Improvements to monitor and restrict tools for general use
I really like the new monitor and restrict tools introduced today for ban evasion detection! I did some testing of using monitor and restrict for general moderation, and there are three improvements that would dramatically improve their usability and impacts:
Please add the ability to add a reason for monitoring a user's messages, the same way that /timeout and /ban have a [reason] field. This will let other mods know what kind of monitoring they should be doing. An example for how I would like to use this is: a user who is toeing the lines of rules in the channel, like saying slightly sexual things. It would be great for the streamer or a mod to be able to use "/monitor SuspiciousUser getting a bit close to uncomfortable" so that other mods can use that context in the future.
Tracking restricted messages in the user's chat history: I was testing restricting a user, and since their messages were rejected they didn't come up in the mod view of that user's profile afterwards. Since mods and the streamer can still see those messages, it's important to be able to go back and report the content of that message afterwards by viewing the user profile.
Discuss whether the restricted user should see that their messages were rejected. At the moment they see the same message they see for automod rejections, but it would be better for us if they can't see whether or not their messages successfully sent, like a silent mute rather than an active rejection. I feel like abusers will use that knowledge to send disgusting highlighted messages that only the mods and streamer can see, which can still cause real harm.
caitelatte
shared this idea
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slash__me
commented
I would also like to see the ability to greenlight individual chat messages of a restricted user just like automod. It seems I can only remove the restriction on a user, but any messages they posted while being restricted are lost and cannot be recovered.
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Sicuasi
commented
I was about to suggest the exact same thing but I saw your post and decided to vote for it instead. Something that I usually discuss often with several creators is shadowbanning, in more complex cases where a particular viewer have developed codependency towards the streamer and is unwilling to accept that they are no longer welcomed in a community, a simple ban won't stop them. And these viewers quite often react in a very aggressive way after seeing that they are banned each time they create a new account, they try to find other ways to harm the streamer, blame the moderators, harass them outside the channel, go after other community members, etc. In these cases we concluded that the best thing we can do is to shadowban the person, and just ignore their messages until they get tired and leave (a streamer commented me that they would like to have the ability to hide/unhide restricted messages to them for their own mental health). Additionally in a lot of cases streamers don't think a person should be banned but if their messages are particularly triggering or make other people in the community uncomfortable and in order to create a peaceful environment without confrontation, hiding this person's messages temporarily with this feature could be useful.
The system as it is now could achieve these tasks if it didn't display the alert to the restricted user. Also I didn't know that the messages weren't displayed in the mod view, that is definitely something that should be implemented to be able to report and audit moderation actions in the future.