Forum Discussion

BigPapiJewy's avatar
3 years ago

Why does EA censor Judaism

I hope I can get clarification for this issue fairly quickly, I was banned for my steam username, no warning, no ask to change username, just banned, and the reason behind this banned is described as"

Hello,

We received a report about your account or profile name. It may be the name you created on another platform.

This name breaks our Positive Play Charter because you may have used words or phrases that harm others or negatively disrupt the game.

Here’s the violation we see:

  Steam-PC  

Hateful Conduct

Persona name:"

Usually I would understand a; please change your username due to it breaking our policy or something along those lines. But nope not for my name!

Just straight to ban, I've called and talked to support, I've made my appeals, and no answer as to why.

Not a single reason has been given, when my friend was banned for saying a few not so nice words, they told him exactly why he was SUSPENDED, but when my name represents me, 6' 2, 230, Jewish guy who's proud to be Jewish, I'm banned because of the word Jew, I've been in game with <removed>, and they haven't even seen a suspension, but <removed> is an autoban, Can anyone just give me a reason why they ban the word Jew, besides "lol * you get banned we don't like that word"? Because the only thing I can see is that they are just making sure that the word Jew doesn't appear in game.

[CM - Edited to remove additional inappropriate names and username actioned by ToS]

6 Replies

  • @BigPapiJewy 

    Detection systems change overtime, certain keywords might not be detected at the time whilst certain others might be detected.

    Sometimes these types of things also rely on user reports, pretty much a lot of factors get into this.

    Though do note that disciplinary actions are not handled on AHQ as this is a community forum.

    If you've exhausted your efforts with the ticket system, there's nothing else you can do as far I'm aware.

    At least, nothing can be done for you on here, only the TOS team will be able to assist with this.

  • EA_Mako's avatar
    EA_Mako
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    3 years ago

    Hey @BigPapiJewy,

    Keep in mind as well that while you may have your own personal reasons and perfectly normal intentions for using a particular word or phrase, we also have to consider how some words appear to others including other contexts that word or phrase has been used in previously.

    If you're running into names you'd consider to be inappropriate, please be sure you're reporting them so they can be reviewed accordingly. We're unable to take action on those types of reports on the forums so I've removed the inappropriate names, but do feel free to report them here if you didn't have a chance to do so in-game and would like to bring those to the attention of our Terms of Service team.

    As far as the ban itself, this will need to be appealed with our ToS team using these steps, as we're unable to review or otherwise make any account changes on the forums.

  • I do understand that words can be offensive to others in certain contexts, but doesn't religion/culture mean different things to different people? Is EA's point in banning people based on their usernames reflecting themselves, to value someone who doesn't appreciate someone else's culture over the person expressing themselves and being proud of their heritage?

  • EA_Mako's avatar
    EA_Mako
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    3 years ago

    Hey @BigPapiJewy,

    I can see where you're coming from for sure, though keep in mind we don't have any way to verify whether a particular name is being used in a self-identifying way or to be inappropriate or malign another group, as we quite simply just don't know who an individual is behind the keyboard.

    When a name is reported and brought to our attention, we'd have to consider how a particular name has historically been used in previous situations as well as any context that may relate to how it was used in these circumstances.

    There's certainly nothing wrong with wanting to express your heritage, though that gets a bit more complicated when online anonymity enters the mix. If you feel the wrong call was made there, please feel free to submit another appeal so our ToS team can review that situation again since we'd be unable to make changes here. Thanks! 

  • Welp did the best I could, apparently evidence isn't enough and it's just a no without a reason👍