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Banning over speech is such a shit practice. Yeah sure, it's in the ToS and MS are far from the only company engaging in this but eventually it gets to point where nobody can have a real conversation anymore out of fear of unknowingly saying an 'unacceptable sequence of words'. And if i can't have a real conversation with my friends on the platform we're not going to use the platform. It's a very slow process of corporate suicide and i don't know how much of a contributing factor this is to the fall of Xbox but it's for sure had an impact on their lack of sales.

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

Banning over speech is such a shit practice. Yeah sure, it's in the ToS and MS are far from the only company engaging in this but eventually it gets to point where nobody can have a real conversation anymore out of fear of unknowingly saying an 'unacceptable sequence of words'. And if i can't have a real conversation with my friends on the platform we're not going to use the platform. It's a very slow process of corporate suicide and i don't know how much of a contributing factor this is to the fall of Xbox but it's for sure had an impact on their lack of sales.

You do need to moderate though. it is the lack of human involvement that is the issue.
There are major corporations right now, who rely on Youtube, but then get randomly shut down by the AI mods and need several days to get their accounts back. And that's just for companies who have Google's actual phone-numbers.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

Fire all the employees and the AI. Grow a sac and use the block button if you're a snowflake.

I wouldn't mind some free company with Eve in Stellar Blade though.

 

[Portugeezer]

AI moderation has a long way to go, companies need to chill. Worst part is when it becomes difficult actually talk to a real human to resolve an issue.

 

[Kumomeme]

lol even microsoft hold power over FFXIV Xbox account lol

 

[StereoVsn]

MS is horrible at support. You think this is bad? They fired a whole bunch of support people across their god damn Enterprise product lines! Including Gov support people. It's an absolute insanity and maddening considering money being spent.

But sure, Satya gets his bonus paid out after firing 20K people because this is for the "shareholder value", don't worry about Enterprises being pissed off.

If anyone besides Google (if you think MS support is bad wait till you see Google's) could provide comparable Enterprise software (BC issues aside), a lot of companies would start jumping ship.

 

[StereoVsn]

Let's say all jobs are eliminated eventually. Where do the customers with money come from to ensure continued profits?

They don't think that far. All the thought is a quarter or two away. Why do you think MS has the stupid 18 months contractor policy? To save a few $, meaningless in the long run but looks really good to shareholders, despite negative effect on product development.

 

[SportsFan581]

As long as they keep humans around for oversight, this type of automated moderation seems normal. Not to mention this kind of thing has been around long before AI became the new buzzword of the moment.

 

[TwiztidElf]

I had a most infuriating issue with my xbox account.
On two occasions I had technical issues with my account where it wouldn't accept the password (even though I was getting it right), and I could not reset the password as it was always trying to force me to login in order to reset it.
Didn't matter what I tried. PC, Xbox, phone, and all different browsers. Nothing.

I submitted myself to the horrendous process on both occasions and got it sorted.
As it happened I was already a non-paying lapsed customer anyhow, but this really drove it home.
I need to keep my free account alive though so I can access my purchases on there.

 

[semiconscious]

op: are you jez corden? because you've cut & pasted jez corden's entire article, illustrations & all, & made it your post. which really isn't all that cool. & i'm saying this as someone who's not a big jez corden fan. while excerpting sections of an article is cool, copying one wholesale is just theft, eh?...

 

[ABnormal]

If Microsoft is truly a serious gaming company...

The hope can end here.

 

[IAmRei]

If the term "You dont own everything and You will forced to be happy" attached on XBox, i wouldnt buy xbox. I was thinking to buy, to complete all fours. But seeing this and microsoft against curvy woman things, makes me hate xbox now. Congrats mic$ you lost one buy for me.

 

[Robb]

ToS agreements in general need to be regulated in some way. It's absolutely crazy that they can take away full-price products from you at any time. An absolute scam.

 

[Goalus]

Community managers should be replaced by AI as well so we don't have to read their racist bullshit on Twitter.

Absolutely.

 

[Kadve]

No unions i take it?

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

OG Xbox Live didn't have any moderation. Zero people were harmed.

Moderation cost: $0.
Player enjoyment level: 100

Unless you're hacking, you shouldn't be moderated. Mute function exists. I use it often. I don't need help using it.

Your system doesn't work. Too many people are dicks for no reason, other than wanting to ruin others' enjoyment of something. Some basic moderation will always be necessary for people like that, who act in bad faith.

 

[Three]

Why is using the game term "Free Company" getting people banned on this xbox/AI moderation system? Does it interpret it as prostitution, a threesome, or something like that? Bizarre.

 

[Deerock71]

Microsoft versus their customers:

 

[Shin-Ra]

OG Xbox Live didn't have any moderation. Zero people were harmed.

Moderation cost: $0.
Player enjoyment level: 100

Unless you're hacking, you shouldn't be moderated. Mute function exists. I use it often. I don't need help using it.

Midtown Madness 3 wasn't much fun against rando's once out-of-bounds/border breaks exploits were found.

 

[evanft]

If you willingly pay for Xbox Live you deserve whatever bad things happen to you.

 

[rm082e]

Question for Xbox players: Am I correct in thinking this AI hall monitor thing is only on the standard game chat, not on party chat or the Discord voice chat?

 

[Drew1440]

It could have been much worse, imaging if Xbox Kinect was a success, and people were getting banned over what the Kinect mic had picked up.

This actually happened with Amazon, where a smart doorbell thought it heard a racial slur aimed at a delivery driver.

As for Microsoft and Google, my aim is to try and remove them as much as possible from my life, android and Windows is the main issue and I'm tempted to just get Apple instead, but they're not any better on that front.

 

[Solarstrike]

This is where I draw the line on AI. When AI interferes and/or takes the jobs away from the customer support industry, it should be illegal by law. There NEEDS to be a law to prohibit AI voice from handling customer service. I've spoke to many customer service personnel in the medical field (I've health conditions) and many people, regardless what country they reside in, are concerned AI will take their jobs. It's extremely paramount that a human handle customer support related inquiries. There's nothing worse than if one has an emergency, to phone in for support, and it's a robot voice. There should be laws already in place to prevent this. A physical robot/AI (within the next 10-15 years) is one thing per physical care/home assistance but phone voice customer support? No!

 

[simpatico]

Your system doesn't work. Too many people are dicks for no reason, other than wanting to ruin others' enjoyment of something. Some basic moderation will always be necessary for people like that, who act in bad faith.

Don't remember anyone quitting Halo 2 over it. Seems overblown without specific examples

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Don't remember anyone quitting Halo 2 over it. Seems overblown without specific examples

I don't work for Microsoft. But I'm sure if you really wanted, you could easily find such examples on the internet. As I'm sure you are aware, people can often be terrible to others.

 

[Dr. Claus]

Your system doesn't work. Too many people are dicks for no reason, other than wanting to ruin others' enjoyment of something. Some basic moderation will always be necessary for people like that, who act in bad faith.

Block. Mute. Get a thicker skin and a spine.

We don't need to ban people because they said mean words to you online, unless it crosses to real world harassment stalking or objective racist rhetoric.

 

[simpatico]

I don't work for Microsoft. But I'm sure if you really wanted, you could easily find such examples on the internet. As I'm sure you are aware, people can often be terrible to others.

My views on cyber bullying align perfecting with Tyler the Creator's.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Block. Mute. Get a thicker skin and a spine.

We don't need to ban people because they said mean words to you online, unless it crosses to real world harassment stalking or objective racist rhetoric.

You really shouldn't have to do that, though. Is the point.

 

[Dr. Claus]

You really shouldn't have to do that, though. Is the point.

This is how the world works. There will always be assholes. You would rather have a company force draconian levels of moderation over just getting over a petty insult and muting/blocking the player?

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

This is how the world works. There will always be assholes. You would rather have a company force draconian levels of moderation over just getting over a petty insult and muting/blocking the player?

There will always need to be at least some amount of moderation, it will never be appropriate to simply have none, and just "let people moderate themselves". That's just the way it is

 

[DragonNCM]

The A.I. cats out the bag and isn't going back in, the reality is that sooner that companies start implementing it the sooner we can figure out what comes next.

Next ?
We know what is next.....

 

[Dr. Claus]

There will always need to be at least some amount of moderation, it will never be appropriate to simply have none, and just "let people moderate themselves". That's just the way it is

Which is exactly what I said:

Block. Mute. Get a thicker skin and a spine.

We don't need to ban people because they said mean words to you online, unless it crosses to real world harassment stalking or objective racist rhetoric.

Or do you think there needs to be more? Should someone be banned because they called you a retard? Because they said "gg ez"? Because they said "kys"?

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Which is exactly what I said:



Or do you think there needs to be more? Should someone be banned because they called you a retard? Because they said "gg ez"? Because they said "kys"?

Or deliberately went out of their way to make others miserable but *technically* didn't break a rule because they know how to abuse the system & get around it? No, no one would ever do that online, right?

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

There will always need to be at least some amount of moderation

yes and giving players full control of their own moderation in the game is more than enough, blocking "harvest dance" because it also contains a sequence of letters (std), that might potentially maybe hurt someone's precious snowflake feelings is just insanity.
you can of course add some reporting feature for some really egregious things, but block/mute should take care of 99% of your offended feelings.

 

[Durien]

So when A.I. has got everyones job, how do they think we will pay for these products the company is making?

Ai with their crypto currency.

 

[Dr. Claus]

Or deliberately went out of their way to make others miserable but *technically* didn't break a rule because they know how to abuse the system & get around it? No, no one would ever do that online, right?

Block and mute. Also develop a thicker skin.

 

[The_Observer]

Welcome to the adorably digital future baby!

 

[Unknown?]

ToS agreements in general need to be regulated in some way. It's absolutely crazy that they can take away full-price products from you at any time. An absolute scam.

For the lazy: https://tosdr.org/

 

[Cyberpunkd]

AI mods is basically how Youtube run things.

The problem isn't the fact that they are AI; the problem is that there is no mechanisim to speak to a real person. The same AI that bans you is also the same AI that determine if your case needed reviewing by a human. And AI always said it wasn't wrong.

The most famous case of a ban that gone public was the developer for the Terraria game. He was porting his game to Stadia but then all his gmail and youtube acccess were blocked when he was banned by the AI. He couldn't get ANY human to look at the case after multiple weeks, so he publicly declared on twitter that he would halt all porting of his game to Stadia until Google send a real human to unban his work email.
Complaint to Google
He eventually got a response. But he shouldn't HAVE to threaten Google in order to see a real human!

Now, this is Google and not Microsoft. But i am just showing you have bad things can get if it goes out of hand.

Till consumers will not make their voices heard this will be the result, there is no upside in having humans interacting and this increased costs if it doesn't translate to better profits. Many companies for example highlight nowadays the fact customer service is not outsourced, I imagine they have a clear link to being more attractive for potential customers.

 

[AJUMP23]

If you willingly pay for Xbox Live you deserve whatever bad things happen to you.

Show me on the doll where Xbox live touched you.

 

[adamsapple]

Show me on the doll where Xbox live touched you.

 

[winjer]

Some years ago, Microsoft got rid of it's Windows internal Q&A team.
The result is a ton of buggy updates, features that barely work, and a ton of issues for users to deal with.
If MS is going to also automate it's moderation xbox team, that will mean a much worse experience for users.
Glad I don't have an Xbox console. But this decision is probably going to also affect PC gamers.

 

[BadBurger]

MS is horrible at support. You think this is bad? They fired a whole bunch of support people across their god damn Enterprise product lines! Including Gov support people. It's an absolute insanity and maddening considering money being spent.

I had to open a case with Microsoft to resolve some issues with cloud storage (Silk) connected to Azure VM's a few weeks ago. 11 AM EST. No US or UK based engineers were available, I got punted to India.

For those that don't know: the Indian Microsoft support is slow, often does not get back to you within the stated SLA time frames, and because they have a difficult time communicating verbally they often have to rely upon technical account managers who are fluent in English as facilitators - and those guys and gals are stretched thin which further increases support time. We pay big, big money for this support to due to our size.

I'd say the only thing I've found Microsoft enterprise support is good at is reading CBS and DISM logs to figure out what went wrong when Microsoft Update or the servicing stack has issues, and they're pretty decent at debugging memory dumps. Anything else and you may as well try and figure it out yourself instead unless it's something that requires action on Microsoft's side with something like Azure.

 

[StereoVsn]

I had to open a case with Microsoft to resolve some issues with cloud storage (Silk) connected to Azure VM's a few weeks ago. 11 AM EST. No US or UK based engineers were available, I got punted to India.

For those that don't know: the Indian Microsoft support is slow, often does not get back to you within the stated SLA time frames, and because they have a difficult time communicating verbally they often have to rely upon technical account managers who are fluent in English as facilitators - and those guys and gals are stretched thin which further increases support time. We pay big, big money for this support to due to our size.

I'd say the only thing I've found Microsoft enterprise support is good at is reading CBS and DISM logs to figure out what went wrong when Microsoft Update or the servicing stack has issues, and they're pretty decent at debugging memory dumps. Anything else and you may as well try and figure it out yourself instead unless it's something that requires action on Microsoft's side with something like Azure.

That sounds about right. Considering the cost it's kind of ridiculous.

We usually have to bludgeon our reps to get someone capable.