discord-feedback

[onyx shale]

It's going to be exactly as I called it

Radio silence until we grow tired of arguing. And then the ban will get rolled out this weekend without any further conversations. It's as eanae has said repeated when this started - the decision is final, they're not looking for any feedback

[timid pilot]

Some of the mods and mentors are also kupo supporters, so they don’t show under those role headers. Also that only shows people who are online like you said.

And before anyone even tries to suggest it. The staff supporting Kupobot with patreon/discord was entirely our own decisions.

[pallid owl]

Still a boneheaded refusal to comment on the previous implication of us all being white supremacists
I've got nothing more to say, which is probably the line you were hoping to hear anyways

The fact that you won't even bother to clarify your meaning behind that statement speaks loudly enough about your intentions

[long ridge]

And before anyone even tries to suggest it. The staff supporting Kupobot with patreon/discord was entirely our own decisions.
Im very sure no one was gonna comment on that tbh

[jagged mirage]

I can feel my IQ diminishing as I see the staff here try to pull a fast one to change the topic.

The amount of disservice and disrespect is real.

[zinc jay]

Nah guys, we're all children who don't know any better. clearly. nuanced takes cannot be had on this and we will always just be wrong. the way this has been dealt with is extremely telling, and should make anyone looking at this lose faith in leadership. None of us regulars know anything about this server, right? not a peep. of course.

[indigo girder]

very interesting how she says only gets $19 a month from it despite how many people are seemingly paying for it. mods and mentors included.

yet the true numbers are obfuscated. along with it having a 90/10 split directed towards her.

i really wonder how kupo works regarding the irs and state taxes with all of these income streams, and potential 'employees'.

yet saying it's a non profit when she's the sole proprietor of this.

but back to the topic at hand, it's very interesting how all of this is seemingly only responded to when it's something she feels she can easily refute and all else is dismissed.

again, i understand why mods aren't speaking here.

[umbral fog]

I understand y'all are frustrated, but please keep in mind that this kind of passive aggressiveness is not good on either side. Keep things strictly to feedback, and not taking potshots at each other

[plucky niche]

Seconded. Claming the interests of the community while using, verbatim, the same hymn sheet as white-collar criminals everywhere is horrifying. I would like to be proven that this is not the case, as I hope this is all some big misunderstanding.

[merry ore]

I’d like to hope that all of us continuously talking like this for almost a full 24 hours that we’ve made some kind of response known in any way

[fading plank]

If it was a misunderstanding, it would be easily refuted with "that's not what I meant at all" or "my wording came off wrong" etc etc.
The fact that it hasn't been, despite it being quite clear that this channel is being looked at, tells me that it either was intended that way, or that the person in question is too prideful to apologise. Which will probably mean that the apology will never come, or only as damage control, and in either case I won't personally believe it to be sincere.

But hey, maybe we're all low parse SMN players playing with legos that just cannot hope to fathom the inner workings of this grandiose decision-making thus far...

[autumn parrot]

I'm going to attempt to clear some of the air here.

The Google form was made with the intention of allowing your voices to be heard through an act of goodwill as we did acknowledge how we upset some of you with the way things were handled. The feedback provided in there will be used as we wouldn't collect it otherwise, so I hope you utilized it in good faith and gave us something to actually work with rather than pick a fight.

The initial announcement post was to inform of a future action taking place, and while I understand why it was received the way it was, the actions of users in this channel has been quite shocking to witness. I won't defend certain statements that were made as I simply don't fully control anyone but myself, but this channel is not meant for personal attacks. No channel in this server is meant for that and is objectively against our first and most prominent rule in the server. I want to remind you all that despite how upset you are, you are still engaging in the server with this rule active. If any more of you are found to be posting personal attacks after this message is sent, you will be muted at minimum.

We will be communicating to the best of our ability going forward, but we simply have nothing else to give you right this second that hasn't already been given in any announcements made or this post you're currently reading. I do sincerely hope you can all calm yourselves and enjoy your lives with each other because this community is capable of such amazing things and I want us all to continue to be proud to be a part of it.

[pallid owl]

I do sincerely hope that someone back there is actually listening and you're not just saying that to say that. At least you said something at all so props I guess.

[plucky niche]

Thank you for a reply befitting of the station. While I don't have time to respond in full, I should hope the 'shocking' response should give you all some semblance of a clue as to the fact that you as a collective have acted improperly in this situation, and an apology from the collective or a retraction of comments made is, in my opinion due - ESPECIALLY to the handful of users who have been 'personally attacked' by your representatives.

Nobody is asking for a full answer and solution right this moment, as you say. We are asking for a guarantee that your team has accepted some error and will be open to communication from its users in the future, which if you are so inclined does not seem to me to be so hard to give, from my position.

As I said, actions speak louder than words. While your words are valued, and I thank you for them, the conduct of your representatives today has made it so words alone will not be sufficient for some of us to trust.

[fading plank]

If you have nothing else to give, does that mean nobody has the answers to the posed questions (ex. What's the positives of the ban that make it worth the negatives?), or that you aren't willing to give any? Neutral question, hope that's obvious-

I sincerely hope that the appeal for no personal attacks also extends to those with immunity to mutes. I believe regular users have been rather cordial with one another after the initial wave, before the 6h slowmode.

Speaking of which, the slowmode isn't helping me believe that feedback is considered desirable; the ability to have a discussion kind of hinges on being able to reply in a reasonable amount of time, and has encouraged me to type more than needed while I wait it out. Like I am now.

[indigo girder]

i appreciate the reply - i'm sure you can understand why people would see the form as a black box that would be ignored in the same fashion as everything else here.

i hope that you all can come to a consensus or understanding where things are able to be spoken about openly. we have the weekend as was all given to everyone to implement this issue.

the fact there's nothing else to give right now seems rather expected, and i wish you all luck.

for now, i guess all i'll say is i am rather confused as to why kupo asks for admin permissions when joining a new server? particularly when the privacy policy linked was last updated in 2020, let alone the configuration.

this is all giving shadows of some other discord bots with feature creep et al, particularly looking at how empty the gitlab is.

[ornate pelican]

Because Kupo Bot’s moderation tools used in this server are publicly available for use. You can see what every command requires for permissions on the wiki. https://gitlab.com/kupo-bot/KupoBot/-/wikis/Staff-Commands/#kupo-bot-staff-commands

Balance also uses Kupo Bot for moderation among other large FFXIV servers.

[zinc jay]

I appreciate a decent reply, tess.

I’m going to be honest, and I will try to be as kind as possible. This has gone beyond just about the twitter ban, it is much more serious and deeply rooted into the server, and the way it is run. This has shown severe flaws in the way that such rules are implemented, seemingly with little deliberation. Eanae has said that this decision was reached after lengthy discussion with the team, but we have no reason to believe that is true. It is Not Good Leadership to be absent a large amount of the time and then come in and make sudden changes and not expect pushback when everything was “working” fine before these changes.

Stop the ban. You should be able to see all of the people here, and undoubtedly those who have used the form as well, giving very clear and simple reasons as to why this is a bad idea. But even if you don’t go through with it I fear the damage is done, at least to a lot of the frequent users. The silence, and the replies we have received speak volumes beyond what you have said, that we don’t matter. What the community here, dedicated to a game with a very strong community at that, does not matter. “This has never been a democracy” and yet, the subreddit and the mods go to vote but we do not.

I, and others are here, because we do, in fact, care about this community. We want what is best for it. We’re not arguing for the sake of it, we’re not just trying to be hostile. We have spent a lot of time helping people, laughing, making friends with each other in this space. To see that activity, those contributions, thrown back in our face as if they do not matter is appalling.

(Also, in regards to what you said about personal attacks, like @plucky niche stated I hope that applies to your staff as well. I’ve seen a lot of wild statements made by them over the last few days, and as someone who very much has trauma as a result of twitter discourse and bigotry I still am very taken aback by the implication that I am a nzi supporter.)

[autumn parrot]

For clarity, since it's been mentioned more than once, that was an overarching statement for every member of this server. No one is immune to punishment for breaking rules in this server. I truly hope no one thinks that way.

[plucky niche]

because i would like to keep an open discussion rolling, and while you're here Tess - I would like to ask, because really this is the lynchpin of the issue.

Can the userbase expect an updated response from the administrative team, prior to simply putting the ban in place?

[autumn parrot]

Our next planned announcement will be about the ban at implementation, but it will have a heavily detailed outline of exactly what to expect so there's no room for confusion.

[indigo girder]

you know you can configure which permissions are asked for more granularly.

i know how this works too. i'm unsure as to why you're giving more obfuscation as opposed to answers. yes the balance uses kupo. we're aware of how prolific your bot is.

a bot asking for admin off the bat is kind of striking.

for a lot of servers with users who aren't technically proficient, this may make it easier to use and configure. but there's no need for them to change that.
but i'm sure you're aware of past circumstances where bots asked for similar permissions and then they continued to obfuscate, no?

you, yourself updated this page 5mo ago.
but the changelog was last updated in april 2023. it's rather difficult to trust your words when the bots abilities are obfuscated in this way and dug deep into gitlab that seemingly only you can easily find as the most recently updated page.

regardless, eanae, i'll leave any discussions of what else is going on outside of your "no feedback" twitter ban. as it seems you're only willing to engage with things outside the scope of your actions or lack thereof here, it's honestly difficult for so many - at this point.

you say a lot with what you care to respond to and i'm sure most of us are aware why. i feel sorry for your moderators, admins and the users who feel so hurt by you and how hurt they feel by you in what they thought and felt was a safe space.

i'm sure you can see how your voice here has carryover to any other properties you currently have a hand in.

[plucky niche]

I don't think confusion is anyone's concern. The message has been received loud and clear already. What is disappointing is this seems to imply that feedback from users will not be engaged with prior to setting the ban in place and hoping it all blows over.

The trust users with a stake in this discussion may have had in your administrative team to provide, privately, a nuanced and acceptable conclusion has been spectacularly shattered.

[icy cypress]

I mean you cant win this, either way one side of the community is pissed . You can only pick a stance and follow through or shut everything down i wish well to the people who felt abuse on both sides of the debate

[autumn parrot]

I simply stated it was the next planned course of action. I refuse to give any of you false hope for any specific changes to those plans when we're still actively collecting feedback. This isn't something we're rushing and have stepped back to allow people time to process what they think so we can come together somewhere in the middle.

The confusion I'm referring to is the idea that we won't take anything else into account but our own thoughts. The reason I mentioned taking the form seriously is because we can't utilize something not given to us in good faith. What you give us is what we have, so please, give us your honest thoughts in a reasonable manner. We want to engage with this better, I assure you.

[indigo girder]

are you able to clarify, for everyones understanding, who has access to responses from this form?

[autumn parrot]

All admins and full mods

[onyx shale]

Thank you though tess for actually being willing to engage with us, instead of throwing shade or insinuating we support the muskrat's actions because we don't cut off Twitter completely

[jagged mirage]

Appretiate the communication.

[misty temple]

this isn't especially relevant to the ban, but i would like to raise that your modmail process also serves to foster distrust with the community. often it feels like, when a mod takes a questionable action, they're allowed to be above criticism because it always results in "either take this to modmail or you're getting muted too", and most people would rather not deal with it at that point because of the upfront hostility. furthermore, the few times i've actually gone to modmail to bring up a topic like that, it's either the same mod justifying their own actions or another mod covering for them -- either way, my voice doesn't feel heard because i'm given the choice of either shutting up or shouting at a brick wall.

the lack of transparency between the mod team and the community has been festering for a while and you guys have really gone off the deep end with this one. i'll be watching eagerly to see if positive changes actually come out of this situation, or if you'll just continue, like always, to paint over the stains and pretend like nothing's wrong.

[plucky niche]

I am grateful for this response. Assuaging concerns is what I was looking for, and I hope you and yours find some gain from the responses here and from the form. My only regret is this response wasn't the one given a whole working day ago. To you, I'm sorry for any perceived malice, and wish you the best in managing this.

[zinc jay]

I will also say I've been the victim of this in the past as well, having mods who I think just toss my modmails in the bin because they see my name on it. It's definitely been better in recent times but it does feel like, despite a pledge of being unbiased, certain users are not heeded/listened to as much as others because they are not "in the clique."

This is a far better response than what we've had, tess, but these issues have definitely been under the surface for a while now, it isn't just this poor communication but other aspects of moderation/leadership as well that have been problematic for a while. I know I and valcors are not the only regulars who feel this way.

[autumn parrot]

I can't speak on anything done before I joined the team, but no modmail has been thrown out a single time since I've been on it, nor do the mods who took action respond to modmails about their action. We actively disallow this to avoid the very thing you're wary of.

We push people to modmail to avoid heating channels and cause greater uproar. It makes everyone's life easier.

[fossil moss]

The feedback form and the way it was approached is literally too little, too late.

It should have been done prior to this final decision even being considered. And the fact that Eanae herself repeatedly said the mod team is not taking feedback, I’m sorry but you must be in denial if you think the form somehow makes it better. If anything, the implementation of said form after hours and hours of the overwhelmingly negative feedback from several users, proven that this is literally just sprinkling a droplet of water into a fire that’s already burning down the building.

I appreciate those behind the idea of making said form. But with the way mods and admin has acted, you have break our trust entirely in believing that any feedback will make an impact on how we think as a community regarding the ban. This feels like a slap in the face, you can put your complaints in the corporate complain box, camera pans over showing it being a trash can.

It’s ironic isn’t it, that the mod team condemn Melon for the behavior he does, and turns around to do the exact same thing he did to us. Except that irl companies do have to listen to their shareholders, in this discord, Eanae controls everything, it’s not CEO behavior, it’s dangerously close to having a god complex. CEO can get fired and have limited terms so to speak. The same cannot be said here. The frustration the mod feels toward Melon and Twitter is the perfect parallel to us feeling frustration toward you. The helplessness of being told to deal with it, and the small actions we take, be it try to boycott Twitter via a ban, or making our voices heard through this discussion, is also being processed the exact same. It doesn’t do anything, we are worthless. This is hypocrisy at best and dictatorial at worst

[pallid owl]

Couldn't put it better.

[indigo girder]

most bots of feature parity to kupo use temporarily created channels for modmail that include mods, admins and the user to all participate in a normal discussion context. and allow for logging of those channels.

having a dm from kupo bot, in which only one person can realistically or does respond is likely leading to a lot of the discontent sen and valcors are expressing. it definitely contributes to feeling discussion or actual conversation with moderators is near impossible.

it seems the way modmails are handled just makes it so unfortunately, no one feels truly able to talk to staff about an issue they feel is important in a private manner where everyone might read what they have to say.

it makes the user feel as if 'well this is the person who's replying to my modmail, i guess it's only us who get to speak about what i feel is important'. it makes it hard for people to feel they have any choice in who they speak to or hear them.

hearing the discontent some moderators appear to have for certain users, i think this just adds to the feeling of their voices not being heard.

what tess has done today here seems to be the longest discussion anyone has properly had with a moderator about a serious (i imagine not harassment/etc related) topic in a while.

[ornate pelican]

We’re aware of how modmail functions on most servers and have made the conscious decision to use the system we have now as it allows the mods to discuss before a response is formed and sent. The whole team is involved in every ticket despite that only a single mod may deliver those responses.

[plucky niche]

While Tess's respectful reply has earned the like from me, I must say my sentiment still remains as this. This is a post the administrative team should keep in their minds if they wish us to put any trust in their judgements or actions. Thanks, Green.

[safe charm]

I would also like to say that some behaviors yesterday enabled certain individuals to dogpile and express blatant snark, disrespect and bad faith arguments yesterday.

I don’t feel like it’s been addressed enough that there was outright presumption of, and condescension towards, intent of any detractors of the decision announced yesterday.

People outright went to short, bad faith arguments incited by the assuredness of the decision going through and caused much friction in here, especially when paired with the various previous talking points of trust and communication.
I think there should be more reflection in that regard, especially. Biases flared, with good intentions, I choose to believe, but it has evidently alienated a few of us who chose to participate speaking here today.

[indigo girder]

i doubt this is the truth given how many off the cuff modmails people express receiving, both harassing and otherwise.

are you unaware of how your own server functions, eanae?

you keep repeating your 'whole team is involved in every decision/et al' thing.

but i've seen very few instances here where your words match up to either your actions, or what others perceive and experience. in fact they're near always in opposition.

what you say seems to be an alternate reality of what everyone else experiences.

this modmail adds another layer of obfuscation to an already broken trust system, and you seem hell bent on adding even more reasons to distrust your words.

either you really just don't care - due to your very deep involvement in the en xiv community for such a long time.

or you're honestly confused at how little you truly understand and the mistakes you continue to make and how much your words and actions carry over to the remainder of your xiv related properties.

let along it going through more platforms you, alone, own.
power is nice. but when it's used to hurt and abuse - and you give indications that you're willing to dismiss and simply not respond to tough questions, it's definitely not.

[autumn parrot]

I really need you to tone it down here. I approved of the message she sent as it is factual and I'm the one most in charge of what happens to modmails. If you only want to attack Eanae's character rather than engage with us appropriately, then this won't continue for much longer.

[plucky niche]

I see. A little disappointing, but there admittedly are more 'main' issues to dedicate brainpower to at present.

[hollow owl]

kisela i know that youre venting your frustration with the modmail system but going after eanae for this system is unnecessary and it doesnt relate to the ban as a whole. attacking eanae as a whole isnt going to achieve anything and remember that eanae is a person just like us. i dont agree with this ban at all and im really happy to see that tess is taking the time to talk to us as well as acknowledge us but attacking eanae isnt the way

breaking away from the main issue at hand isnt helping anyone.

[next oar]

Will admins and moderators write up a post-mortem of some sort? I want to see which complaint we made has been caught and what went unaddressed.
I know for a fact that this conversation inevitably will die down as time goes on, but what I REALLY don't want to see is this whole conversation getting swept under the rug and zero change being made to any of the points made here.

I wonder if this very message will get swept under the rug

[indigo girder]

understandable. i'll leave this here for the time being.

most of what's been said needs to be said and i am reaching the point of repetition at best, at worst what i say is rather attacking. i do apologise for treading that ground as heavily as i have.

but as @plucky niche said, there are more main issues to deal with that we're all aware of. unfortunately they can't be all dealt with at present. the twitter ban seems to have been more of a catalyst than many realised.

i appreciate your candor and everything you've said today, as i'm sure most if not many others do. it isn't enough, and i think we all know that.

but sometimes, larger discontent has a way of simmering to the top when something like this happens.

i guess i'd just echo the previous message, along with encouraging you all to really consider the full scope of things myself and others have mentioned and their interplay.

[cerulean kestrel]

I'd like to take my time to support the ban of X/Twitter, honestly.

Yes, a lot of artists built communities on there. But slowly moving those communities to other places that haven't openly stated they'll be stealing that art to train their AI feels like an important step.

We as a whole do not allow art theft, and training AI with art non-consensually is inherently art theft.

Even if you don't consider the owner of X/Twitter's actions to be enough of a reason for you to abandon X/Twitter, you should care enough about art as a whole to recognize that Art Theft = Bad.

Bluesky, Reddit, DeviantArt, ect. All are wonderful options. And yes, the official FFXIV accounts don't exist on Bluesky yet. But they didn't exist on TikTok until we had a large following there already. We have to make the move first in order for the company to make the move.

Some large companies already are making the move. Be the change you want to see.

[merry ore]

I’ll second this, there’s been detractors and certainly some directed criticism to some parties, but overall the last 24 hours of discussion has been mostly genuine responses in how a lot of us feel, as well as caring and helping new people out in #beginner-lounge or #questions-and-help very, very actively. Some would very much attest to the great help we’ve given to them by being warmly open and welcoming to nurture their
I just don’t want any of the positive and/or critical feedback that may be needed or necessary to go the way of the dodo, so to speak.
But I’ll hold my tongue for now, I don’t feel I can articulate this kind of topic much in my current state of mind, and I just hope those who are reading this in the mod and admin teams know that we care, we want this server to be positive and grow, but that some things may cross some line of sand that you may want to ask someone about what’s on the other side. If that metaphor works
Thanks

[versed mauve]

deviantart supports AI

[zinc jay]

And to be clear as well, AI scraping is an issue on every site. Reddit and Bluesky are not exempt from this.

[orchid briar]

I disagree with this entirely, not out of support for the muskrat but because the alternatives you listed absolutely do not disavow AI artwork and some even support it. As an artist, I would rather stay on a platform that actually may give me enough success to live off of- even if my works get stolen for AI stop. There are barely any alternatives out there that are artist friendly that also will give them a large platform.

[drowsy siren]

Why not post on both?

[ornate pelican]

To expand this as far as I’m aware Bluesky has banned AI training on images but I don’t believe there’s any comment about posted content. Reddit has a contract with Google to train its model on Reddit comments and posts.

[indigo girder]

bluesky's 15m series a was from blockchain capital which near entirely invests in ai companies, crypto companies. one of the members of this firm is on the board of bluesky.
and is seeking a 700m valuation from another vc firm which - again - supports near solely ai and crypto companies.

ai companies don't particularly care about robots.txt files and have most scrapers which use different ip's, etc.
api's do great for those who try to use things legitmately, but it's not necessary for any real scraping.

sites that try to avoid this are playing a game of whackamole trying to prevent the 1000s of ai startups with large funding scraping whichever site. let alone openai/stabilityai/everything more.

there is no such thing as an ai friendly site. there are those that might try to avoid it may really try but it's not easy.

the more they learn to detect them the more these companies learn to avoid their detection.

edit: the more people stand as if bluesky or any other tech company is going to avoid the gold rush of ai is frankly blind.
they're all doing it in some way or another, bluesky, reddit, deviantart, anywhere. unless you're doing it completely privately there is very little you can do to stop this train.

edit 2: reddit has a contract with google to allow access to its new reddit comments and posts but that's mainly so it is still visible in search. this was a major reason for the api limitation that was imposed at exorbitant prices at a similar time to their ipo. again - scraping doesn't care and reddit can't do much

[next oar]

Bumping the request to see if there will be any response to this.

[autumn parrot]

This will be included in the announcement we make.

[wary frigate]

this

[indigo girder]

give it time.

what you and others have said likely won't be ignored at large, however a proper response as you and many others desire will take time.
give the mods and admins some grace, so that they can try to sort all this out.

i'm sure you'll get a large part of what you asked, but it needs time.

what tess has said just now does builds confidence, but still - truly give it some time. this isn't easy on anyone.

[long ridge]

Thanks, it's much appreciated

[next oar]

You seems to be missing why I made a bump there. I did it because there's a chance my request went unnoticed amidst of other wall of text.
At least by bumping it, or maybe explicitly sending @ at admins, I can rule out the possibility of simply missing my post.

And frankly I don't know what perspective you are trying to add by sending this message. what's the point you are trying to make?

[indigo girder]

that it won’t go unnoticed. many people have expressed similar sentiments to your own here and likely within the team itself.

but the weekend just started.
as was mentioned at the beginning of all of this, we have all weekend, i guess.

i’m not speaking to just you, more telling you and others to understand you need to moderate how quick and deep of a response you expect.

and understand that there’s a reason solely eanae and tess are speaking here in any true level currently.

any mods posting are short, and if they do it’s either dismissive or noncommittal. this is a change of pace from earlier on.

but in general - i’m just saying that you will get the response you ask for in some form. and that this isn’t easy on the mod team or any of us

[misty temple]

with all due respect, i'm loath to take your opinion seriously given that this is your first and only post in this server. the fact that you believe the issue is simply "AI bad" demonstrates you're not actually aware of why this community is up in arms about the ban in the first place. and saying "even if you don't draw the line at melon's actions you should draw the line at art theft" is not a good look.

we are well aware that artists can have many platforms beyond twitter that we can very easily find and share in this server that we want. this is not the point of contention. i'm not saying you're not a part of the community just because you posted once in the discord, but you are woefully unaware of the discussions that are taking place. this channel is for feedback about the discord -- if you are not a willing participant of it, then this conversation is not relevant to you.

and like others have said, AI training is not a unique issue to twitter.

[rich elm]

You respect the right to share information but then you support the ban to suppress information what kind of sense does that make, oh yeah im gonna screenshot the twitter post and crop it so I avoid getting shot in the head by moderation team as if thats how unnecessarily far I have to go to even post FFXIV content and or from the official SE account

[misty temple]

there is a largely negative reaction because the ban adversely affects people who actually use the discord for disseminating information, much of which exists and will continue to stay on twitter because the community established on twitter does not care about what the subreddit discord chooses to ban. that should not be surprising. since the platform was sold to melon, even the official ffxiv accounts have continued to post on twitter and hold sweepstakes involving the creation of twitter posts, and i don't expect things to suddenly reverse course.

"things will work out" is not a solution, and we are all within our rights to voice our respectful opinions about the situation -- IF it is actually about the situation.

[onyx shale]

Question actually, how will the twitter ban interact with the ffxiv twitter sweepstakes then?

If the intention of the ban is to reduce traffic to Twitter, won't mentioning the sweepstakes on reddit/discord defeat the purpose then? Would the ban also then extend to removing all mentions/promotions/announcements regarding the sweepstakes?

If discord/reddit is allowed to discuss the twitter sweepstakes while the Twitter ban is active, wouldn't this imply that the Twitter ban is just moral high ground virtue signalling

[split totem]

This I feel will have to be a wait and see type thing.

So far most big companies have yet to distance themselves from Twitter. But in Nintendo recent newsletter they officially removed their Twitter link and promotion of Twitter.

Potentially other companies could follow suit. With them abandoning Twitter.

It will be a wait and see type of thing. Square could establish a bluesky account. But that is still a wait and see. I'm not jumping the gun and saying they definitely will move to it.

[open lark]

wait, but i read that 6 months ago they ended twitter integration. i think that was right about the time that twitter changed the API integration costs. microsoft and sony ended their integrations with twitter at the same time too i think

[timid pilot]

API integration for things like easily sharing screenshots/videos from your console is different from an official presence on a social media website

[fading plank]

I posed a similar question earlier and I believe this to be the easiest way to understand why the ban is not well thought out.
Deterring people from using twitter is a fool's errand, especially since screenshots of its media are allowed, meaning you only remove ease of communication, not engagement with the website - which is up to us, every adult in this server, and nobody else should even have a say there.
What the ban does accomplish is removing artists and anyone producing the media from credit. For the sake of virtue signaling, the ban will hurt the community and do nothing of actual value.

This has always been a net loss. And I suspect the wave of righteousness that comes with hearing bad news about some guy on the internet is to blame; someone heard about it, suggested it to the team, and it was collectively decided that arguing against it would make them seem like they don't care or support the bad guy.
But this is a battle only to us. The bad guy in question isn't even aware it is being fought, so little is its impact. This decision is willing to blow certain pieces of its community up in order to take a shot at the bad guy, who isn't even going to notice.
I can't excuse how flippant this is being with people who weren't even asked in the first place. And for what? To say you 'tried to make a difference'? That kind of moral high ground does nothing and less for anyone.

[hoary garden]

While we are on the subject of keeping conversation civil, conducting ourselves appropriately, and not resorting to ad hominem attacks: this comment specifically was absolutely inappropriate and utterly unacceptable, doubly so because it was made by the server owner. A public apology is required.

[fossil moss]

The server owner has personally, repeatedly said she is not taking any feedback and nothing will changes her decision.

This says a lot about this virtue signaling that is banning Twitter when the people who are a part of the LGBT+ community actually are against said ban in this server. Is this really a ban to protect us helpless users like we are some sort of children not capable of making that decision for our own?

To many here, this is exactly the kind of thing that is going on irl. Whatever frustration you feel, is not on us. We are not your children or your friends, we will question your decisions, and speak up if it’s something we find unjustifiable.

The server owner channels that energy into her big sweeping decisions, expecting people to take it like the word of god. Because let’s be real here, even irl figures have things that limit their influences which I will not be diving in. Here, there is nothing like that, no check and balances, no opposing factors thats meaningful.

Any sort of feedback is being shut down, and file in the corporate complain pile that is the trash can.

I have said before and I will say this again until someone from the admin or mod team give us an answer. why is this not a public conversation?. No this is not Reddit, stop linking the post that you claim is astroturfing then base your decisions on said post. You are hurting your own credibility here. And the more you tried to justify it, the more it makes it very obvious that this decision comes from a personal place and not some sort of protection toward this community.

[pallid owl]

I still find it completely unbelievable that such a comment could be made towards the general population of this server which I am sure Eanae is very aware is not, in fact, full of Nazi sympathizers. And to the points made before, I will shout into the void once again and say that banning Twitter links accomplishes absolutely nothing other than making our lives as active users harder, with no relevant damage done to the owner's bottom line, in light of the fact that the ban is supposed to apply only to embedded links and not screenshots, which is frankly laughable if the time was taken to actually consider how this ban would be implemented.

[silent flower]

Honestly the 4-5 person echo chamber this channel has become makes me never want to be a more active member of this Discord than anything the moderation team ever did.

[fossil moss]

The mod team has disappointed us, and this time, greatly so. This screenshot right here is why people rightfully do not believe a word mods have repeatedly say about our feedback will change the decision, especially if it’s an overwhelmingly against/ or for favor.

Actions speaks louder than words, and right now, the only action we saw is nothing have changes despite people coming into this channel expressing their frustration. As per the word of the owner, you guys are not taking any feedback whatsoever.

No changes will be made, and every single reply from the server owners has solidify this further since she selectively choses to answer unrelated comments. This is identical to what is going on in real life that actually affecting us. Your stance on things does not matter, but your action does. At the moment, what you are doing in making this decision, is the same exact thing Melon is doing.

[orchid briar]

Don’t know how to say this nicely but if people being mad over being called nzi sympathizers for posting Twitter links made you not want to become a more active member then… I dunno what to say lmao. Theres like a clear difference in “this is bad” level here

[pallid owl]

Well, excuse us if we express our frustration with a server that we are extremely active in, as opposed to having 32 messages in the past two years, most of which are in this channel in the past two days.

We have a stake in this because we are actually here every day chatting and helping people. Quite frankly, you have shown no such investment. And nothing you've said in this channel so far has indicated to me that you have any understanding of why we all are so against this. You're allowed to have an opinion. So are we. Except ours is far more relevant to what's actually going on in this server on a daily basis. So again, I'm sorry if you don't like what we're saying. But that doesn't mean we're not going to say it.

[hoary garden]

And yet they were quite successful in baiting several very emotional—and thus very easily dismissable—responses which did very little to resolve the actual purpose of your frustration aside from adding to channel noise.

[pallid owl]

I'm noting that there has been a very high correlation between people who support the ban and accounts that are extremely inactive on the server.

And it no longer matters what you consider a "dismissible" response, as most of them have been dismissed without regard to their content anyways previously. Tess held us out an olive branch. We appreciate that. What still won't and cannot be dismissed is the words and actions of the server owner. Every point in here has been hammered home so many times that calling it beating a dead horse would be a dramatic understatement. Yet, no indication of even acknowledgement, god forbid consideration, from the person in question. So I genuinely have zero interest in how productive you think we are being with our replies.

[indigo girder]

this isn't a public discussion because the mods can't present a united front right now.

banning twitter was a decision from the admins - though eanae was specifically called out. it appears that they still aren't ready to reveal more information as to why. the linked message was sent about 30 hours ago.

they're still either ironing out how this ban will work (which isn't difficult to implement and eanae already said exactly how it'll work, it's a simple filter).

there may be discontent - but maybe there is a united front yet mods aren't speaking up.

the debate/discussion the mods mentioned has not been made public to anyone, just that the merits of it were discussed internally.

it appears there are rules on what they can discuss publicly without risking their mod position. no leaks, etc.

along with dissent and not agreeing with an admins decision, it appears to me that moderators can't safely give their feelings about without risking their position.

and it also seems that what the admins and mods are willing to say right now is limited. and anything they say publicly now may be up to change, or challenge.

they either don't wanna lose their position, give people false hope, show what they truly believe or all are on the same page, with the same understanding.

i'm sure many don't want to be attacked here either as some people have.

edit: apologies for using your message here blitz, but as this isn’t a public discussion we have to use what little information has been given to us to even gleam what the situation might be

[static flower]

Agreed.

[mighty fossil]

there's no need for a large amount of people to respond to this as these people you believe to be for an echo chamber are sufficient enough to express issues towards this entire thing.

because they're people who actually use this discord, there are plenty of more from beginner's to endgame lounge

[next oar]

If you wish to provide a feedback, could you at least stop deleting the messages you sent? I saw you yesterday too but your message is all gone.

[pallid owl]

Sometimes widespread assent sounds like an echo chamber. It's not. It's just people reasonably agreeing.

[static flower]

That’s the point that some of you don’t seem to understand. It’s not widespread assent.

But because some of you engage in toxic behaviors to counter those speaking up here, such as going through their post history to claim they aren’t a “regular” and thus unworthy of an opinion in the matter, why would anyone want to speak in dissent here?

[meager sluice]

respectfully, you joined yesterday, your only messages are in this channel, and you keep deleting those messages. as opposed to the several active members here unsatisfied with the way eanae has been responding to criticism and dissent to the ban.

so yes, it is worth mentioning when the only thing you've done is snap back at the people unhappy about the ban and mod response.

[plucky niche]

I'd love to feedback on how your original post conveyed much of the same vibe by simply disregarding everything that was discussed before you, but you deleted them so I can't.

I hope we can all agree here that the point that needs to not be distracted from, is more about the communication and management issues that have been shown. As I'm sure you familiarised yourself with sufficiently, the discussion about the pros and cons of the ban itself have been talked over in detail days ago.

[sacred zephyr]

I would like to remind folks to please remain respectful towards one another. There's no reason to take pot shots, regardless of where you stand in all of this.

[vocal agate]

So indeed, feedback is being thrown into a trash can. What is the point of requesting the user's input if you know you're not going to reconsider your position?

That also seems to confirm that the "This was a unanimous decision from the mod team after much deliberation" was a lie, if they're still struggling to present a unified front. For all we know this was 1-2 ppl's idea, but people in the mod team are forced to have a single voice so everyone else was forced to submit regardless of their protests

I'm far from the most active in here but still, it's a little disappointing to see how this situation has unfolded

[onyx shale]

I do agree with emu, the main discussion here has evolved past the twitter ban (which from the sounds of things is going to be a done deal regardless) to the management of this server.

Some of the statements/comments made by eanae when this started was very targeted. In fact, if the things she said was said by any of us, I would expect us to be server muted for it. Instead, eanae (from our perspectives) has got off scott free

[static flower]

My point is being proven. I do hope that everyone can move on from this situation regardless of the outcome in a more peaceful and civil way in the future.

[pallid owl]

But we are unworthy of the same treatment.

There is a reason you have to be a citizen of a country to participate in its elections. You need to have an actual stake in its overall success or failure to guarantee that your voice is one that should be heard.

I see no reason why people who don't use this discord should decide what is or isn't allowed in it. Outright.

I did not participate in the reddit poll. Nor was I aware that its result would affect me. Nor was I aware that it even existed in the first place. I would wager most people in here are in the same situation.

So I ask yet again: Why the hell does its judgement apply to us?

[fading plank]

The peaceful and civil way is going to be finding a community whose leader respects the people in it, if neither sincere apology nor backpedaling occur. Some might call it an overreaction that won't affect anything, but I have self respect and don't feel like being called a nzi by anybody. Frankly if you're okay with it, you also shouldn't have an issue with twitter staying unbanned.
You can't both be upset with the rat for saying and doing bad things and thus banning its platform, and be totally ok with the server owner saying and doing bad things to you, their community. At least by not going through with the ban, there's no hypocrisy.

[indigo girder]

we have all weekend, i’m sure they’ll use that time to discuss this.

tess said they were taking feedback here and in the private form - i’m sure many mods are reading what people post in the feedback form along with what people say here.

the announcement about the form implies they know many will be angry or upset.

as others have said, calling someone a nazi, particularly when they’re a member of a marginalised group themselves, would be banned or muted if it was anyone else who said that, regardless of context.

i guess all you can hope is that eanae at least will speak with her honest voice as server owner at the end of this, however this comes to pass.

[fading plank]

Yes, I'm personally waiting for whatever their official response will be, and act accordingly

[hallow mist]

I hate to put it like this, but the more this kind of decisions happen, the more the "no politics" rule looks like "no politics unless you're staff and posting in #announcements". As much as I could agree with the why, the method is severely lacking and frankly damaging.

And do I need to remind everyone that as things currently stand, there will be a time when we can't talk about official FFXIV contests and giveaways because they require actual interaction on the big no-no site?

we have all weekend, i’m sure they’ll use that time to discuss this.

Also yes, this. Decisions and discussions take time, especially on larger servers like this (I can speak from personal experience).

"Staff are slow to officially respond" is not the win you're looking for.

[warped forum]

With there being plenty of other official channels from Square Enix and this being a discord focused on FFXIV and the community surrounding it I think banning X links is a good move. As it has been stated, no action is taken against the individual, just clean removal of the link by Kupobot.

I've always disagreed with no politics rules in servers because it encourages the status quo to be comfortable, and the status quo largely hates people I love, but that's not directly the topic I'm providing feedback on currently.

When existing in the political climate that currently controls many of the sources of places we enjoy it's important to sometimes make uncomfortable changes.

[pallid owl]

As much as I agree with what's stated here, I don't think it takes a unanimous vote, a discussion, or really anything other than a sense of decency to at least apologize for implying that we are all Nazi sympathizers for opposing this ban for unrelated reasons.

[turbid kayak]

Regarding official ffxiv contests and giveaways they are posted on the lodestone and on the official forum.

And it is about banning posting the twitter link on discord, and not banning you from posting lodestone announcement, and or banning you from entering the sweepstakes to enter the contest.

[onyx shale]

Twitter sweepstakes require engagement with Twitter to actually enter the contest

[plucky niche]

Plus one to the 'give it time' comment. A good answer won't be given without them having time to discuss about it. I can only hope that they are discussing it, but nothing I can do but have some faith.

I trust that together with it will be an acceptable apology for conduct shown in the past few days.

[autumn parrot]

I just want to take a moment to remind those of you still taking shots at Eanae's comment that she does have a life outside of this server and doesn't only work on weekdays. If she does say something, you need to be patient about receiving the message.

[indigo girder]

i understand what you’re saying tess, but i think you missed the point of what we’re saying.

many of us are adults and of similar age to her.

we have lives - jobs, family, relationships, hobbies and activities we do on weekends and weekdays.

responsibilities and work are things we all have.

i don’t think demonstrating that she is a busy person compared to us is fair.

particularly when saying “give it time” in regards to a larger comment from her seems to be near unanimous from everyone.

[autumn parrot]

I'm not missing any points, I'm letting you know why she hasn't said anything yet and to please stop repeating yourselves.

This isn't the "pile on Eanae" channel. Your concerns for her comments are well documented for her to make a decision when she is able.

[hoary garden]

That is understandable.

However. It takes approximately eight seconds to pick up your phone, type "I said something to a member that was completely out of line, and I apologise for that", and hit send.

[hollow fjord]

Unless I've missed something - which is completely possible - there's been no indication that any of what we've said apart from the very few things that she has cherry picked out to respond to are actually being read, understood, and considered. I think it's atleast understandable to expect some form of acknowledgement that she has actually read some of the other, real criticisms coming her way.

[pallid owl]

While I understand that she has a life, as do we, it does not take an inordinate amount of time (which she has, on that subject, taken to respond to other, less pertinent queries) to apologize for or even clarify an incredibly offensive and rather disgusting comment made towards us.

I'm more than happy to wait for the decision on whether the ban on twitter will actually go live. I've said my piece. But apologizing is not something that requires deliberation or a vote. I think I speak for most of us when I say that it feels like it's malicious intent that we have been completely ignored. It's unbecoming of not only the owner of the server, but any decent person.

[fading plank]

Is there really a 'decision to be made' when it comes to apologising...? If I said something hurtful to somebody and people told me I needed to apologise, in no way would I need to "make a decision", unless I didn't think I need to apologise in the first place...
Sorry, this doesn't really give me much hope for a sincere apology, if any will come. It's quite worrying, really, that anyone would suggest there has been no time for an apology when there was evidently ample time to respond to much less relevant topics.

[indigo girder]

i doubt many people are waiting for her specifically to reply to anyone right now, apology withstanding.

they just want anyone on the team to give some clarity to the situation.

the anger directed at her does can like a pile on. but people are hurt by what’s been said and unsaid.

everyone here is trying to at least talk to someone, anyone about this situation.

not to continually feel dismissed or ignored, or like they’re doing a bad thing merely for wanting to talk about this issue openly.

of course people are repeating themselves because there’s near 0 feedback from anyone.

with no voices and no communication beyond blitz’s comment of inner staff workings and your comments - people have nothing to go on.

people just want to ensure they’re heard.

[pallid owl]

We did not stop repeating ourselves because that would defeat the purpose of us saying anything at all.

We stay quiet, it's easier for everything to get smoothed over and forgotten. I'm sure that's what the admin team would love right now. That's not what we want.

[sacred zephyr]

Please refer to the announcement. While we will continue to encourage feedback, we want to make it clear that the decision has been made. We understand that this might disappoint some of you, but this is the policy that best fits the community that we wish to support.

[lean wave]

Neat, guess it's time to lurk elsewhere

[rigid fern]

"I see no reason why people who don't use this discord should decide what is or isn't allowed in it. Outright."

I just want to say that just because many of us rarely/never comment in this discord doesn't mean we don't use it. You do realize that talking is not required to use resources and read.

Same goes with the statement about being a citizen of a country to participate in elections. You can be a citizen without ever being noticed lol.

These comparisons are wild and just because you come and have a bigger social battery doesn't mean my opinion and the opinion of those others like me are invalid. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Oh and just to be clear, I'm all for the Twitter links being banned in this discord. Sorry you're having a hard time coping with the fact that many of the more silent viewers feel this way.

Back to never talking I go. I hope y'all have great days.

[meager sluice]

so.... where's eanae's apology?

[pallid owl]

If you don't talk, you once again have no reason to care if you can link Twitter or not beyond virtue signaling. Thanks for that. Have a good one!

[worthy quarry]

there is nothing to gain from banning twitter links

[hollow fjord]

one upping this. im expecting a full apology at some point soon.

[sacred zephyr]

Enough with the passive aggression. Or overt aggression. Any aggression at all.

[plucky niche]

Can you explain to me what the point of encouraging feedback is while in the same sentence saying it won't be considered?

edit: oh my god i didn't see that. 86 responses out of a server of a quarter of a million and THAT'S what you're justifying with?

[onyx shale]

If we are not allowed to vent our frustration in the feedback channel here, then what's the point of this channel? Are we only allowed to post positive feedback, and all negative feedback be silenced?

Edit: 86 responses out of 250k people in the server is in no way a majority.

[fiery jackal]

The feedback showed that a ban was more inline with the majority of users.

[jagged mirage]

Majority? It’s almost 50/50. And data collection is only a couple days old with only 86 responses from how many server members here?

[sacred zephyr]

Feedback being considered does not automatically mean changing course. If that were the case, then what you are asking for is to be making the decisions yourself.

We took note of several of the most common concerns and did spend time discussing ways in which we could mitigate some of them. The art one was the biggest one, but the solution is admittedly not the most elegant. It's the best we can come up with for that specific case.

[remote spade]

Was endgame-lounge discussed considering how people post strat stuff/videos on twitter

[surreal shuttle]

Endgame-lounge was discussed. When the ban rolls out officially we will have a FAQ on the specifics and how it’ll work

Every “but what about…” question you’ve asked here has been discussed and will be explained in full by the time the ban is official

[indigo girder]

this is why private feedback forms where you can’t see if they’re being astroturfed because they made it so you can be anonymous is comedy.

you’re doing very well guys im proud of you for following in her footsteps

didn’t eanae say we had all weekend? i guess y’all have decided and made how it all works early on saturday. funny that

[sacred zephyr]

We are trying our best to mitigate the most common issues while still upholding the policy.

[fading plank]

"Despite nearly half of the people we asked being against this, we have decided to go forward with it."
No explanation as to what the positives of this are (there are none unless you count a moral high ground). Acknowledgement of the negatives, and an obscenely tedious solution given. No solution for non-art such as raidplans and other forms of video media.
If this decision that was against half the people's interests is supposed to be worth it, then telling us why should've been an easy task. But you have not. You can't. There are no positives that aren't for virtue signalling. You've made the decision to stunt communication in the server for the sake of feeling good about yourselves.
And I hope you do, I hope it is worth it for you.

I'm glad that about half the people are happy, and if they are non-talkers, then I assume the server prefers there to be less people who talk and share things, and more who do not interact at all.
I have no disrespect towards lurkers, but this decision has not affected you (and wouldn't have if it hadn't been made), and I can't find it in me to believe that there are actually so many people in favour of a ban.

And of course, no apology. I don't think I expected it to come, but it's disappointing nonetheless.
"We are sorry" isn't the person in question taking accountability. Didn't think that needed to be specified.

[sacred zephyr]

The second paragraph states the following: Additionally, some of the comments made on our end almost certainly strayed too far into needless accusations, for that we are sorry.

Please make sure you read the entire announcement.

[next oar]

Oh I didn't submit the feedback, whoops. I didn't realize it's only being held for like 35 hours-ish

[vocal agate]

The way you're framing it makes it look like not going through with the ban was never considered. You used feedback to try and adjust your initial proposal, but never to question if it was really the right call in the first place. Is there even a point in the survey then, if any opposition would be met with a "Sorry you don't like it how can I make it so you like it" in the first place, rather than re-evaluating whether to go through with the ban?

[sacred zephyr]

Some months ago there was a separate discussion on the same policy, but at the time we had decided it wasn't necessary. Since then, things have gotten significantly worse upon the platform and the majority of the initial detractors on the team now agree with the ban.

As for the feedback itself, we are genuinely interested in it, but it still remains feedback and not an explicit vote. The comments provided can help us adjust how we handle things, but they don't automatically dictate the policies.

[kind inlet]

It may be meaningful to point out that this discord is not a democracy.

[onyx shale]

I'm going to be very blunt.

The apology statement in announcements is a slap in the face PR statement. The majority of "needless accusations" were done by one specific person, and to make another mod write a generic PR apology is a cop out and feels extremely insincere

Also, can slow mode be dropped to 5 mins? It's almost impossible to have a productive 2-way discussion with how long you have to wait

[pallid owl]

It is not a democracy. You do not need to run a democracy to be reasonable.

If an announcements post had been made condemning the actions of Twitter's owner and calling upon all members to cease any tangible support in the form of paid verification, etc, and a SUGGESTION that we stop using Twitter, absolutely everyone would have gotten behind it.

The outright BAN on it has pissed people off because you are smacking an ant colony with a sledgehammer. It is absolute, massive overkill, with more collateral damage to this community's freedom of expression than is necessary.

[plucky niche]

I'm not sure if you intended to show that 86 individuals contributed to the form. To claim that this is an adequate measuring of the community, at this short a notice, is comical. And while tempers have ran high, bookending your apology - which I note still isn't coming directly from those who have had a hand in it - with blaming the users for lashing in return to the comments made towards them, is beyond disappointing. Respect is earned. So is trust.

As was discussed in this chat over the last 2 days, a primary concern was users not being queried on whether this should have taken place in the first place. This seems to have been safely ignored. Another concern was users not being able to interact with the decision making in respect to a change that affects them. This also seems to have been safely ignored, as - as I feared - the moderation team has once again gone back amongst themselves and come out with a decision that's 'best for you, because we tell you it is, and that's final'. This shows your only commitment to accepting feedback was the kind of feedback you liked hearing, and not the kind you didn't like.

This decision should have been taken into account for the benefit of the users, not the moderation team alone. Your team's blatant and continuing disregard for the opinions of the users over the past few days should be an indicator to anyone where your motives actually lie.

I was hopeful when we had some communication from the administrators yesterday that your team would finally be open to considering a reevaluation of your decision making process. This was, very obviously, a mistake on my part. I was wrong to trust leaving making a nuanced and respectful conclusion in your team's hands, and I will not make that mistake again. I look forward to reevaluating this when every other social media site goes down the same pan in 3 years.

[mighty fossil]

personally, i didn't quite see any fault with the comment by a "we" but a single comment for everyone associated to being nazis after i woke up and looked around for a bit.

i dont know how many faults were there to be a "we" for a community run discord server.

also, i'd like to see less of the "irl, am busy" excuse when i've seen this in statics already for a supposed hc group and such, people have em as well.

community wise? being hands off is fine, there wasn't a need for this much dedication.

i'd still be for banning it but allow redirects which would be a ban for a different reason so i don't have to see broken media on discord.

[sacred zephyr]

Slowmode updated 👍

Nobody made me write the announcement, I decided to do so on my own with the approval of the others on the team. Regardless of who specifically said something, we are all still part of the same staff team and take responsibility for the actions as a whole. That seems appropriate to me, at least.

[surreal shuttle]

Just a reminder that

A) the feedback from is still open and you can still respond to it if you wish. The image in the announcement was only to show the current stats

B) we cannot control how many people respond to the form. Just because there are X amount of people actively engaging with the server at any given time doesn’t mean they’ll all respond to the form

[fiery jackal]

Out of 250,000 people, only 86 chose to respond to the form.

[meager sluice]

it's pretty disingenuous to call 86 votes a "majority" in a server with hundreds of thousands of users.

it's also disingenuous to say we had a "couple of days" to vote in the feedback form when the form was posted 36 hours ago.

it was clear from the beginning that our feedback means nothing to you. the results of the form don't matter, they never did, and my views on this have only been reinforced from the announcement and responses you have given us today.

it is also an insult and slap to the face for you to apologize on behalf of the person that actually needs to apologize. where is eanae's apology for that disgusting comment and accusation? she is more than capable of apologizing herself.

[indigo girder]

as you evidently have access to the data of the survey, hiccup.

are you able to post counts of those who posted anonymously or with a name? you can blur names etc. it feels as if you made the perfect form for astroturfing.

discord is not a democracy but you’re now framing it as a vote by the people, for the people.

even though your boss said discord and this server was not a democracy.

please don’t imply you can apologise for others, please.

i do find it very funny how much your votes mirror brexit percentages, and that 86 votes were your evidence (of unknown quantity or quality due to the nature of the form)

[sacred zephyr]

Please excuse me if I try to respond to things in order

[plucky niche]

This would have a point if we weren't just told that there is zero reason in us doing this. 'Please submit your feedback, but our decision won't change so you may as well be screaming into a void'. I know that's not what you mean, but it's what we're being told.

[jagged mirage]

On the note that it’s not an explicit vote.

The discussion form to my understanding was an olive branch extended with some promise to review collected QUALITY DATA from users who shown frustration.

Instead it churned responses into cold quantity data with collection only being a couple days old when the result looks good on your team’s end. That result being posted along with announcements shows bad faith and somewhat of a take back from what the feedback form promised to do.

Any person with some experience in data should be offended. This action crosses some lines and is shady to say the least.

[sacred zephyr]

To get a significant portion of this community to respond to the feedback form would be rather impossible without sending out pings, and even then that wouldn't guarantee any sort of majority actually taking the time to reply.

The people who did reply are those who, I would have to assume, actually care about the issue enough to bother with the form at all.

As for the ban on twitter itself, the primary reason is absolutely due to the vitriol and hatred that the platform now represents even in comparison to 6 months ago, but that isn't the only reason. Twitter has, functionally, gotten significantly worse since the change in ownership. It's no surprise that so many large communities are taking a similar step as we are, some of which relied on twitter links far more than we do.

[median mantle]

To be fair, I'm not super inclined to spend time responding to the form when it's already been said that the ban is happening regardless and feedback is not being taken. If I want to shout into the void I don't need a Google form for that ^^

[next oar]

I must say I really like how @sacred zephyr is trying to communicate, It really feels different from how rest of the moderator teams try to interact with the people here.
This message alone makes me think that you are trying to try your best despite the current mess, and it feels like it's a human responding to the complaint instead of "the collective".

[meager sluice]

what about the people who actually care that posted here and not the form? the google form is so laughably easy to bot and make alt accounts for. as eanae said, "these polls are astroturfed to hell and back."

why do we need to take into account people who do not talk in this discord? people who are not affected by this ban at all? as eanae said, once again, in reference to the poll on r/ffxiv, "[they] only took into account people who post to r/ffxiv."

[vocal agate]

But then again, if the idea of the feedback form is to involve the community in some way in the decision making process, it's already made moot the moment it comes out after a decision has been made with no intention to correct course. So I ask again, what is the point of feedback if there is never gonna be any intention to re-evaluate the proposal? It comes across as an attempt to save face, so people can't say their voices weren't heard (And sadly, they're not)

[wanton karma]

#announcements message Eanae has posted an apology. Making sure it gets seen.

[sacred zephyr]

We did not frame the vote as anything other than an expression of support or opposition (or those with no opinion).

As for how many offered their names, It was around 19 people (I say 'around' because I cant be certain some aren't aliases that they don't use here). The reason we did not require people to offer their names is because we wanted to allow people to express their opinion freely. People tend to do that when they're allowed some level of anonymity. We even got a response to "remove homo mods" so... take that as you will.

[indigo girder]

no one trusts your form, hiccup, blitz and everyone else.

it’s not those who actually care who use your form. to imply that is honestly rather gross.

many would rather that people at least see what they say rather than just the mods who have already shown how distrustful they behave.

they see your form as performative and people have seen how you use it.

pretty much exactly as you did here, again, it’s perfect for astroturfing in any form.

quantitive data where you don’t discuss people’s larger issues are easy to represent.
you seem to have ignored anything qualitative from anyone here or elsewhere.

edit: 19 people gave their names and you’re using that for your justification? holy crap man

[fading plank]

As for the ban on twitter itself, the primary reason is absolutely due to the vitriol and hatred that the platform now represents even in comparison to 6 months ago, but that isn't the only reason. Twitter has, functionally, gotten significantly worse since the change in ownership. It's no surprise that so many large communities are taking a similar step as we are, some of which relied on twitter links far more than we do.
What does this tangibly mean? "Twitter bad" is what I'm understanding, but what positive comes from banning it in this server? Why isn't whether somebody uses it their choice?
I would understand if twitter attached propaganda to every post, but it doesn't. I would understand if people used it maliciously in this very server, but they don't.
People use this to post bunny pics and house memes, to share raid plans and art. What about this was so bad it warranted this ban?

I do hope you don't feel like you're personally being slammed here, and I do wish you had more people tackling the many responses that will inevitably come alongside you.

[kind inlet]

It's starting to sound like there's a set of larger issues here vis a vis how moderation makes decisions about moderating the server, which feels like a discussion that needs to be had... but it's entirely distinct from the actual action of banning the links from Twitter, which regardless of how the mod team has gone about communicating it and petitioning for feedback about it, DOES still need to be done.

Put another way: let's set aside the discussion about the mods and the principles of asking for feedback and coalesce on the part where banning Twitter is the right thing to do for the discord.

[onyx shale]

At the very least, if the intention was to go ahead with the ban regardless of the feedback received, this should have been explicitly clear in the announcement post about the form.

The way things were worded initially, it gave the impression that the feedback form will have an impact on whether the ban will go ahead, when clearly this was not the case

[ornate pelican]

I’d like to mention while staff are allowed to reply the discord team in general prefers to communicate through one voice. While Hiccup may not speak for the entire team his statements will reflect the feelings of the team. We’ve found it’s worse to have multiple people stepping over each other than a single person handling replies. The staff is watching comments here.

[plucky niche]

To get a significant portion of this community to respond to the feedback form would be rather impossible without sending out pings, and even then that wouldn't guarantee any sort of majority actually taking the time to reply.

This is not my complaint. My complaint is this being used as a justification for 'well, it's the will of the people!' when it has less credibility than a toothpaste ad saying '90% of dentists recommend!' with the small print saying they queried like 6 dentists. In addition to this, what are people who read the thankfully now apologised-for-but-certainly-not-at-the-time comments from the server owner that feedback is pointless and the decision is fixed, meant to think? How are they meant to think that the feedback form is a worthwhile use of their time?

I'm glad that you accept that the solution to the problem is a bit slapdash. What I am disappointed about is the decision to still push it and not, which in my opinion would've been more sound - and it seems like you've done in the past! - put the decision on ice and try to find something that actually works.

I would like to be clear that my complaints are directed at the collective decision making force and not personal attacks on any individual. I am grateful for this communication, but more needs to be done.

Also, just as an anecdote.

A vote that had a sample size of a miniscule amount of the population it actually affects, and the result is a slim majority that is being held as the gospel? Seriously, doesn't that sound familiar?

[pallid owl]

As to the form: it closed WAY too early. Even I, as one of the more vocal opponents of the ban, hadn't gotten to filling it out yet, because I was under the impression that I was going to at least have the weekend to collect my thoughts, write them down, and submit them.

As it stands, I submitted my form with my vote five minutes ago, AFTER the screenshot was taken and the results posted, in incredibly rushed fashion because the announcement had already been made on such short notice.

As Tetris said: anyone with any amount of knowledge regarding statistics and data collection would call this a farce.

I will say again that Twitter has never been used maliciously in this discord, never has anyone here used it to tangibly further its owner's bottom line. There is no reason to ban its use purely to showboat morals. If you want to virtue signal, write an announcement post condemning his actions. It really is that simple.

And I would like to thank the mods speaking here for finally giving us something to work with.

[fiery jackal]

That’s fair. As they stated, the ban is going into place but with modifications to suit the feedback which is also fair. I would also like to point out that people have been using parallels to real world democracy as criticism for this ban which is so beyond the scope of the actual ramifications of this decision. This isn’t a life or death situation nor is it truly a “regulation” of information. It’s simply decreasing traffic via link interaction.

[sacred zephyr]

Ok responding one at a time is extremely difficult so I'll just try to address things as they appear.

Nobody is botting a form with less than 100 responses. The idea that someone would go to the effort to bot ... 10 extra votes or something... is absurd and I really don't want to entertain something like that. It's reaching, and I don't want to spend time arguing that.

As for how the server is run, it's run exactly the same way that the majority of communities I've been a part of also do. Decision making is regularly left up to the people on the respective staff teams (most often when the community is a particularly large one). There's nothing strange about how this server is run, it's in line with pretty much every community I personally have been a member of. If anything, I would argue we pay more attention to how people feel than most, and it leads to fairly heavy amounts of burn out. I'm sure some of you could at least respect that it's not an easy task trying to communicate to a small crowd upset with a decision that you've made.

[onyx shale]

Also echoing siti's statement here. Personally I never filled in the form because, from the interactions here on the day everything went down, I was given the impression that filling out the form is just a waste of time because nothing will come out of it

[plucky niche]

To be clear I'm not conflating the results with real world politics. I just think it's ironic.

I don't envy the staff's position in this. I know it's difficult. But this isn't it, and asking us to accept this based on this is unfair. As Chiyo said, if the moderation team wished to cement their morals, a broad post educating users about the actions of Muskrat and a condemnation of it, and maybe a plug to bluesky and such, would have been more than sufficient. Users would have no question where you stand on the matter, and those who did could be referred to it. Simply banning the platform altogether, especially in a community like this, has more punishing effects on this community than benefits otherwise. I know you know this.

[sacred zephyr]

An example of virtue signalling would be the following: "It really sucks to see all these homeless people, somebody should help them," and then proceeding to do nothing about it.

What we are doing is joining in with a larger effort to push away from the use of Twitter. I'm sure you've paid enough attention to what's going on over Reddit with particularly large communities (including our own subreddit) moving away from the use of twitter. While you're correct that it won't suddenly cause the death of the platform, it does add to increasing pressure and encourages people to find less hostile and more supportive platforms.

[fading plank]

If the form is seen as valid just based on somebody (anybody) submitting it, this channel should too, right?
I think people made their stances in here rather clear, so counting them should be easy.

[indigo girder]

19 gave their names, the remainder are all anonymous.

i thought astroturfing was a concern that was shared by the mods and eanae.

but regardless, you’re all aware of how this works.

again. those who actually care used the form is quite rough to hear coming from mods who were attacking and demeaning themselves at the beginning of this.

no one trusts your form and it being 3/4 anonymous leads heavily into that.

you don’t need to bot a form.
it takes 10 seconds to fill out the damn form, use chatgpt to write it and use a temporary email address.

[pallid owl]

You can encourage people to move away from Twitter. Nobody is discouraging that. What we are discouraging is outright banning its use for harmless means, because that is overly heavy-handed, and quite frankly, should not be for you to decide for us.

and in fact, NO, I DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO REDDIT. That is precisely why I am so insanely angered by a decision made FOR US by a community we are not necessarily a part of.

[meager sluice]

it's laughable to think banning twitter links will decrease traffic at all, or that it will make a dent in traffic. people will give twitter the same amount of traffic as they've always done. if anything, people will use twitter more to search for people and posts. or twitter links will be exchanged in dms like a black market.

[onyx shale]

The parallel I'll draw is the reddit blackout recently. That had even more buy in with the majority of big subreddit's going completely dark. And it did absolutely nothing.

Let's be realistic here. On an even bigger platform like Twitter, how will a few big subreddits and discords banning links make a difference, when the majority of Twitter users aren't in them

[fiery jackal]

People will still use Twitter, correct. A boycott is a boycott, it doesn’t need to be world changing. And the black market line is odd.

[mighty fossil]

i'd also think encouragement of shifting platforms is much better as the reddit community and discord is different in my eyes

[jagged mirage]

I just find it amusing that no one bothered to conduct a research here on how many users here actually uses r/ff14 (whatever subreddit is called sorry I don’t care enough to use it) and vice versa.

Yet it is constantly being used as justification to this ban.

[median mantle]

It may actually increase traffic if you now have to search for the post concerning some new strat instead of just watching the video from the discord preview (which also won't generate revenue since you don't see ads)

[pallid owl]

As I said much earlier. I would wager good money that most of the people here are not users of the subreddit. I for one am not. Neither are most of the people in this server I speak to. None of us even saw this coming. I don't know why they have a say in what happens to us when the overlap between the two is ostensibly, not anywhere close to 100%.

[meager sluice]

it's called a comparison to other banned items or topics.

boycotts are supposed to achieve something, and boycotts are supposed to be made by many people. not a select group of people making decisions for thousands. it's called punishing the userbase for your own moral gains.

if you want to boycott twitter, do it on your own. don't force others into this.

[hollow owl]

if I can ask one unrelated question to the mods, some of the comments made by shue were straight up made in bad faith. as a former moderator himself, was he informed that his comments were inappropriate at times?

[indigo girder]

did you use chatgpt or gemini to explain virtue signalling there? anyways.

eanae herself said “It's about picking the battles you can. Can I and do I avoid Chic-Fil-A? Yes absolutely. Walmart? Yep. Not everyone can take on every single cause but we can absoutely pick and choose the causes we do stand behind. And this ban is in that same regard. This is a battle we as a team can choose. Are we going to hurt Twitters bottom line? Absolutely not. But we can choose to support our LGBT and marginalized communities by removing traffic from a tool weaponized against them.”

i understand you may hold an opinion here.

but it’s also understandable that you have to toe the party line.

r/ffxiv participated in the reddit blackout. we know how that went.

but you do know, really, nearly no one here uses the reddit - right?

i’ll also add that it’s very odd how you now participate here yet you factored near no ones opinions here into your decision.

if anything this shows a lot of derision for the userbase who was at least trying to talk to you. you talk to them now you can say “we made our decision and it was always the same”

[fading plank]

Reddit uses less (read: less, not none) media content compared to this discord; there are subreddits for memes and art where most of it goes. As you might guess, those are NOT under the twitter ban. In fairness, the ffxivart subreddit is, as far as I can tell, direct posts from the artist. Which may or may not link to - you guessed it - their twitter (and other socials, if any).

The mainsub just has little to lose with the twitter ban. At best it has used twitter links for official ffxiv posts or to dunk on problematic ffxiv player #923 that week. Of course it's easier for them to say yes to it.

[sacred zephyr]

I would also like to address the question of politics. This isn't an invitation to get into the nitty gritty of it, but this server has always and will continue to be a place that supports people regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, skin colour, or otherwise. To that end, we do find it necessary to draw a line in the sand at times. In this case, we are making the effort to discontinue the support of a platform that is actively used as a tool to harm certain groups of people. While you are absolutely free to continue using it outside of this community, this server is under no obligation to support something that conflicts with the general moral guidelines we believe in.

[ornate pelican]

Shue was spoken to by some members of staff about this and has left the server. He’s no longer a member here of his own choice.

[onyx shale]

To me, the banning of Twitter links here unfortunately feels more like virtue signalling, because it's just doing something for the sake of doing it when there's no measurable impact.

Personally choosing to boycot it would also have more of a personal impact and feel good factor, compared to having it forced onto everyone. You're not going to get buy in if a decision like this is forced on people

Re eanae's statement: If you want to support lgbtiq+ people through the shit show in the US, there are way more meaningful ways to do it than a waving the "hey we banned Twitter" flag

[plucky niche]

Hear hear.

The morals of attempting to take traffic from Twitter are admirable. They are! Absolutely nobody has questioned this from the start.

What people have questioned is the integration. Banning links to Twitter has, let's be honest, no effect on Twitter. Conversely, it has a massive effect on the server and the user experience. This suggests to me that this isn't the right integration, despite the morals being good.

As I previously mentioned, my honest suggestion would've been an educatory post using your considerable platform and loud voice in this community about what Muskrat is doing, and what Twitter is becoming, and the effects this has on the world. Use your voice to educate. And nobody will be in question of your stance, and a good thing will have been done. If Twitter is used to push hateful content on this platform then the moderation team can nix those posts specifically, which they always have anyway.

Also, re: Eanae's post just above me, thank you. That was kind of confusing at the time.

[indigo girder]

any admin with access to server insights is able to screenshot where server joins primarily come from.

@ornate pelican are you able to show those who come from the server invite link versus server discovery, etc?

[ornate pelican]

We do as much as we can. We host fundraisers in which we raised hundreds for the Trevor Project, we’ve hosted talks about being queer in FFXIV by Rainbow Materia (you can find the VoD on YouTube). We plan on being obnoxiosily gay this year and plan on hosting a much larger fundraiser this pride than ever before. Our staff is majority LGBT.

[pallid owl]

I joined from the server invite link. That doesn't mean I came from Reddit. Because I didn't.

[fading plank]

If using twitter to share bunny posts is "supporting an anti-lgbt platform", then playing FFXIV, who posts on twitter and therefore "supports an anti-lgbt platform", is also anti-lgbt.
You wouldn't argue that. It's ridiculous. I didn't even wanna type it. Trying to wrap a ban that does nothing to help lgbt folks and instead makes their safe spaces more barren into something righteous and supportive is not doing what you think it does. And even if it did, you making this choice for them when they are absolutely capable of doing so themselves. Don't patronise us like this. We didn't ask you to make decisions for us because you think it's best.

[sacred zephyr]

I do not use any form of AI to write my messages. I'm sitting up in bed at 3am in the morning trying my best to respond to what I can.

As for factoring your opinions in, I would again like to reiterate that we never framed this policy as being a decision of anyone other than the staff team who run this server. We support giving feedback because it can sway the individuals on the team and what they might support, but it does not mean we automatically do whatever we are told to do by a handful of people in the feedback channel. Feedback has helped us alter and shift policies in the past but, again, that does not mean it is a replacement for the system that this and most other communities operate under.

In this case, we read the feedback offered and still came out the other side supporting the ban.

[hollow owl]

i shared a video of someone making a really detailed representation of the TEA ultimate gunblade from ffxiv in the endgame lounge. does that make me a supporter of anti-lgbt+ ?

[sacred zephyr]

You are free to draw your personal lines where you so desire. This is the line that we have decided to draw for this server as the team that moderates it.

[plucky niche]

I'm glad about that! Genuinely. All of this is good. However it doesn't change what I said at all. All of that still stands.

Also, regarding this, I know this wasn't what you aimed to address but I'm gonna quote it anyway

we never framed this policy as being a decision of anyone other than the staff team who run this server.
This is the problem. This would be fine, if the staff team had come to a more nuanced decision in respect to the users. And thus it is the place of the users to offer their corrections in return. It can be a joint escapade. A little bit.

[hallow mist]

Wow, how things have changed in a few hours.

While I (and many others) have defended the staff for slow responses, and gave you the benefit of time to make a decision because we understand that these things do not happen instantly, apparently the feeling is not mutual?

You gave yourself all the time to come up with your decisions and responses, while not even giving 2 days to users (who is a much bigger, much more diverse and chaotic crowd that takes even more time to mobilize) to form and fill proper, official feedback?

I joined from the server invite link. That doesn't mean I came from Reddit. Because I didn't.

Or you did a Google search, found the link on Reddit, clicked it and never looked back. Such a Redditor! /s

[next oar]

This is an unrelated feedback about the choices of activity you do but could you also consider doing activity towards helping people with disability please. this is the field I've personally contributed the most and it can use every help it can get

[ornate pelican]

We absolutely can. If you have charity recommendations you’re welcome to DM them to me.

[jagged mirage]

[pallid owl]

If you are all determined in the face of feedback, callouts of your extremely flawed data, and what I would call logic to proceed with the ban as stated I can only hope that you did so after actually, deeply considering all of what we've said. And also that you all realize appropriate provisions should be made for the allowance of redirect sites for media, which do not generate even an infinitesimal amount of ad revenue.

[hollow fjord]

Hey what the fuck was that?

[onyx shale]

...was that necessary?

[indigo girder]

your definition of virtue signalling was in a different context to how others were speaking about it - and wasn’t your writing.

i do appreciate the direct admission that this was nothing more than an executive decision made by mods who feel they know better than other users.

i understand the 3am sitting in bed thing too, it’s the same for me. insomnia.

i think you’ll find a lot of the users who were hurt by your actions here are lgbt themselves.

but no, you’re not forced to do what you’re ‘told’ to do and again, your framing is poor here.

i know how communities operate hiccup, but unfortunately the lack of transparency throughout this has sewn deep distrust for the mod team at large.

@ornate pelican thank you, i’m glad to be proven wrong. are you willing to post geographic server insights as well? as this does feel like an americocentric decision.

[fading plank]

your delete button is fast, but lightshot is faster...

[hollow owl]

did I trip out or did I see someone post a photo of them asking chatgpt to generate a paragraph on how enane is bad? i didn't see who posted it but that's honestly really silly no matter who posted it like cmon now

[plucky niche]

The point I'm trying to make, which I'm begging you to understand, is nobody here disagrees with your motives. The disagreement is how it should be applied. This is a decision that affects the users, and generally there's a couple more of us than there are of you. Thus, the opinion of the users in its integration should be considered.

Also, hey, Eanae, did you just accidentally drop your shittalk against us in this chat rather than mod chat? The fuck?

[ornate pelican]

That was absolutely my bad. Was meant to be a light hearted joke to staff about the ChatGPT accusations.

The accusations being thrown towards people have reached absolutely ridiculous levels where it’s people trying to discredit one another by any means.

You can’t engage in good faith discussion by attempting to character assassinate the staff with every message you send.

[sacred zephyr]

This is getting to a point where there is very little left to say on the matter. I am happy to answer questions if some exist that weren't already addressed, but even I have my limits with the passive aggression and putting words in my mouth.

You have all been made aware of the decision, and you are absolutely free to disagree with it. But so long as you are active here, you will be expected to follow the policy as outlined. In this case there isn't much you can do wrong since the process of deleting the links will be automatic and no punishment will be given.

[hallow mist]

You know what all of this reeks of to me so far?

A bunch of politicians sitting in a skyscraper making decisions "for the good of all of us", completely oblivious to what their policies do to the peasants on the ground level who are just numbers to them.

I hesistated to say this, walked back this exact comment multiple times before sending any of my messages, but it's harder and harder with every message I see coming from certain members of the team.

[jagged mirage]

I acknowledge and sympathize wrong channel posting fuck up. That can happen to anyone. But I can see that there is zero investment from the owner to engage with their users who do not share their goals and needs.

With that said I appreciate Hiccup, Tessa, and Meara for mitigating this incident.

[onyx shale]

When some of the replies from staff (and former staff) on day 1 were attacking us when we were trying to have a discussion, can't you see that a lot of us have lost faith in staff's ability to handle things civilly

[ornate pelican]

Absolutely. Please see my statement here #announcements message

I acknowledge I let my emotions from the events of this week ruin my judgement and I’m sorry.

[sacred zephyr]

I think it is equally fair to say that there is a clear hostility towards the staff actually engaging with you in this channel. As I said, I am happy to respond and discuss this with yall, but I'm just an Australian dude up in bed at 4am in the morning. I'm doing my best here.

[pallid owl]

I would like to repeat the question of what allowances are being made regarding posting of twitter media that is not so easily distanced from the platform. You cannot possibly expect us to download every clip from twitter to repost it here.

Redirect site embeds generate zero revenue for the piece of shit that owns twitter. I still see no practical reason for them to be banned.

[plucky niche]

I'll tell you what it sounds like, it sounds like you're still not treating this discussion in anything like good faith and we still can't trust you to act with any empathy. That is some serious nerve. I hope you can prove me wrong.

Hiccup, I value you taking the time to discuss this. But there is only 'little left to say on the matter' because your team has arbitrarily decided so. This isn't an amicable solution, and as unelected administrators we as users have a basic expection that you wish to reach an amicable solution with us, or y'know, care what we have to say about things.

regardless please let hiccup go to bed and someone pick up the job

[sacred zephyr]

In regards to twitter media we're actively discussing that to see if there are ways to mitigate the problem. We will absolutely include a response to this in the FAQ when we post that. In the meantime if you have suggestions we would be happy to hear them.

[indigo girder]

eanae, that image you sent implies that you believe users here are using chatgpt to write their 3 paragraph messages.
just because people can write doesn’t mean they use chatgpt.

it truly makes me wonder if you honestly used it to craft your apology that you wrote there. some of the language is a bit clunky and heavy and isn’t usually used in the fashion it is.

[hollow owl]

hiccup go to bed man it's 4 am on a saturday you deserve some rest. i appreciate you being a voice in all this madness

[next oar]

You should sleep man. staying up until 4AM can't be good for the judgement you make, and I'm afraid you'll inevitably slip and make things worse.
You aren't the only member of the mod team and I'm sure someone else in the team is awake enough to take the seat you are currently occupying

[fading plank]

Assuming my comment didn't fall under that, I'll ask again.
You said twitter is anti lgbt. Let's just say that's true. You also say using it would therefore be anti lgbt (using as in sharing links - ANY links -, otherwise the ban would make no sense). Under those conditions, I can see why you wouldn't want to see it in the server.
But, twitter is used by officials from FFXIV. It's also used by people who are lgbt. As such, my common sense tells me that simply using it can't be anti-lgbt, meaning the ban on links that have nothing to do with anti-lgbt sentiments doesn't target the things you take issue with.
Can you explain, like I'm five if you must, why the ban is in place regardless?

[long ridge]

Hi, could we not have held, specifically a seperate poll that was not part of a feedback form, held for longer than a single day to collect opinions? What about longtimers who may have been spending time raiding this weekend and missed the announcement? It should have been a week minimum without being behind a form that people may not have realized also included a poll

[pallid owl]

I am happy to hear that there's at least a discussion. I hope this is true, and that it is fruitful.

My opinion of this situation is still that it was terribly handled. That said, I appreciate that you and the other mods previously present are at least willing to speak to us on the matter after nearly two days of radio silence. For that I thank you again.

[plucky niche]

The hostility in the air is unfortunate but I must write in blazing letters across the sky it is only here because the moderation team has repeatedly demonstrated an unwillingness to actually work with us.

I'm not deflecting blame, and there has been a fair amount of dry sarcasm beyond professionalism the last few days, but help us help you. We don't WANT to pester you all like this, we WANT to have quality input in forming an amicable solution. We can't do that if you continue to insist on only 'variations' of your original plan. Mutual agreement doesn't work that way. I know you hold all the cards in this situation but if you want a discussion you've gotta give us some more space.

[sacred zephyr]

I'm not aware of any community that elects its moderators and administrators. The community control in servers like these is the choice to stay, leave, or perhaps join the team if they believe they have ideas that they'd like to push for, but I have never been a member of a discord server or forum in the last 20 years that elected it's staff members.

Regardless of that I can appreciate the desire to have a say in things, especially when a decision being made is one you disagree with. We are happy to take feedback and that has given us reason to alter policies in the past, but it does not automatically replace the decision making process. If the staff team still comes out the other side disagreeing with the feedback, then the decision will still ultimately be up to them.

[fading plank]

(can somebody save this man, it's NA wakey time on a Saturday, why does he have to be up at 4 in the morning to solo this alliance raid?)

[hallow mist]

I know it's not on you but... what feedback are you referring to?

The official one barely anyone participated in because it was shut down unusually fast, or people actually combing through this channel?

[jagged mirage]

#discord-feedback message

yeah most of us called out on this biased data collected in the pretense of good faith to hear users out regarding opposition to the ban

[icy sentinel]

maybe it's because the raid won't drop aggro

[sacred zephyr]

And I don't want to sound crude in saying this, but people are free to build their own communities following the management style they wish to employ. I would hazard a guess that many places are built exactly for that purpose. We won't be able to please everyone, that just isn't possible, but I would at least hope that you all can respect that we try to make decisions based on what we believe is best for this community. There will be decisions you disagree with, such as in the case of this one, but it wasn't one made under any desire to randomly piss some people off. It was a decision that aligned with what we as a team believed in.

Keeping in mind we are not always unanimous, and often we take a long while to debate our stance before making these decisions.

If I could type a single sentence without a spelling mistake that'd be real nice.

[onyx shale]

@sacred zephyr bro sleeeeep

[gloomy grove]

Brother just let the others pick up the slack please

[sacred zephyr]

I got a little bit left in me, and Id like to continue engaging a little longer lmao.

[pallid owl]

you better be getting paid OT for this

[plucky niche]

Wasn't implying anyone did. What I was implying is I personally have an expectation that unelected decision makers are prepared to engage with those they are making decisions that affect, before making said decisions and then refusing to budge.

however, that does require some humility and removal of, as some agonising putting-one's-foot-in-it has demonstrated, the opinion that we're only talking because 'we think we know better than you'.

and yeah, PLEASE someone pick up for hiccup. this isn't fair.

[indigo girder]

i know you think ‘no one would bot this’ but you used brexit percentages and near solely used quantitive data to justify this.

i do wish more mods would have spoken freely as opposed to just one doing this at 3am his time.

one or two others and an admin who showed herself using chatgpt to craft something to stay.

i apologise that you were tasked with this hiccup or decided you had to do this, but i understand why you felt you had to.

i know you try to make decisions that are best for this community.

but you have made decisions while standing under the umbrella of what was already a done deal and announced as “not taking feedback” by the owner.

your discussion and presentation of this doesn’t align with how this was initially presented or what blitz said at the beginning

[sacred zephyr]

I would like to push back on this idea that we 'think we know better than you'. We can't tell you where to draw your line, as with any sort of boycott or otherwise. That is a decision you have to make and I would never presume to tell you what to do. The main difference here is this is the community that we moderate and administrate, and we make our policies and decisions with the desire to push this community in a direction that aligns with what we believe is best for it as a whole. Not necessarily what is best for each individual, because that would be nearly impossible with 250k people here.

[untold sequoia]

Thank you for the thanks, I'm going to just come out and have a heart to heart with this channel.

First off I will acknowledge that was have made mistakes on our way to this point, and for that I personally apologies for that, Eanae has also apologized and I implore anyone who hasn't read it yet to go read it in #announcements. We are actively reading all the feedback people here post and what has been submitted to the feedback form, so please don't feel as if your issues are falling on deaf ears. I know simple words won't be enough to convince some of you that what I say is sincere but that is all I have. While most of us on the mod and admin side haven't been active in this channel, that doesn't mean we're not doing anything, we have been holding multiple discussions on how to handle certain issues that have been brought up to us, the artist one as mentioned and we are still taking feedback on this up to the last second.

Now on a more personal note, I cannot speak for anyone else but for me personally, this has been a difficult couple days and while I acknowledge the part we played in hostilities, some of the things people here have said directed at the mod team and their fellow users has been nothing short of cruel, and even slurs sent our way. Everyone here in this channel is a person who cares deeply for this community and the mod team is trying our best to ensure that everyone's voice is heard and their feedback is taken into consideration, so I would request that everyone please remember that we are all people with our own feelings and issues and that we all show some empathy when we're talking to each other, thank you.

[fiery shuttle]

Moderators arent beholden to answer everything and anytime its a voluntary role. So if theres noone then, let people rest

[mighty fossil]

a much better way where no one would've dabbled so much time into this entire thing would be a @ everyone ping in #announcements into a encouragement to use other platforms than twitter instead of a sudden, non @ everyone announcement out of nowhere for a discord server.

I also highly doubt everyone on earth, would see the meaning behind these actions the same way.

I've expressed my opinion on how'd I want to have a filter for it.

I'd like to make a reminder that this is still a community run thing and there's no pay involved.
It is something that's a come and go whenever who's available.

There are several actions that could've reduced the activity to the extent someone would be seemingly overexerting themselves to respond on text.

If the 250k is so much of a concern, a new role should be up for it as announcement changes like these are significant even if it's just a new filter

I'm quite certain im in servers bigger than this because they're used for their main form of communication outside of forums with frequent pings of hotfixes

[turbid kayak]

ping everyone yes 🙂

[sacred zephyr]

We try to avoid the @ everyone ping because there are 250k people here lmfao

And I would like to not be assassinated in my sleep.

[autumn parrot]

We don't use that ping because we would break everyone's discord.

[sacred zephyr]

Do we have an announcement role people can take up? I haven't checked in ages. Maybe that's something we could employ, no idea.

At least then it'd be opt in

[autumn parrot]

We can discuss it

[hollow owl]

i believe it was said before that discord straight up doesn't allow the everyone ping to work in servers this large due to how it might crash clients. i do however 100% echo the sediment that the poll needed more time to collect data

[fading plank]

Surely it is possible to have Kupo bot send a message in every channel to at least notify the currently active users? We have "A friendly Kupo reminder", I'd honestly be delighted to see it say something else for once.
This channel is so far up I'm convinced most people don't even look at it.

[ornate pelican]

An everyone ping would actually crash the discord and probably Kupo Bot. We can discuss having an opt in news role ping.

[sacred zephyr]

Possibly? That's something to bring up to the people who actually dig around in Kupo code

[cold sinew]

Organizations like subreddits and discords don't have any obligation to allow Twitter links within their space if they don't wish to. If you don't like it, find another community. That's my take.

[next oar]

jsyk that a discord server with 19000 people in it can spike the API response rate with everyone ping. I agree that it's not really a good idea

[pallid owl]

I didn't even know this discussion was happening at first until my friends from this server started discussing it in our private chats.

[plucky niche]

I made this comment in reference to someone accidentally dropping a comment assumedly meant for your private channels showing that that's how your opinions seem to lie. Believe me, I can feel the second-hand 'oh shit' from that but I'm not going to act like it didn't happen.

Tacking on what Meara said, I would like to say - one thing we can ALL agree on is we are all on the same side here. It is not profitable for our cause to be doing this.

Is it so hard to put this decision on ice and come back to it when everyone's cooled down and prepared to have a more nuanced and accepting discussion as something like individuals of equal interest?

You don't want to have this argument, and neither do we.

[hallow mist]

People have been telling Hiccup to sleep as soon as he revealed it's 4am for him, so I don't understand what this is about.

---

And yes, an everyone ping on a server this size is a very bad idea.

On the other hand, even with a ping it wouldn't have justified the laughably short consultation period of 1.5 days.

---

@thorny lantern I'm on a 570k server, a few months back someone accidentally left an announcement role pingable, people spammed it, and we had to close that channel for like half a week

[thorny lantern]

I still remember during the old days when we had huge servers with global emotes, where in some of those the admins/mods got hacked and did an at everyone ping. It was a disaster even back then lol

[turbid kayak]

its funny how everyone wants the poll to be even longer, yet in this channel people want a response right away, is it going to be a frustration vent for a whole week straight?

[sacred zephyr]

And to be clear, I have friends who feel beholden to twitter as well for one reason or another, I understand their point of view as well as that of the people who disagree with this decision in here. Again, I'm not asking you to sit down, shut up, and be happy. I get it, it sucks. I wish twitter wasn't a total cesspool (in my opinion) but it did finally get to the point that I do agree with the ban and think it will ultimately be positive not just for this discord, but for the XIV community in general. I do believe that movement amongst the various XIV communities will push people to expand where they post their content and, hopefully, allow things to continue as normal without the need for Twitter.

That's my hope, at least.

[jagged mirage]

Want to take a second to read the room on what Meara posted before throwing out your “take” to rekindle the fire?

[gloomy grove]

I know we have a role for trivia, so an announcement role would be nice if we can implement it. After all, as the mod team said, a ping with a server this large will break stuff. It's just not an option for us comparing it to, say, a friends server or a small community.

I can understand the fact this has been extremely divisive, but as other people said: there is nothing stopping you from going to a new server with moderation that suites your style. As someone who was part of the team, we do talk about this stuff. Very extensively might I add. Are things always going to be popular? No. But we are trying our best to at least steer the ship best we can. We are human after all, stuff happens.

However, I also personally think just going and personally attacking the moderation team is disrespectful. Could things have been handled better? Sure, that I agree with. But at one point there is a difference between genuine feedback we can use and just contrarian insulting for the sake of it. All I ask is we try better to work together. Starting with adding the announcement role would be a nice start imho.

[sacred zephyr]

Lets please try to keep things cool, it's been nice to kind of calm things down a bit and talk lmao

[mighty fossil]

🤷 normally i'd be in #rants but this is something else, least i can still look up my history since the links i've posted in the past shouldn't be purged

otherwise i'd forgot about that nudist jp elezen or that jp post with the drg lb murder in tiles

[cold sinew]

Not particularly

[autumn parrot]

!mute 247825515363303424 1h

[ancient gale]

Success!

@cold sinew has been muted by @autumn parrot for 1 hour!

[plucky niche]

This is my problem. We agree. You know this and I know this. But I do not feel a ban is conducive to our interests as a community. It'd be nice, but a lot of things would be nice, like some politicians encountering Wonder of U i will say no more.

I am begging, can we just mutually all agree that if this needs to happen it needs, as you have said, to be integrated better. This discussion is welcome, but it doesn't substitute for more care, cause we're all already that one spongebob gif with all the spongebobs and the fire in the brain and the filing cabinets.

I genuinely believe it is in ALL our interests if this is not done right now. We have all seen your dedication to making a difference. It is appreciated. We'd like to help. But not like this.

[autumn parrot]

You can disagree with each other but please keep that kind of attitude out of it

[open lark]

Something else that might help, and this is just me, is on a matter like this is to not have a 3rd option. It's a yes or no decision if a ban were to happen and just not voting is having no opinion by itself. A 3rd option like no opinion just skews the metrics of the votes that would make a difference

[sacred zephyr]

I think we've generally made it clear that the ban itself will be happening, but we are happy to discuss ways to mitigate some of the initial annoyances if you have any suggestions. Keep in mind any linking to twitter will be disabled including those workaround things like fxtwitter. Outside of that, if you have suggestions, absolutely open ears.

[indigo girder]

yeah with respect to you guys an @ everyone would make the server unusable for quite a long time.

regardless, you guys are saying you know what is best here. there's no real way of justifying your way out of that because, that is what this decision is. unfortunately there's just too many inconsistencies and ignoring voices which aren't your own. also hiccup - most large communities work in the same fashion.

and meara, mods showing themselves now is very telling.
but please know the way people are being spoken to doesn't show that anyone's voices are heard in near any capacity. in fact, it just shows that our voices are those you discuss behind the scenes then don't show your reasoning to any of us.

you guys have been talking privately and not engaged with anyone here, ignoring them and not even covering many users major concerns in the announcement post. it sews more distrust for all of the users and what they expressed here for it to not even be covered..

now with you engaging so heavily here with everyone now you have something to push, it feels rather than engaging with your users on a majorly divisive decision - you guys have now decided it's appropriate to speak with candor.

my best suggestion for all of you to actually pause this decision for a week or so. there's no major need to rush it as heavily as you guys are. in fact you might get even more evidence to make it more obvious to ban it outright.

quiet some discontent, and please, honestly discuss this decision with users due to the frankly insane amount of comments and engagement on this decision.

[fading plank]

To be completely blunt, there is absolutely no conceivable way that the ban will not take place, is that right?
Any and all feedback would merely adjust minor conditions, but you are still absolutely banning twitter links?

[mighty fossil]

i'd vote no opinion cause i wanna ban/filter it, but allow redirects. and for the main issue twitter has, I'd encourage the use of other platforms instead of immediately shoving it in and begin filtering all twitter links after x day has arrived

there is one benefit of making that seemingly useless ban
no more broken media and having to click on it to actually go to twitter just to see the media in it

[plucky niche]

yeah this is. this is what i mean. we're going to keep fighting on this forever because you think you know what's best for us and we disagree with what you think is best for us. this isn't tenable. please, just put the damn thing off. for now. this has been a god damn trial by fire for the mods/junior mods and I don't envy you in the slightest. Surely it can't be that difficult for y'all to give us an inch and let this down amicably so we can look at it as equals in the future?

[sacred zephyr]

That is the plan, yes. Links to twitter will not be allowed. If there are any ways to help mitigate some of the annoyances from that, we are very much happy to discuss. The implementation in this case is absolutely up for some discussion if there are methods of doing things that even we haven't figured out.

[turbid kayak]

redirects in particular makes the ban just as useless, as it just does the exact same as if it was before as if twitter links are allowed

[autumn parrot]

!mute 192819897800196096 1h

[ancient gale]

Success!

@jagged mirage has been muted by @autumn parrot for 1 hour!

[hallow mist]

It's almost like even people who defended the radio silence and said "give them some time" are also not happy with how short the feedback period turned out to be.

Oh wait, we are. At least I am: #discord-feedback message

---

@gloomy grove A nice start would be working toward untangling the current mess instead of pretending everything is set and done and "look to the future" with suggestions like "Starting with adding the announcement role".

An announcement role is a good idea, but it's not going to solve the current issue.

---

@mighty fossil Not a jab at you, but imagine if there's an actual poll to vote on instead of having to "I'd vote X" because it's already closed for some reason 💀

And yes, "no opinion" is an actual option according to #announcements 😂

[pallid owl]

The problem I've had with this ban is that it is a functionally stupid solution because embeds generate no revenue anyways. So literally who cares?

Maybe 1/50 times I actually click on an embedded link to check the full website. The other 49 times I simply watch the clip or whatever it is in the embed.

This does nothing for Twitter's bottom line and is why I still think it is frankly, stupid. But I know how to choose my battles and this isn't something I'm willing to throw myself at any longer.

*With the asterisk that there are concessions made to facilitate the continued posting of media in some form that isn't a total pain in the ass.

[plucky niche]

I'm in a similar boat and that's why I'm begging y'all to just meet us in the middle here. I personally have been here yapping about this for nearly 48 god damn hours, accounting for sleep. I know some of you on the mod team can match me, if not more. This sucks and I - and I'm sure you all - are sick to the back teeth of it. But as long as I feel like we are being told, not asked - tolerated, not valued - I will keep countering. and I really don't wanna.

so please? c'mon. surely we can all manage that.

[indigo girder]

pausing for a week or so, so that people can talk about this would quiet the discontent, frustration and allow people to speak about this with the moderators.

maybe you all would actually get somewhere rather than just disdain from your users. you may still get disagreement, go ahead with it. i really don't care how this goes forward.

but in order to reinstate any trust many users have now lost for the mod team at large, you need to honestly engage with them. not do this.

ignoring users, including long term users very active here, dismissing them and throwing them to the bleachers is doing no good for trust in this mod team.

**i mean this very bluntly.

give your users the time of day to talk about it openly with you all. **

because right now it just makes it seem as if you are all rushing this decision based on personal or political motivations.

it truly is not a good look for you to rush it even faster than planned.

[sacred zephyr]

There is no plan to push back the start of the ban. It'll be going into place on Monday. That doesn't mean we can't adjust things as needed and as other solutions are found mind you, so we do still encourage suggestions and such.

I'll again reiterate that this isnt a rushed decision on our end and has been the source of discussion for several months at least. It just so happened that recent events sort of kicked things up a notch and we felt it necessary to make a decision.

Again, I'm trying to be transparent here because I don't want to give any false hope for certain outcomes. I'm still very much happy to hear additional ways to help mitigate some of the irritation, but the ban will be going into place.

[pallid owl]

I mean it when I say this, I care about the server. I am probably the most active user in endgame lounge day by day. I really, really care about how we are able to interact and twitter media is a HUGE source of endgame information, be it strats, funny clips, whatever else. I am not trying to hate you guys to hate you guys. But I want a solution that does not hurt us extensively and a full ban without any conditions is exactly that

Edit: Unfortunately I think you are uninformed in that regard given how much of the community information comes from JP, which is a primarily twitter based community, at least in how EN gets info from them.

[sacred zephyr]

I wholeheartedly believe that the content important to endgame will find its way to other platforms.

[zinc jay]

They will not do that. Most will simply leave this server.

[fading plank]

Okay, thank you for your honesty Disappointing, to be sure.

I'll be leaving the server once the ban is in effect. I don't know if there is a place where the grass is greener, but since our values don't align to such a harsh degree, it's better than making myself miserable. I don't expect anyone to make the choice I will, as it's mine and I don't speak for anybody else, but I do want to make it clear that this is the consequence this decision had for me.

If anybody runs or knows of community servers that don't enforce things that damage their community's trust and ability to communicate, I'd appreciate a DM Of course I assume advertising one here wouldn't be allowed, but just in case one is out there. Hope that it's okay to put that out here.

[sacred zephyr]

And you are free to do so.

I would prefer people stick it out and give it a chance, see how things shape out

But if the decision is one you just can't deal with, then I hold nothing against you for leaving.

[hallow mist]

But I know how to choose my battles and this isn't something I'm willing to throw myself at any longer.

Which is important to point out as well. People vocally disagreeing with staff decision here are inherently doing so at much personal risk of being silenced and losing access to the community they enjoyed engaging in, just from the difference in position of power alone.

And somehow we still have so many people here, disagreeing with staff decision.

[plucky niche]

There is no plan to push back the start of the ban. It'll be going into place on Monday.

For god's sake, why is this the hill? Please, work with us on this. You know where we stand. I hope you value our contributions. This, to us, is not valuing our contributions because it inherently ignores almost all of what we've brought up. The one thing I am asking is that we can discuss this. Otherwise this is not an equal endeavor, which it should be.

[sacred zephyr]

You're not going to get banned for disagreeing with us unless you decide to suddenly call me a creative word

[indigo girder]

it may not a rushed decision on your end, hiccup. but to everyone else it feels that their voice has been utterly tossed away.

your response is pretty much what i just stated, you are throwing your opinion, views and power at others. dismissing everything they're saying.

the moderators of the r/ffxiv discord are not the only people in the world with the ability to perceive time.

you seriously need to consider the engagement here and how it differs to other decisions that have been made.

and i truly mean it, heavy distrust has begun for the mod team at large.

[worthy beacon]

I have to agree with @indigo girder on this one. It's been looking like a knee-jerk reaction from the outside, especially with such a short time to collect feedback from the poll. What were the events that initially caused this discussion months ago?

[pallid owl]

Alright I mean this in good faith but kiseia, you can't possibly believe that the trust of like 30 users here is important to them. They've said it - this isn't a democracy, and we are not many. We quite literally don't matter. That argument is not fruitful.

[sacred zephyr]

Look, all I can offer you in explanation is that this is the hill because this is where we as a staff team have decided to plant our banner, in a sense. It's what we believe is necessary to continue with the direction we'd like this community to go in. Again though, just because something is implemented doesn't mean we can't alter it as new solutions are found that can help mitigate some of the irritation. That's why I suggested people continue to engage if they have ideas surrounding that.

[next oar]

Let me provide a perspective from JP residents:
I strongly believe that there will be a lot of loss of information originated from JP ffxiv community in endgame-lounge and I don't think other alternative will match the current popularity of twitter anytime soon. bluesky doesn't seem to be a popular alternative for twitter in JP at least
(Sorry I can't bring myself to call that platform X)

[sacred zephyr]

And I would again push back on this idea that we're simply ignoring and pushing people aside because we don't care. We are incapable of making a decision here that will make everyone happy, so regardless of what we do, someone will be upset. It sucks, but that is the truth.

What we have elected to do is uphold the stance that the team has agreed upon, even if it might upset some people. In this specific case I would obviously hope that people discover the twitter ban really didn't amount to causing much damage. I believe if other, larger, and more twitter reliant communities can survive without the platform, then we can as well.

People just need to give it a chance.

[plucky niche]

And the dedication of the staff team is respectable. But what Kiseia has said is the problem we have.

you are throwing your opinion, views and power at others

Is it such a mystery then, that the response is 'actually no we don't appreciate that (and optionally here's where you can stick it)'?

All we are asking is for the staff members to do what is best for the community - actually best for the community. That doesn't mean having to sacrifice your morals. Just work with us.

[sacred zephyr]

I'm not sure what you want me to say in response to that. This is the way that every community I've ever been a part of has worked. There are staff members who operate the community, and they often make the decisions they believe are necessary for their specific community. It's not unique to this server.

We're not throwing our opinion at you, because you are free to continue using Twitter outside of this server.

I wont tell you where to draw your personal line in the sand.

[turbid kayak]

imo, all this "work with us" is really turns down to is "ban or no ban", a line has to be set. and a middle ground doesn't really exist.

[hallow mist]

I notice the distinct lack of even entertaining the idea of properly doing user feedback collection again, after they so glaringly evidently fucked up the 1.5 day "feedback".

"Nah man it's all set in stone, deal with it :)" is the underlying tone I'm perceiving here.

[worthy beacon]

You're sounding too much like you want a democracy, be careful there.

[sacred zephyr]

!mute 200162274894151680 1h

[ancient gale]

Success!

@hallow mist has been muted by @sacred zephyr for 1 hour!

[sacred zephyr]

We're not going to go down that road again.

[shy kiln]

I need to put my 2 cents here aswell
it's been days i've been concerned about it.

I find the ban very silly
Baning a whole application over one silly person's actions.
It is like if you'd want to ban any league of legend's discussion since it's owned by tencent and we all know how shady this company is.
Like any blizzard game talks.

[sacred zephyr]

I am trying to engage with people respectfully but I do not respect some people attempting to stir the pot.

[pallid owl]

Look, I'm not suggesting that you personally, or the mod team at large, are willfully ignoring us out of malice. But can you truthfully tell me that the trust of a couple dozen users complaining here would be enough for anything to change? Because the answer, from this decision, is a resounding no.

No hate, but I feel my statement was realistic. That's all I was indicating to kiseia. There's no subtext here and I'm not trying to take underhanded shots at you guys.

[fading plank]

For me personally, "the chance" is waiting until the decision is put into action, to give you every last second to change your mind and do better.
Once it's finalised, the negatives are locked in.
The lack of initial interest in feedback. The weird way in which the form was handled. The complete disregard for half of the votes against the implementation. The decision made to please staff, rather than the people it primarily affects. The lack of ability to budge on the decision, despite the immense pushback.
And, of course, the inability to explain why this all makes a positive difference in the first place.

I wish you - you personally most of all - no ill will, nor do I want anyone to lose sleep over this. I'm just one member of 250k. I don't matter, and I know as much, but in most other servers, people at least make me feel like I do.
I have no desire to give a chance to a decision an incredibly tiny amount of people made for everyone else, just how they have no desire to give a chance to let us sort our own morals out by ourselves.

[sacred zephyr]

All I'm saying is see how things shape out.

Give it a month, and if we're wrong you can say so to my face.

I'm saying just see how things progress.

[indigo girder]

it's rather fruitful considering the highly active long term userbase that is dissatisfied with this decision. mentors, helpful, etc.

but regardless hiccup, i do mean this - take your time making decisions and not just enforce what was said.

'see how things shape out' is, i know you're exhausted.

[remote hamlet]

Hi, since this channel runs on a 5 min cooldown, feel free to DM me on this, I am interested to know what exactly are users relying on Twitter for JP related resources. Since from what I've been reading, this has been one of the major issues people will be facing when the ban effect goes on Monday ー Then I'd like to know what exactly will be affected and I don't mind multiple DMs to me on the matter. I might be able to help out.

[plucky niche]

The dedication of the staff team to their morals is something we can all respect.

However being a brick wall against US, the users, the people ON YOUR SIDE, is not something we can ever accept if we don't agree. It makes us feel like you are not on our side, you are on your own side. We are simply asking you to take five and reflect the wishes of the users, not just yourselves. Because I think we have shown today we agree with your motives. You have our support in denouncing Muskrat. But not in this way. I am begging you to understand this. We respect your stance, but give this the time it deserves.

[sacred zephyr]

I would assert this:

The initial ban will be irritating for a number of people and I dont disagree with that. I'm certain it will be annoying. But I also think the uptick in people pushing back against the platform will encourage a good majority of the most popular creators and such to make an effort to move (those that haven't already). I would argue that even in a relatively short period of time, much of the information and content that was once exclusive to twitter will be available elsewhere.

That is my main belief in how this will pan out.

And, again, part of our implementation in the meantime is allowing screenshots.

So in the case of text based information, that will still be available.

As for media, as I said, we are discussing workarounds or other ways to mitigate

[pallid owl]

The vast majority of which will remain in this server interacting as they always have been, minus twitter links.

I know at least I will be, as will the majority of my friends. There is simply no leverage we have that matters should we not be able to come to a mutually satisfactory answer. This shows in the fact that we are practically down on our knees begging to be heard out. That's all. I've really got no more to say.

[fading plank]

I can already tell you it's wrong right now, but I don't see it as your fault, so I wouldn't rub it in your face irrespective of that.
Of course everyone can live and move on without twitter. I'm not saying the server will spontaneously combust. My decision to leave is out of self respect, as I don't think the way this was handled was respectful of the community.

To give an example, the popular MOBA League of Legends (lmao) put out an immensely overpriced skin a while ago. I can not buy the skin, and it won't affect me realistically, nor will the game change as a result of it. But it told me that there's more consumer disrespect than I reasonably expect from any company (and I expect a lot...), so I uninstalled the game and don't play. It doesn't matter for their bottom line, I'm not rallying anyone else to do so, but for me, ignoring such things makes me feel icky and like I'm allowing them to treat me this way, therefore I deal with it in the only manner I can - I leave.
LoL mentioned, I will now go wash my hands.

[sacred zephyr]

Honestly I should ban you for even mentioning League of Legends.

How uncouth.

But seriously

[plucky niche]

This is what I mean. You are not willing to give an inch to my viewpoint despite the state we're all in. This to me just... doesn't make sense. not anymore. I want this to stop. You want this to stop. This probably won't stop if you don't treat us like our opinion is worth as much as yours.

The past 48 hours should have demonstrated to you all that this action is not right. We agree with the motives. But don't just, do this and 'see how it pans out' or whatever. All we want is to be respected. All we want is for our input to matter. Not just the input you're prepared to allow.

[sacred zephyr]

As we said before, I don't think us specifically banning twitter will suddenly derail the entire platform. It certainly won't. What it does do is contribute in some small way to a wider response against the platform, and yes I do believe it is much larger than some of you are giving it credit for. We are talking about communities in the millions, for instance. This pushback encourages creators to branch out, even if they don't outright leave the platform. Even companies are making the move. Slowly, absolutely, but they are.

[indigo girder]

echoing emu, 'see how things shape out' has the exact same playbook as 'wait and gather honest responses and discussion'.

the former just requires marginally less effort and doesn't take up more of your weekend.

but hiccup, i feel that assertion is quite wrong. iluna's putting her hand in the ring here for how many jp users still use twitter and asking about how to handle it. this isn't really how 'changing a platform works'.

digg to reddit was about the only time i've seen this ever successfully happen.

as i said to eanae, there are literally 500 bsky.app posts on this whole discord. many of these posts are from moderators.

popular creators have avenues and different revenue streams. not unpopular ones. not smaller ones who haven't left.

i'm with you values wise - but i think you're all rushing to reason this heavily for someone else, based on a decision that was made for you in #announcements.

what you're writing seems ad hoc and you coming up with reasoning on the spot as to why this is the right decision and doing your best to ignore what people are saying.

[sacred zephyr]

But beyond the actual impact of the decision is, again, where we stand morally and what we would like to support or not support in this case.

[mighty fossil]

normally, i'd want to ask the strat makers for the JP strat in this input, but eh, either they don't know of this or do not care about this server to make a comment on it since... well, there are compiled infos in jp, it shouldn't be that frequent but it is annoying to wonder why it wont sent if they dont know about it.

I'll admit, the information I got during the raiding period is from twitter then game 8, then the strat fight began and now it's back to twitter, lodestone, I assume the translated strats for savage were similar in this way.

It's also how we had a fight between which strat to use, either idyl, nuke, newkemaru, newkemaru 3 for m4s and there were the priority issues for fusefield.
i remember going from twitter > youtube >= game8 discord to the point i started cherry picking on which of these strats sucked and swapped em out and eventually it settled after a few weeks

i genuinely doubt they'd care about the twitter situation or this server tbh, but it is for the people in the en side

After some thought, it's mostly an inconvenience for the non-jp on jp but there's the game8 which should be the norm except the process of reaching there is still likely media platforms of varying form

I'm quite certain some of the jp people I follow don't even know a site that's similar to twitter ,bsky, exist or dont bother and keep posting there anyways

[sacred zephyr]

And we're not forcing you personally to align with our line in the sand, you can still engage with twitter as you desire, we are simply drawing the line for this specific server.

[short sail]

I think that this is a very respectable view, one I hold as well, as I support the ban. That said how it has been handled implies a lack of interest in actually making a good change for the sake of people. There is a fundamental different between letting people decide whether they want to boycott a platform, and wielding the moderation power to make that decision for them. You cannot claim making a tangible difference while also saying it won’t affect people tangibly. We are not children who don’t know better

[ornate pelican]

I would argue as a greater whole there is a good chance this ban has a tangible effect. Not primarily from us but sports subreddits which were 80% Twitter content have gone through with the ban. Subreddits with 3+ million very active subscribers which will push sports broadcasters into more mediums. We’re only a drop in the bucket of this ban.

[white totem]

There is a fundamental different between letting people decide whether they want to boycott a platform, and wielding the moderation power to make that decision for them.

You can type in twitter.com on your browser right now and go there

[long ridge]

But that's just it: A tangible effect by necessity causes a tangible issue for the people affected in the server

[sacred zephyr]

Again, I will repeat what I said earlier, we can't make the decision for you because you are free to engage with twitter as you desire. But we moderate and administrate this server, and so I would argue whether we want to support something or not is well within our right. Just as you are free to disagree, obviously, but that is no different than any other community.

[plucky niche]

But it is not so right now, hence the issue we have! As I said previously, there are plenty of actions the administrative team could do instead of this. You mentioned it, and so did I earlier - this server's voice is large. Education from this staff team can be wide reaching. Talk to people, tell them about what is happening. It's pretty much guaranteed that it'll curate your own space anyway, if anyone has a problem with it then they're probably the target anyway.

What this is, the ban and the refusal to give an inch to the contrary, is showing us users that our views are wrong and yours is right and that is that. We've managed to come to an amicability this much, surely you all don't still think this? Look at it from our perspective. We're people just like you.

Change can be made in more ways than this.

[indigo girder]

just because zuckerberg or bezos haven't done a nazi salute on stage doesn't equate them in any way different.

the problem is how heavily twitter is used for xiv.

just slow down for gods sake, you don't need to rush something like this.
talk to your users honestly not talking to them in the way you are. it hurts and upsets them at best, and is harmful at worst.

@ornate pelican sports subreddits, please stop with the false equivalencies. in addition, this is such an americocentric view which xiv and even en xiv is not, and you know this well.

[short sail]

And yet the decision is still being made with the intention of making a change. I’m not saying they are forcing us to not use Twitter, but the goal is absolutely to delegitimize the use of Twitter by forcing people do find other avenues for communication, in relation to this community. Once again, that is not a boycott of the scale of banning people from using Twitter, but it is still a boycott. If it wasn’t than this decision would be worthless and wouldn’t be happening in the first place

[ornate pelican]

We have discussed a full ban on any source which requires a login to view which would affect Facebook and Instagram. But we are not lumping those bans together at this time and will revisit in the future.

[mighty fossil]

i dont know what a reddit subscriber is and i dont give discord nitro money.

groups come with varying audiences that may or may not be US focused

I'd also think it'd be convenient of me to not have posts that force me to login or create and account for a platform, but I can't control where the source is from.

there is a less "Destructive" method to give a chance to, I also don't think it'd be the end of the world but it turns a possible convenience into something more inconvenient.

[sacred zephyr]

The issue here is you are mistaking how we run this server as us telling you how to run your life. We can't tell you what to do the moment you step foot out of here, and you are free to do so anytime you wish, but this is a community that is moderated and administrated by a group of staff members who are trying their best to keep this specific server on a path that aligns with what we believe is right for it.

[hollow owl]

random question: do mods get notified when kupo deletes a post automatically and can they see what the post was

[sacred zephyr]

And I really think it's a little silly to not even give this a chance to see what happens.

If you want to come back in a couple weeks and tell me it sucks, the world is on fire, and you told me so

I welcome it

But I truly don't think that's going to happen

[untold sequoia]

Its a dedicated channel so we can set notifications to be on whenever a new post is made in that channel, this covers both Kupo and Automod deletes

[sacred zephyr]

The XIV community in general will adjust and information will be available elsewhere just as quickly

Good luck trying to stop that from happening, really

[plucky niche]

Kiseia hits the nail on the head.
The last hump that I am so direly trying to communicate is every time I think I'm getting somewhere with y'all and then you say 'well the ban will be happening but-' that to me says my input on the server I enjoy spending my time in is not valued. How can I come to an agreement with you all like this?

and believe me, I know you're not forcing your morals onto me because as I said, we all share them. I am just ASKING, begging on my god damn hands and knees so we can all happily go about our business, is that the moderator team respects its users that are so, god damn tired, and pause this decision. We respect it. We just don't agree. And we want that to be respected in turn.

[short sail]

Personally I think it’s a little silly that we never got asked if we even wanted to see how things work out but c'est la vie.

[sacred zephyr]

Respecting an opinion and mirroring it are two different things. I absolutely respect your opinions on this, I understand them even, but I also disagree with them. There's still no plans to delay the ban at this stage.

Twitter really is not that important and people will adjust, and they'll do so quickly and reform the same circles they had to begin with.

[fading plank]

@plucky niche I don't want to stifle your attempts at communication, I really don't, but seeing you burning so brightly for this while also seeing that you are not getting, and likely won't ever get, the answers and middle grounds you deserve, kind of hurts my soul. They've made it clear they will walk their path exactly as intended before all this discussion took place.

[sacred zephyr]

I made it clear earlier that the ban will be going through because I didn't want to give any false hope that it would suddenly reverse.

[plush star]

The way I'm seeing this is, the staff is making a decision you're against, you explain why you're against it, the staff reviews your feedback but still decides to go ahead, you take this as if the staff is ignoring your feedback. I think that's a wrong conclusion to reach.

[sacred zephyr]

That isn't us telling you your opinion doesn't matter, It's just that we still disagree and intend to continue with what we have discussed and decided.

As I said, give it some time to settle and see what happens.

[white totem]

You're making the false assertion that anyone has to comply with your opinion in order to show that they respect your opinion

[indigo girder]

that's fine, it's never posted here anyways. there's a few reasons you're targeting twitter and not addressing the false equivalency.

you know how americocentric this is and how it affects people outside of the states.

@sacred zephyr no, i feel that is what you are doing, you're projecting your own views onto emu here and it's unfair.

you're trying your best to do what's right, the world won't catch fire and you know it - we all know it.

to us, it's just a shortsighted, rushed decision which is being taken for a ride.

the power you all think you have to make any major changes to the xiv community isn't going to happen because most players aren't american, nor are they going to leave where all the things they like are.

all you're doing is limiting information for no real reason beyond 'lets give it a go!', nothing bad will happen - and you're right.

but at this point hiccup and everyone else, the disrespect and dismissal you're showing people is just rough. and just continues to hammer home the points that were made here that you all ignored and have not touched on in any proper manner.

@plush star yes that's completely it. not them using their justification on a near 50/50 split of a private form no one trusted where 3/4 of the users who commented on it were anonymous.

[sacred zephyr]

In the meantime we're discussing ways to make the transition the least irritating it can be given the circumstances.

[plucky niche]

Then you are showing me that my opinion is lesser than yours. I can't put this any other way. I am beating my damn head against the wall here trying to get you to appreciate that equal discussion requires some measure of equality.

And Alukah, thank you for your input but in this specific situation - what I'm trying to do is mediate an amicable conclusion to this that is reasonable to everyone. We're so, so tired. All we want is to be able to talk about the thing that's being done, to actually be given the time of day to discuss.

i'm going into FRU now so i've gotta abstain for the time being. please. just help us help all of this.

[sacred zephyr]

I disagree with you, and I have nothing else to really offer because I don't think you will be willing to hear me out in good faith.

[sacred zephyr]

Just give it some time. If you want to tell me I'm still wrong in a couple weeks, a month? I would be happy to address it again.

You can survive until then without twitter in one server.

I'm not trying to sound mean or crude or anything, but I can't offer more than that at this stage.

[indigo girder]

i will hear you out in good faith, hiccup. it's been near impossible for anyone to do so throughout this.

in order for anyone to respond to you in good faith, you need to be actually addressing what i have said rather than you just asserting points at me.
you giving your honest views and reasoning of the mod team at large as opposed to how you've spoken to everyone here.

no one can respond to someone in good faith when they assert their opinion at you from a position of power, rather than them honestly talking to you.

[plucky niche]

Please don't belittle it to this. We've got so much done.

I'm simply asking you to accommodate me not NEEDING to do this, to budge just a little bit. Is that really so much?

Edit: I am not intending to put words in your mouth. You know this, I really hope. It just feels dismissive.

[sacred zephyr]

I'm not belittling anything and I would ask that you dont put words into my mouth.

I would remind you that I have sat here awake at godawful hours, listening to people level hostility at me and the others, calling us stupid essentially, in an attempt to actually engage in discussion.

I have not ignored your points, I have met them head on as best I can.

[fading plank]

Unrelated to all of this, is it bedtime yet?
I'm a little worried given the time for you, at the risk of sounding like I'm your parent

[sacred zephyr]

What it comes down to is this is a decision that we have made, and it will be happening. It does not mean we do not value feedback, it just means that we ultimately still believe in the initial policy.

We have encouraged people to still disagree or offer solutions to some of those mitigation issues.

But this was never a discussion about reversing course and I don't believe I ever mislead anyone on that front.

[turbid kayak]

imo, it should be acceptable to be allowed to test out rules and such, to allow seeing what the result of the ban is.
saying similar to "you think my opinion is worth nothing cause you don't want to do what i say you should do"
and if the ban isn't working out, then you can change the rule back

[sacred zephyr]

Rather I wanted to explain why we made this decision.

And that we are happy to discuss this and our implementation.

All I asked in return is that you give it a chance and see what actually happens as a result.

[short sail]

I find this repeated stance by the moderation team to be contradictory to the ultimate goal of the ban. If it barely effects people than why do it at all? I think it does very much so effect people, because that its purpose. If people didn't rely on twitter in this community than it would already not have a purpose here. If you ultimately have decided that de-legitimizing twitter is worth the cost of inconveniencing this servers members than I don't understand the avoidance in just saying it. This is your guy's server, you call the shots. Frankly its almost worse hearing you guys telling us that this small sacrifice is for the greater good than just being up front and saying you don't actually care about the effects and just think hurting twitter is more important.

[sacred zephyr]

If we didn't care about the effects we wouldn't have offered warning in the first place. We wouldn't be bothering to discuss workarounds and mitigating factors. We wouldn't have bothered engaging people at all on the matter.

So please, don't claim otherwise.

[indigo girder]

at this point it feels like you have reached the dismissal and 'i am too tired for this shit' phase which i am also reaching.

same time zone, hiccup.

and people here largely haven't levelled hostility at you, or anyone else. there are a few who did so, but they were muted. but, still, mate - no one is calling you stupid and people are honestly trying to engage with you.

it's you guys not giving the same back at this point.

they've just spoken to you about how they feel about your decisions and implored you to do look at other options.

consider their points rather than asserting your own as the only true fact.

maybe consider their feelings and positions as opposed to solely thinking 'we have made this decision, we value feedback but this decision is made'

[sacred zephyr]

You claimed I used an AI to respond to somebody. You have repeatedly claimed our efforts of getting feedback are, essentially, bullshit. You have repeatedly made assumptions on what we mean despite being told the opposite in good faith.

So no, I disagree in this case.

I would call that hostile in the sense that it doesn't actually engage with the belief that I'm not just sitting here bullshitting you.

[fading plank]

"It has come to our attention that there is a cake in the fridge that you wish to eat. We will be eating that cake."
"We don't want you to eat our cake."
"We are open to feedback in regards to how we can make you feel better about our decision. We are still eating the cake, though."

But that's my cake!

[sacred zephyr]

I'm just a dude trying my best to explain why this happening, how it is happening, and trying to take on feedback.

[hollow owl]

unrelated but its like what 6 am for you now hiccup? i really hope you're getting paid for all this OT or in the very least you have done breakfast 🥺

[white totem]

I'm confused why you believe that an open discussion is equivalent to the idea that the team that runs this server must oblige your demands simply because you have them and therefore it should be catered to, otherwise you are simply being "dismissed"

Claiming people are "honestly trying to engage with the mods" while simultaneously implying about two messages ago that the poll was rigged because it is anonymous is wild

[cyan jolt]

Why is there even so much back and forth here? That's exhausting for everyone. Leave this open so people can give their opinions, but then take a step back.

[sacred zephyr]

Regardless, I do believe it's getting to that point of talking in circles. Again, I'm just asking that people give it a couple of weeks. Im not gonna tell you to stop offering your feedback in here and I'm certain others from the team will step in to offer their piece as well

[indigo girder]

i claimed you used an ai because you had a definition not written by you which was not the definition in which people were using the word, in 2025 - it's reasonable to assume people use ai to ask about defintions of words. i apologise if you looked up the definition elsewhere, and apologise for the assumption.

i claimed your methods of getting feedback are flawed by their very nature, anyone who understands data or stats or how computers work on any level knows that a google form that allows anonymous entry is flawed. this is simply fact. this isn't an insult or that it was rigged. it's just fact. along with the fact that 3/4 of the posts were anonymous.

when eanae spoke heavily of investigating astroturfing on reddit, using a form which has easy capabilities for that confounds me.

there are too many inconsistencies in yours, eanaes, and blitz words for me to take what you're saying as fact. with other mods saying other things.

[plucky niche]

My issue is and always has been how I, and others, have been made to feel dismissed by the staff's refusal to negotiate on this key point.

I am glad to have met you and spoken to you, and it grieves me that I can't make you see my mind. As such, I don't think there's any point in us discussing this any further. I'll continue to monitor the channel for stuff I can contribute to in other ways.

I'm sorry to you, and everyone else I've tried to speak for. Please rest well.

[long ridge]

youve sent 3 messages in this server and ONLY in the feedback channel today. Why today of all times...

[sacred zephyr]

At this point I do think it's time for me to step back. I just ask that you please at least try to engage with other staff members respectfully. I'll be blunt, I will mute people if you try to stir the pot.

We absolutely do not need this channel to turn into shit slinging

[autumn parrot]

Stop pointing fingers at other users like this please.

[untold sequoia]

Following on from this, this isn't something that is going to be put through in the next few hours. I would suggest that everyone and especially those that have taken the time to make their opinions heard to take a step back and either get some rest or just do something fun. Then come back refreshed to make your opinions heard

[eager burrow]

May not be my place but isn’t feedback also constructive criticism? From what I read, the team seems to be defensive against the decision without taking the opportunity to understand where the users are coming from. We understand that you guys did a poll but since not everyone present in this server has a Reddit, the poll doesn’t portray the whole picture. All we want is the opportunity to express our opinion on the matter.

[sacred zephyr]

We can continue the discussion so long as everyone makes an effort to atleast be fair to one another as human beings.

But as or me specifically, I need sleep.

Night yall

[fading plank]

Good night soldier

[white totem]

Irrelevant

[icy cypress]

they have mentioned multiple times that they are reading this channel and have engaged with it

so i am pretty sure they have read the opinions expressed in here
but reading doesnt mean agreeing

[ornate pelican]

Regardless on if they are engaging the whole team is reading the channel.

[hollow owl]

get some rest man. you deserve it for being a voice to us and trying to reason for both sides.

speaking to the rest of the normal userbase, I think we all need to stop. this has been going on for two days and it's exhausted both sides with us going in circles. im really glad to see that the community cares this much that they'll fight on for what they believe in. but unfortunately mods have made their stance and we cannot change it right now. perhaps if the political situation in the states cools down, the admins will remove the ban or better yet maybe the ban will be removed because of other circumstances. we have all said our pieces but i don't like to see how hostile this channel has become with both sides. we all need to break out and take the time so cool off.

[indigo girder]

just so you give this a read, krom.

i claimed your methods of getting feedback are flawed by their very nature, anyone who understands data or stats or how computers work on any level knows that a google form that allows anonymous entry is flawed. this is simply fact. this isn't an insult or that it was rigged. it's just fact. along with the fact that 3/4 of the posts were anonymous.

when eanae spoke heavily of investigating astroturfing on reddit, using a form which has easy capabilities for that confounds me.
i didn't accuse the form of being botted or anything, those were hiccups words.

i said that the form by its very nature is vulnerable to astroturfing or fake submissions.

[eager burrow]

The question is if they took in the feedback and are mulling it over. I understand they may have read it but I’m talking about if they registered the information. I personally don’t care for Twitter since I don’t use it but I’m advocating for those whose arguments are not being heard and taken in by the team. The community as a whole will most likely suffer from this decision as they will have to upload stuff on sites where the original credit could be lost. I suggest we do the poll once more both here and on Reddit and compile the answer which would now be harder to contest in this case.

[fading plank]

At this point, since the ban will be in effect no matter what we say, why not double down and make a blanket statement that you will only tolerate feedback in regards to working with the ban?
Might as well stop giving us hope by engaging with those who don't want the ban at all, and you might even get something you want to work with by only letting those speak that will agree with your choice to ban the links.
Just drop the axe in that regard already. You have no intention of undoing the decision, so let's avoid exhausting everyone and restrict feedback. At least it'll make it undeniably clear to everyone that you won't consider opinions that are strictly against yours.

[ornate pelican]

Chances are staff replies will be slow the rest of the day. I’m going to the aquarium with my kids, Hiccup is going to sleep. Be aware that staff not responding or responding slow doesn’t mean we’re ignoring the chat. Please enjoy your weekend.

[plucky niche]

ditto.

[untold sequoia]

Multiple of us have said that yes, we are reading and discussing the feedback that is brought up here and on the form, if you don't believe us there is really nothing else we can do on that front

We are treating this issue and your feedback very seriously, I can personally promise you that

[hollow owl]

as bonnie said, the mods aren't simply ignoring us. take this time to chill out and do something else. all sides are exhausted and we need to stop.

[short sail]

And what if the mitigating factors are not enough for people? Simply letting people screenshot posts or download videos through websites may not appeal to everyone. Frankly the lack of interest in even gathering the wider communities feedback until you were systematically told off in this channel for 5 hours does not give me confidence that the moderation team has any intention of caring if the answer becomes a resounding no. Even when a poll gathering feedback was put up, its results were shown within 31 hours, over the course of a weekday.
Right now we have been given very little to instill confidence that feedback will be heard, and what little we have gotten out of that was after almost a full day of us talking to a brick wall before anything properly changed
Simply hearing "We have heard your feedback and will consider it" is far too little far too late after we were repeatedly told that what we actually have no sway on any decisions made.
Regardless, I realize this point has been made ad nauseam. But I hope it will at least be added to the pile of multiple paragraph long messages from people who legitimately care about this server, or cared before this experience.

[eager burrow]

Anyways, that was my two cents on the situation. Have a good one ya’ll and rest up! Have a nice day! ^_^

[indigo girder]

i think what yuyu is saying here really speaks for how many people are feeling the mods are acting.

whether or not it's true having 'truths' asserted at you, having an aura of 'we know better' is very hurtful for many here.

this is an xiv server, and most of the mods are lgbt. i am myself, for reference. statistically, and from the many people i've met in this game, there's legitimately a mental heath angle here the mods need to consider when speaking to people.

the talking down to users, and the 'we know best' and mods not taking the time to discuss with warmth and honesty is more than likely truly hurting people.

i'm not playing some bullshit game in saying this but please consider your words, guys.

in addition the mental health of your mods who also have to deal with all of this shit and read it.

when a mod gets a sec any chance we can have reacts back?

[plucky niche]

wanted to credit @sacred zephyr when they wake up. we do not agree and my mind isn't changed, but theirs is an unenviable job and it sucks. in the wake of the past few days, thank you for being the voice.

[long ridge]

I agree with sentiment that it's probably best to take a step back if we dont have new issues to discuss or new points to present.

For the mod team, I hope that even in spite of slipups on the part of users, you can still give valid weight to the specific paragraphs raised by people here. There has been a lot of reiterating the same points, but each person here has raised a few important points of their own that I hope will not be lost to the veritable deluge of debate that has occurred.

A lot of passionate users have been trying very hard to make their voices heard especially in light of the delay they experience in finding out whether their concerns had been individually considered. Sometimes this frustration has resulted in users losing patience, especially because many users feel in a particualrly powerless position in this discussion. I ask that you might remain empathetic and sympathetic in spite of raised emotions here.

Hope you all are managing well and hope everyone has a better day

[fading plank]

I don't wanna take my argument away from yours, but just to clarify, it's something that may be personal to me. I prefer if people are upfront with their words and don't leave room for discussion when there isn't any, because that just means I'm yapping into a void.
I do hope all people here, lgbt or not, can manage their mental health on their own in regards to whether they can interact here without upsetting themselves - though, in fairness, staff already seems to be speaking for us, so they might as well consider that responsibility regardless...

I'm personally done w this beyond occasional chime-ins, but I've mentally checked out of this as I've been told my efforts are futile, and I respect that honesty. I'll leave when the ban hits and that'll be the end of it for me. I hope others can make similar healthy choices for themselves, whatever they may be.

[mighty fossil]

i somewhat dislike a community service thing being treated as a job when it should be something that's a come and go volunteer thing.

the source of something this abrupt isn't what i'd believe to be discussed when it suddenly came swinging to begin with.

I may have a different idea of "prohibiting" twitter but I would also think that this is very abrupt to the point I would genuinely think not all of those who have volunteered would've come to the same conclusion.

You can claim it's discussed before, and I can wait to see what happens, in fact, I'd like to see what happens if you just ban it now, or the very same day of announcement. I'd most likely be away at the time for it and be confused upon return.

[turbid kayak]

noone reads the announcements most of the time when a rule break hits, the link would be removed and redirected to the #announcements channel when it hits anyway, users wont be punished for posting that link.

[indigo girder]

no i'm not trying to take away from yours either. i'm sorry if it came across like that. i was attempting to add to it and i largely echo what you're saying. if it is as hiccup presented things, i think what you say should please go through just to take care of people. this is causing both mods and users harm at this point.

yapping into a void is never fun, but it's that hurt you're feeling that can truly overcome some people and that's my worry. the not being listened to and just being hurt.

someone like hiccup or myself may be able to take people speaking in this channel in the manner we have, but i know it truly affects many deeply.

i worry about other mods, with respect to you guys, truly. and i do respect his hustle in being here for so long and taking on the mental load that he did.

edit: this isn't to say this doesn't affect me, insomnia a bitch.

[long ridge]

( I posted this at the exact same time as 2 other long replies and just want to ensure the mod team noticed+had a chance to consider it, in case it got lost)

[untold sequoia]

Yes, we are reading and processing what people say, even if people convey it in a terse or rude manner, we are still reading it and treating it as appropriate feedback, you don't need to worry about that (Though do try and be nice about the feedback please)

[long cedar]

Been silently reading this chat for the past 4 hours and I really don't think anyone would be satisfied with any mod response that isn't reversing the ban. They are not going to relent on that and unfortunately it's going to end with no-one being happy.

For the staff, having been a mod myself in several servers previously and similar going through this ordeal. It's so easy to get wrapped up in discussion about server policies behind the scenes, go through plans, iterations and reviews for weeks only to surprise server with it from nowhere. It's a mess when you've already made a decision and open it up to everyone who think they can change your mind.
It'd be obvious in hindsight to point out that any future policy changes/implementations should be announced and opened much earlier with significantly more time for discussion BEFORE a staff decision is made. That is the only way for users to properly feel included.

And just make the statement of the ban clearer in announcements. I know Hiccup already did but it's at the bottom of their post and no-one reads the whole thing. There's no need for more people to come in thinking the decision can be reverted

[indigo girder]

unfortunately it appears this was a forced rushed decision from two days ago.

#announcements message

it maybe have been discussed or floated in the past but their hand was forced. to sort out or solve this now, as opposed to giving them time to truly impliment it properly.

that's why i (and others) have mentioned the weekend thing.

[turbid kayak]

mods alone without agreement with the admins cannot just say "oh we are going to do something else", fairly simple

[long ridge]

Yeah , the intent of my post was moreso was hope that the earlier discussion points that were being brought up wouldnt get forgotten. For example, giving more lead time on future decisions, including more participation from the discord (specifically) community and recognizing seperation between the reddit and discord communities, recognizing regular contributing members and giving their voices weight as theyre a huge factor in how good the community is, showing more good will earlier in the process, including polls that span longer durations and are clearly marked, the possibility of announcement ping roles, etc.

My fear was that such points might somehow become obfuscated by later discussion, or later-discounted after the fact because those who raised the issues later allowed their patience to slip (tagging Maera too cause i think i may not have been clear in my original response)

GUH i clicked the wrong one

[untold sequoia]

Wrong Bonnie

[long cedar]

Yeah I saw that brought up, Hiccup did mention that this was supposedly discussed for 'months'. I'm just saying in my experience as a mod elsewhere, it's really easy to get wrapped up in having all these discussions behind the scene and making a decision. Then last minute 'oh crap we should open this up to the server for discussion' which comes off really badly cause the discussion won't really amount to anything.

I've learnt the hard way and it hit differently being on the other side now

[indigo girder]

you're likely correct in that reversing the ban is the only thing that will make others happy.

but you've seen me and some other mention distrust, this comes from the scrambling the mods had to do to justify/understand how to implement and deal with this when this was announced.

along the lack of responses and very rude, if not rather mean to the point an apology was made. while simultaneously being very dismissive towards others.

[indigo girder]

aye, i have similar experiences moderating.

large decisions like this can upset a userbase heavily. we did one of ours without any consultation without an in depth post (major safety and harassment issues for people) and a lot of people were upset, and due to the sensitive nature of it we couldn't fully disclose the reasoning for our decision.

really just trying to give some understanding within what mods say and understand that they may be hurting others with how this is happening.

i don't so much mind the ban if it were to go ahead, but if it does, this server really needs some warmth and understanding from moderators towards the users during this period.

i guess that's the main reason for my plead of 'wait' so no one is scrambling for a solution. then hopefully come to a consensus and a more reasonable way of expressing themselves to one another and the users, too.

though at this point the lack of trust makes that feel impossible, for many who posted here.

i feel that the way some expressed themselves toward users in the mod team is a really bad look, and truly does hurt people.

as aurelleah said, a lot of people are really passionate and asking for participation or just to be heard, and the words coming from the moderators make them feel completely dismissed and their time, words or opinions aren't valued in any capacity. peoples words and pleas are just being trampled over and any voice anyone feels they have is now cut down.

regardless of whether this is 'happening on monday' or whatever is decided, i think people are more hurt by not being heard and dismissed, over and over, without a reasonable way that the mods can express what they're doing beyond "it's happening, we'll figure out the rest later."

regardless, mods, i apologise for my long and tiresome insomniac posting.

i wish y'all luck, be kind

[orchid briar]

My feedback won’t be long, because most of my concerns have been addressed and I see no point in harping on stuff that people no longer stand by

I am very happy that the mod/admin team did take accountability 🫶 I understand sometimes things get super heated and you say things where in hindsight ur like o. Shit. I still think the twitter link ban should’ve been all or nothing- but this is a nice compromise for people who wanna share art or XIV related content that’s exclusive to twt

I hope everyone in this discussion has a good day and eats well. Even if I heavily disagreed with some of the takes ppl posted, lol. Good vibes to all!

[granite aurora]

ssstwitter lets you download vids. or apps on the play store like TwDown etc

[ancient gale]

Member not in server with ID 297171554020622338 has been banned by eanae for the following reason:

Extremely rude.

[thorny lantern]

You can still take a screenshot of the news and post that.

[sweet badge]

Unfortunate endgame of relying on private corporations to provide a public platform for news. I think you can definitely make a fair argument that in the current enviornment the owners beliefs posit more harm to people than the loss of twitter links. Its definitely complicated

[charred sail]

i think there should be another poll for it that involves everyone being pinged

[umbral fog]

an everyone ping is not going to happen in a discord of this size

[surreal shuttle]

@ everyone would crash this server. Its functionality is turned off for that reason

[charred sail]

well then a poll isnt a good idea

[autumn fjord]

i think having an announcements role ping is good; i've always thought it was a bit strange that a server of this size didn't have it but it didn't seem worth bringing up

[untold sequoia]

We can discuss it, but you can do it yourself by enabling notifications for any message in #announcements

[next oar]

Can mod team either put a timestamp of when the rule takes effect or post another PSA? or is it already active? I have no idea because of the timezone

[ornate pelican]

It is not active. Right now it’ll likely be flipped on coinciding with an announcement from the Blue team at around 8:00am EST which is approximately 9 hours from the time this message is being posted. This will vaguely coincide with r/ffxiv. r/ffxivdiscussion was also supposed to go live around the same time but seems they decided to just pull the plug today.

[next oar]

Understood, thanks for specific time. After converting the timezone am I correct that the time is <t:1737982800:F>?

[ornate pelican]

That is accurate. I’m also going to reset the slowmode here and set the time back to 1 minute.

[next oar]

Thanks for confirmation, May I suggest editing this time into one of the announcement posts so people can check with more clarity?

Additionally, the emote is still turned off as of now. I feel like reverting emote back on goes in line with the decision of reverting slowmode to 1 min since the storm has calmed down, wdyt?

[ornate pelican]

Reactions have been reverted. I can add it to the announcement. Exact timing will come down to when I can drag my butt out of bed and let my dog out first but the time is accurate enough.

[next oar]

Sounds good to me, thanks!

[empty arrow]

And videos? You expect people to screen record entire ffxiv clips instead of simply using a link???

[fading plank]

You can download them... by paying for twitter

[azure gate]

And you expect people to give money to the pale mucker? That would defeat the whole purpose of the ban.

[fading plank]

Almost like this ban just complicates communication

[empty arrow]

I mean a large portion of the community is Japanese and don’t post their clips to any other platform besides Twitter

And that’s not gonna change anytime soon so do we expect people to just screen record every single video they come across?

[fading plank]

Obviously I'm not suggesting you do that. But idk if they are giving an alternative for videos. Prob expect you to use some 3rd party tool to get the vid and repost with no proper credit bc that'd link to twitter

[pearl halo]

Can't you technically use websites to download the clips? (Of course please still give credit to the original poster) Or is that against the rules? (Genuine question)

[median mantle]

You can, it's just massively inconvenient

[pearl halo]

Very true

[fading plank]

Ima be real, most people will not do either

[empty arrow]

You end up punishing the users of the discord more than the people you intend to with shit like this

[azure gate]

I suggest we return to writing very descriptive but lengthy novels that rely on one's imagination as a substitute to videos.

[fading plank]

Was gonna explain that they don't really care about the negatives this brings, but messages get censored heavily it seems

[median mantle]

I don't think anything got censored here, some people deleted their own messages expressing their support for the ban and then left the discord but that's about it

[fading plank]

No, mine just did

[median mantle]

May have used a banned word by accident or something

[fading plank]

I can hazard a guess but either of the two would be telling...

[empty arrow]

The ban won’t affect people that barely use this discord so why should they care
But it does just make the overall experience more annoying for the people that do

[pearl halo]

I deleted my twitter account so this ban doesn't exactly affect me but I'd think the ban would have a safe second option for clip sharing ready beforehand.

[misty temple]

it's a little funny how we still had to sidestep the TOPICAL chat filters when trying to provide feedback about the topic

[median mantle]

must've been fun

[empty arrow]

I remember getting 24hr muted for using the word and I had no idea it was even a thing

[fading plank]

It's either poopliticks or virtual signal and I assume it's the latter based on the topic

[azure gate]

It honestly feels pointless. Most people use the alternates when posting links, so it's not even the original site. I personally dislike the site and don't use it. Yet I don't go around telling hundreds of thousands of people to stop using it or don't post anything they saw

[fading plank]

I wouldn't wanna use my power over such a large community to force them into my personal boycott, esp when it will do nothing to the bad guy and inconvenience said community

[next oar]

Since we are in the feedback channel I think we should focus on checking if certain alternative methods are allowed or checking if they thought about certain edge cases, wdyt?

[fading plank]

We've addressed many, including videos, and afaik it was just acknowledged but that's it

[azure gate]

They said all of them are banned iirc

[surreal shuttle]

Videos won’t be banned

All alt links will be banned

[fading plank]

I think the intentions here are good, but I didn't consent to being weaponised for anybody's agenda, no matter how noble it is...

[surreal shuttle]

The words “Twitter” and “X” will not be banned. And you can talk about them both freely

The announcement in an hour will have a FAQ

[empty arrow]

But then at that point why even…

[fading plank]

So are twitter links to videos banned?
If yes, that's the issue
If no, what's the point

[azure gate]

I ponder if the polls used can be considered fair, only 86 people voted, didn't even know there was a poll to begin with.

[surreal shuttle]

Links are the only thing that will be explicitly filtered

[misty temple]

oh absolutely not

[next oar]

I think the summary of how the ban works in detail should be in the announcements posts before the ban takes effect so that others can prepare the alternatives and make sure no edge cases are left unanswered, wdyt?

[surreal shuttle]

Screenshots are fine. Downloaded videos are fine. Mentioning that Twitter exists is fine

[fading plank]

They can't ping everyone (fair) but also said before the form even came out, that the ban would happen.
They never wanted feedback on whether it should. Feedback is only for how to make you more ok with it. But it was always gonna happen.

[misty temple]

ngl this isn't even a "compromise" at this point
it's just a very weird, very confusing action solving a problem that doesn't exist

[empty arrow]

They never once posted it in the actual channels??? The second I heard about it in the channels the rules were already taking place

[surreal shuttle]

I mean at this point there isn’t much time left. The announcement will come when the ban does

[fading plank]

Well, the less spread, the less resistance, the better.
It's shady to me, esp with the way it was handled, so I won't stick around post ban.

[next oar]

I think posting it earlier answers some question people are having right now. an hour is still a time for people to think about how they want to adjust it, could you consider it again please?

[surreal shuttle]

I can answer questions now myself if you have any

[azure gate]

So out of 258,873 people only 86 voted. That's what? 0.1%? This feels very absurd, honestly and I don't see it stick around for long.

[fading plank]

It'll stick because staff wants it to, it's not on us

[surreal shuttle]

We can’t control how many people respond to the poll

[median mantle]

The poll wasn't to decide if the ban is happening or not. It was decided that it's happening no matter what before the announcement was made

[empty arrow]

That’s literally how 90% of the rule changes go here. And then the mods go back to barely using the discord more than twice a month fucking lul

[surreal shuttle]

I will say stuff mentioned in the feedback form was considered and the ban was tweaked based on feedback

[next oar]

Is there a reason why details won't be in the announcement before the ban is issued? if you can't answer it then it's okay, I'm simply questioning a good reason behind it

[misty temple]

what problem is the ban solving in its current iteration?

[surreal shuttle]

Because we decided the announcement will come simultaneously

[next oar]

And for what reason?
Sorry I feel like I'm putting weird pressure here

[surreal shuttle]

It’s also like, pretty much nothing in the announcement will be stuff we have not discussed here

It’s not a big secret

[fading plank]

I want this question answered too

[empty arrow]

I don’t know man a lot of the regulars seemed to only catch wind of this happening before it was too late lol

[surreal shuttle]

We feel it’s our way of discouraging use in the community of a platform we find problematic. Is it a moral stance? Yes. But it’s one the team feels is worth taking, even if it’ll be inconvenient at the start

[surreal shuttle]

They’ve been here since we first announced the change days ago

[misty temple]

and this is worth taking... why? just seems like you're needlessly inconveniencing people based on a moral you also decided to impose upon them

[fading plank]

Does the team weigh the worth of this moral stance that will not affect the bad guy as more valuable than its community's freedom?

Freedoms the wrong word but idk rn I'm at work

[surreal shuttle]

I mean I think whether or not you feel this will “affect” the bad guy is going to be up to you. We’re aware that we are a very small rock in an ocean.

[next oar]

I mean I agree, but my suggestion is made because I think it improves the visibility of the details.
People can technically read through the backlog and understand the gist of the rule, but I think it's so much easier to simply read the announcement once, wouldn't you think?

[median mantle]

Well, they can read it once the ban is live

[untold sequoia]

We will be making an announcement with all the details when the ban goes live in an hour

[surreal shuttle]

It’s coming in less than an hour and we’ve been talking about it for days. I really don’t think it should surprise anyone

[fading plank]

Sorry but I know for a fact that one server of one game not sharing as much on twitter won't affect the richest guy on earth (or close to? Idk)

[empty arrow]

Well if the change is unpopular would y’all be open to reverting it or what

[surreal shuttle]

And you know fwiw among other communities doing this it is pretty rare that we give a heads up like we have. A lot of other places just do it without saying anything first lol

[median mantle]

It's been said multiple times that it's happening regardless of what people think so

[misty temple]

keen to hear about this, because if the answer is no or vaguely defined then we're all wasting our breath here

[untold sequoia]

I can't see the future so I can't make any promises, but at this point in time we have no intention of reventing the change

[surreal shuttle]

That’s not what was asked

[untold sequoia]

But ultimately that is not something Blitz or I can promise without having a lengthy conversation with the team

[fading plank]

It is and has been and the answer is no, based on what staff said to us the past few days.
Honestly if they go back on it after the backlash they already got, they'll just look bad twice.

[median mantle]

ye, misinterpreted, mb

[empty arrow]

So I’m wasting my time then? Alr im over it then lol

[surreal shuttle]

I will say this. The vast majority of FF14 stuff is available on literally anything other than Twitter. We have been pretty thorough internally on figuring out what kind of information/anything can only be found on Twitter and realistically the answer isn’t a whole lot

[fading plank]

Yeah, pretty much.
It's mostly just venting here.

[empty arrow]

This is funny when you consider the vast majority of JPN XIV content is on lmfao

[surreal shuttle]

Screenshots

[orchid briar]

Only question I have is if someone attempts to circumvent this ban by posting some kind of unique twitter embed (just a hypothetical btw), would they be punished for this action?

[fading plank]

They don't get punished already since it just gets deleted, so that would be weird...

[untold sequoia]

Intentionally trying to circumvent the filter is against the rules in general

[surreal shuttle]

The ban contains most alternative embeds we know of. If someone should circumvent by posting one we don’t cover then yeah they’ll be actioned

[empty arrow]

So we can make it harder to give people access to the original source why punish them like that LOL

[surreal shuttle]

This is the only part of the ban that would lead to someone getting mod actioned

[orchid briar]

Alright 👍 not that im planning to do so but I was just curious lol

[untold sequoia]

But like if someone didn't know about the rule and used a 3rd party domain that we didn't know about, we're not going to punish them for an honest mistake

[empty arrow]

If I go around posting screenshots like this and the original posters page isn’t easily accessible that’s so unfair to them. I’d reckon a quite a few would be pissed about it too

[surreal shuttle]

I mean maybe it’s just me but I don’t find pressing ctrl + print screen or the screenshot buttons on your phone that much of an inconvenience.

Also the point of the ban is to make it more annoying to use Twitter here anyway, so people use it less lol

[median mantle]

would non clickable links like emi821hana/status/1883837272640176469 be forbidden too?

[fading plank]

Yeah, you're making that decision for all of us without our consent.
I'm more upset by all this than twitter tbh

[untold sequoia]

I don't really understand what that is so I can't answer that, sorry

[next oar]

I was aware of motivation behind the ban, but I think this is the first time I heard the intent of banning twitter

[empty arrow]

But if I’m posting someone else’s art why would you go out of your way to punish them???

[long ridge]

The poll was hidden behind a "feedback form" which implies effort and that you have something prepared to say it also wasn't mentioned in the paragraph that there would be poll there unless I'm mistaken?

I'm curious if the poll would have had considerably more responses if one was provided in an additional link next to the feedback form link

[misty temple]

"the point of the ban is to inconvenience our users" is... hm. wow.

[median mantle]

It's basically just the link to a post, just need to put x.com infront of it to get to the post

[surreal shuttle]

We’re not punishing anyone. You will not get mod actioned for posting a Twitter link and having it sniped by Kupo

[untold sequoia]

No that would be classified as circumventing the filter

[empty arrow]

That’s so fucking mean to artists holy shit

[fading plank]

Being unable to share easily is punishment whether you like that word or not

[next oar]

Could you add that example to announcement posts that goes live please?

[untold sequoia]

Sure

[autumn fjord]

so you can’t even attribute/credit screenshots of fanart now? lol?

[misty temple]

• the way that the poll "results" were propped up in #announcements as if they were somehow indicative of what the server users think despite a) being anonymous, b) showing up after being repeatedly told the stance of the mod team would not change, and worst of all c) having a whopping EIGHTY-SIX (coincidentally a very apt word for the situation) responses was very weird.

[median mantle]

The username would be in the screenshot at least

[surreal shuttle]

If you’re posting art and want to credit the artist just post a screenshot and say “this is from @name on Twitter/X”

[plucky niche]

For those who have just come into this channel today, I recommend scrolling up over the past weekend and reading the discourse there. There was a long discussion about most of the topics that are happening here, and despite days of this the administrative team showed themselves to be, at best, unwilling to accept any alterations at this time. To put it bluntly y'all are wasting your breath, despite how valid your criticisms may seem. We've probably already brought them up, and they've probably already been dismissed.

[fading plank]

Btw the original reddit poll was made by a new user who had never posted in ffxiv before

[modern jacinth]

We were already in talks of it for the subreddit well ahead of time before that was posted.

[empty arrow]

Sharing links help artists in the algorithm sending a screenshot does not man what the heck??

[untold sequoia]

I just need to make this clear, the poll was to give us an idea on which side of the ban the person giving the feedback landed on, it was to help us understand the feedback better, the ban was always going to happen as per Eanae's announcement and I'm sorry we didn't make that clearer, what we were seeking feedback on was how to implement the ban

[misty temple]

if you were only seeking feedback on how to implement the ban then what was even the point of asking if people supported the ban or not

[sage rune]

Most redditors went to games subs they have nothing do with to do polls

[autumn fjord]

apparently artists are acceptable collateral damage here because that’s the whole point of this ban. to stop anyone from going to twitter

[plucky niche]

To be clear to all the people finding this out now - the moderation team have repeatedly shown that they are not prepared to consider for a moment that putting the ban in place now is not the right thing to do. If you're going to suggest this, expect to be disregarded. We tried.

[misty temple]

(as much as i agree with you wholeheartedly i would suggest not poking the recently hostile bear...)

[empty arrow]

Putting “this is made by @ so and so” is not nearly as effective has sending a link and to act like it is is genuinely so absurd

[untold sequoia]

As long as you're not attacking anyone, you can be frustrated

[sage rune]

It was used to contain dissent in here

[untold sequoia]

I'm not going to sit here and tell people they have to love this change

[empty arrow]

If the original artists found out their work was being shared in that way I’m sure they’d have some choice words

[surreal shuttle]

Some artists explicitly require they be credited with a link. Most do not

[median mantle]

Your best bet to in theory maybe possibly cause a change is waiting for the ban to happen and then bring up concrete examples, anything else is pretty much of a waste of time like Emu saidn

[surreal shuttle]

Also if you were concerned about helping said artist with their algorithm, google them and click it yourself, no?

[next oar]

I don't think we can improve the communication issue as long as we keep going back and forth in this feedback channel.

[orchid briar]

Yeah personally speaking as someone who does enjoy to draw, I wouldn’t be happy if I found out people were sharing my works in a Discord server and not even linking it, lol. But that’s just me. At least crediting the artist is required because if it wasn’t then I would fully be against the ban

[long ridge]

I do appreciate the clarification; were the responses of people responding held in equal measure regardless of whether they supported or didn't support it? Since my feedback included a lot of details that went beyond simply how the ban was implemented and referred more to how it was handled even though I do think The Rat (derogatory) is an ass; I agree with the morality behind the ban even if I don't support the ban entirely and wouldn't want my notes discarded because I chose wrong on the form

[untold sequoia]

Yes, we considered everyone's feedback equally

[empty arrow]

Absolutely this would be unacceptable to me

[plucky niche]

The conclusion of the last couple of days is that the moderator team claim to be accepting of feedback as long as it doesn't actually say 'don't do the ban rn'. If that is your feedback, they are not prepared to discuss. Best to base your comments accordingly if you're just joining this discussion

[empty arrow]

With a link…

[short sail]

Are any Twitter links going to be retroactively filtered? Or just ones posted from the time of the ban?

[untold sequoia]

Nothing retroactive is happening

[modern jacinth]

No retroactive ban, only going forward.

[orchid briar]

I do have another question actually- but since you mentioned that all feedback was treated equally- does this also include people who only joined the conversation for this specific topic and have never spoken otherwise? Because I dunno how I feel about that specifically 🫤

[median mantle]

#discord-feedback message

[empty arrow]

This hit the nail on the head but of course.

[next oar]

I have to dig through a pile of backlog to figure out which edge cases has been addressed

[untold sequoia]

Don't worry I'm keeping track of them and we can add them to the announcement

[plucky niche]

I'd also like to stress. Points of feedback are apparently equally considered, but if your feedback is related to the ban itself, it will not be considered. Best to not convince yourself it will.

[autumn fjord]

makes sense that chronic lurkers don’t care/support the ban, it’s not like they’re the ones sharing stuff

[orchid briar]

Well I know my question was already kind of answered but its moreso like “is this really fair?” kinda deal to me

[misty temple]

i think, whether they like it or not, this is going to be the perspective a lot of regulars are going to have about the mod team going forward as well.

"we've made a decision, based on some nebulous internal discussion of which you will have no transparency about, and you're free to provide any feedback that isn't 'don't take this decision' regardless of what the decision is." reeeeal smooth.

[untold sequoia]

Considering a lot of people chose to leave their name off of the form, we had no choice but to treat everything equally

[plucky niche]

And in my opinion this should be a healthy perspective to have. The moderation team do not seem inclined to put the lie to your statement.

[next oar]

That's good to hear, I'm also talking about other channels though so I would appreciate if you could sweep general use cases from active channels like #general-discussion and such as well (sorry if you guys have already done it)

[orchid briar]

So if people were forced to leave their names on the feedback, that specific bit would’ve been considered? I’m not saying being a regular should grant you special privileges or anything- but I did (and still kinda do) believe it was silly that the feedback from someone who knows the dynamics of this community well and some no-name Andy who has never even bothered speaking here and will likely leave after the ban to be considered on the same level

[untold sequoia]

No, because ultimately there is no way to verify that the name someone put on the form actually belongs to them, the name field is just there for people who want their name attributed to their feedback

[long ridge]

Just throwing it out there that personally I feel like it's fair for people feedback to be considered equality depending on which side theyre on for the issue (obviously)

However if anyone's read my past feedback here on the topic I'm hella not in favor of people's feedback being equal in the case of someone who posted only 3 times ever in the past 2 years and only in this feedback channel this weekend, vs someone who's sent 70,000 messages contributing to this server across various channels because one of those two people are far more likely to be affected by moderator decisions than the other

[median mantle]

What about these cases btw:

1. social media post/pastebin with nothing but a twitter link as message
2. social media post/pastebin with multiple Twitter links as collection of strats for a specific fight for example
3. social media post with some flavour text + twitter link
4. Message link to a twitter message on another discord like the balance
5. link to large document with lots of text and twitter links to supplement videos or images

[plucky niche]

one might think, if the feedback medium was considered nebulous, one might consider the entire thing nebulous, and not simply shrug one's shoulders and carry on...

[untold sequoia]

Also I'm going to be honest with all of you, the people who barely speak in this server aren't exactly giving essay worthy feedback, usually its just a "I support the ban yada yada" which while its a nice sentiment, isn't really practical feedback we can use

[orchid briar]

Yeah thats kinda my stance as well but I do understand that its hard to check these sort if things so shsjsh

[long ridge]

That's fair tbh

[plucky niche]

I'm glad y'all at least recognise this, because if you have no personal investment in the situation then the only perspective one would HAVE is 'hey nazis really suck' which is a pretty universally agreed sentiment

[median mantle]

the worry is probably more that those messages can be used to justify the ban with "look, our users want it"

[untold sequoia]

1. I honestly don't know
2. Uhh, if I BSky post has a link to Twitter in it, I'm personally not going to care, but I can't speak for the team
3. Same as above
4. Thats fine
5. Uhhhhhhhhh, that should be fine?

I'll save that message for the team to properly discuss though

[next oar]

As the implementation goes, I am assuming that generally if the messages contain parsable twitter links it will be deleted, correct?

[untold sequoia]

Yes

[plucky niche]

end of the day, despite the moderation team being open to feedback, the subtext is very clear that push comes to shove they value their own opinions higher than ours, so that's what's going to win out when time gets called sadly

[next oar]

Awesome! In that case, what's going to happen to a separate media that just so happened to contain twitter link gets expanded by the discord in an embed form? would that be possible to catch? or would that be considered false-positive if it gets parsed? Nevermind, this technically doesn't contain twitter link so that should be fine

[autumn fjord]

1. what about link shorteners like bit.ly that lead to a twitter post
2. what about a screenshot of a full twitter link

[untold sequoia]

If this doesn't cover it #discord-feedback message then idk, we'd need a more formal conversation to decide

[untold sequoia]

1. Not allowed, personally thats just the same as a 3rd party link
2. Again I'm not 100% sure but I don't see any issue with that, though if the screenshot is JUST the link, idk, maybe don't

[surreal shuttle]

We tried to cover as much as we can but if something comes up that isn’t explicitly covered send a modmail

[autumn fjord]

well in the latter case someone could be trying to attribute an artist who posted the specific artwork a couple of years ago, and the point of sharing art links is that people want to reshare to their own account, which would be hard with just a screenshot (possibly with the date cropped out) and a username

[sage rune]

Sending a modmail just to share sauce seems pretty inconvenient

[untold sequoia]

No, Blitz is saying if there is an edge case you're not sure about, feel free to open a modmail to get clarification

[sage rune]

Ah fair

[next oar]

I think it's essentially the same as number 3 but much more broad. it's like "what if this specific post from this glam collection blog contained a twitter link in it's embed view"
I don't think this can be detected by the bot, so I'm going to assume it will be fine
-# Also I don't think there's that many website that does this

[onyx shale]

Question regarding attributing to artists. In the screenshot example posted earlier, the artist's name was in Korean. How are you expecting users to search up that artist for more if they can't even type that name?

[untold sequoia]

Yeah I don't have any issue with that, but we haven't formally discussed that so that might change in the future

[untold sequoia]

You could include a copy of the name in text when posting the screenshot

[empty arrow]

I asked this and the response was “I don’t see the big deal” so yea lol

[median mantle]

the username itself should always be ASCII I believe, so that should be easy to type

[onyx shale]

Another question, is attributing screenshots to atrists going to be enforcible? I can see a lot of people inadvertently posting screenshots without saying who it comes from, which can piss artists off

[median mantle]

i.e. ff14hioo_oo7

[next oar]

This is something that I've been wondering a lot, and this question goes into general moderation stance but I'm going to bring it up anyway since this feels relevant
Is the line of what's okay and what isn't clearly defined within moderation team? and the appropriate duration for punishment as well, in case when the action is necessary?

[next oar]

Interestingly this has been answered before this twitter thing became the main topic: #discord-feedback message

[untold sequoia]

If you intentionally circumvent the ban then that is treated as circumventing the filter, which is already a well established rule and I don't see any issue with moderators not knowing where the line is, however since we haven't accounted for every possible edge case, we would discuss that as it comes up

[heady sand]

Backread a bit and saw that everything i wanted to say was probably said already by quite a few people, but I'd still like to give my feedback as someone who uses twitter to post ff fanarts in #art or endgame related clips in #endgame-lounge : I am honestly quite disappointed with the mod team that such a change was enforced for a reason like that. It's definitely punishing a large portion of people for using a tool because of a much smaller amount of people using said tool for other purposes. I definitely disagree that such a change was even remotely necessary or even considered. I am probably not the only one who found out about this today and feel like this change was a bit decided in the backside for a personal reason instead of a relevant one. Won't stay to add more, but still wanted to give my feedback nonetheless since this is a feedback channel.

[next oar]

Ah I see. I asked this because I sometimes see the inconsistent mute durations in between mods, sometimes I see 12h mute going without a heads-up and sometimes I see 5h mute for the exact same violation as the one that got 12h, and sometimes just a warning without any mute at all. so I was curious

[untold sequoia]

As a rule of thumb, warnings are typically paired with a mute between 6 and 12 hours, where exactly between those 2 numbers is up to mod discretion

[long ridge]

I wish warnings were given prior to the first mute especially if someone is likely to be receptive to the warning

Mute feels like a "okay you didn't listen so let's have a time out"

[misty temple]

+1, this tends not to be the case from what i've seen and experienced firsthand.

[fading plank]

why are warnings paired with a punishment anyway?
I'd understand if your warning was "hey don't post that" or "please tone it down", but whenever I see somebody get retroactively sniped for something that nobody in chat even warned them about and has to eat a mute for hours, that's just unreasonable to me
in almost every server it's Verbal Warning > Mute > Ban, for the record

[onyx shale]

Also shower thought suggestion, do you want to let people know the muskrat's name is a banned term in the final announcement? I can see people trying to discuss the announcement and getting whacked by auto mod lol

[empty arrow]

Yes I gotten a 12 hour mute for a rule I didn’t even know existed lol

[long ridge]

I got a 6h one for the same tho the mod did reduce to 3h after which I was grateful for

[fading plank]

I thought circumventing filters wasn't allowed but it's been done here all the time so idk why the term is banned in the first place
Unless ofc we're supposed to not talk about the incoming ban in the first place, in which case the term ban is probably a great way to do so!

[untold sequoia]

I thought circumventing filters wasn't allowed but it's been done here all the time so idk why the term is banned in the first place
We're allowing it in here so that you guys can discuss the ban

[surreal shuttle]

FYI #announcements message the ban is now live

[shy kiln]

So, from what i read
(F)elon is bad, but zuckerberg is good?

[fading plank]

The majority of the FFXIV art community has moved to other platforms like Bluesky.
Is this true? I have no tangential info to claim otherwise, but how do you know this?

[plucky niche]

Putting the ban live while people are still contesting its integration in the first place is exactly the problem we've had over the last weekend. What a shame.

[empty arrow]

Already blantantly false LOL does the mod team think ffxiv artist are exclusively American or something

[next oar]

I've never gotten mute nor warning before but every time it happens it's kinda scary to me.
It just feels like a harsh punishment to let them know who's boss instead of actually providing what's allowed and what isn't

[untold sequoia]

We're currently discussing banning other problematic platforms such as Meta but we didn't want to overload this one

[orchid briar]

This is kind of true for the western side of the XIV art community, untrue for the eastern side though

[long ridge]

Btw this is meant as actual serious feedback, I know im not the only one put off by mutes being the first line of action in the punishment sequence.. I understand this is a big server and sometimes harsh actions are needed against trolls or particularly heinous actions but like someone slipping up or getting carried away, it feels like a warning by itself would convey the same level of discipline without smacking then with what (in other servers) is considered a hefty measure

Which by the way wouldn't it be better to call it discipline? Since the goal is to steer people into a better course of conduct and not only to punish wrongdoing (they're not the same thing and the nuance there is that discipline is considered to be done with intent to guide people's actions)

[next oar]

If the action taken is against the malice or intent behind it then I would understand, but that would probably need a clear communication that you need the opponent to stop what they are doing first

[fading plank]

if you're gonna use this server for your boycott, at least be honest about information like this.
You're omitting the entirety of the JP artist community that isn't on bsky as far as I've been made aware of in this channel by multiple people

I guess artists aren't as important as some moral high ground...

[autumn fjord]

last time i posted ffxiv art on twitter i got 12k likes same crosspost on blusky didn’t even crack 1k

[plucky niche]

as i said previously, any argument contesting the ban itself, no matter how valid, has been bluntly dismissed by the moderator team for the entirety of this discourse

while they claim to be noting feedback, and I do appreciate that, it's really only feedback of certain types. anything else and they know better than you.

[fading plank]

I'd be surprised if a user receives more interaction on bsky than twitter

[mighty fossil]

" However, those found to intentionally be trying to circumvent the ban will be punished. Posting partial links will also count as circumvention. "
This shouldn't be here as people are going to go out of they way, to fix the link themselves just to see it in this case.

It's already inconvenient to not see anything, it's even more of an inconvenience when you want a surprise link.

[next oar]

99.9% of JP artists are on pixiv to be fair to mod team, that doesn't address the other part of the rule but for JP artist part specifically that's the alternative

[plucky niche]

Posting partial links will also count as circumvention.
Yeah this is daft. This cannot coexist with you also saying 'screenshots including the links are fine'

[mighty fossil]

Let the filter do it's thing on it's own and all you can do in this case is encourage people to go to bsky even if there's a great difference in traffic between twitter and bsky depending on content

[fading plank]

Yeah, if I'm entirely honest I'm not talking here because I believe anything will change, I don't expect that kind of grace from people who collectively decide that their moral stance outweighs an entire community's.
I'm just so disappointed because I genuinely thought the FFXIV team, of all things, would be better than this.

[plucky niche]

Yeah. It's fair to the wider amount of users seeing this now however, that they know where their position truly is. I know the mod team wants to appear nice and accepting, but when you're inherently not, it only creates hypocrisy.

[fading plank]

Assuming this is bc "if there's nothing to click, it'll discourage usage"
They both acknowledge that it'll be too much of a hassle for everyone to do this when looking at art, and simultaneously expect you to go through this hassle for posting raidplans etc.

[plucky niche]

Then simply providing the numerical code from the end of the tweet URL surely shouldn't be an issue? Shrug.

[fading plank]

I can't make heads or tails of it regardless

[empty arrow]

I can’t get over how they think all of ffxiv has moved over to bluesky just ignoring the large Korean and JP user base that has not lol

[meager sluice]

i have yet to see what the positives to this ban are. other than moral grandstanding, is there actually any benefit to banning any form of twitter links? this is a genuine question, by the way.

[plucky niche]

like, surely if I just posted the highlighted text from here to get to the posting, that'd be fine? surely? or is that 'partial links' whereas me literally posting this image would be fine?

edit: and by the way, when I said, multiple times over the past weekend, that at least SHELVING the idea of this ban so it was actually worked out how the integration would work, would be a good idea? this is what i mean

[next oar]

I wouldn't look for a way to circumvent the filter man

[surreal shuttle]

Posting the literal image is fine. The numerical code would be a partial link

[fading plank]

@meager sluice this is how that was answered

[plucky niche]

why? i am being so genuine, please explain how one of these is fine but the other isn't

[surreal shuttle]

One of them is circumventing the filter we put in place and one of them isn’t

We explicitly allow screenshots

[empty arrow]

Feels like a personal thing being forced on a entire community lol

[plucky niche]

Not an answer. I asked why one of them is allowed, despite it not directly providing traffic to the platform, yet the other which also doesn't directly provide traffic to the platform, isn't allowed. Could you just explain the thought process?

[untold sequoia]

Because we said so, and that is the simple fact

[meager sluice]

so the "benefit" is taking the choice away from hundreds of thousands of people to try to discourage the use of a major social media platform instead of letting people decide for themselves? and then banning any form of link so the person has to go on google or go on twitter themselves to find the page they want to look at?

[fading plank]

It doesn't have to be reasonable, it's because they said so.

[empty arrow]

We all knew this was the reasoning but I’m happy it’s being said

[plucky niche]

I shouldn't entirely be surprised when 'the users are only complaining because they think they could do our job better' is also the perspective of the administration team. Disappointing beyond words.

[fading plank]

Unironically sums up this entire situation

[next oar]

I'm gonna be honest I didn't want that answer to be phrased like that, It really feels like you are saying "we are the rules, now shut up"

[restive lintel]

Purposefully being obtuse when it’s been clearly stated several times over isn’t the way to go about it either

[next oar]

I was thinking about re-emphasizing the feedback #discord-feedback message because this is something that I've felt for so long, but looking at that response I don't think this will be a good use of my time

[untold sequoia]

Please do not attribute malice to my messages when there is none, screenshots were allowed as a compromise

[median mantle]

since you said "FFXIV Team", Incase you weren't aware yet: This is a unofficial discord and is not affiliated with the actual team behind XiV at all

[plucky niche]

I'd also like to tack onto this. While I do respect the time you all put in and I know this isn't what you WANT to communicate, this says, to all of us, that you all are prepared to enforce this decision you've come up with, while you are not prepared to actually help your damn community. We, the users, should not come second to whatever you feel like doing.

Although given this posting made by some of your staff the other day - names redacted for some basic decency they haven't earned from me in the first place - I shouldn't be shocked. Y'all are unfit to be acting this way.

[meager sluice]

found out editing a post with a twitter link will retroactively delete the post anyway because it's updated. just for everyone here. o7

[fading plank]

No I'm quite aware, I mean that more like FFXIV is considered quite nice community wise and I'm sad that this isn't the case for what's arguably the community representatives in this server

[empty arrow]

A compromise with discord mods and the users but completely unfair to the original posters who would benefit from having their links shared around lol

[misty temple]

thank you for your research

[long cedar]

I'll reiterate what I said a few days ago, no-one will be satisfied with any mod response that isn't a reversal of the ban. No-one is going to end up happy

[fading plank]

posted by staff in here during a discussion that we thought was serious
it's not serious to them if they post stuff like this in their private chats. And I don't wanna know how much worse it is behind the scenes, since this was very swiftly deleted.

[misty temple]

serious enough to impose their morality on everyone but not serious enough to consider our thoughts… funny how that works

[plucky niche]

Institutionalised apathy towards the opinions of regular users should not be a surprise to anyone who's interacted here today.

We have given y'all more respect over the past few days than y'all have clearly given us. I don't know how you can keep a straight face while saying our opinions are respected. Shame on you.

[meager sluice]

i think having chatgpt open at all is quite concerning.

[restive lintel]

You’re being disingenuous, Meara’s remark was clearly on why screenshots are allowed and partial links in plain text are considered circumvention

[untold sequoia]

I don't exactly want to engage in this back and forth, but I can tell you that I personally am taking this seriously, and I have been respecting your opinion, if you have feedback or questions on the implementation then please have at it and let us know, but I won't be engaging anymore with posts like this, sorry

[fading plank]

There's only so much we can believe if the consensus is "You're all extremely unhappy about this, there are no tangible upsides, many downsides to which we have less than elegant solutions for, if any, and a lot of you feel downright disrespected. We will do it anyway."

[next oar]

I am sorry if this wasn't your intent, but no matter the context I can't help but sense a pressure when the person under the power gives uses a phrasing like you did in the original message.
It doesn't help when the moderators tend to throw mute around very freely that leaves a strong impression of who holds a power as well. it just reinforces the image I had for a long time

[surreal shuttle]

The way the ban works has changed in the days between the initial announcement and now and that’s largely due to feedback here and the form

[untold sequoia]

Some of you are unhappy that the ban exists at all, and I understand that, but at this point in time the ban isn't be reversed and I can't do anything about that

[surreal shuttle]

Just because the ban still went through doesn’t mean we aren’t listening

[plucky niche]

I thank you for acting this way as an individual. Sadly, the way your collective has conducted themselves publically and privately are well telegraphed, hence the nature of my postings.

[untold sequoia]

And please feel free to continue using the feedback form as we'll still be reading results

[fading plank]

Graciously allowing us to give feedback on how you can make the ban more palatable just isn't the olive branch you think it is.
If you announce that you're going to shoot me in the leg, I tell you to please not do that, and your response is "I'm open to feedback as to how I can get you treated and what kind of rehabilitation you can get access to, but I'm still shooting you", I'm not gonna be thrilled.

[mighty fossil]

I still think filtering twitter/x link while allowing redirects has a lot of potential benefits while filtering redirects makes it more inconvenient

[plucky niche]

amusing but accurate analogy

saying 'we're listening' and offering an olive branch while also refusing to budge on the problem everyone actually has, is pointless and insulting

[next oar]

By the way sending this response alone felt like I'm walking on eggshells. that's the impression I have against the mod team at least, I'm not sure about what others think of it though.

[fading plank]

Is there a difference between the feedback form and posting feedback here?
It should have no difference in how it's valued, correct? Just that posting here is more visible to everyone, while the form is screaming into the void.

[untold sequoia]

You're never going to be punished for offering feedback as long as you're not being abusive about it

[onyx shale]

Funny thought, because of the ban, I'm going to be using twitter more lmao.

Previously I only just look at posts and clips through the discord embeds. Now I need to actually create a twitter account and search that site to look for the clips that people allude to

[untold sequoia]

All feedback is equal

[plucky niche]

unless y'know. it's about the ban itself?

[fading plank]

Equally unimportant unless it fits their moral stance

[civic pier]

just wondering, can u mention the previous and current name of the site or is that an autodelete? and is it ok to post videos from the site if theyre downloaded?

[untold sequoia]

Only links are blocked, the site's name is fine, however don't mention Musk. And yes for the second question

[next oar]

name is allowed as announcement says

[plucky niche]

I realise I'm poking and poking and being a nuisance but i have to be to try and get y'all to realise the daftness of what you're saying

[meager sluice]

can you say "@___ on twitter"

[untold sequoia]

Yes

[orchid briar]

I mean ngl yall can keep harping on them not changing their stance on it but they have been very open about the fact that the ban was gonna happen anyway so I don’t see the point in constantly beating a dead horse?

[fading plank]

They'd much prefer if we stopped talking about it, I'm sure.
Which is why people don't. I'm not here to do them any favours if they do none for me.

[plucky niche]

don't mean we've gotta be happy about it

[orchid briar]

Didnt one mod here literally say you can be unhappy with the ban and talk about how you dont like it? Like despite everything, nobody here has gotten directly censored for speaking their mind besides the 6hr slowmode a while ago

[fading plank]

the lounge channels were briefly upset but mods quickly came in to contain it, so now you risk a mute by talking about it there, I assume. So we're here.
Something about not being political.

[plucky niche]

Exactly! Which is what we're doing. And I aim to keep being unhappy about it until someone accepts my voice that change needs to happen. That is how this works

[untold sequoia]

If a mod tells you to stop something, you have to stop otherwise you break the rule about going against mod instruction, I'm not telling you guys to stop, so feel free to continue in here until someone does tell you to stop

[orchid briar]

I mean go ahead but nothing’s changing so I dont really see the point in constantly telling two mods about how mad you are ngl

[misty temple]

i hope you will continue to monitor the situation as we get into the next raid tier and ultimate because that’s when #endgame-lounge typically shares a lot of strat diagrams and videos that are almost exclusively found on twitter

[untold sequoia]

We will be, but no promises

[plucky niche]

Oh, they know my mind. But anyone coming in to this channel confused deserves to know how the land lies. And nothing WILL change without enough voices.

[fading plank]

"The injustice is already happening, why complain anymore?" isn't how injustices are abolished

[long ridge]

Might we exclude endgame lounge from the ban since those users appear to be the most heavily affected?

[next oar]

On that note, I have a feedback regarding the moderation stance since I don't think anyone is brave enough to say this; can moderators just be a bit more "humane" when you are delivering punishment to others? It often feels like it comes out of nowhere like a punch and everyone is left speechless, it really leaves a bad impression

I don't really know if "humane" is a correct word to use here, but you know what I mean

[fading plank]

I'm sorry but I don't think they care about any specific channel more than the others
as in, I don't think they care about any at all-

[mighty fossil]

again, remove these two which will allow redirects, keep twitter/x banned, people don't need to actually go to the site and see ads, and we can still see the content conveniently

[meager sluice]

video game channels and threads are affected too, since a lot of funny clips or news clips are posted in them. for monster hunter, for example, we get the majority of our news from clips twitter users post. and now we can't post them.

[long ridge]

I do second this; certain mods apply non-kupo verbal warnings ahead of time and pretty much every time I've witnessed it, it addressed the issue immediately without need for an official bonk

Delivering a mute with a warning at the same time for offenses that have been building feels exceptionally heavy even for a larger sever. Why not steer someone off that course before it reaches threshold for mute?

Feels like every time I see a mod now I feel like I'm walking on eggshells

I wouldn't expect this to apply to trolls or bots etc etc but if a regular user is drifting into mute territory, a reminder can go a long way

[onyx shale]

Do staff have a workaround for videos? Because nothing has been given in the announcement. And as you're aware screenshots don't work for videos.

Afaik the only options available to us now are paying Twitter to download the vids (hahaha) or actually having to install an application/plugin for it. What about mobile users then? Are they SOL unless they give the dbag money to download vids?

[civic pier]

theres a site u can use that downloads videos pretty easily called “twitter video downloader”, u can also choose video quality and audio/no audio

[plucky niche]

i'm just gonna post this as a screenshot cause i can't be bothered doctoring it to avoid the filter. you get my point.

[orchid briar]

You can throw twitter links into twitter downloader so mobile issues aren’t as heavily affected

[fading plank]

ban working as intended

[meager sluice]

agreed. i have often seen people do something that's deserving of a warning get muted for several hours instead.

usually it's the regular members warning them and trying to fix it before the mods see because we know what will happen, or it's a mod or mentor giving a warning and a separate mod coming in an hour later and muting for 6-12 hours.

treating a punishment as a warning is concerning.

[next oar]

I'm pretty sure there are non-negligible amount of users that just tries to be as milque-toast as possible because they don't want to upset the mods and get a mute or something. I know it's a slap on the wrist but it's still a slap, the pressure I feel when I see the punishment comes in to others is immense.

[fading plank]

I vividly remember that interaction
2 users talking to one another, chat is completely normal about it
Suddenly one of them gets muted for 6h, for what they said (vague)
other user explains they weren't upset by what they said at all
"well somebody else was"

nobody in chat has made any indication thereof

honestly seeing that should've been a sign

[untold sequoia]

Alright I know exactly what you're refering to so I will answer this, the complaint was in modmail because the person was too uncomfortable to bring it up in public

[restive lintel]

In my experience, it’s often that the warning came from a mentor

[thorny lantern]

We discuss punishments internally before they happen.

This includes simple things like verbal warnings sometimes.

But the more serious stuff is always discussed first.

[misty temple]

is that the case 100% of the time? the haste with which they’re doled out sometimes makes me not believe that

[fading plank]

are we really punishing people for an interaction they're having with somebody else who is fine with it, because someone completely out of the conversation asks for it?
Worse things have been said by people in this chat alone, can I get them all muted?

[meager sluice]

forgot about that so i fixed my post to include mentors

[untold sequoia]

Also to add further context, the person who had been warned had received multiple verbal warnings in the past for similar issues

[plucky niche]

i don't really think this is a battle you should be fighting. if two transphobes are happily yapping in general i don't want to not be able to get them shot

[gray bane]

honestly, the fact that you guys would also consider a wholesale ban on twitter screenshots, even if you're allowing it for now, is worrying.
like, at this rate you might as well just ban any mention of twitter whatsoever and be done with it. because what's the point of looming this part over our heads?

[fading plank]

Yeah absolutely, but it wasn't anything of that sort

[short sail]

I have found that this issue with intense moderation action to first time or otherwise un-warned offenses to be pretty significant regardless of individual moderator. Even if actions are a result of team consensus than the feedback still applies because it shows a systemic issue.

[misty temple]

this - because was it really a compromise if you could at any time decide on a whim to revert back to the original plan?

[fading plank]

imo 6h is also just a really long time
You mute for damage control or to let people cool off, but most reasonable human beings don't need 6h for the latter

[next oar]

If it's something that can clearly see the malicious intent I would be fine with that personally, but in my experience this is around the half of what I've seen overall, or the one that left me an impression for that matter (spam, NSFW posts, egregious pfp, etc)

[meager sluice]

it's usually 6h or 12h which is insane.

[zinc jay]

I'm just going to chime in and say that it feels very very telling to see you guys recommending instagram, a product of fb, when zuckerberg has absolutely been kowtowing to this administration as well. Or is that american politics and muskrat somehow... not?

[median mantle]

It's been mentioned before that they're contemplating banning Facebook too so I would imagine Instagram won't be far off

[misty temple]

i do also think 1h is kinda long for even accidentally triggering the word filter

like a couple days ago, where i was trying to engage with the topic at hand and mentioned the guy’s name (which you’d think would be allowed in the context of trying to discuss the ban) and got auto timed out for an entire hour without warning

thankfully someone was benevolent enough to remove it after about 5 mins but the fact that it even was an hour is just far too long

[surreal shuttle]

Banning other platforms has been discussed but given how much is in this one we didn’t want to overload it with banning more platforms.

[untold sequoia]

It would be Meta a whole so yes

[surreal shuttle]

It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that we’ll do more but we just wanted to leave it at Twitter for this one

[untold sequoia]

We recently down-stepped our filter so a lot of the words no longer come with a time out, we can discuss doing the same for Musk

[zinc jay]

So it is just moral grandstanding. Got it.

[gray bane]

I'm also incredibly confused by the way this point is written, a bsky link with a link leading to the same twitter post is allowed? am I reading this correctly? if my assumption is correct, why allow this if you're not allowing any and all twitter links whatsoever?

[misty temple]

another hypothetical but what would you plan on doing if meta or the rat or someone you happened to dislike and wanted to deplatform here purchased reddit or discord?

[untold sequoia]

We're not going to get on people's case if a BSky post happens to have a Twitter link in it, but if you're linking a BSky post with the express intent of sharing a Twitter link, then thats a problem

[plucky niche]

Also, fwiw, I haven't had a good explanation as to why posting this as a screenshot is allowed (image) but writing that everyone should look at 1883271723547836702 on twitter is not. Surely these amount to the same thing?

[zinc jay]

All in all this feels like a fairly complex web of what is and is not okay that users would just rather not deal with at all.

[next oar]

To be fair I don't really see the point of asking this question, no one will post a number alone when they are trying to share a certain posts though
Or is this rhetorical

[meager sluice]

with how frequently some accounts post, finding an individual post on that account is like finding a needle in a haystack and you need the link or at least numbers at the end to find it. otherwise you're scrolling forever.

[surreal shuttle]

We encourage the sending of modmails if you have any confusion regarding if something is allowed or not

[plucky niche]

Precisely. Own it and ban everything, even the mention of the entire platform, or agree with us that this just isn't realistic or dial it back

[median mantle]

Which generates more traffic and revenue for the platform funnily enough

[plucky niche]

Honestly posting a unique identifier for a post is a pretty frequent thing, especially when the rest of the link is generally uniform and well understood. Not gonna mention what sites i mean but i'm sure y'all know the gist

[long ridge]

Wholeheartedly agree here; I bring it up not because it's as if some individual mod has gone rogue or anything but rather that the overall approach in general feels quite heavy handed. Many situations in which a 6-12 mute has been dropped could've sufficiently been handled with a "hey knock that off / youre being too pushy / etc" -- if someone is so locked in that they're not willing to listen and adjust to coaching, that's where one would expect mutes to come in.

Even in the case of people sending in modmails, having someone just pop into a DM and be like "yo this behavior is causing an issue" or providing a ping in the channel or whatever should work for the majority of cases that aren't "auto ban" or "auto mute" level offenses

[untold sequoia]

A point you guys need to remember is you guys won't see anything, you won't always know that we've given them verbal warnings in the past for this or that people have opened modmails about it, ect

[long ridge]

I'm referring more to the cases where I didn't know what I was doing was an issue till I got bonked, my examples are more first person experiences

The times where I WAS provided a warning, the behavior stopped / changed immediately and was just as effective without feeling harsh

Sometimes people get carried away, other times it's an actual lack of awareness / understanding

[zinc jay]

nah. with how long it takes for modmails to get replies a lot of the time sensitive things just wont work.

[untold sequoia]

If someone is so critical that that a 1 hour possible wait is too long, then a mod ping should be fine

[next oar]

That doesn't really change the fact that it gives a really harsh impression when the punishment gets delivered though. I would appreciate if you could share a brief context when that is the case, otherwise it just looks like an unfair punishment, the one that I can't justify and understand why that happened

[misty temple]

modmail is and has always been a hole in the wall to yell into.

hey, remember when you guys decided to strip my event winner role for being “disrespectful” in modmail even though i was anything but, and then refused to elaborate and closed my mail? that was pretty cool.

[next oar]

I REALLY don't like it when I see a moderator that I'm not familiar with and the first thing that pops into my mind is "Will this person mute me if I upset them in any way?". It's super stressful but I'm choosing to deal with it because I see a lot of people that I like having conversation with, which includes some moderators that I am familiar with

[meager sluice]

the only person here who mentioned 1h mutes is valcors, and that was about the automod. the rest of us are generally talking about the unfair common 6h and 12h mutes.

furthermore, we're talking about how unfair the mutes are and how punishment is used as a warning, not about having to wait an hour before speaking again.

[fading plank]

what does a role have to do with it anyway
am I gonna lose my Light role if say smth stinky

[hollow fjord]

Its understandable to use modmail to report something you're not comfortable speaking up in public about, but it resulting in an immediate mute is really sudden and hits hard, even to those just chatting normally that aren't being muted.

[misty temple]

it was a little bit of flair for winning a community event, not related to data center roles or the like

[long ridge]

Specifically I've been muted 2x without warning, and a third one of which other users had already informed me I had just broken a rule and in which case I was entirely ignorant. I retracted my statement but still got bonked

The other 2 times apparently the behavior had been an ongoing concern but no one told me it was an issue until I got bonked with a mute. Had someone simply been like "hey you're being too pushy about this feature sprouts are unaware of" for example it would've stopped right then

All my mutes have been 6h for first time offenses which felt pretty awful

[fading plank]

u got punished for your perceived tone in a private conversation, not through the usual ways (mute), but by taking a vanity role from you that you rightfully earned?

this vexes me

[misty temple]

it was on top of a mute. i went to modmail to dispute it and they took the vanity role as additional punishment.

this was the “poor behavior” in question, btw.

[hollow owl]

can we have the shue emote removed? shues comments made during the initial discussion of the Twitter ban were in bad faith and his behavior wasn't befitting of a mod. keeping his emote here in the server is insulting to the userbase.

[untold sequoia]

I will bring this up with the team

[fading plank]

consider me even more vexed

[hollow fjord]

this is crazy

[meager sluice]

this feels petty, them taking away your role

[untold sequoia]

Hey guys

[next oar]

Yeah so far it just made me learn not to piss them off at any cost, instead of being aware of the rule.
Fear-based ruling doesn't really feel good when I'm on the receiving end

[empty arrow]

I was told videos would be allowed but that’s a lie lol

[onyx shale]

Videos are allowed... if you download them and reupload them on discord

[untold sequoia]

Imma be real with all of you, but posting snippets out of context from issues long since resolved isn't productive in this channel

[plucky niche]

id much rather be productive about the damnfool twitter ban

[sweet badge]

This is actually some incredibley disappointing stuff because i genuinely support the ban. You just NEED to go wholehog with it. It feels so limp to have over a few days seemingly softened the position substantially. Ban twitter, ban instagram, ban facebook, and Ill support it they're platforms no reasonable human should touch anymore, but you have to actually DO IT

[empty arrow]

Now what kinda solution is this I just wanted to post a bleach trailer in #952328891584872488 lol

[untold sequoia]

Like I could go and start sharing the message log from the modmail and the action that lead to it, but thats just ugly

[misty temple]

cool. i’m not asking for it to get readdressed. i’m giving a firsthand account of how untransparent both the modmail and punishment process are.

[untold sequoia]

If you want to give a firsthand account, at least try to not be disingenuous about it please

[scenic nest]

Yeah that's more traffic for the site if need to take something out of another discord server then have to download the vid instead to post instead of copypasting the link with the embed trick to share something forward.

[untold sequoia]

You're all free to give feedback, but intentionally framing things to make us look bad won't be tolerated

[short sail]

I believe that transparency on these issues is better than some perceived clean image. This isn’t a discord server owned by a company trying to protect its brand.

[empty arrow]

Well I was literally told links of videos wouldn’t be blocked only for me to link a video that got blocked

[long ridge]

I think the reason people bring it up isn't to air dirty laundry about anyone specifically but more to raise the issue that the user base has some gripes that aren't unique to any one user, it's an atmosphere felt by a lot of people and we're hoping to get that looked at soon since we finally have a time to air it together

[plucky niche]

I just don't know why the moderator team is so prepared to read all the loopholes and allowances and annoyances and such about the ban, but A. didn't seemingly consider them and B. is STILL refusing to accept after 3 days of this that it just shouldn't have been done

[next oar]

I'm just bumping this so at least this will get acknowledged: #discord-feedback message
Could you consider this please

[meager sluice]

which is basically stealing instead of the much easier and respectful way of linking directly to the account who posted the video.

[thorny lantern]

I found the link for it on youtube.

[untold sequoia]

Yes we will discuss it

[median mantle]

Check if the filename had a banned word in it, when uploading a video, discord keeps the original name

[fading plank]

We can't go too deep in that rabbit hole bc then we'd also have to consider how bad discord and reddit are considered. What about Youtube? Where do you draw the line? What's considered "bad enough" for you?
You may think it's ridiculous to consider banning any of the three, but that's how the twitter ban looks to a lot of us.

[onyx shale]

I did like the hypothetical that someone posted earlier. What if the dbag or meta buys over reddit/discord? Will the admins just delete the subreddit/server?

[plucky niche]

the lack of common sense is just mind blowing

[empty arrow]

But you see the problem is that the video link is a link I found on another discord
I thought it was something neat to post into this discord why do I now have to go grab the link on YouTube just to post it here I don’t get what this place is trying to accomplish

[misty temple]

not sure what’s disingenuous about it when this was all i’ve been led to believe was the course of action. i was only given enough context to think that this is how it went, because the ticket (and the follow-up ticket) was marked resolved without any additional response.

if you wanted me to have fully understood what it was specifically that triggered the “poor behavior comment”, then you would’ve provided it before resolving the ticket, no? it’s what we in the business call transparency.

[gusty peak]

I agree that the Twitter ban doesn't go far enough, and should be extended to more websites.

[fading plank]

yes we should ban every link while we're at it

[zinc jay]

i mean its like i said, i feel as though this decision shows there is a substantial disconnect between staff and users because a lot of staff either arent affected at all or dont use the server frequently enough for it to be as disruptive as it is to us

[empty arrow]

Yes it’s obvious this is a decision being made from people that don’t use this place often enough to know how annoying it would be

[gusty peak]

I don't think we need to go that far, why do you want to ban every link?

[hollow owl]

does this include banning photos of link from the legend of zelda

[fading plank]

I think this is really it; staff saw a way to get a moral high ground and doesn't get how we can't "just move to bsky!" or the like.

[orchid briar]

Tbf they have mentioned that they were looking into banning links to other sites but seeing how controversial the ban to 1 has proven to be I dont blame them for holding off on it lol

[sweet badge]

I think its a practicality thing mostly? Like yeah ideal reality platforms like current discord/youtube/reddit etc dont exist. Unfortunately there is no way around needing to in some way use a private social media platform to communicate. In the meanwhile i do think banning a platform headed by someone who has some extremely unacceptable political beliefs explicitly known is a valid step

[plucky niche]

ding ding ding.

why nobody is prepared to admit this is a sunk cost is unbelievable to me. This speaks to so little management experience...

[orchid briar]

Also I believe this discord would become borderline unusable if they did do so but that’s something to discuss for another day I suppose

This slowmode beating my ahh man 😭

[onyx shale]

Be thankful you didn't have to go through the 6h slow mode on day 1

[fading plank]

Because links on the internet could lead to other links that may lead to twitter. You can't link to twitter, and you can't link to discord messages that link to a twitter link, so why stop here? It's like you say. More websites are bad. We should ban all of them, and just to make sure nobody can reasonably engage with them or gets tempted to, we should also ban any link that leads to them in another way.

[orchid briar]

Oh I did lol, mine was on 4 hours by the time it was lifted

[empty arrow]

This isn’t the only discord people use btw so instead of being able to just share links we found from other discords and post them here you have to jump through hoops because reasons I guess lol

[gusty peak]

nah I think it's enough to ban Twitter and Meta, people should still be allowed to link directly to stuff

[next oar]

I feel like at this point, the most viable alternative is basically "create a different server with people you want to share posts together"

[fading plank]

Nooo I don't think so. You said more websites are bad and I totally agree with you! :)

[ornate pelican]

The discussions of these bans is wide across FFXIV community leadership. Other communities may follow suit. r/ffxivdiscussion already has.

[zinc jay]

it feels very... idk. monarchic? to assume people would not just leave here

[onyx shale]

Which kinds of defeats the purpose of having a community, if the only way to enjoy the community is via creating another discord for it

[fading plank]

why is it across leadership and not the community that actually gets affected?

No, the poll with less than 0.1% of the subreddit doesn't count

[median mantle]

To be fair, people probably won't leave immediately due to inertia, same reason people don't instantly leave the bad site

[zinc jay]

And it is just as unpopular if not more on ffxivdiscussion.

[turbid kayak]

i guess you could start voting out the leadership

[untold sequoia]

Hi, thanks for bringing this up, we've removed it

[gusty peak]

hey moderation, Yuyu is just trying to troll me, he isn't actually interested in having a honest argument

[plucky niche]

The view of like two dozen members of leadership is by rights less crucial to consider than 250,000 users. I respect your morals but you cannot act like it is.

[fading plank]

I would, but unfortunately this isn't a democracy.
If they say they're banning everyone with an anime pfp, they will just do that and you can't get a say.

[onyx shale]

Ffxivdiscussion has an existing rule which already bans posts which only has a link to twitter, insta gram etc and nothing else. The Twitter ban there is practically a non-issue since no one uses it.

I feel like equating this discord to ffxivdiscussion is very misleading, as there is a hugely different use case for Twitter

[empty arrow]

Reddit and discord are two very different platforms lol
You don’t send images and links nearly as much as you do on discord

[misty temple]

the justification has continued to be “we are linked to the subreddit” despite the obvious distinctions between the two platforms.

[meager sluice]

i feel like i need to stress that once again, discord is not reddit. they are two completely separate platforms with separate communities that function completely differently.

[zinc jay]

? please stop instigating things youve been doing it since this started and it helps no one.

[hollow owl]

thanks I really appreciate it.

[sweet badge]

This is pretty cringe my brother in christ.

[zinc jay]

it all comes back to being proof of how little a lot of staff use this discord publicly.

[next oar]

Could you please be respectful when discussing stuff, I've seen you interacting with people here that can be seen as provoking and elicit an aggressive response, which you succeeded few times

[sweet badge]

Hey while we're saying fun stuff isnt this decision and discussion inherantly a violation of that rule about 'politically charged subjects?'

This isnt a gotcha the rule is kinda dumb anyways im just wondering if like... anything matters anymore?

[fading plank]

the ban itself is a violation of that rule tbh

[zinc jay]

like, im sorry, but i will not buy the "we know whats best for the community" line if there's some staff members i dont think ive ever seen engage in high traffic channels

[meager sluice]

when sprouts ask why they can't post twitter links and you're unable to explain why because of the no politics rule.

[onyx shale]

If you think about it, instituting the ban in the first place has made things here a lot more politically charged. Before that, most of us would be happy to ignore the muskrat and not give him the time of day

[misty temple]

you do make a good point
“keep politics out of the server” and yet i will enforce my own politics on the server…

[pallid owl]

mother knows best sitri

[sweet badge]

I honestly kind of just agree like i kind of have to consider the mod team havent read their own rules.

[sweet badge]

To be clear i think the solution here is remove the rule. You cant not talk about politics. Everything is politics and we should talk about it

[hollow fjord]

I think it's pretty telling that I've been using this discord for about a year and a half now, and until recently I did not know that channy wasn't the owner of the server. I don't think I've seen most of the moderation team, especially administrators except for channy, in any channels except for the very few I end up conversing with on a near daily basis.

[misty temple]

this ban aside i do feel like the hostility with which some mods engage with the user base violates rules of respect, but yk special exemptions and whatnot

[median mantle]

Most communities have that kind of rule because those kind of discussions tend to devolve very quickly, probably not a good idea to remove it

It's basically the same as a "no religion talk" rule

[meager sluice]

honestly, same. i thought channy was the only admin for the longest time 💀

[zinc jay]

a lot of mods only seem to engage actively in off topic channels which do with that what you will but.

[fading plank]

I completely get a no politics rule in the sense that it sparks difficult conversation that rarely ends with anybody happy.
But for the same reason, politics should not be the reason for rules like the twitter ban. I'm here to play funny video game, not to make my life a hassle because some person I never see decided that they have a moral stance to take.

[onyx shale]

Or not engage at all. Let's be frank, who of us has seen for example eanae before this started?

[turbid kayak]

this channel should be banned, everyone here is already breaking the rules and is not banned yet

[ornate pelican]

People are walking a thin line and I’ve instructed staff if people trigger a political filter to not unmute them.

[orchid briar]

I saw them like once but that was so long ago I dunno if I was even speaking here yet lol

[fading plank]

we got told off for piling on them the other day, which is telling, but yk preemptive warning.

[misty temple]

“internal discussions” with no input from the very people it’s affecting is not the making of good governance

[empty arrow]

I mean even in the announcement they state ff14 has moved to bluesky (untrue but whatever) but like? This discord is more than just FF14??? What about the overlap in communities that haven’t migrated?

[fading plank]

the governance just isn't good
I'd mind the server owner being inactive much less if they didn't come out of the woodwork suddenly to force their political movement on us, negatives and all, claiming that it will somehow do more good than the harm it's already done.

[sweet badge]

Me when the mod team makes an inherantly political decision and then is unclear about how and what we can say about it

[misty temple]

also in the announcement: “most ff14 artists have moved to bluesky” is a pretty impossible statement to prove.

[surreal shuttle]

That statement in the announcement is in reference to art, not 14 in general. Square enix has an official bluesky. No specific 14 account yet but I imagine that isn’t far off

[short sail]

In the context of this conversation, where is the line? The decision was made due to [term filtered]’s actions and the platform he hosts so can we talk about it?

[zinc jay]

Which is still wrong. It is very, very american and western centric to say that the ffxiv art community has migrated.

[onyx shale]

Yes, but how do you know most artist have moved to bluesky. Is this something that you have proof on, or is this just a feel good statement pulled out of your arse

[fading plank]

The statement about art is also wrong, though. Or are we pretending half of the world doesn't exist?

[mighty fossil]

I do find it questionable on if this is actually a unanimous agreement by the staff, a split in decision or an act done by a single person.

I find it very rushed for something that has been supposedly discussed before

[turbid kayak]

id imagine it is some weird organization work to get the ffxiv blusky up and running, it also having to need its own ffxiv domain. as they already do with the square-enix-games domain

[scenic nest]

Yeah Nintendo is one big example of this and there's plenty of Nintendo gamers on the server, not to mention the many gacha games.

[misty temple]

on paper it’ll always be “it was a carefully thought out and debated team decision” but you’ll never get to know any better.

[gusty peak]

what do you mean?

[empty arrow]

Nintendo, FGC still heavily Twitter focused it just annoying when I take links from other discord like those and have to do workarounds to get them to work here lol

[sweet badge]

Oh hey while im thinking about it

Its RIDICULOUS to make this decision and not even let us say the mans name. Your rules prevent us from discussion the situation you asked for feedback on! Its crazy! I cant even argue for it because the mod team is making this an INDEFENSIBLE position to take

[zinc jay]

further proof the staff are out of touch with the community and who uses this server, i fear

[heady inlet]

I don't mean to put words in other folks mouths but I think they meant it was cringe

[median mantle]

They're not using the SE domain tho, the account is on bsky.social, so they could easily do the same with xiv

[fading plank]

From what we can deduce based on comments made throughout the past few days, mods must put up a united front (implying there isn't one inherently), and that admins make the decision (admins, not mods).

[turbid kayak]

that is one of their fr social, this is the official
https://bsky.app/profile/square-enix-games.com

Square Enix (@square-enix-games.com)

The Official Square Enix Bluesky page. Get the latest updates https://www.square-enix-games.com/

🎮FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth is available on Steam and Epic Games Store now!
🎮Dragon Quest III: HD-2D Remake is available now!

Bluesky

[hollow owl]

im gonna be honest guys this nonsense has gone on for several days and it's worn itself out. the mod team has input the ban and that's it. there's really nothing else to say here. you guys are kicking a dead horse. can we take a break from all of this for a couple of days or something

if we wanna send Twitter links we'll probably just send it in a mutual server or via dm. this entire discussion has worn down both sides and im sure everyone involved has something better to do than argue about a done deal.

[median mantle]

ah, nvm then, I was wondering why they added the fr, now it makes sense

[long cedar]

Hiccup mentioned that staff will stand on a 'united front' regardless of personal opinions or disagreements brought up by mods internally.

Having been a mod myself elsewhere, I take that as there have definitely been mods against the ban but there was either an executive decision or majority vote for the ban

[plucky niche]

This nonsense has gone on for several days, and it's beyond common sense that the moderation team cannot accept any fault and double back on themselves. This does not get resolved by us being quiet and complacent.

[fading plank]

I assume this decision came about similarly to how the reddit blackouts did (which also didn't do anything and were reverted swiftly).

[zinc jay]

which is telling in that it implies some of the mods here may very well be getting flak for a decision they do not agree with.

[sweet badge]

Also its crazy how the only things mods have given us are a veiled threat about political discussion and removing some emotes. I know they arent listening but its not even good pretending

[plucky niche]

Like, staff, we've seen you don't have valid counters to the points you bring up. Would it be so damn hard to say this was a bad idea?

[onyx shale]

Or admit that yes, it's a bad idea, but you're going to implement it anyway because admins have the right to.

[pallid owl]

Knowing some of the staff personally, it is most definitely not unanimous lol

It's only unanimous for the purpose of the public-facing sentiment

[worthy quarry]

y’all dragging it now

[zinc jay]

argument about the ban aside like its not a good look is it huh?

[fading plank]

If you, as a moderator, disagree with this decision the same way users do, and also recognise that you're being thrown under the bus while you can't even give your opinion without potentially losing your position... do you really want that position?

[onyx shale]

As an aside, I do feel sorry for the junior mods. This shit show is crap for their first week in

[sweet badge]

No like i was saying earlier in a vacuum i support this ban but i have been utterly convinced this mod team is not defensible in their implementation and behavior regarding it. Its an awful look

[plucky niche]

yeah. setting a terrible example for them

[empty arrow]

If you know any of the regular mods it’s pretty easy to tell who’s on board and who’s not lol

[onyx shale]

Not a great feeling learning that being a mod also means having to toe the party line or deal with very unhappy people...

[hollow owl]

think of it as getting hired when a bunch of people were fired at their job and the remaining people who witnessed it have a distaste for the new people

(hopefully that isn't happening here)

[long cedar]

From experience, hell no. But it's just an unspoken thing unfortunately

[onyx shale]

Which unfortunately this fiasco is a painful lesson in

[sweet badge]

Yeah i can confirm i was this guy at one point. You dont really have a choice

[azure gate]

I am just wondering when are we banning instagram, after all, not like Mark isn't sucking up to the current president. Just asking.

[fiery jackal]

Are we assuming the moderators aren’t sentient individuals who can choose for themselves. That’s what this feels like.

[long cedar]

I've done the same dance before., made bad decisions and overstepped. So I can't exactly criticise much

[pallid owl]

Man let's just ban typing into discord because keyboards and computers can be used for hate speech

[zinc jay]

also while yes this has been dragging on it will absolutely keep going as more and more people realize links are banned because a lot dont read #announcements

[heady inlet]

Dan Clancy has been kissing the ring too is twitch banned

[plucky niche]

Well if they want to keep their jobs, of course they aren't

[sweet badge]

I think i can mostly because public criticism is what got me off my horse eventually. Criticism is worthwile

[misty temple]

sundar pichai was among the front row, too. might as well ban google and youtube links while you’re at it?

[zinc jay]

I can tell you factually that this was not a unanimous decision by staff.

[fiery jackal]

That’s not true. There are people on the mod team that don’t agree with this and voiced their opinion and are still moderators.

[plucky niche]

I mean this with utmost respect but the moderators can't simply say 'actually i don't want to do this' and continue being moderators. That's a pretty universal concept of management.

[gray bane]

they said they will eventually ban facebook and instagram, they just didn't want cause too much damage by banning 3 platforms in one fell swoop.

[pallid owl]

better start throwing away all your android devices!

[fiery jackal]

That is true. They even said it so. Yet nobody has been sent to the guillotine yet so what gives.

[onyx shale]

Blitz has said here earlier that regardless of their real personal opinions, mods have to present a united front in public
And so far, we have not seen any mods publicly say they disagree with it

[sweet badge]

The bait is strong with this one

[zinc jay]

which is a fascinating thing in and of itself because this server is not self sustaining like that. ffxiv community as a whole fundamentally is not. anyone who uses this server frequently can tell you how reliant it is on outside content.

[pallid owl]

I'm just saying that if you start banning every single thing that you find disagreeable in terms of potential political alignment you're gonna be sitting in an empty room with nothing to do REALLY soon lol

[fiery jackal]

That isn’t bait. I’m stating what has been said. This entire channel has gone full self destructive implying that people don’t have free will anymore.

[plucky niche]

and also, if you're looking for social media management not infested with right wing chuds that's also gonna be bad news

[ornate pelican]

To be clear the ban we’ve discussed is a ban on content which requires an account to view. That happens to include Facebook, Insta, and TikTok

[sweet badge]

Is that really the only thing you have to offer this discussion? Do you realize how that makes the mod team look?

[autumn fjord]

didn't someone just say that they had to make a twitter account because embeds no longer work and they had to go to the site to see the content fully when previously linked embeds were satisfactory

[pallid owl]

they've been selectively ignoring points made for days, don't hold your breath

[onyx shale]

inserts first time meme

[plucky niche]

should've been here on day 1 lol

[sweet badge]

Yeah yeah i know i know i just got to say it im happy let me have this

[misty temple]

i’ve quite literally just tested this with a twitter link and i’m perfectly able to view the content of the linked tweet.

[autumn fjord]

no, as in on this server

[pallid owl]

banning embeds does in fact force me to go to the actual website and give the dude his ad revenue yes

[plucky niche]

beyond comedy at this point

[zinc jay]

ok what is actually the phrasing on the filter bc this is absurd

[ornate pelican]

It’s broken it shouldn’t be doing that.

Unfortunately discord doesn’t let me fix it from mobile

[sweet badge]

Me when i ban a thing so bad i benefit the worst man on earth by doing it

[plucky niche]

the amount of rake-stepping really goes to show how much easier a long post condemning his actions would've been...

[onyx shale]

You can see X/Twit content without an account if you click on the link.
If you need to search stuff up, you know because links/redirects are banned, you 100% need an account

[sweet badge]

I think you could fairly argue '(banished topic) is an unacceptable human and we encourage you to not use twitter where possible. Please engage with alternative platforms' would do more net good for the average person atp

[pallid owl]

me when I do something without thought to its practical consequences (we've been saying this for three days)

[plucky niche]

ding ding ding

[misty temple]

this is so easily disproven. i can view content on facebook, instagram, and tiktok all without an account. i send tiktok links to my friends without tiktok all the time.

[sweet badge]

How long do you think before they stop pretending to let the peasants have a voice?

[pallid owl]

I don't even have insta or tiktok and I watch that stuff via getting sent it by friends all the time

[mighty fossil]

actually
tiktok, twitter, instagram, facebook
they require a login if you want to keep browsing from it upon clicking on it.

also, this is going to be the case