During a recent gameplayer opinion piece one of our writers recalled an anecdote of a disturbing experience that happened on HOME recently.
The snippet in question reads as follows:
"While doing some research on ‘who actually buys HOME clothing’ we happened across a fellow in a cowboy hat (who we'll call 'Jed'). After telling Jed who we were and why we were here doing research, we had an interesting discussion about why he bought the cowboy hat, and virtual belongings in general. Jed told us that he’d done up his apartment with furniture and he invited us over to see it all. Being that it was related to the conversation and the Home research we agreed.
The distant tingle of an alarm bell sounded when I materialized in Jed’s apartment. Everything was super colour-coordinated, ultra chic, and the furniture had been surgically arranged in the room (possibly with a virtual laser level). “Nice feng shui” I mumbled. “I know!” he typed back enthusiastically. It was at this point that I applied this virtual scene to its real life equivalent: I’m currently standing in a trendy house with a cowboy (who, just now, has decided to halve my personal space) and we’re talking about the sensible placement of his furniture.
Houston, we may need to abort...
Sensing an awkward lull in the conversation Jed and I discussed interests, hobbies, and ages (he 'said he was over thirty', and out of journalistic curiosity I told him that I was younger than I am. I said I was 15). This was a colossal mistake. What happened next all but confirmed the sum of all fears: “do you have a cam? I’d like to c u in the flesh” Jed asked, moving in to ‘lap dance distance’. That’s right folks, Jed-o was something of a pedo." - click here for the full story.
Interesting story, no? To be fair to HOME, we may never know for certain if Jed was in fact a mid-thirties sexual predator (or just a very disturbed/ very bored twelve year old kid lying about his age). Whatever the case, it got us to thinking; what if it was legit? Are there systems in place to stop this sort of thing happening for real?
Yes and no. Sure HOME filters out offensive words like "fuck", "shit", "but that" (which gets censored as "****hat"), and "gay" (which isn't actually offensive at all), but if you want to swear up a storm on a Bluetooth headset? No such censorship unfortunately, you can happily flick your switch to ‘Tourettes’ on that bad boy.
As to whether you're safe from deviants, the answer is similarly grey. In the case of Jed clearly we weren't, but a Gamespot forum user Modus_Operandi had a different story to tell:
"I was watching my sister testing out Home with my PSN account. She was chatting (via text) with some random guy. "What's your name," "Where you're from," "How old are you," that kind of stuff...
Well my sister is 14 and this guy says he's 21. From out of nowhere he says "wanna ****?" My sister became disgusted and typed remarks like "wtf, omg" and suddenly the all-powerful Locust_Star magically appears...
If you've seen him before, he's basically a bald guy wearing a black long sleeve. Anyway he tells the guy making harassing remarks to keep it clean then he disappears (mods = invisible). The guy didn't knew who Locust was so he ignored him.
Locust pops out of nowhere and I believed he suspended that guy since the avatar immediately went away. Then my sister's Home avatar literally teleported to some other area of the Plaza with Locust and he asked my sister if she knows how to report. The guy was still harassing my sister via PSN messages though (on my account too -_-).
But anyway, be careful for those that screw around. The mods are watching..."
What are the moderators stance on all this though? What actions do they take? In search of an answer we turned to TedTheDog 'Home Community Manager' on the European Playstation community forums. Ted had the following to say about invisible moderation:
Firstly, even our moderation policies and practices are in beta. We've got both in place and we'll change them if need be. For example we're looking to change a couple of things to better deal with certain types of harressment. I cant go into further detail, its simply not ready yet, but the point is we're adapting.
Another thing is that all moderation will be done by SCEE staff. We will not be recruiting volunteer moderators. Its a job with customer services, business and legal ramifications and not something a volunteer force should be asked to do.
Our moderators are invisible and the grief reporting mechanism alerts us to people we should be watching. However grief reports are not something we take at face value, we always treat them as an alert that something needs to be investigated rather than a call to zap someone just because a grief report was submitted. Although invisible our moderators will be showing themselves occasionally to let people know they're there but moderating whilst invisible brings us a powerful mechanic and a huge efficiency at the same time.Thats probably stating the obvious but its worth saying anyway.
Suspensions and Bans are not from Home, they're from PlayStation Network and we have more control than I could mention (or can discuss in detail) and certainly more control than I think most people realise and we can do that without mac or IP addresses getting involved.
With regards to "bad people" we like to consider the intent of their actions. Some people can annoy others through innocent actions and some people just set out to annoy. We like to think we'll seperate those out and educate one group and moderate the other. Obviously something on the scale of Home will need public education schemes rather than 1 to 1 pep talks and we'll work on that too.
So, I'd like to reassure you that we will endeavour to tackle problems and we've got plans in place that we're working to right now and that we can adapt if we find improvements. Its early days still, this phase of the beta has just begun, but we're making progress and will improve over time."
We’re sure you agree that it’s nice to know that security is out there. But we still have concerns. First, due to the invisible nature of it, the concerned general public will never really know how tight (or lax) the security in Home really is. Second of all, will all this be enough to stop an innocent unworldly minor from giving out his/her name/age/location, or someone getting stalked via other means (email, instant messaging, regular PSN messaging)?
We'd like to think the answer to that question is ‘Yes’, but ultimately it’s not a pedo-bear perfect system and just as the moderators will adapt to combat weirdos, the weirdos will adapt to find new loopholes. Obviously, we hope we’re wrong on this one.
Alle Kinderschänder haben sich ne PS3 gekauft um Kinder in Home abzuschleppen. :rofl4:
. Checkt einfach meinen Blog dadrüber. Wer Home mit NXE vergleicht, hat doch null Ahnung von beiden Anwendungen. Das momentane NXE ist einfach nur ein billiger XMB Klon und keine Konkurenz zu Home.
