Moderation Tools for World Creators
tracked
Lucifer MStar
Allow world creators the ability to moderate their OWN worlds and issue their OWN bans. I'm tired of seeing crashers and exploiters in my worlds and kicking them is nothing. I want the ability to ban certain individuals from my worlds.
There is absolutely no harm in doing this. Who is it going to hurt? The exploiters and cheaters.
What if world creators abuse it and ban people from THEIR OWN worlds? Well it's their fault their world fails to gather a population.
What else will this do? Allow world creators to suit the needs of their wanted audience.
it will also help take the stress off of the actually game moderators.
Thank you,
Lucifer MStar - Creator of 30+ worlds including church of marriages.
P.S. Communicate more with your community on what you are doing about these crashers and exploiters and maybe the heat and stress will die down. Honestly this is the most annoying thing communication.
Log In
Sotalo
The Museum's biggest rule, please respect the artists and their time, is meant to ensure the personal safety of all contributors. Artists and contributors shouldn't get flooded with hate, harassment, threats, or excessive popularity. In return, they're willing to contribute and have their art and history displayed for free, and the project can operate. I tell people of my mod powers, and they feel more secure having their names and history displayed. When trolls first found my world and realized I had the power to kick anyone in any public instance, they asked me to stop joining public lobbies. When they realized these powers are built into VRC, they stopped.
I join instances opened by others. TheDoctor26 (creator of Furhub and Furhub Karaoke) opened the instance where I held Sylys' memorial on the day of his passing. While relaying his life's history, I knew not everyone would approve. But because I had mod powers, I felt more at-ease not having to take 80 people to a new instance just to ensure history could be told accurately. And I did remove someone that night who harassed me in that instance.
World creators who abuse their powers aren't benefiting their world. But because full details of mod actions aren't publicly shared, mods already have to put up with harassment from people who know less about the reasoning behind such actions, and any Canny request to eliminate mod powers undercuts moderation even further. Mods need more help to ensure peace, not less.
I can say any decision to remove mod tools from world creators will absolutely hurt the museum. And since world creators have a vested interest in the worlds they create, their powers are less likely to be used for petty reasons and more likely to be used to curtail trolling, hatemongering, and bad actors of all sorts.
Deantwo
Sotalo: So, aside from the difficulty of moving 80 players from a normal public instance to a group public instance, there is no reason for you to have these world author moderation powers? I don't know your world or your exact use-cares, but we can find better ways to solve these issues.
Sounds like we just need ways to change the ownership of an existing instance. So you can convert a normal public instance into a group public instance.
Or maybe a more reliable way to move a massive number of people between instances. For example a way to automatically invite everyone in an instance to a new instance or something. Probably something like a "party system" would be best here, so you can join a party and have an easier time following them between instances.
The last and arguable most effective options are already built-in to VRChat. Everyone has the ability to mute or block people that are being a nuisance. And if that isn't enough, a vote-to-kick can be called on the troublemaker.
Either way, these are just random first ideas that could potentially solve the issues you are describing, which would allow the new groups features to take over where the old "world author moderation powers" have clearly failed.
Some of the worst world authors seem to be so entitled that they think they should be able to enter any private instances of their world, or that they should be immune to group moderation actions while in group public instances of their world. And this is all just so they can prevent a few people they have labeled as "bad" from using their published world.
Sotalo
Deantwo NO. If world creators can't moderate public instances, it will just lead to creators never wanting to use Public instances ever again. There is a deep, longstanding record of very lousy trolls doxxing, harassing, and spreading false rumors targetting Furries. Any attempt to limit world creators' abilities will give those trolls more power. Some people use information in the worlds to benefit their own hatemongering schemes and have broken trust completely. This is not 1 in 10 people, or even 1 in 100, this is 1 in 10,000. Those people pose an immediate danger and threat to the safety of users and break trust with the platform. We can give information to VRChat's Trust and Safety team, but without any ability to moderate public instances, World Creators would become powerless to help people immediately when known abusers are permitted free reign. The good far outweighs the bad on this decision. World creators who abuse their powers can and should be reported, and after investigations it would make sense to remove them. But known harassers and abusers can't wait for a decision from the TOS team to stop harassing people in an instance. One of my friends recorded such an interaction and submitted it to VRChat.
People salty about world creator's moderation are just salty about moderation in general. Until VRChat finds some magic way to eliminate trolls, my vote will always be for better moderation. And nothing anyone says will justify a world creator's inability to remove known dangerous and psychotic individuals from spreading rumors, ripping avatars, crashing lobbies, etc. in a public instance of their own world.
Deantwo
Sotalo:
> "NO. If world creators can't moderate public instances, it will just lead to creators never wanting to use Public instances ever again."
Plenty of people don't like normal public instances for any number of reasons. I don't see why the world author/creator should be treated any differently.
But I will agree that normal public instances would be without any moderation at all. I just don't see that as a bad thing currently. Maybe because I haven't seen all the same things you have. I didn't mean to be insensitive or anything.
> "Those people pose an immediate danger and threat to the safety of users and break trust with the platform."
Then you, as the world author, kicking them from a single public instance doesn't make a difference. You should make a detailed report to VRChat's Trust and Safety, so they can be dealt with correctly and potentially permanently.
> "World creators who abuse their powers can and should be reported, and after investigations it would make sense to remove them."
I agree, but we are still waiting to see these reports actually leading to any sort of action.
> "People salty about world creator's moderation are just salty about moderation in general."
I think you are missing the scope of current world author moderation powers. The world author has moderation powers in ALL instances of their world. If a vindictive world author wanted to, they could assert their will unto any instance they manage to enter. For example, if a world author could enter a friends+ instance owned by someone they dislike, they could join and literally kick the instance owner out instantly. The same is true for group public instances, the world author also has moderation powers there, which has caused moderation wars where the groups are forced to ban the world author from their group just to prevent them from joining.
I would be happy enough if the world author moderation powers were just limited to only be in normal public instances. That way everything will seem consistent with the rest of VRChat, and we won't have to worry about moderation wars. VRChat can then take their time to decide what they want to do with moderation of normal public instances in due time. Simply just prevent world authors from asserting their moderation on instances they don't own.
Sotalo
Deantwo You may not have had experience with this, but many have. Some world creators and moderators experienced attacks, harassment, defamation, and doxxing by trolls in their world. Trolls who use alt accounts to bypass bans regularly. Restraining abilities to moderate public instances makes VRChat's public instances that much more unsafe for people.
Blocking people does not stop them from sending defamation, death threats, and swat threats. Ensuring they are at least unallowed in the worlds of the creators they hurt is the first step in making sure that behavior gets controlled.
If a world creator cannot guarantee safety in their own world, then what will supplement this lack of safety?
Deantwo
Sotalo:
> "If a world creator cannot guarantee safety in their own world, then what will supplement this lack of safety?"
The players (or world creators themselves) can make a new instance, preferably a group public instance so they can moderate it themselves and feel safe. Or they can go to a private instance if they want to be even safer.
If you want to encourage people that visit your world to use group public instances of your official group, so you can moderate it better, then look at how the Trans Academy does it. If you enter a normal public instance of their world, it has a message explaining that it is unmoderated and suggest that people move to an instance hosted by the official group.
Chirping_Cat
If the suggested feature is implemented, world creators will be held responsible for moderating witch hunts that are unrelated to their world's activity, even though they may lack the qualifications, experience, or skills to do so. This combined with Sasha Mason's concerns about sharing bans, which have already shown mixed results on a small scale, makes it evident that the difficulties of implementing this feature far outweigh any potential benefits.
Lucifer MStar
This is very outdated and now with the group system I think this is irrelevant now!
Chirping_Cat
Lucifer MStar: Just need the ability for 'Public' instances to be associated to a VRC Group, and to be renamed 'Official Public' to distinguish from 'Groups Public'
Then you'll have all the tools needed, whether or not we should is a another matter however.
Sotalo
Chirping_Cat Trolls will flock to unmoderated Public instances, then.
Chirping_Cat
Sotalo I don't think you quite understand.
What I am proposing is that Publics be depcreated and replaced with 'Official Publics', which are just Publics that are associated with a group run and maintained by the world creator. This would allow world creators to assign in-game moderation abilities of those instances to people of their choosing, and to use the inbuilt ban functionality of groups to ban people from Official Public instances, whilst still allowing Groups, Friends and Invite instances moderation autonomy.
Even if trolls flocked to 'Unmoderated' instances, which I personally feel is hyperbole, that would only encourage people to use Official Public instances, no?
Sotalo
Chirping_Cat This is not the ask. The ask is to remove moderation from world creators. The official group system may work for a large, organized system like Furry Hideout, but for the tens of thousands of worlds that don't have complex community structures and systems to build and promote group public instances, this ask just condemns all those public instances to zero moderation. Groups of trolls can prevent each other from getting vote kicked. They can go in and vote kick ordinary people from the instance. We see this constantly. The one saving grace against trolling is giving world creators the power to stop it.
Whaddageek
This is a bad idea. People are astoundingly petty and possessive about their creations, and this is ripe for an incredible amount of abuse.
DAG-XR
World creators should be the absolute decision maker on how moderation works in the spaces that they took the time and effort to design. World bans are available on Rec Room, Horizon Worlds, and probably other platforms too.
Sasha Mason
DAG-XR: Disagreed. It can create complications in how users are able to hang out with their friends or attend to events if they got banned by a world author. World creators often also know each other, so it is very possible for one person to get banned by several authors at the same time via ban lists. This can potentially make the game outright unplayable for certain people, depending on which group of authors banned them.
Unlike VRChat account bans, world authors wouldn't need any justified reason for why they banned someone. It can simply be that they heard something bad about them or they just generally don't really like your face, or maybe you did something in the world that is tied to an automated report system to ban you when you, for example, dare to cheat - regardless of instance type.
This wouldn't really help make public spaces safer either. If someone's goal is to be nothing but annoying, they can keep creating as many alt accounts as they want. A world ban won't change that. There's already more than enough moderation tools available to deal with bad actors. World bans are just going to disconnect social groups, for them to move to a completely different world or certain communities just have to deal with some people being left out at all, potentially just because of some petty drama they had somewhere.
So, TL;DR, depending on how this ends up being used by world authors, this comes dangerously close to what VRChat Developers can do when they ban someone.
Chirping_Cat
Sasha Mason Correct, there are already well-documented cases of this occurring on a much smaller scale. For instance, a handful of world creators formed the United Moderation VRChat Group to run 'official' group public instances for various worlds, and there are well-documented cases of egregious bans being issued by one of more of the individuals with moderation abilities, to which public apologies on Twitter/X had to eventually be issued. Whilst it's one thing to say "We removed it eventually, our process worked!" one cannot guarantee that such will occur in every instance, leaving potentially innocent users unable to join friends in a bunch of fairly popular worlds.
Sasha Mason
I don't know if allowing something like that would overall be a good thing to do. Sure, honest world creators would be able to ban bad actors from their world, but it also enables anyone who is making a world to randomly ban any person they see fit for any reason.
Imagine if my friend group was hanging out in a world that I can't join because of some drama I had with the world creator, or one of the world creators friends, if I were banned from being in certain worlds or playing certain games permanently, even in my own instances.
How would VRChat combat world authors abusing this, banning anyone they feel they see fit, regardless of whether they're actually bad or not?
I feel like there is a very good reason for why VRChat won't allow something like that. Having people being left out of hangouts and community events because a world author decided to ban someone just cuz they felt like it would be awful.
EDIT: The only way I see this being okay, is if it would exclusively affect public instances. Friends+, group instances ect should be moderated by the instance owner / group moderators. As the instance owner of a public instance is the world author, I'd say it would be more than fair for these types of instances.
But I wouldn't want to feel like needing to change to a different world because one of my friends had some issue with the world author at some point and got banned, or when communities hosting events feel pressured to go to a completely different world from the usual ones because someone in the community got banned for a random reason.
This is a dangerous thing to allow.
Deantwo
Sasha Mason: Totally agree. I literally had this happen a couple months back. A world author had me on a blacklist using an Udon script, if I joined the world (even in non-public instances) I was instantly teleported to a prison-box far from everyone else.
This stupid drama kept me from hanging out with some friends for a while when they were in that world. It was not a fun experience.
The issue has since been resolved though. Since such blacklists are against the Creator Guidelines, the world author was forced to remove the blacklist script.
I am sure the world author will still instantly kick me if I happen to be in the same instance as them, but I guess that is technically still allowed.
Sasha Mason
Deantwo: Yeah, if certain individuals, groups or communities do not want you around, by all means, power to them.
Deantwo
I would actually like to take the opposite stance here.
I don't understand why a world author should have moderation powers in a public instance. If the world author wants to be in control of the instance they are in, they should make a friends+ instance or a group public instance.
Basically, the new group public instances solve this issue in the best way possible. Anyone can make an instance with the level of moderation they want. If you want the world's "official" moderation you use the world author's group. If you want you and your friends to moderator your own instance, you use a group you created yourself.
Pure public instances should not be subject to weird moderation from some random person just because they happened to to be the world's author. Some world authors can be really weird and controlling, even in an instance that is supposed to be public for everyone. If you don't want specific people to ever use your world, don't make it public.
If you want to control who can use the world you authored, I suggest checking this Canny post or make a new Canny post about more options for making worlds only accessible to specific people/groups.
Deantwo
All that said. I think it is about time that world creators lose their "world author moderation powers" over all instances of their world.
CRiMSOM13
This would only make sense if there are VRC+ worlds or group + worlds, I do not support this unless worlds are marked as premium.
DarkGrey
My only concern with something along the lines of banning players from our worlds would be a tyrannical world maker banning anyone they don't like because they just have the power to do so under the guise of, "they are bullies," or "They were cheating I swear it.", basically gatekeeping their world.
Beyond
I'm surprised to see how old this request is, so here's my two cents on the topic considering we HAVE the ability to do this right now, it's just that it's against the current TOS.
This is mainly something I think game worlds really need, specifically ones with save systems.
If we as world creators have a valid reason with proof of why a user should not be allowed in our world, we should be allowed to lock them out of our world. If the reason is not valid or is considered discriminatory, then yeah, that's when the world creator should be punished for abusing it.
The TOS regarding it should combat people abusing blacklists/ban systems, not those who are utilizing it for actual moderation of their worlds. I am tired of receiving pictures of people cheating in my worlds like I have any control over it, so having the control expected of me would be nice.
LoppyDaCutie
Beyond: unfortunately, this would be breaching vrchats Terms of Service by preventing players from access to a server which as some may know worlds people want to join. also it may be better to prevent them from joining/creating any actual public instances. like they can create a group instance that is public but not able to create a public instance itself.
Chirping_Cat
Beyond: It would be better if VRChat deprecated Public instances as we know it, replacing it with a system where the VRChat SDK would allow a World Creator to associate the upload with a VRChat Group. Instances run by the official group can show as Official Public instead of Group Public, but essentially that's a vanity difference and from the back end perspective they're the same thing. Instead of worlds suggesting a Public instance by default, they'd suggest an Official Public instead. This change would:
A) Clear up any ambiguity between 'Public' and 'Group Public' instances by clearly throwing the 'Official' term into worlds that are moderated by the world creator/s group.
B) Allow World Creators to ban people from Official Publics via the pre-existing Group Ban functionality.
C) Ensure that these additional banning' powers for World Creators are constrained to Official Publics and do not extend to Invite, Friend or Group worlds. (To do so would be enormous overreach by the world creator)
Load More
→