There’s a debate that things have recently gotten overboard regarding the State of Firestone Discord server. I never had a say regarding what goes on with the discord, so here are my honest thoughts about the current ongoing situation.
For context to those who don’t pay attention:
Many months ago, we had the introduction of AutoMod. This official discord bot or whatever is responsible for muting you if it detects any “bad” word in your message. Hence, your message gets filtered. At the time, it censored many general things such as “retard” etc…
Recently, the AutoMod has been turned up to the MAX setting. It will censor you for the prettiest things, such as “fuck head” “fuk” “fuck him” and many more… We’ve all experienced it.
However, efforts have been made to introduce voice channel moderation through the firestone bot. So far, its purpose is just to censor a “word.” However, this is currently being tested similar to how AutoMod was first tested on basic words. Now, it’s been turned to the max. Will we see a similar thing happen to the voice channel stalker?
My Thoughts
Personally, I don’t see why the discord had to be turned into a censorship platform for the Chinese Communist Party. Let alone these efforts of automation, but an army of moderators was also brought in. I don’t see a reason for all of this, or at least how extreme things have become. The people who decide on these moderation decisions might not be so aware of the communities feelings, so here’s a poll that I think should be considered!
Vote HERE
What do you think of AutoMod?
Keep
Remove
Unsure
0voters
What do you think of publicFirestone’s ability to stalk you in the VC and moderate?
Keep
Remove
Unsure
0voters
Are you a fan of the new moderators?
Yes
No
0voters
Were these extra layers of moderation a rational decision done by the Founders?
Ah yes, it’s my fault as a mod a rule that I had no input on was created, then I got told to enforce it.
As for the topic here, I don’t have a problem with certain automod functions (namely spam tag prevention, slur filters, etc.). But I have voiced my disagreement with the extended use of it that has recently been adopted to Fed. Automod isn’t some random bullshit magic either, nor is it exclusive to making it so you can’t say naughty words. This is what the automod section of a server’s settings looks like (Shown is the Court’s Discord’s automod setting): Screenshot - 31a1b82ab024b02fad70563f7e27d85c - Gyazo
as a server owner? best thing to come out of discord, i can limit bot presence in my servers and set EXACTLY what i want filtered and the punishment issued without having an associates in software engineering. the way that its working in firestone? wack.
this shit is wild bro, cant wait for it to be mandated the publicFirestone has 9 different bot accounts monitoring every single chat ever in all firestone chats for someone to slip up and say something naughty against our benevolent and sinless owners
if he was gonna crank up automod like this and then have publicFirestone monitor vcs now too, what was even the point
its whatever, i barely talked in fs general to begin with because of how sensitive the automod was. (throwback to getting an unappealable 7 day timeout for saying “thomas”)
An absolute ridiculous step, I’ve spoke with some of the moderators and they have very little say in the failure of AUTOMOD and are mostly against its implementation.
As a community veteran I think it’s an absolutely retarded move, if you want dead voice chats, and text channels you’re doing the right thing. However if you want an active, vibrant server with rules that were in place for 5 years and were largely effective, steps should be taken ASAP to remove AUTOMOD along with other recent enhanced moderation tactics.
Me personally I do 80% of my communication in Firestone via group chats, those who don’t already, will follow in my footsteps. It certainly doesn’t bring any encouragement for me to increase my presence in the server.
Also, something VERY important to add. THE REMOVAL OF GAME NIGHTS. What a stupid and irrational decision that was almost a year ago? Not on topic, but still related since it pertains to the discord.
Sure they were added back, but nobody uses the current channel. Its bad.
Agreed, gamenights was a great thing, allowed me to speak with more people and create new friendships that still exist to this day. They simply brought the community together.
Ah yes, it’s my fault as a mod a rule that I had no input on was created, then I got told to enforce it.
automod is fine but I don’t like how it blocks the any commonly flagged words since ai don’t understand context. fed said that enabling commonly flagged words were for reasons like people saying nsfw content to people at 13-14 and fed doesn’t like that. there are other reasons but I am not at liberty to say but fed can comment on that if he wants to
lowkey the publicfirestone thing is cool but ig it does kind of invade privacy but I don’t think sam is recording and caching it but who knows. publicfirestone is being temporarily taken out of service anyways.
i agree automod is affecting discord activity but 1am vcs can still be done tbh
however, automod in limited quantities is beneficial
I don’t believe simple curse words should be censored - it’s certainly an overstep
coinciding with that fact, there has to be a humam factor to moderation
automod doesn’t comsoder the context of a conversation or whether it was made with intent but rather acts on the words and nothing about them
simply put? tone automod down, keep the mods
vc automod idk what that is as i dont talk in fs gen vc, however from the things i’ve seen (people being muted for n-word usage when they didn’t, according to witnesses), it seems unreliable. as a result we should probably remove it and increase moderation presence in the voice chats as an alternative
as a politician and semi-senior ish member of the community, i dont really have a say in what happens
im simply splurging my opinion to the general public
If this is what you all mean by “Automod” (This is not my screenshot. I do not like burning my eyes, thank you)
Then, yes, that is a Discord-level thing. The “commonly flagged words” rules is a list that Discord themselves control, which if you want to learn more about it, you can do so by reading this help article over on Discord’s website.
I agree, solely relying on voice recognition for moderation in voice channels is not really a good idea, as even Alexa, which Amazon claims can understand everyone, has trouble sometimes.
The settings Dannyboy has here is what I recommend for anyone who doesn’t fully understand AutoMod. I also use these settings, combined with Dyno for phrases and words I don’t want members saying, but mods and staff are allowed to say.
For those that are still interested in reading more about Discord’s AutoMod feature, there is a blog post that you can read as well as the help article I linked above.
I would say most of the community members in our server are at, right above, or above the age to be communicating in ways that are being moderated. If someone is specifically violating a rule, targeting or harassing a group of people or individual persons, then moderation should be given.
A lot of us have been in the Firestone community going on 7 years now, and this is the last thing any of us want to see. No one is going to be able to speak freely, or even want to engage in communications in the text nor voice channels. I know for myself personally, I stopped talking and or engaging within the Firestone discord back in 2021, and changes such as these are only making me want to stay away even more.
the thing is, to monitor what you say and then determine if what you said was on a list of “banned” things (it probably isnt, voice recognition just isnt good) it HAS to stalk what you say. If it deletes it from whatever its referencing from after is another thing (which ill be honest, i dont trust it deletes unless shown the code for it.)
