How will the AI that monitors our in-game chats effect RP?

notyuu

Drinks_from_Ponds wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

All this monitoring and the gold sellers are still spamming in every zone chat I visit.

[snip]

@Drinks_from_Ponds
Buying in game gold for irl cash is super agsaint the TOS as in go straight to permanent ban, do not pass go, do not collect ban appeal.

On the other hand selling crowns for gold is allowed due to zos getting their cut, so while I'm not recommending you do so, it is the option that won't get you on the permaban speed run leaderboard

[edited to remove quote]

Arunei

SilverBride wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Privacy laws protect the consumer's private information, such as name, address, payment information. This doesn't fall into that category.

Depends on legislation. In EU, chats and private messages are protected just as phone calls and letters are. I don't know about the US, of course.

When we sign up for any private service we agree to their Terms of Service. If their Terms of Service says they have access to all our activity while using it then we have given them permission and have no legal recourse.

That doesn't mean that how they choose to use this permission is in the best interest of the company or their consumers. If they are indeed monitoring our private conversations they need to rethink this choice.

Not really. Just because something is in a ToS doesn't mean it's suddenly legal to do if it breaks a law. So if it turns out they HAVE broken laws, be it in the US or other countries, then it being in the ToS doesn't mean squat. It's still illegal and they can still face legal repercussions for it.

Like a private company can put in their ToS that they can steal from you if you consent to whatever Service they use, but theft is still illegal. A private company can say in their ToS they have rights to kill you if you don't do a certain action, but murder is still illegal. Some extreme examples but it's mostly just that, examples. An illegal action doesn't suddenly stop being illegal just because a company says they 'have the right' to do it in their ToS.

katanagirl1

Drinks_from_Ponds wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

All this monitoring and the gold sellers are still spamming in every zone chat I visit.

[snip]

Any zone on PS NA.

I remembered something last night after reading this thread. Do you guys remember a thread with a guy posting about this subject (now I’m going to be a little vague here for obvious reasons) where he was super optimistic about using this for various things in game and how cool it would be, and a lot of comments were moderated and the thread eventually locked down?

It’s starting to make sense now.

[edited to remove quote]

Stafford197

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, just wanted to chime in here. We’re looking into some of the questions in the thread and checking in with the team for feedback. Since it’s pretty late in the day on a Friday, we probably won’t have any feedback until earlier next week. But wanted to acknowledge that we’ve seen this and are investigating.

For now, anyone with ban issues, please make sure to put in an appeal and share your ticket number. Happy to pass those along.

Any word yet on this?

brylars

Stafford197 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, just wanted to chime in here. We’re looking into some of the questions in the thread and checking in with the team for feedback. Since it’s pretty late in the day on a Friday, we probably won’t have any feedback until earlier next week. But wanted to acknowledge that we’ve seen this and are investigating.

For now, anyone with ban issues, please make sure to put in an appeal and share your ticket number. Happy to pass those along.

Any word yet on this?

No but it is only Monday. As long as we keep talking about it and keeping the conversation civil, they will respond as soon as possible.

WynnGwynn

Kevin has been replying to loads of stuff rn but seems like this one was not one of them. I swear in whispers to my friends (I don't do that to random people I always assume that could be considered bad/reportable) so I am keeping an eye on this. I play offline a lot just so I don't accidentally talk like I normally do due to this. Really making me kinda worried that things like throwing an f-bomb with your friends who are old adults like me is considered ban worthy when it's not even public.

AltmerGF

Can anecdotally say I was using some less than wholesome language with my friends while playing this weekend and haven't gotten banned, so hopefully we're just looking at some sort of overzealous moderation glitch

Syldras

WynnGwynn wrote: »

Kevin has been replying to loads of stuff rn but seems like this one was not one of them.

I think as it's a serious matter it may take a little longer.

By the way, what does "rmt" stand for? It got autocensored in the chat yesterday (within a longer word) and I have no clue what it's supposed to mean?!

TaSheen

Syldras wrote: »

WynnGwynn wrote: »

Kevin has been replying to loads of stuff rn but seems like this one was not one of them.

I think as it's a serious matter it may take a little longer.

By the way, what does "rmt" stand for? It got autocensored in the chat yesterday (within a longer word) and I have no clue what it's supposed to mean?!

Real money transactions?

Syldras

TaSheen wrote: »

Real money transactions?

That's unfortunate, considering it's a not uncommon grammatical ending in German.

TaSheen

Syldras wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Real money transactions?

That's unfortunate, considering it's a not uncommon grammatical ending in German.

There might be other more "unusual" meanings though - I don't personally know of any, but others may. That's just the only thing that came right to mind.

Elsonso

TaSheen wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Real money transactions?

That's unfortunate, considering it's a not uncommon grammatical ending in German.

There might be other more "unusual" meanings though - I don't personally know of any, but others may. That's just the only thing that came right to mind.

Quite likely. I am surprised they would filter on it, though. It is not a term I feel would be used by the people actually doing it.

brylars

WynnGwynn wrote: »

Kevin has been replying to loads of stuff rn but seems like this one was not one of them. I swear in whispers to my friends (I don't do that to random people I always assume that could be considered bad/reportable) so I am keeping an eye on this. I play offline a lot just so I don't accidentally talk like I normally do due to this. Really making me kinda worried that things like throwing an f-bomb with your friends who are old adults like me is considered ban worthy when it's not even public.

There are some things that @ZOS_Kevin and the others can respond to and there are some things that have to go through official channels before an answer is released to the public. Once it is posted here they know it is going to be posted on other media, social media, Discord, etc.

Syldras

Elsonso wrote: »

Quite likely. I am surprised they would filter on it, though. It is not a term I feel would be used by the people actually doing it.

Maybe it's a super fancy slur no one knows (but someone might know it, so just to make sure, it's censored)!
I'll test it out. I'll randomly call someone "You RMT!" and see what happens
...no, of course I won't. Doesn't make the whole thing less ridiculous.

Arunei

Stafford197 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, just wanted to chime in here. We’re looking into some of the questions in the thread and checking in with the team for feedback. Since it’s pretty late in the day on a Friday, we probably won’t have any feedback until earlier next week. But wanted to acknowledge that we’ve seen this and are investigating.

For now, anyone with ban issues, please make sure to put in an appeal and share your ticket number. Happy to pass those along.

Any word yet on this?

He did say earlier this week, could mean tomorrow or maybe even Wednesday. I'm hoping we'll actually get a timely response because this is a matter that affects the whole community, not just one part of it.

I'm really hoping @AltmerGF is correct, and the other people suggesting the bot is only meant to flag potential issues and not actually act on them are correct. It just seems like such a massive oversight to have implemented this on purpose.

SuspensionDispersingAutomaton

AltmerGF wrote: »

Can anecdotally say I was using some less than wholesome language with my friends while playing this weekend and haven't gotten banned, so hopefully we're just looking at some sort of overzealous moderation glitch

Just made a forum account to say this.
I play since the beta of 2014.
I never swore in any of the public chats and was always polite with strangers.
With my close friends, we jokingly call each other all kinds of words in private because we take no offense at it and are fully consenting to it.

On September 14, I received a 72 hour suspension for something I know for a fact no one reported and was said by me to my fully consenting friend in a private party.
When attempted to explain that and appeal the ban, the customer support declined and kept the ban on my account, sending me a generic reply, telling me that every private chats in this game are subject to automatic moderation and don't require reports, and that next ban could be permanent. To say this is highly disturbing is to say nothing.

Me and my friends are uninstalling the game and will not return unless this is truly a mistake on ZOS's part and the bans for private, consensual chats among friends will be fully reverted and compensated.

I don't feel safe using chat with friends in this game anymore, the only thing that barely kept any fun I had left for this game.
I hope this is all a horrible mistake on AI part, but judging by what customer support tells others who get into this situation, my hope is dwindling fast.

KV_Tootn

SuspensionDispersingAutomaton wrote: »

AltmerGF wrote: »

Can anecdotally say I was using some less than wholesome language with my friends while playing this weekend and haven't gotten banned, so hopefully we're just looking at some sort of overzealous moderation glitch

Just made a forum account to say this.
I play since the beta of 2014.
I never swore in any of the public chats and was always polite with strangers.
With my close friends, we jokingly call each other all kinds of words in private because we take no offense at it and are fully consenting to it.

On September 14, I received a 72 hour suspension for something I know for a fact no one reported and was said by me to my fully consenting friend in a private party.
When attempted to explain that and appeal the ban, the customer support declined and kept the ban on my account, sending me a generic reply, telling me that every private chats in this game are subject to automatic moderation and don't require reports, and that next ban could be permanent. To say this is highly disturbing is to say nothing.

Me and my friends are uninstalling the game and will not return unless this is truly a mistake on ZOS's part and the bans for private, consensual chats among friends will be fully reverted and compensated.

I don't feel safe using chat with friends in this game anymore, the only thing that barely kept any fun I had left for this game.
I hope this is all a horrible mistake on AI part, but judging by what customer support tells others who get into this situation, my hope is dwindling fast.

OMG.. for real... Im out, this is over all means. So goes my sub for Plus.... This is not normal

Pelanora

I just can't understand what zos think they're getting out of this. How do they think this makes a better game?

KochDerDamonen

Really disheartening to hear ZOS has gone down this route, I haven't logged in in a while but I loved being in Adult guilds and having 18+ conversations in private with my friends when I was active. Automatic moderation of private chats is a quick way to completely run off a portion of the community that should be expected and welcomed in a mature title as long as they are respecting the boundaries of others.

I don't think I'd have any fun coming back to this game if the communities I hang out with were forced to use PG13 speak, the game's lovely and all but I play MMOs to hang out with other people. If I have to use Discord to do that instead of using game chat, then the game's chat is broken.

I should never have to worry that I might need to appeal a chat ban because I might say a fairly tame curse word or refer to someone's anatomy in a suggestive... or explicit manner, in a private chat with a consenting friend. Especially not if support staff will just blindly reinforce the automoderator's ban.

Ugrak

SuspensionDispersingAutomaton wrote: »

On September 14, I received a 72 hour suspension for something I know for a fact no one reported and was said by me to my fully consenting friend in a private party.

Out of curiosity, did this occur on the NA or EU server?

Kappachi

AltmerGF wrote: »

Can anecdotally say I was using some less than wholesome language with my friends while playing this weekend and haven't gotten banned, so hopefully we're just looking at some sort of overzealous moderation glitch

even amongst private chats you agreed to a TOS when you started the game, if you're throwing out the real world equivalents of n'wah/s'wit/etc then you're bound to get banned. keep it civil in-game even amongst friends.

pklemming

The obvious answer to this is we all learn Klingon.

Jay’, Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam

Pelanora

Kappachi wrote: »

AltmerGF wrote: »

Can anecdotally say I was using some less than wholesome language with my friends while playing this weekend and haven't gotten banned, so hopefully we're just looking at some sort of overzealous moderation glitch

even amongst private chats you agreed to a TOS when you started the game, if you're throwing out the real world equivalents of n'wah/s'wit/etc then you're bound to get banned. keep it civil in-game even amongst friends.

That's ridiculous. Zos isn't some moral police over private citizens consenting private chat.

SuspensionDispersingAutomaton

Ugrak wrote: »

SuspensionDispersingAutomaton wrote: »

On September 14, I received a 72 hour suspension for something I know for a fact no one reported and was said by me to my fully consenting friend in a private party.

Out of curiosity, did this occur on the NA or EU server?

PC NA.

Ugrak

SuspensionDispersingAutomaton wrote: »

PC NA.

Thanks.

The reason I am asking is that the EU has some different legal frameworks around the use of AI and personal information such as the EU AI act and GDPR. Several major AI services have postponed or limited their deployment in the EU market while figuring it out, so I'm wondering whether this new system is currently only rolled out on the NA server.

Guess it would only take one observation of an EU case to rule that out, so it would be interesting to hear if this has been happening there yet.

Pelanora

But the NA server is a part of a game marketing to European citizens so it will be captured by the gdpr.

Elsonso

Pelanora wrote: »

But the NA server is a part of a game marketing to European citizens so it will be captured by the gdpr.

Yup, the company does business in the EU, and that is enough to them subject to the GDPR. However, the GDPR does not cover everyone. ZOS asks where people are located, and presumably they retained that information and use it to comply with the laws that player is subject to. I figure that this is how they deny loot crates in jurisdictions where they cannot sell such things.

To me, that means that they could apply rules to players in EU differently from other geographies, no matter what server they are logged into. Whether that is what they are doing, though, is unknown.

Personally, I still think this is "business as usual" for ZOS. They have always screened what people say, in every venue that they are present in, and they use pattern matching to pull out naughty words. They have banned or suspended people in the past for it. These actions have been long been rumored to have an automated component to them. The only thing new here is that people are blaming "AI" for this, and I am not certain that actually represents much of a change, if it is even relevant in this context.

One thing that I will say is that the game security stuff around here is all top secret. I doubt that Kevin will come back with anything more than a generic statement saying they have always monitored the in game communication and that bans and suspensions should be handled with a ticket, as always.

Ugrak

Pelanora wrote: »

But the NA server is a part of a game marketing to European citizens so it will be captured by the gdpr.

True, then again who knows how it might be managed. Maybe just exclude users from applicable regions instead. Of course all this is pure speculation at this point.

Not that it really makes a difference in the end anyway. There does appear to be a significant change in moderation policy. If it's here to stay then I guess a lot of users are not.

MJallday

ZOS needs to come out with a statement on this. Facebook is full of articles from gaming magazines this morning absolutely destroying them

Edit - I won’t post them but a simple search of ESO AI on YouTube / Google shows how big this got

spartaxoxo

MJallday wrote: »

ZOS needs to come out with a statement on this. Facebook is full of articles from gaming magazines this morning absolutely destroying them

Edit - I won’t post them but a simple search of ESO AI on YouTube / Google shows how big this got

I tried Google and only saw 1 article about it. Hopefully that helps us get an answer though.