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As part of our efforts to improve transparency in moderation, the Regional Stability Squad has committed to providing a report regarding any incident where a long-term member is banned for any length of time or leaves the community as a result of the incident. The moderation team and RSS welcomes any thoughts or feedback regarding this incident, which you can provide by posting here or by reaching out to any member of the RSS.

This official record is duplicated as a Google Doc for backup and redundancy.

User: Argin / redrevoltaire
Issue: Potential Discord-Wide Ban Evasion (Potential Violation of Discord Terms of Service)
Report Reason: Long-time member was temp-banned from an official Wintreath platform

Summary

After a year-long absence, Argin recently returned to our community. In the process of reapplying for Citizenship, he mentioned that his previous Discord account had been deleted due to Discord terms of service violations. At that time, this explanation was accepted without question, and his Citizenship was approved.

However, sometime later Argin attempted to join The Campfire Discord server, which is made up of members who recently departed due to grievances regarding moderation in Wintreath. In the process the matter also came up there, and their administration was left with the impression that Argin was actually banned from Discord entirely and was evading that ban, which they felt would result in serious consequences for any server that allowed him on.

As a result, former senior chat op trader approached Regional Stability Squad (RSS) member Laurentus on this matter, who forwarded trader’s concerns to the RSS.

RSS Discussions

Because the RSS currently has authority over OOC moderation policies, this spawned a discussion within the RSS. As part of the discussion, the following relevant points were brought up:

• Argin is currently using a proxy or VPN on the Wintreath forums, which could also be used to evade an IP-based ban of the sort Discord uses. However, there are legitimate uses for proxies and VPNs, and this is at best circumstantial evidence.
• Discord hands out various levels of punishment for terms of services violations, including account termination and permanent bans. When Discord deletes an account without also banning the person, they are free to create a new account. The RSS confirmed that Argin’s former Discord account was deleted, but could not determine whether his account was merely deleted or if he was outright banned.
• In a discussion with Wintermoot, Argin stated that he did not know why his account was deleted, nor whether he was banned from Discord. The RSS views this with skepticism, as Discord policy is to send an email specifying what exact terms of service were violated and the punishment taken in response.
• While trader stated that servers that harbor Discord ban evaders were in danger of being wiped, there is no method for server administration to determine if an account is tied to a Discord ban unless the user admits to being banned. This would make such a server-wide punishment unreasonable unless the server itself was also violating Discord terms of service.

In the process, the RSS discussed the idea of creating a policy to ban any member who was punished by Discord for terms of service violations, regardless of the exact punishment. That discussion was effectively tabled pending resolution of this matter.

Decisions of the RSS

Ultimately the RSS felt this was an issue that should be handled by Discord itself, as server administration has no reliable ability to determine whether a user is evading a Discord ban. As a result, the RSS approved the following actions by consensus:

• Wintermoot filed a report with the Discord Trust and Safety Team as Discord server owner, pointing out where Argin stated his previous account was deleted for terms of service violations and elaborating with the information that trader provided as well as the ID of Argin’s previous account.
• Out of an abundance of caution, Argin was temporarily banned from the Discord server pending resolution of this matter.

Final Outcomes

Within 18 hours of filing the report, the Discord Trust and Safety Team responded to Wintermoot’s report with the following, indicating that they were only concerned if Argin continued to violate Discord terms of service:

Clyde (Discord)
Mar 22, 2023, 03:20 PDT

Hello,

Thanks for writing in. Discord investigates and takes action on accounts which are in violation of our Terms of Service. However, we generally believe in targeting rule-breaking behavior instead of targeting an individual, in most cases.

If the user is continuing to violate Discord’s Terms of Service on their new account, we’ll need you to provide the message links of the violating content for us to investigate the situation. Alternately, if you feel that the past violation was so egregious that the user should not be allowed back on Discord under any circumstances, please let us know and provide any additional context about the situation, and we will investigate further.

Sincerely,
Discord Trust & Safety

As a result, Argin’s ban was lifted and he was invited back into the server. This incident will result in no negative record or action toward Argin, and the RSS apologizes for any inconvenience this incident caused him. The temporary actions taken toward him were merely out of an abundance of caution to protect the server while we waited for a response back from Discord, and were not meant as any judgment or punishment from the RSS.