Mezigoto
On 8/20/2017, I went to the channel of Mezigoto, somebody I hosted about a week back (when I was helping him in a game called Fortnite, stated in his channel description that they were noob in the game & spent a few hours giving him tips), to find that apparently he had banned me from the channel on my second visit:
click image for full screenshot of channel & chat
Of course he hasn't given me any reason for the ban & it's unlikely he'll get/see the message I sent him:
I'm expecting the same slanderous reason Ring_of_Favor has decided to do this (backseat gaming), although I did mention this before on his channel when I was in there the first time, he might have decided to place the ban after reading the details about RoF & decided he didn't want to mess with the possibility of getting the same publication of his actions sooner or later if he did. The problem is that this action (which must've been done after I left, can't say entirely when however), only places him on that list. This was only the second time going to his channel (that I can remember) & was going to switch the auto-host to his channel due to the one that usually gets hosted on my channel playing a lot of games from Blizzard (a company that I've been boycotting since 2010) & I'd rather have Fortnite being hosted on my channel rather than Hearthstone, however decided otherwise when I saw the ban was in place (one of the reasons why I sent a message before just putting the host in place, just in case what I was expecting might happen happened & this is proven here).
What makes this matter particularly sickening is he placed the ban knowing he was still getting auto-hosted off of my channel, which only shows the mindset of this individual. Spending a few hours helping him learn the mechanics of the game, giving him a follow & auto-host because he seemed to be appreciative to it (as well as a decent guy, which I was apparently dead-wrong on), only to be banned as soon as I left the channel only proves that this is the type of lowlife that others should not be attempting to help in any shape & form & I'll be sure to block him in any game or platform I run into him on.
This was a guy that I spent a few hours with the first time I joined his channel & he seemed appreciative for the help, so I not only followed him, but also added him to my auto-host list. When I found out he wasn't as decent a guy as I had originally thought (same situation with gameskooled), I responded to the ban by:
Banning him from my channel
Removing him from the Twitch Hosting panel on my channel
Removing him from my auto-host list
Removing my follow to his channel
Using my image blockers to break display of his avatar on the suggested channels display on the right side of the screen so I wouldn't be tempted to go there anymore
I've been considering using the uBlock Origin plugin for Firefox to start blocking channels from even loading that have placed bans on me, just in case I accidentally go to one of them using the Random channel listing (something that apparently has been discontinued on Twitch, but you can still get there if you have a direct URL to it), I think it's probably time to start doing that (on all 3 of my computers); I'd do it through my hardware firewalls if I could (which I'm still attempting to do through keyword bans, but haven't succeeded yet) so no computer on the network could access those channels (including guest computers).
We'll see if there ends up being any response to the message I sent him, although I received no message in his chat (or a verbal reply in his channel) when I attempted to whisper him (not even a verification that the whisper had been sent, an error that privacy didn't allow whispers from people not being followed or error stating that he couldn't receive the whisper because I was blocked from his channel, although it does appear the whisper was sent when I look at my whisper history).
Attacks are still happening regularly on my channel ever since the mockery stream on RoF's channel on 6/3/2017, I was originally give it 3 months for the attacks to stop before I fully removed the Free Games section from my channel (currently only available to subscribers to my channel on Patreon), I decided this was the push that is going to have it removed even before the deadline. I may lose a lot of followers because of this (I know a number of them were only following because of the Free Games list), but if they are only following for freebies (which is still possible if they are subscribing via Patreon), then they don't need to actually be following the channel, all it does is boosts the Follower count & doesn't really help with the channel when they're not being active in the stream (which is usually the case in may channel, sometimes I mentally can envision tumbleweeds going across the screen while I'm playing/streaming & it just ends up being a waste of bandwidth streaming to nobody, which is why I started a donation system).
Now you have to consider whether you really want to be contributing to this Twitch user & this goes even farther beyond the situation with RoF or gameskooled. Let's look at the facts:
Ring_of_Favor
Wasn't followed
Wasn't auto-hosted
Has been manually hosted every time I went to his channel (with the exception of when banned)
Not friends on Twitch
Ban was placed silently, wasn't known until a later visit; the reason was stated as backseat gaming, however he never stated he was appreciative for the help I attempted to provide him (which is likely why I never followed him or auto-hosted him)
gameskooled
Was followed (removed after the situation on RoF's channel that had him stating he was placing a ban on me on RoF's Twitch)
Was following me (removed shortly after I sent him a link to the review of RoF)
Was auto-hosted (removed after the situation on RoF's channel that had him stating he was placing a ban on me on RoF's Twitch)
Was auto-hosting me (removed shortly after I sent him a link to the review of RoF)
Was a Friend on Twitch (removed shortly after I sent him a link to the review of RoF)
Was a Friend on Steam (I removed & blocked him on Steam after he stated he was placing a ban on me on RoF's Twitch)
Ban was placed in response to the review being written on RoF; while I haven't verified this yet, I don't think I need to after he removed the Twitch friendship, follow & auto-host himself, prior to me unfriending & blocking him on Steam
Mezigoto
Was followed (removed after I realized the ban had been put in place)
I believe he had a follow on me for a very short time, I would assume removed after he went over details on my channel & the review of RoF
Was auto-hosted (removed after I realized the ban had been put in place)
Not added to Twitch friends list, however this was something I was attempting to do towards the end of his stream the first time I was in it, Twitch has just made that option VERY difficult to find
Ban was placed silently, wasn't known until a later visit
All I can say is I'm glad I didn't give him a subscription & these types of situations only show why I probably will NEVER subscribe/donate to a Twitch channel or even put my credit card into their system (which means I won't be utilizing the Twitch donation/subscription system even if receiving or loot drops; although it seems I may have gotten some donations in the past, I haven't actually received them, because I haven't even applied for the partnership program). If these types of situations are going to effect my willingness to put my payment information on Twitch itself, I think it might be time I disable loot drops on my channel (using the option I've run across in the options on Twitch in the past); this might cause me to lose followers, but again if the payment system can be manipulated in a corrupt manner such as this, I'd sooner not allow people watching my stream to benefit from Twitch perks for being a Prime member...
UPDATE: At the end of his stream for the day, he was stating something about needing to get back to 100 followers by the end of the day (I would assume there may be a stipulation regarding the partnership program to be able to receive donations, subscriptions & so on directly through Twitch), as he was only at 94 after I removed my follow from his channel. A couple of viewers in his stream stated that he could expect 6 bots to follow his channel, dummy accounts I would assume. When I checked again today (8/21/2017), I noticed he was at exactly 100 followers so I know that's exactly what happened; some of those usernames make it pretty clear they are dummy accounts, as well as the fact that there is literally nothing on those channels (which I guess isn't surprising if they aren't streaming, but I caught his viewers stating they would do this, so he pretty well got caught red-handed for boosting his follower rating through dummy accounts & his followers would be considered accomplices in this). Of course what he's said in that stream really can't be determined because he always plays music in the background of his streams, which pretty well causes the entirety (most of it anyways) of his stream to get muted, however the chat is still there & the comments about sending "bots" to his channel to follow it can through the chat in the Past Broadcast where he was playing BATTLEFIELD: UNKNOWN SOLDIER on 8/20/2017. I believe stat boosting is a violation that could be reported to Twitch, however I haven't found that specific detail in Twitch's rules yet to report it; I could attempt to report it as an other violation, although seeing as the last attempt I made to report such a violation just threw an error, I don't know that I'm going to attempt it. I'm just going to make that information public here so people are aware of fraudulent stats through account manipulation (multiple accounts) so they are aware that he's manipulating Twitch policy to stay in the partnership program.
In any case, I have put the blocks in place on 3 different Twitch channels where they had me banned (regardless of reason, seeing as most seem like bogus reasons anyways) through uBlock Origin, now I won't be accidentally going to those channels by clicking on a random link, what I'll see when this is the case is something similar to this (the URL will obviously vary depending on the channel):
I've also used this to fully remove the avatar from the left-hand bar on Twitch (previously I was using a plugin called Image Blocker for Firefox, which oddly enough worked well when I blocked the avatars for Ring_of_Favor & gameskooled, but seems to have had some issues when I blocked the avatar for Mezigoto, causing the broken image icon to appear rather than just hiding it), so that line won't even show to his channel if it's compressed, however if I expand the line to full size, it will still be seen (normally it's compressed, so this really isn't a problem); I did attempt to fully block the line from showing, however haven't found the correct element to block yet. One thing to not however when it comes to avatars, as I've noticed with gameskooled; if they change their avatar, the block on those images will have to be re-applied, seeing as the image URL apparently changes with each new avatar upload...
Of course if I end up switching off uBlock Origin on Twitch (as has been the case since I started using it, it wasn't really needed on Twitch until now), those channels will still load without problems, which explains why I had to take several passes at blocking those pages, because even though I could place the ban, I didn't actually have it filtering anything due to not filtering anything on Twitch...
UPDATE: I checked his channel again on 8/23/2017, figuring I could pull the chat logs where his viewers stated they were going to send bots his way to subscribe to his channel (to get to him back to 100 followers), found that he had removed a few Past Broadcasts videos after the Fortnite stream on 8/20/2017 (the one where I found out where I had been banned from his channel). Furthermore there hasn't been any further Past Broadcasts archived after that point (minus the 3 that he had apparently deleted), so I have to assume he's turned off that feature on Twitch (not that I see it did him much good anyways, the music he plays in the background has a good majority of pretty well all of them muted). I expect he's seen this review (not that I've given him a direct link, but I did send him messages stating I was going to put him on my blacklist as a result of the ban, which I think he was already aware of given he probably read about the situation with Ring_of_Favor), of course he probably went to my channel afterwards & found the mention of his username & direct link to this blacklist entry, later noticing the update regarding him manipulating the Follower count with dummy accounts (I have noticed the counter on this page hasn't gone up since my last update however, could be he has non-standard ports blocked, which the counter uses to display the counter & it won't increase if it's not being displayed).
I also grabbed a few usernames (or at least display names) from his Fortnite stream on 8/20/2017 (which ironically has about 3 different games in it, not just Fortnite). I've already blocked him on Steam (considered stating something on his Steam profile, but held back on throwing a link to this review on there), I'll be watching for him in Fortnite to block & mute him there also (which should include the entire Epic Games platform).
UPDATE: I later blocked his Google+ & YouTube accounts also. It wasn't until in the evening that I decided to leave a comment on his Steam profile, requesting a reason for the ban:
After I posted this comment to his profile, I removed the message sent to him on Twitch from my outbox (seen above), although I have to believe he may have seen the whisper, even if it didn't show privately in his channel after it was sent. My expectations of how he was going to respond to this comment is to not give a response & quickly remove the comment & block my Steam account. 2 days later, only the first of 3 of what was expected has happened. I've seen he's been online a number of times & has had several streams since then (I'm pretty certain he must've seen the comment already), interestingly enough, he has chosen not to respond to the comment on his profile (even if the potential response is to not respond, delete the post & block); seems to me that Mezigoto is playing it a lot smarter then RoF did & rather than retaliating to the publication of his actions, he's chosen to ignore it. This does at least show me that Mezigoto is much more level-headed than that of RoF & his lowlife streaming buddies, but that doesn't mean I consider Mezigoto a decent person after I wasted a few hours helping him learn Fortnite's mechanics (something I asked him if he'd like the help on before I got into the details, expecting exactly what happened if I did attempt to help him & he didn't want it, although it happened regardless of stating he would like the help), giving him a Follow & auto-host, then taking advantage of the views he would have gotten off of my channel from the auto-host after quietly placing the ban after I left. Mezigoto may be smarter & more level-headed than RoF, but shows he has a more deceiving nature & will take advantage of what he can when he's apparently already made up his mind that he's going to ban you, you just won't find out the reality of it until later...
UPDATE: On 8/28/2017, I verified that Mezigoto had blocked me on his Steam profile (verified through a secondary Steam account, where the ability to leave a comment was still visible) & as expected, he did not respond to the comment. What's interesting is that he chose to leave the comment there, but seeing as he chose not to respond to it, I decided I would delete the comment myself after this update is pushed.
Backing up on this a bit, while I do have to give him credit for not verbally retaliating (as far as I know), you have to look back at the reason why the ban was placed in the first place (which may not actually be known yet, but here are a few reasons I can think of:
Despite requesting the help when I offered it to him (before going into detail), he could have banned under the same allegations that RoF did (backseat gaming). However when you look at the rules on his channel, he states, "No backseat gaming unless explicitly asked for."
For starters, it's not backseat gaming just giving him the mechanics of the game so he can better make use of stat increases.
Any suggestions given were not specific instructions, only statements on how I would do it.
He did accept my offer for help by specifically asking for it when offered, so it goes without saying this shouldn't have been a reason for a ban, but RoF was the first (that I know of) that has used that accusation to their toxic advantage.
It is possible he read the article about Ring_of_Favor & decided to ban for that reason. While it was stated on his channel once about the ban (and he showed disbelief when I stated it), I didn't go beyond a simple statement about the situation (can't remember if he warned me about trash talking or not, but all I stated was the ban for a false reason, which is truth, not trash talking). Again I will refer to the rules on his channel to point out it states "Don't bash other streamers." although I can't be certain whether that was added before or after the ban was placed. Of course it's possible he might have just placed the ban simply because he found a link on my channel & the article had been written about the situation after RoF's disgusting display, so I can't say for certain whether this rule on his channel had any part in the ban being placed, although I do see it as a good possibility (not that there's anything good about it).
No specific trash talking was said while in his channel (aside from stating the mockery stream from RoF), so if the ban was placed specifically because of the article being written or being linked off of my channel, he placed a ban for a reason not relevant to his own channel (external). Although considering I mirror bans on my own channel (when for a false reason; legitimate bans I probably wouldn't pursue any actions on, but I don't usually do anything in other channels that would warrant a legitimate ban), I suppose I can't speak too much about this point, but I wasn't the first one to place a ban when it came to Mezigoto...
The irony of the situation is if he placed the ban for the purpose of the review being written on RoF, he must've know he'd be getting an article written on him also if he followed suit. This shows he was either asking for one to be written on him or just plain stupidity, because he couldn't see that it was likely to happen if he did.
Even more ironic is if the ban was under the accusation of backseat gaming & he had seen the article on RoF, he should have definitely known that one would be written on him if he placed a ban.
There was a slim possibility that one of his moderators may have placed the ban & Mezigoto may have not known about it until I had whispered him (or contacted him on Steam, if he never saw the whisper). One reason why I believe this is he had to tell one of his viewers on 8/20/2017 not to skip song requests simply to get their requests played sooner & apparently he has given users moderator simply so he wouldn't have to stop playing to allow them temporary rights to post links (not a great reason to give somebody moderator privs if you ask me).
While unlikely, there is a slim possibility it could have been a shared moderator from Ring_of_Favor's channel (or one of the others that followed suit when he did his mockery stream, both Followers & moderators) that simply placed the ban without discussing it with Mezigoto.
It is possible that one of his moderators decided to place the ban making the accusation of backseat gaming themselves.
It is possible that I may have been banned by one of his moderators simply for giving a large amount of detail on Fortnite in a short period of time, meaning they didn't like talkative individuals. Of course this could have also been placed by Mezigoto, which as far as I'm concerned would be a trap set by accepting the help & I would expect the detail about RoF banning for the false-reason backseat gaming didn't help...
The ban was placed after I had left the channel, so whatever reason the ban was placed, it was obvious the decision wasn't made while I was still in the stream (possibly not to cut off Mezigoto off from the information he was being provided with). Furthermore the Follow & auto-host was active for about a week & a half after I left the stream, which was promptly removed when I realized I had been banned on the second visit, so this only shows devious intention if he had already decided to place the ban, but decided to wait until I had left to place it.
If it had happened to be a moderator ban that Mezigoto was unaware of & he was willing to fix the problem by removing the ban (which was unlikely after going off on him via whisper & stating specifically I was going to place him on my blacklist), I would have removed this page & reversed the ban on him, but would have waited to see if they needed to reinstated/republished (should the ban or retaliation happen again) before adding him to my auto-host list again (I probably would have given him a Follow, however). After the block on his Steam account & lack of incentive to give a reason, it was obvious that he had no intentions to take the matter any further, so I have no intentions in reversing any of the steps I have taken in response to the false-ban at this point.
As of the ban on Mezigoto's channel on 8/20/2017, I have made the following changes to my channel:
It goes without saying, I've made mention about the ban on my Twitch Feed, so I don't really need to go into that.
As would be expected, I removed the Follow & auto-host from Mezigoto's channel when I found out about the ban, perhaps a week & a half after my first visit to his channel & placing both the Follow & auto-host on his. His channel (including link) was also removed from the Twitch hosting panel on my channel.
The ban he had placed was mirrored on my channel.
Going through my ban list & my Twitch blacklists on this site, I placed a few more bans on individuals that were on the blacklist, but not currently on the ban list.
I reordered the panels on my channel a bit, so important panels would be first, then panels more relevant to the channel itself would be closer to the top & additional information (with less relevance to Twitch) were closer to the bottom.
I removed the ban on pinapleking. Technically speaking he was banned because PSN user EPICMINECRAFT25 enlisted his help to cause harassment/retaliation on my channel through various accounts (after blocking whispers from those that weren't on my follow list because of this situation & he was apparently unwilling to verify his email address on the many attack account he was using to do the harassment on). Considering I believe pinapleking to also be a victim in this matter, I decided I would give him another chance should he ever decide to come back.
The Free Games list was officially discontinued on my channel. I was giving a grace period on the (almost daily) attacks from RoF's viewers/moderators for them to stop & possibly bring back the Free Games list publicly on my channel, but I cut that short (about half a month) after this ban & the Free Games list is now only available to subscribers (via Patreon) on my channel. I did however leave this section behind to point out giveaways that were pretty well lost (not listed) due to mass attacks from both PSN user EPICMINECRAFT25 & Ring_of_Favor. I also ended up appending (subscriber-only) to the title of that panel to show that the giveaway list was no longer available to non-subscribers, with additional details being added to the body (when I removed details about it being public or suspended) as to why it was no longer going to be public.
The User Blacklist panel was updated on my channel to include a list of all users that were currently banned from the channel (including the new bans that I had previously missed), as well as links to further details (when available).
2 additional suggestions were added to my Twitch Suggestions panel on my channel. These include:
Options to auto-remove Friends, Follows & Auto-Hosts on being banned from a channel.
Notifications (with optional reason) when banned from a channel.
I made a decision that I would NEVER put my payment information on Twitch! If this is the response to help (and likely a virus-like ban wave from other users that don't like the fact I am getting the facts about these bans out there), there is really no reason in subscribing, donating or even attempting to receiving donations through Twitch, not to mention I expect Twitch could potentially misuse any payment information I may have put on there, so the cons severely outweigh the pros when it comes to any paid function on Twitch at this point.
Because I do not want to support Twitch financially after it's become obvious that they allow users to play God (and be abusive) on their own channels, I will be removing my channel from Twitch Prime loot drops (recently added when Twich Prime loot was added).
His profiles were also blocked over 3 other networks:
As for Mezigoto's Twitter, can't really block him on a network for which I don't have an account on, so I didn't take that route. I have never really had a reason to have a Twitter account that pushed me to creating one, I don't intend on creating a Twitter account & the ignorance of some individuals on there (do I even need to mention Trump) only further gives me reason to avoid it like the plague.
Additional steps were that I utilized the uBlock Origin plugin in Firefox to block a number of the elements on his channel, as well as pages that were linked from his channel. Since the ban on his channel (or at least when I noticed it on 8/20/2017), I have added the following rules in uBlock Origin:
||www.twitch.tv/mezigoto$document,domain=www.twitch.tv,important
||static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/c6833bba48025f1b-profile_image-70x70.png$image
||www.twitch.tv/ring_of_favor$document,domain=www.twitch.tv,important
||www.twitch.tv/gameskooled$document,domain=www.twitch.tv,important
||static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/blizzard-profile_image-ede74b5c45a43edc-70x70.jpeg$image
||www.greenmangaming.com/?tap_a=1964-996bbb&tap_s=144242-b85bf8$document,domain=www.greenmangaming.com,important
||static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/panel-57524004-image-ed02c401ae5d5598-320-320.jpeg$image
||streamlabs.com/mezigoto$document,important
||static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/panel-57524004-image-ae0bb627ec9f85ca-320-320.png$image
||www.speq.me/Mezigoto/*$document,important
||discordapp.com/invite/vpg8qst$document,important
||static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/panel-57524004-image-6b042b19729422e9-320-320.png$image
Not all of these are for his channel or links off his channel, but there have been a few others I decided to put in place when I decided uBlock Origin had a good potential to cut off access to these pages (or simply as a reminder not to go to them, should I accidentally do so).
I have also attempted to add the Follow & Subscribe elements on Mezigoto's channel to uBlock Origin to block their appearance, however so far I haven't succeeded in doing so on his channel (as they re-appear after refreshing the page). I later decided there was no point as they would likely show on other pages (seeing as uBlock Origin currently doesn't block his videos from showing under the block of his channel; I would have to do each video individually, which isn't worth the effort when they expire & new ones are getting added daily) even if I could get the element blocked on his channel (this would only be worth the effort if I could block the element globally on his channel & videos).
EDIT: There is one other possibility I can think of that might have prompted Mezigoto to place the ban & this is that I remember giving somebody tips on system processes they could kill in the Task Manager to lower system lag while playing games; I can't entirely remember if Mezigoto was the person I was giving these tips to, but there's a good possibility of it. As I was giving a list of those processes, I noticed that Twitch was auto-converting those process names to links. As I was leaving the channel, I noticed the streamer stated something about saying they were going to check those links & kind of spaced it off until I was already in bed. I considered whether I should get back up & let the streamer know that those were never intended to be links, they were just process names that could be killed in the task manager to prevent some degree of system lag (mostly noticeable in games). It could be my lack of urgency to reiterate the point of those inadvertent links (meaning getting out of bed to try & clear up the misunderstanding on his part, despite battling an illness & spending a few hours to help him already) that got me banned from his channel on Twitch. If it was Mezigoto that I gave this information to & he believed I was trying to hack him or was being malicious if he clicked on those links, I suppose it would be understandable why he banned me from his channel, however the cutoff without reason is a flaw in Twitch's system that needs to be looked at, because I might have had the ability to get back to him on it if I had realized this as a potential possibility for the ban earlier, not that I think it would have mattered, as he had already made his decision shortly after I had left his channel on the first visit...
Last updated 9/4/2017