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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Do you have anything more than assumptions to go on for the reasons? If you only assume those are the reasons you shouldn’t announce them as a big headline item.
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.
Not OP but: It may not be assumptions but personal anecdote. I guess it takes concerted effort by significant number of individuals to find out if this is happening.
Twitch shadowbans public VPNs due to abuse/bots. The most common method for people to get around bans is to use a VPN – now assume millions of viewers, and you’ve got an easy recipe for needing to stop that activity.
You’re not punished for being privacy conscious; you’re being punished for being roughly in the same realm as harassers, etc.
If you don’t want to be banned, rent a VPS and set up your own private VPN for only you. The problem is that using Nord, Windscribe, etc etc is that you’re sharing that VPN tunnel with hundreds, maybe thousands of people at a time.
It’s trivial for twitch to differentiate between users who are logged in and have verified accounts. Slapping bans by IP is archaic and lazy when you have more precise metrics to go by. And at the very least, they should make you aware that you are banned before accepting your money for their services.
You can just make a new account and blam you’re free from the ban on your account. That’s why IP bans exist.
VPNs exist and then boom IP bans no longer matter. Hell, some ISPs give you a new IP if you just restart your modem. IP bans sweep up clusters of users behind large gateways like college dorms or carrier-grade NAT.
IP bans do not work and I’m sure twitch seldom uses them, the exceptions being VPNs and cheap/free VPS services.
Think of it from the reverse direction. If you have a twitch account in good standing that’s verified with a valid email and has no violations, why all of the sudden would it make sense to apply a ban to this account? Perhaps preventing new accounts from being created on a sketchy IP could be a sensible solution, but shadowbanning an existing account makes no sense and is a lazy approach to security. In addition, fingerprinting makes it so a service can easily differentiate between users using the same IP.
What if the account is compromised? Now the spammer is able to do their spams freely on the IP address.
It’s just a hell of a lot easier to black list the entire IP than to try to manually let in small percentage of people who use a VPN AND want to comment or whatever.
Compromised accounts logging in from VPNs are a thing, and most Twitch users probably can’t be trusted not to be reusing passwords across literally everything.
Maybe I’m missing something but you can tell a compromised account from a secure account by the user behavior, no? If an account is compromised the activity will be spam/harassment, etc at which point a ban on that account would happen. And compromised accounts could be accessed from a non-vpn Ip also.
I’m curious to hear the opinion of those downvoting this response. It seems off brand for privacy enthusiasts to disagree with my take on IP bans.
It’s because many privacy enthusiasts are or have also been in network infrastructure, and realize the measures that must be taken on a hostile network which literally defines the internet.
I told you what to do. Rent a VPS, and set your own VPN up. Nothing is stopping you from doing this the right way.
The corporate world is really clamping down on VPN use. VPNs for me for not for thee is their motto.
Only the ‘free’ services. I bet amazon.com won’t ban you from shopping on vpn.
Not just the free services, they’re all doing it.
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
Don’t use Twitch
Got an alternative that isn’t youtube?
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.
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.
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