this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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Privacy

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If you notice your chat messages show up in the chat feed but don't appear on the streamers in-screen chat, you have been shadowbanned.

Twitch will still take your money for donations, subs, etc, but your feedback won't be seen by anybody but you. This shadowban does not appear in the appeals page and can be applied randomly and intermittently. You are never informed about this by the way. You'll likely be talking in a chat and assuming you're being ignored. Hop into a private tab and load up the stream where you'll be able to notice if your messages are missing in chat.

From my observations, there seems to be some type of algorithm/system that determines who to shadowban. I'm assuming it assigns extra points for factors like VPN usage, Linux, and adblockers. Once you've been shadowbanned, switching one of those three will not work to unban you until some arbitrary timer expires.

I'm posting this in case anybody else has experienced this and felt frustrated and isolated. You're not being ignored (unless you're a twat and are being ignored). You're just being punished by Twitch for being privacy conscious.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

You can get through the shadow banning by sendubg multiple copies of your send request a number of time equivalent to 1 terabyte. Only works if you do it for each comment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Can't you still connect to twitch chat via an IRC or XMPP client? Or did they axe that feature?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Pretty sure that still works. A few tech streamers like Vedal rely on that for their stuff to work.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

They've been shadowbanning VPN users for years. It's not a policy I expect to change.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (3 children)

The corporate world is really clamping down on VPN use. VPNs for me for not for thee is their motto.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

logs in while connected to VPN

spends 15 minutes identifying fire hydrants, traffic lights, and stairs

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

Use ipv6, they should be untraceable/ anonymous for non state actors.

They won't be able to what is and isn't a vpn.

We just need to cut grandma off those expensive ipv4 addresses

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Only the ‘free’ services. I bet amazon.com won’t ban you from shopping on vpn.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Not just the free services, they're all doing it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

They make it a whole lot harder, asking for photos of ID and selfies and bank statements directly from your bank, etc.

Amazon specifically. Unsure about other sites.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

I recently stumbled across an open-source frontend for Twitch called SafeTwitch, I really like it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Got an alternative that isn't youtube?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Touch grass /j

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

If you don't care about privacy that much, which I assume you don't because you use Twitch, Kick is the only alternative I can recommend. Everything else either is dead, is in another language, or has no good content, which sucks because some of them had good privacy policies. Monopolies are dogshit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Out of curiosity, have you tested the shadow ban with a non-web Twitch client, like a phone app or an IRC client?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

This happens to me if I have my VPN on from my phone app.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have not. I try to avoid apps if I can.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Fair enough. Just so you know, though: F-Droid has open-source Twitch apps requiring minimal permissions, and last time I checked, you could use a desktop IRC client to interact with Twitch chat. (The latter requires more effort to set up.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Might be worth spoofing your user agent! I mostly just make it look exactly like the user agent my windows machine sends, so I'll still look like a Firefox user. But by default, Firefox will note that it's the Linux build in the user agent.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Do note though that this does not prevent them from using Javascript to detect your OS. Even Tor Browser does not hide it for some bizarre reason... which IMO makes Linux users blend in a WHOLE lot less.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Actually; with the right plugins and configuration...even JS identification can be obscured in Firefox. I've done it before on Windows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not offering my techniques to the public right now; I kinda blundered on it by tinkering and it does break a metric shit ton of things.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

The shadowban I am pissed about is Reddit. The comments would appear for me just fine, but not visible outside of my account. Given that I have pretty much only commented about very neutral, even childish topics - I blame my email, which is on my own domain.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

Weirdly, when I was on an affected VPN and had a Twitch account, I could still stream. Just couldn't use the chat on my own stream. It makes no sense whatsoever, and the main effect it has is just to make users angry with them when they discover they've been shadowbanned for no rational reason.

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