That's obviously not what's happening here though. I have plenty of adult friends who go on public and private servers and actively trash talk during games and have never been banned. And none of their friends have been banned. A small group of 10 year-old children aren't having a coordinated attack of hundreds to thousands of reports against them repeatedly over many months.

Not to mention tacking on the requirement that instead of a bunch of 10 year-old children being - as they tend to be - offensive/testing limits when adults aren't looking, Microsoft is publicly lying to their customers (creating liability) and implementing an automated system so poor it doesn't so much as check if the reported user even uses chat.

EDIT: To further substantiate what I'm saying, I just checked and you cannot submit a report without selecting the specific messages that relate to it. The UX requires that the individual messages are selected and cannot be submitted empty. The parent is at least being misled in thinking their child or their friends don't use the chat feature.

> A small group of 10 year-old children aren't having a coordinated attack of hundreds to thousands of reports against them repeatedly over many months.

You know they are likely playing with a large group of other 10 year old children right? There’s going to be at least a few amongst them that just think it’s fun to mass report everyone that says anything marginally inappropriate.

Imagine you buy a Monopoly, D&D or MtG set. You don't have room to play it at home so your child goes to a game cafe to play it with friends. A sex offender is trying to cozy up to them. Who would you blame for that, Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast? Is allowing them to confiscate a game set (or cripple it so it can't be played with other people) the right solution?

As a side effect, if you or your child are a bit inconsiderate during a tense moment of the game and someone gets mad back, with a press of the button they can block you from ever playing by reporting select words to game publisher. You will not be entitled to refund. Would you say that if this was not abused in a couple of months then it's definitely OK and we shouldn't worry about it?

Minecraft was sold as a game set. There are paid official places you can go play it now, but buying the game set does not require you to use them. Do not mistake it with Roblox, that one is both a game cafe and a game set.

having your internet connection disconnect is also a ban-able offense ...

Perhaps the server you’re playing on has a plugin that disables chat reporting?

In this case, the reports need to include messages by the person who is being reported. This is verified with private/public keys.

To be mass reported, you need to be on a server with all the people who want to report you.

Honestly, Mojang built this system well, and seeing Hacker News full of assumptions is really disappointing.

People are recounting actual real instances of abuse. Both here and youtube creators. And it seems pretty plausible. This is basically enabling online bullying and lynch mobs. You only have to join one negative server to get banned from everything everywhere. I think this would be more forgiveable if it was an autoban from the place you were misbehaving, or if the bans were default limited in length without a detailed appeal process involving the person whose account was being stolen servers could opt out of the ban process so at least you could still play with friends at home.