Discord's "Shadowbans"

Hello!

There has been an issue circulating on discord for a couple of months now, about people not being able to join a server after being unbanned. I'm certain that you are aware of said issue, as you have a pre-made script for tickets about said bug.

Cause of issue, according to you:
-IP ban from an alt.
-User has joined 100 servers, thus hitting the limit.
-Invite link has expired.

Cause of issue, from my understanding:
-Client sided logs that indicate if a user is banned from a guild.
-The IP ban system doesn't remove a users IP from it's logs (after he/she gets unbanned).
-Events that happen after a user hits the "Join Server" button, are in my opinion in the wrong combination. What I mean is, that from my understanding, after a banned user tries to join the server that he/she is/was banned on, it first checks if said user is IP banned, before checking if he is banned from the server on his/hers current account.

Now, in the last sub-point I do sound like a hater of the IP ban system. But, I am not. It sure does wonders when it does its' job as it's supposed to.

How I would fix it:
-Make it so that it first checks if the account trying to join is banned, and then check if it is IP banned.
-I'll give an example of how I imagine it. Someone breaks the rules on the "xyz" server, and thus gets a ban. Now that person instead of accepting his/hers fate, makes an alt account, and joins the server again under a different alias. And gets banned again, now it can either be fully automatic, or a option that can be enabled by and administrator on said "xyz" server, or be a manual option such as a tick box in the ban GUI. And that option would IP ban the users IP causing him to not be able to join on that IP. In short, it would be better if IP banning someone would be an option, instead of a standard.
-As I said before, about the checks when joining. Now, let's say that the aforementioned user dms' and administrator of said "xyz" server, apologising about his previous behavior, after some time has passed. Now when the administrator unbans him/her, it will not do anything, as he/she is still IP banned. But with my idea, an unban would be a IP ban bypass, making the unban more important than the IP block. Please refer to attachment 1, as I hope it will explain it better, than words.

I sincerely hope that this doesn't metaphorically get swiped under a rug, but actually has an impact on this issue, as it has been causing a lot of unbannable bans. I do not mean any harm in my message, this is just a suggestion. You guys rock, and I just want to make a positive inpact on a service that I use on a daily basis.

Kind regards,
rzecz.

weboy

February 08, 2023 12:03

You are forgetting the fact that making an alt and joining the server while your main is banned, is against Discord Terms and Services, the fact that they did it means that all of their accounts should be disabled.

Unbanning an IP might sound easy when you only look in the scope of a single server, but there are hundred of thousand servers on discord, and finding out who needs to be ip unbanned is a lot harder than it sounds.

What if the user has been harassing more servers than just yours ? Then they cant remove the IP ban, but keeping that kind of information about every ip ban would slow down the checking of ip bans so much that discord would grind to a halt every time someone joined any server.

Which means that it would be easier to just let the IP bans time out after a while, insted of catering to people who blatantly broke the TOS.

rzecz

February 08, 2023 15:07

Dear weboy,

I'm not talking about a platform wide IP ban, I'm talking about the fact, that if you ban someone on a discord server, they're getting IP banned on that server in particular. And in some cases, even if you unban that person, he still can't join.

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