Tuesday, March 27, 2018

False reports & IRC (Twitch chat) logs

So from iBreezyy's video which gave light of the fact he was filing false reports, I spent a couple hours going through my backed up IRC logs (what was left of them anyways) to log what was in them for future reference as they may be needed in a future court case against him (or his parents, if what he's stating about being underage is accurate, but technically speaking I think he's breaking Twitch policy if this is true & could have his account closed for that reason, I'll have to check the Twitch policy age minimum later).  What I collected so far can be found here & will continue to be added to each time I see a large gathering of unknown individuals joining & leaving my channel within a short period.

This is going to give some indication of just how often the false reports are being filed, as well as who is likely a part of it.  Of course I'm not going to point fingers until proven guilty (with the exception of those who have already proven themselves guilty from the Twitch troll party on 3/19/2018), so currently these logs are just speculation of possibility, not definite (at least not yet).  Of course there's no saying how long this has been going on prior to the logs cutting off, it could have been happening every day since the original issue on 2/19/2018, which I unfortunately have to expect is probably accurate based on his attitude when filing a couple more reports during his 3/22/2018 stream, so if you get right down to it, I'm surprised he hasn't already had his account banned for excessive abuse of the report function...

Note that there are a number of grey boxes in these logs (screenshots); these are individuals that have shown they can be pleasant on the channel & therefore I have censored out information regarding them seeing as I don't really need to be publishing details about their activity in my channel when they have proven themselves to be decent people.

At this point I'm certain there will be a new article on my personal site about iBreezyy by the end of the week, it's a shame Twitch can't get these matters resolved before negative articles about their service end up getting published on various other sites...

UPDATE:  A side note, but after going over the Twitch's Terms of Service, it states:
If you are between the ages of 13 and 18 (or between 13 and the age of legal majority in your country of residence), you may only use the Twitch Services under the supervision of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to be bound by these Terms of Service.
According to his own statement, he's stating he's a child.  I doubt a child, but a teenager at best.  However even as a teenager, (under Twitch's ToS) he should be getting supervised by an adult & I can guarantee that's not the case when you consider how he's been acting.  Because things are starting to add up, I decided it was time to file another report, similar to the last, however categorized as an underage user:
In your terms of service, it is stated that those between the age of 13 and 18 must be supervised by a parent or legal guardian.  In the Past Broadcast located at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/241771155 (slanderous discussion started in the last 17 minutes of this video, this particular statement made at 3:35:54 in this stream, along with additional statements about reports against my Twitch channel by him & his friends starting at 3:33:32), he stated that he was "a child" while make a "child abuse" report on my YouTube channel under asinine reasoning.  With what he was stating during this stream, what happened during the attack on my channel on 3/19/2018 (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/240727033) & the original issue on 2/19/2018 (https://youtu.be/mcFJSAZtGUI) that appears to has gotten him to recruit others into reporting my Twitch (and YouTube channel as of 3/22/2018 when this stream of his aired, the one I found the evidence of it in & backed up on my personal site, linked in my Twitch blog at https://twitch-wondergamer.blogspot.com/2018/03/organized-harassment-false-reports.html) I can GUARANTEE he has no adult supervision during when he stream or even uses Twitch, so this is a close repeat to the last report with perhaps the most accurate categorization that I can give with the evidence he has provided while his stream was running on 3/22/2018.
I don't have a lot of trust in Twitch when you consider the amount of attacks that have been allowed to happen against my channel & good portion of those never getting penalized for their actions, but we'll see where this goes; if anything I would expect him to get contacted with a reminder of Twitch policy & there may be a limit on how often he streams, where it might become apparent he has an adult there with him (not that I expect he's actually going to start following this rule, but I suspect Twitch will probably be able to determine this if they are monitoring his channel if it has a warning on it), but we'll see where it goes from here.

UPDATE: And that report seems to have done the trick.  I went to the hospital (due to an infection after my surgery on 3/15/2018) after making that report, came back, got some sleep (not getting much sleep the night before), checked his channel to see if the report had done anything & got the standard error that usually shows up on banned accounts (note the URL in the address bar):


I checked my Twitch ban list just to make sure he hadn't changed his name (expecting the name might have changed in the banlist along with any possible name-change on his channel, it does this with auto-hosts anyways), doesn't seem he has.  Hopefully he will learn from this & not try to push the buttons of somebody who actually reads the policy of services they use, which in this case managed to be used against him & probably wouldn't have happened if I hadn't done my research & figured out he was committing slander & filing mass false-reports (through not only himself, but also his friends & followers) on a regular basis.

I expect he will be able to successfully appeal the ban, but it may be under the stipulation that he be under supervision when he streams or views (although I would expect the latter to be impossible to verify).  He does have a YouTube channel, I can guarantee he will continue this charade on that channel (I find it highly unlikely he will learn from this) & I'm expecting a video probably dedicated to me (or rather his false-representation of me), which is where I will have the ability to file a report against that channel as well (once he's thrown some slander on that channel, I will have enough evidence through his own doing that I will successfully be able to file a complaint against his channel under YouTube abuse policy without having to supply additional evidence, although it's going to be an uphill fight considering YouTube still doesn't give the option to supply supporting evidence unless it's through a legal threat).  There is also a detail I have put on the Discussion tab of my channel regarding these attacks, slander & false-reports, I expect he will be reporting that when he finds it, which is probably going to backfire on him & cause his YouTube account to get banned as well (of course from my experience with YouTube, they don't verify facts when allegations are made from big name companies, so he might actually succeed were he to report it, but at the same time he takes a risk of getting his own account banned as well, where this would only be a strike on my account, possibly a full ban on his).

UPDATE:  I've been watching the IRC logs closely (and logging them in chunks multiple times a day) since I realized what was going on (after seeing the video on iBreezyy's channel) when this group of people joined, then leave shortly afterwards, particularly when a stream isn't even running.  The fact of the matter is they are still at it with the false-reports in hopes that they will be able to get my account banned, but I don't really have any fear of that because I'm not doing anything that is going to warrant one needing to be placed.  What I do know however is there is going to be one HELL of a page going up on Twitch on my personal site (regarding revictimization of a victim) if he ever succeeds, with iBreezyy being a BIG part of it, with a possible lawsuit against his parents for damages caused by those reports; I already have enough evidence to go after them for slander committed by their son, but I don't believe slander is a good enough reason to have the police issue a subpoena against Twitch for his personal information to issue them a summons, however this may at least be discussed with the police in the near future if he keeps at it.  I'm more expecting he's going to take a more extreme route that could land him in prison for 20 years, however I won't get into details on that just yet, just keep in mind I have contacts ready to prosecute, as well as for the local media (news stations) & drafts ready for publication on multiple sites should it happen (this won't be publicity he's going to want & I can only imagine what his parents will have to say about it when it becomes national news).

The fact of the matter is after they viewed his video, Twitch is now fully aware of the false-reports iBreezyy & his followers are making against my channel (I would expect they were aware of it prior to viewing the video, however it seems that wasn't enough to ban those accounts for extensive abuse of the report function) & I expect sooner or later the accounts that are continuing to abuse it to the extent I expect it's happening (based on my IRC logs alone) will start being banned on that reason (this is actually stated at the top of the box when you open it to report a channel, "Abuse of this feature is a violation of the terms of service").

I am certain he currently blames me for getting his channel banned & he's ramped up more of his followers (or perhaps I should say former followers, seeing as his channel was banned for lack of supervision for his age while using Twitch) to make even more false-reports against my channel, however he needs to realize it was his own actions that caused his account to be banned, all I did was point out what he was doing to Twitch using his own video as evidence (until he realizes that, things aren't going to change & eventually it will escalate to the point that he will be forced to change when he no longer has the option to make that decision on his own).  This is why I publish this information online with all possible evidence right off the bat, which has gotten me a number of attacks in the past, however as many times as it has happened, I know how to deal with it & the continued retaliation will just continue to dig himself a deeper grave.

UPDATE:  As of 3/28/2018, looks like iBreezyy's channel has been reactivated.  We'll see if he's able to follow Twitch policy from this point forward; his aggressive nature & persistence in attacking my channel over the last month would tell me otherwise (my IRC logs I expect are going to continue pointing that out for me, as it did earlier today that the abuse of report function is still happening) & this is only what I got from the last 17 minutes of his own stream aired on 3/22/2018 (which has been deleted from his channel since it was reactivated, but that portion of that video is still backed up on my personal site & viewable from this blog, likely becoming a part of a new article on my personal site if the attacks continue).  If this continues to be a problem & I have to report his channel again (where Twitch may chose to ignore the reports), I may have to speak with my local police about it (as I did with PSN user EPICMINECRAFT25), followed by a lawsuit against his parents for his slander (when children are the target of a lawsuit, the parents or legal guardian become responsible for monetary damages in court, even if that only includes punitive damages).  I would expect sooner or later other users who are doing this for him will also be getting thrown into the lawsuit mix (I already know of one other definite user from the evidence I took from his channel on 3/25/2018, which was the evidence that was used in the report when his account got banned).

Monday, March 26, 2018

Organized harassment & false reports

On 3/26/2018, I ended up finding out that iBreezyy has been going the extent to retaliate against my account for making his griefing public in this video.  The retaliation was to be expected, but I didn't expect him to go as far as slander, abuse of the report function (okay, I suppose this one was to be expected, but not to the extent he's doing it) & recruiting a mass of individuals to make reports to back up his abuse of that same function.  You might claim I can't back this up, well I can actually & it comes from his own mouth.  After re-recording that portion from his own Past Broadcast, I actually had the evidence to make reports against both his Twitch & YouTube accounts.

373 MB download, should stream in most browsers, right-click & save if you want a local copy (video only) or to view multiple times without having to redownload:
Video
Description
 NOTE:  You may receive a ban message if you are in a ban range that includes hacking activity.

This was the first report I made against his Twitch account as prior to finding this in his Past Broadcasts, I did not have any evidence to make a legitimate report against him.  Once I had it, I spent several hours re-recording it & typing an extensive description before filing any reports.  The Twitch report when through without a hitch, however obviously hasn't done anything as of yet.  The report that was sent to Twitch was as follows:
There is a number of reasons why I am reporting this account today, the matter starting back on 2/19/2018 when he chose to grief in a Fortnite mission I was in (https://youtu.be/mcFJSAZtGUI).  I only found out about his channel after the 3rd name change on his account (seems Epic Games allows you to see names changes from your block list).

On 3/19/2018, my Twitch channel got hit with an attack via chat where I ended up having to ban 5 different accounts, which is also when I enabled Follower-only chat to help mitigate attack such as you will see at https://youtu.be/614Emx8pxfk

On 3/24/2018, I saw them entering the channel for another attack, however the Follower-only chat function stalled them from being able to do it & I increased the minimum of that function to 1-day when I realized what was coming.  This was later discussed with a friend (who happened to join around the time they did) about mid-way through my stream located at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/242237338 (Past Broadcast, so this video will expire) & I posted a new blog entry about it when I had finished my stream, which can be found at https://twitch-wondergamer.blogspot.com/2018/03/another-attack-attempt-but-foiled.html.  This attempt was foiled due to that function, but it was attempted & there were a few follows placed in an attempt to do it (details about this are on the blog), I increased the minimum to 30 minutes after ending my stream to deter the likelihood they would attempt it again (it will continue increasing as they continue to try attacking the channel.

Unfortunately I found out today while watching one of his videos that he's been attacking my channel regularly by misusing the report function & as of 3/22/2018 (when his stream was running, which is also where I got evidence of this from) he's also doing the same on my YouTube channel (I would expect also my Epic Games account or any other account he know I have).  Until now I had no evidence to support a report against him, now I do however, so I am using this evidence to make the report & hope something will come of it.  This discussion is done in the last 17 minutes of his Past Broadcast found at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/241771155, I have re-recorded this portion of the video to be used as evidence regarding the organized harassment & attacks on my channel, as well as misuse of the report function & slander, it will be used in a later article on my personal site if the abuse & manipulation of code of conduct to be used in their favor continues to be an issue.  Slander has also apparently become an issue (which this video verifies), I'm expecting I may need to get the police involved if it goes much further...
On 3/26/2018, I ended up finding out that iBreezyy has been going the extent to retaliate against my account for making his griefing public in this video.  The retaliation was to be expected, but I didn't expect him to go as far as slander, abuse of the report function (okay, I suppose this one was to be expected, but not to the extent he's doing it) & recruiting a mass of individuals to make reports to back up his abuse of that same function.  You might claim I can't back this up, well I can actually & it comes from his own mouth.  After re-recording that portion from his own Past Broadcast, I actually had the evidence to make reports against both his Twitch & YouTube accounts.
When I went to report his YouTube channel, I realized 2 things:
  • I wouldn't be able to report his channel because even through I had the evidence to make the report, YouTube does not give you the option to provide supporting evidence on violation reports, so in the end I wasn't able to file it...
  • While trying to find a valid reason to report his channel, I noticed a few that made me determine that having YouTube host that video wasn't the best idea, because it would give him a legitimate reason to report the channel that YouTube might actually act on.  For this reason the video was deleted on YouTube & I decided to instead host it on my personal site, I would be giving details about it later in my YouTube channel's Discussion.
The ironic part here is he's abusing the report function probably daily (while there's no proof to support this, it does seem he's doing it fairly often based on the comments in his video) & getting others to join him in abusing the report function.  If reports against him doesn't penalize his account, his continued abuse of the report function is going to backfire on him, because Twitch will see what he's complaining about, realize he's just trying to cover up a situation, then he'll feel the wrath of his own actions.

Unfortunately most trolls/griefers can not grasp the concept of learning from their mistakes, believing they can never be caught if done over the internet, only choosing to retaliate in a fashion that only further shows theirdemeanor & how poor of a person they actually are.  Some may actually learn from it & change their ways so it doesn't happen again, in some cases I might even be willing to work with them if they apologize & show they can be a decent person (removing or at least hiding all evidence of what happened in the first place), but after the first sign of retaliation, any mercy I may show that individual is off, they get to reap the rewards that they sow.

I have a story with a particularly stubborn individual with the PSN username of EPICMINECRAFT25, where he took it too far (death threats & threats of physical harm) & gave me a reason where I was able to take the matter to the police.  Somewhere between a week or two after the report was filed, the attacks from this individual stopped & I haven't seen any activity on his PSN account since.  It is still undetermined exactly what happened, but I would expect the police showed up at his door, after that is anybody's guess.  The way he acted only gave indication that he was a juvenile & if the police did in fact show up at his door, there's a number of ways it could have played out:
  • He might have been arrested
  • He might have been grounded
  • He might have been too scared to continue his harassment
The fact that his PSN account hasn't had any further activity since then also gives a few possibilities, starting with the same first 2 above, but throwing in the possibility that his PSN account might have been banned (while I would expect his profile to go private if it was in fact banned, the possibility is there as I believed the police had to subpoena either PSN or Twitch to get his personal information).  Full details regarding the matter with EPICMINECRAFT25 can be found here.

I will do what I need to do to get these attacks to stop & continue making the public aware of the situation as they continue to happen.  I have already had to upload this video to my personal site so it wouldn't be subjected to the possibility of my YouTube account getting flagged for a possibly legitimate reason to file a report (he, his friends, followers, subscribers & who knows who else have already filed countless false reports against my accounts if what he's stating in this video is correct, why give him a reason to file a report that might actually succeed), there's really no reason in me not adding his Twitch account as a new entry on my personal site anymore.

UPDATE:  I later decided to increase my Follow-only chat minimum to 1 day to match how many days this shit has kept me from doing streams on my channel, it may later be increased if the attacks continue.

One other thing to point out is what happened on my YouTube channel on 3/22/2018.  It's already been mentioned that they reported it & it was stated they were going to comment on the video, however I noticed a comment was never left (probably because they realized that comments were moderated & it would never see the light of day on that video, that's not to say I wouldn't keep logs of it or publish it somewhere else as further evidence of abuse by iBreezyy & his friends, follower, etc.), but they did happen to downvote it on that same day:
This really doesn't do much, while the options to upvote or downvote are still there, I've had to mitigate downvote abuse in the past, so these statistics aren't public for that reason (which was disabled at the same time that comment moderation was enabled).  I have both of my channels locked down for a reason & situations like this only show why it needs to be done.  Follower-only chat is currently set to 24-hours on my channel specifically because of these situations (I never wanted people to feel obligated to have to follow to chat, but I will enable it when the channel is getting attacked like what happened on 3/19/2018), where the excessive amount of time is probably deterring users to keeping a follow they may have had on the channel, but if the loss of new followers comes at the expense of a lack of security against further attacks, I'm okay with people not following to have a higher chance of mitigating further attacks against the channel (I don't stream to get follower or donations anyways; I play games to have fun & stream only in case people want to watch, it's their decision where they want to take it from simply watching, however I won't tolerate abuse/discrimination against myself or others in the channel).  The other option is I could turn on auto-moderation, however this would probably be too much trouble to deal with as I don't have moderators on my channel, it might be something I'll look at later (provided I can block/moderate everything & define a user whitelist to pass through auto-moderation, this might become an option in the future).

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Another attack attempt, but foiled

On 3/24/2018, the same individuals (possibly with more in tow) attempted to attack my channel once again, however enabling Follower-only chat (if only for 10 minutes) gave me enough time to stop it before it happened.  I personally don't like using this feature as I don't want people to feel obligated to have to follow to chat (however I do expect they verify their email address, as many accounts that don't are troll accounts), however it was proven in this attempt to have a positive effect on stopping the 2nd attack on my channel from this group, as when I noticed the gathering of individuals that had joined my channel (5 according to the dashboard), I checked my viewer list via IRC & noticed a few names in that list that had already been banned in the previous attack (including none other than iBreezyy, the one that started out by griefing a mission I was in simply because I didn't give him a weapon (only finding out after 2 name changes on his Epic Games account that he happened to be a follower/subscriber of Ring_of_Favor, somebody I had an issue with last year, more details can be found here).

Twitch users joining channel to attack (screenshot from IRC logs), stalled by Follow-only chat being enabled:
Gray areas indicate censoring, the one friend I had join during the stream & around the same time these individuals were about to attack my channel, they left about the time I started discussing the matter over Discord with him.

My email notifications from Twitch would indicate that a few of these accounts did follow in expectation they were going to wait out the 10-minute wait time in order to be able to attack the channel once the time had elapsed:
Click for full image
Click for full image
Click for full image

While I do have logs for when they followed through Twitch email follower notifications, I don't have logs on when they unfollowed (thybreeze later refollowed, no new notification was sent, likely due to being in the same day), so I can't be certain what was said during the stream to cause them to back off, however I discussed with this friend over Discord that when I saw the attack coming, I increased the minimum to 1 day.  Other things that were stated included the fact that I was considering banning every single account that joined when this group joined (something I'm still not certain I want to do as it's not certain every one was a part of the group, however I would expect otherwise), also bringing up the fact that the last attack resulted in 5 reports to Twitch & 3 to Epic Games, which could have resulted in a ban on iBreezyy's Fortnite license (not that I would expect Epic Games to do anything on offsite activity, I chose to file the complaints regardless to see if anything would come of it).

The Follower-only chat now has a minimum of a half-hour (increased from 10 minutes from the attack 5 days ago), it will continue to increase as I see this continue to happen.  The date that I disable this function also got pushed back an additional 5 days (to 4/24/2018).

UPDATE:  It was later determined that the original purpose of coming to my channel was not to attack verbally in chat (this only happened the first time on 3/19/2018 as it seems they saw an opportunity to do it without witnesses, not realizing I would Highlight that stream & upload the local recording on my computer to YouTube), but rather to abuse the report function, which I became aware of due to approximately 17 minutes of discussion at the end of one of his streams, which I re-recorded as evidence & used in a couple reports against him, the 2nd report being successful when I used his statement of being "a child" to report his account for being an underage user without adult supervision (being a violation under Twitch's Terms of Service).

Monday, March 19, 2018

More attacks

On 3/19/2018, I ran into another matter with attacks on my channel from a number of people who was originally believed to be a part of a troll party in Fortnite, however I recognized one username as being a follower of Ring_of_Favor's channel (further details can be found here) & a comment during this attack would further point out that I was correct when I recognized his username (only realizing it later after a couple name changes on Epic Games after the video of his griefing was published), but getting back to the attack that actually happened, the Highlight of that attack can be found here.
Twitch version embed broken due to API change, have not managed to get it fixed yet;
this video can be viewed here


There is additional details in the description as to what lead up to this (a trolling video that was re-uploaded to YouTube after a bug on Twitch caused that Highlight to "expire" on Twitch), showing griefing in Fortnite by one individual, only backed up by the other lowbie in that party (and later by NightmareeCS in the most recent attack).  This attack has resulted in both videos being used in reports to both Twitch & Epic Games (5 reports to Twitch, 3 to Epic Games, one of the reports being a second report on the same individual that got reported after the griefing incident).

Monday, March 12, 2018

Expired Highlights (bug)

Due to a bug on Twitch that effected Highlights between 2/26 to 3/8 of 2018 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Bp-9RR5Psamv2dPF9jVd1imWgjsgf-TV), a couple of my Highlights were deleted when the original Past Broadcasts expired.  I unfortunately did not have a local backup of the Fortnite griefer video for Dr. Jew, however I did have a backup of the one for Aluuurt (PSN username Logster45; this user has since changed his EG username to BreezyyHD), so I will be uploading the backup of that video once I get finished cutting off the first half of the video (irrelevant to the issues displayed in the video, this was just preparation for the next mission).  Because of this, I will be making it a point to have a backup (or export) of each video I have on Twitch on YouTube as well (expect in special cases, such as when the soundtrack of a game would cause a penalty on YouTube; the worst that can happen here on Twitch is the video gets muted).  Both of these videos were uses in griefing reports to Epic Games & if EG hadn't seen them before their unfortunate collateral damage to the Highlight expiration bug, they won't be seeing them because the link to the video provided in the report will not be valid (even if the backups are uploaded to replace deleted videos)...

UPDATE:  I finally got the video uploaded to Twitch, however it seems the purpose in these are to schedule events to show those videos, not to simply allow viewing of them, so uploading the backup to Twitch ended up being a HUGE waste of time, however I did get the backup uploaded to YouTube, so I'll instead be embedding that video here:

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Surgery (3/15/2018)

For those who have been watching, you may have noticed I've had connection problems that has effected my ability to continue streaming, cutting short those streams at least twice in the last week.  I am posting this update to let my viewers/followers know that I am expecting to have surgery on Thursday (3/15/2018).  While I am expected to be released the same day (unless there are complications), I will be in recovery & may not have the ability to stream much (possibly at all) until I have recovered from the procedure.  I still do not know how long the recovery period is expected to be, so I can't give an estimate on how long streaming could be put on hold due to the expectation that I won't be able to spend time sitting at the computer to play/stream games (games on the Wii might still be possible).

UPDATE:   I will definitely be offline the entirety of the 15th seeing as I need to be monitored the rest of the day & overnight, even if I'm back at home; the only way this will be possible will be if I spend the night at my parents (I don't have a guest room & I'm certain they don't want to sleep on the couch in the front room).  My parents do at least have proper internet at their house now (having dial-up up until only the last month, where they got internet through Xfinity), it might be possible for me to connect to their wifi through my Android or laptop, but streaming definitely won't be possible (if gaming at all) until I get back home on the 16th & that's only if I can tolerate the pain until I've fully recovered from the surgery.