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.
Your question is a good one. I’m not the one who downvoted you fyi. To answer your question, it is absolutely a personal anecdote based on my own experimentation. I’m sure others will add their own experiences. Based on my experiences there’s no doubt about twitch shadowbanning based on VPN use. I’ll admit I don’t have a basis for Linux and adblockers being a part of the equation, but I made it clear in my original post that those were assumptions.
To further speculate, I have an idea that the shadowban may actually be triggered by somebody using the same VPN server doing something that triggers it, affecting anybody else on that server. I can’t possibly provide evidence for that theory, but it would explain the seemingly random nature of the shadowbans.
VPNs seem a fairly common reason. I am mostly curious how you came to the conclusion that Linux use was a factor since that is not a common ban reason.
I’ve only experienced a shadowban while using ubuntu. I switch between all the major operating systems on the same twitch account and with the same vpn service/servers. The bans have only been initiated while on linux, although they did follow over to the other OSes until some type of timer was passed.
This follows what some online shopping services do, which is to assign weights to certain user metrics and if a set threshold is crossed it rejects your payment or otherwise blocks you from a transaction. So VPN+MacOS might work but VPN+Linux matches some type of metric fraud systems associate with criminals.
You probably got swept up in the Suspicious User heuristics that Twitch uses now. Mods and Broadcasters should still see your chats. Message a moderator of the channel and explain the situation. They can remove your account from the shadowban from that channel.
It probably means lots of users from that VPN’s gateway IP have been reported/banned/manually added to the Suspicious User restriction list.
I doubt it has anything to do with Linux, and I guarantee it’s not a move to flip you off for trying to guard your privacy as an innocent person.
The issue is that a lot of the things you can do to hide your identity online are the same things people doing bots or harassment do, because they work.
So, their system learns that pattern and when you match it you get caught up. There is no good way to tell users apart when doing offensive security like this, other than waiting for accounts to start spamming the n-word in chats and ruining the stream experience, which is the thing this system is mean to prevent.
Don’t get caught up in privacy paranoia - there are much bigger fish they’re trying to fry than someone who just doesn’t want ad networks tracking them.