could use a desktop IRC client to interact with Twitch chat. (The latter requires more effort to set up.)
Might be worth spoofing your user agent! I mostly just make it look exactly like the user agent my windows machine sends, so I’ll still look like a Firefox user. But by default, Firefox will note that it’s the Linux build in the user agent.
Do note though that this does not prevent them from using Javascript to detect your OS. Even Tor Browser does not hide it for some bizarre reason… which IMO makes Linux users blend in a WHOLE lot less.
Actually; with the right plugins and configuration…even JS identification can be obscured in Firefox. I’ve done it before on Windows.
link?
Not offering my techniques to the public right now; I kinda blundered on it by tinkering and it does break a metric shit ton of things.
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Why would you care?
Because interacting with streamers is a big part of Twitch?
I love popping into a nearly-empty Twitch stream and interacting with a streamer. It must be pretty discouraging to stream into the void with no viewers, and it’s cool to hear about why they like a game I’m considering, or getting help with learning a game, or (rarely for me, lol) sharing some of my knowledge about a game.
It’s also the only way I connect with two of my (married) friends from uni. I pop into their stream when I can and we chat a bit while they play.
Twitch with no chat might as well just be a YouTube video that I can speed up, pause, and seek.
Because people use Twitch on Linux with a VPN? This seems kinda obvious…
Is it the privacy community in general or Lemmy that’s gotten infiltrated by all of these antagonistic socially inept 15 year olds recently? Never started a thread on Lemmy that’s gotten so many unsupportive and useless responses before. And I’m active on piracy subs…
