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haloman30

1.19 Update Postponed

7 posts in this topic

Howdy, folks - we've got a fairly important announcement to make today.

 

As of now, we are delaying all plans to update to 1.19 until further notice. We do hope to update at some point down the line, but there are some features that 1.19 (and moreso 1.19.1) appear to be implementing that we feel could end up doing serious damage to the Minecraft community as a whole.

 

Chat Signing and Player Reporting

As of 1.19.1 Pre-Release 1, chat messages on servers can be reported to Mojang for a number of reasons. Some of them are completely reasonable, others are borderline, and some yet are downright unacceptable. This situation is still developing and Mojang has recently started to make some adjustments - so there is some hope - but the system itself is still deeply concerning.

 

You might be wondering - what happens if a player gets reported? Well, if Mojang decides the report is valid, the player reported will face a temporary or even permanent ban from multiplayer and Realms. Yes, you read that right - a player could be reported for a chat message and potentially be given a permanent ban from the entirety of Minecraft multiplayer.

 

This is not a joke, and is not an exaggeration - this is a real feature that, as of writing, is planned for 1.19.1. The initial 1.19 update introduces part of this feature, which is chat message signing and a profanity filter toggle.

 

We don't know where this feature is going, but with the nature of our server being largely geared towards a more adult audience, we feel that updating at this time could be a risk not just to our server, but to anyone who plays on it.

 

Options - or Lack Thereof

With this feature, we felt as though we effectively had two options:

  • Stay on 1.18.2 for the foreseeable future, until when/if the reporting feature is removed, allowed to be opted out of by server administrators, or scaled back to where it wouldn't impact us
  • Update to 1.19/1.19.1 and disallow all mature subject matter in server chat, including forbidding all sexual-related topics from discussion outright and the complete banning of swear words on the server

 

As you might guess, that second option is not very desirable. We've allowed most server chat outside of racial slurs and actual outright harassment since 2014 - and we really don't want to change that. Not only that, but we suspect you guys wouldn't enjoy that very much, either.

 

So, as of now - we've made the decision to remain on 1.18.2 for a period of time to see where this situation goes. We want to see where this feature develops, if any opt-outs are made available, and if they start to overreach their enforcement after some time. Our hope is that this won't be a permanent thing, and that Mojang will continue their trend of listening to their community and come up with a viable solution for adult servers - but we can't know for sure just yet. That, and this feature feels as though it's likely come down from Microsoft as opposed to Mojang themselves.

 

 

We will continue developing features and fixing bugs for the server as planned - and we'll be sure to post an additional update as soon as we know what the long-term plan is going to be. But for now, that's all we've got. Stay tuned for future updates, on both this situation, as well as for those previously-mentioned new features and fixes!

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If that's what MC is coming to. I want no part of it. I'd get banned for speaking normally. Especially if swearing becomes a bannable offense. I already hardly play MC but if that change comes out. Especially with how it currently is. I won't be opening the game again, I guess time will tell. The feature could be great and it could provide something that can make people feel more safe on the game but as a lot of people who have reviewed that planned change have said. It could be abused by people that may just not like someone.

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15 minutes ago, ___Jayden said:

If that's what MC is coming to. I want no part of it. I'd get banned for speaking normally. Especially if swearing becomes a bannable offense. I already hardly play MC but if that change comes out. Especially with how it currently is. I won't be opening the game again, I guess time will tell. The feature could be great and it could provide something that can make people feel more safe on the game but as a lot of people who have reviewed that planned change have said. It could be abused by people that may just not like someone.

 

Profanity isn't bannable, that's already been set.

 

There's been some developments in the time since the post - Mojang has (somewhat) clarified that their intent is more for severe offenses (actual harassment, real threats, etc). Of course - what they say and what they do are two separate things.

 

However the good news is that it does look as though there will be an opt-out, as only "signed" messages can be reported. Basically if a message is signed it has a digital signature with it that confirms that "yes, this message 100% came from this user". Unsigned messages cannot be reported since there's no way to verify. And as of right now, PaperMC 1.19 builds allow for message signing to be disabled (and in fact it's setup like this by default), which effectively means all messages within that server are not reportable.

 

As long as this doesn't magically change between now and release, it won't matter a great deal what they consider enforceable - as it won't have any effect in CU (and likely many other servers too if I had to guess).

 

So I suppose the tl;dr is that as of now, it's looking like it won't be a very  big deal at all ultimately - servers that don't want to use it likely won't have to, and the pg-13 servers that do can have fun with it I guess :lmao:

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On 7/3/2022 at 5:26 PM, haloman30 said:

 

Profanity isn't bannable, that's already been set.

 

There's been some developments in the time since the post - Mojang has (somewhat) clarified that their intent is more for severe offenses (actual harassment, real threats, etc). Of course - what they say and what they do are two separate things.

 

However the good news is that it does look as though there will be an opt-out, as only "signed" messages can be reported. Basically if a message is signed it has a digital signature with it that confirms that "yes, this message 100% came from this user". Unsigned messages cannot be reported since there's no way to verify. And as of right now, PaperMC 1.19 builds allow for message signing to be disabled (and in fact it's setup like this by default), which effectively means all messages within that server are not reportable.

 

As long as this doesn't magically change between now and release, it won't matter a great deal what they consider enforceable - as it won't have any effect in CU (and likely many other servers too if I had to guess).

 

So I suppose the tl;dr is that as of now, it's looking like it won't be a very  big deal at all ultimately - servers that don't want to use it likely won't have to, and the pg-13 servers that do can have fun with it I guess :lmao:

That's good to know, Thanks for the information.

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Alright, so some additional updates on the 1.19 situation:

 

As of now, we've made the decision to (assuming no new horrible info comes out before then) update to 1.19.1 once it releases and is stable. We won't be updating to 1.19, and instead will jump straight to 1.19.1 once we're able.

 

Most of what remains in the reporting feature seems to be detailed enough ingame to have seemingly very little opportunity for misinterpretation - to the point where I'm much more comfortable potentially enabling that feature. Now, that being said, we will not be enabling it right out of the gate. We'll be keeping message signing off initially, and we plan to still watch and wait to see what kind of stuff gets banned and enforced before making a decision to enable message signing (and thus, reports) or not.

If the report categories don't change any, and if the only people getting banned are actual scumbags (and not just people goofing around with each other for fun), then odds are we'll enable it at that point.

Either way, that'll be for a future announcement - and after seeing where everything else goes. The update is still a ways off, and enabling any chat reporting is likely still a month or more away from when we're updated - so this won't be anything that'll have any immediate impact.

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One last update on this situation now that 1.19.1 has officially released:

 

We've done some early testing with Spigot and are happy to confirm that we are able to disable chat reporting entirely through the use of a special plugin.

 

Once we update (which will likely still be a few weeks or so), absolutely no chat reporting will be possible within CU. We can also confirm that there won't be any gross or ugly formatting applied onto it either, like we thought was going to be the case based on earlier vanilla testing. You'll notice a grey line on the left side of all chat messages, but that's it.

 

So once again for any of you folks worried about 1.19.1 and its chat reporting, we can say with 100% certainty that it will have zero impact on our MC server.

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