Suggestion - White List for Trophies / Games?

[Leaderboards]

On 4/3/2018 at 10:54 PM, Thropy_Hore said:

if i had to guess,

he couldn't care less

 

He and the rest of the site couldn't care less what you have to say, is more accurate >:)

 

 

Edited April 14, 2018 by Leaderboards

[Dav9834]

1 hour ago, ars said:

Well it's not really about the trophies but customer data. The potential for this whole situation to go away - PSNP staff selectively picking up people on the internet, without their consent, based on their hobbies or taste in games and attempting to shame them in public for commercial profit - is just a welcome side effect.

Oh I see what you're saying. Possible

Edited April 14, 2018 by Dav9834

[Sergen]

6 hours ago, ars said:

Well it's not really about the trophies but customer data. The potential for this whole situation to go away - PSNP staff selectively picking up people on the internet, without their consent, based on their hobbies or taste in games and attempting to shame them in public for commercial profit - is just a welcome side effect.

 

PSNProfiles could potentially be justified in showing the profiles on the website as all of the trophy lists on the website are publicly available. I guess the issue would be that people who don't even know of the existence of this website still have their trophy list here because they randomly get added by a stranger. I think other websites require the person who owns the profile to actually confirm that they are adding themselves to the website, that will likely have to be the way PSNProfiles operates after that date. I do believe the issue really is that people are being embarrassed publicly just because of the kind of games they choose to play and also because they joined a modded lobby by accident on a game and the trophies were unlocked for them randomly. I believe it is unfair to a person if they get flagged and when they wish to argue against it, it is put on display for all members of the website to see rather than being settled privately. Ideally, a dispute should be between a member of staff, the person who reported the trophy list and the person who is flagged, but I guess at times there are people who even get reported by their friends who know about their shady trophy activity and the person wouldn't want to let them know that they reported it. I'm not sure if a flagged user gets a disclaimer mentioning that when they submit a dispute, the dispute for their profile will be available publicly, but I would say that it would be fair to inform anyone who wants to dispute a flag that what they present is going to be available for public debate. 

[Otonio_Bruno]

Quote

Sly-Ripper: the only way I'd do a whitelist is not have it count towards the 3 flagged games limit
Sly-Ripper: nothing else
Sly-Ripper: I mean everything else stays the same, you still need to hide them

BlindMango: I'm slightly confused, why would they need to hide it if it doesn't tell them it's flagged?
Sly-Ripper: it will tell them
Sly-Ripper: it'll still flag them

Sly-Ripper: there's hardly anyone effected by not being whitelisted
Sly-Ripper: I don't see why there's such a big fuss about it

 

A step in the right direction, I must say.

[BlindMango]

12 minutes ago, Otonio_Bruno said:

 

A step in the right direction, I must say.

 

Yeah he told me it would not count against them but they would still have to hide it due to how the separation from the leaderboards works, I told him thats like a halfway fix because a whitelisted game shouldn’t have to be hidden 

 

So I dunno, not counting against you but still having to hide the game seemed kinda pointless to me, the issue is having to hide the game for something which wasn’t your fault to get back on the leaderboards, which is what you have to do anyway for a flag now

[Potent_Delusions]

10 minutes ago, BlindMango said:

 

Yeah he told me it would not count against them but they would still have to hide it due to how the separation from the leaderboards works, I told him thats like a halfway fix because a whitelisted game shouldn’t have to be hidden 

 

So I dunno, not counting against you but still having to hide the game seemed kinda pointless to me, the issue is having to hide the game for something which wasn’t your fault to get back on the leaderboards, which is what you have to do anyway for a flag now

 

I agree, just seems like a bit of a "nothing" change. As you say: white-listed should mean no hiding needed either.

[MMDE]

39 minutes ago, BlindMango said:

I told him thats like a halfway fix because a whitelisted game shouldn’t have to be hidden 

 

I agree with you that it shouldn't need to be hidden, but I would also rather it not count towards profile stats. So only practical difference would be that it needs to be hidden, and no H symbol etc.

[Darpiom]

Seems that decision taken what to do about this matter but i still want to express my thought about white listing but first of all the OP @ProfBambam55deserves a special thanks for starting such a quality discussion and his overall approach all along the thread's lifespan..

 

I heavily object whitelisting in any form because;

 

I dont really understand and think positively about the people who seeks for legit trophies while they know everywhere is full of hackers!! especially I don't understand when there is a chance that they can get these trophies in private sessions like gta 5. here is a perfect example of what i am trying to say in this thread

https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/59371-i-need-help-with-hacked-online-level-trophies

here the player getting hacked unintentionally but succeds to revert back the process, (after that) yet still seemingly goes to a public session and earns the infamous Run like the Wind trophy which is unobtainable without hacking.Aren't you like wtf happens here?.. What can be the people's motivation to lurk around in these places.. there are thousands of people who earns this kinda trophies still on the leaderboard.. if we start applying whitelisting, wouldn't we promote such things?  then am i a fool that i m not playing gta online afraid of getting hacked? 

Also, i have seen one or two places and as well as in many other threads that some users say PSNP cant decide how we play games. Nooo!! Its totally wrong. PSNP should be in a position to say how the members play.. Yes, this is a product of a profit seeking private entrepreneurship and based on COMPETITION it is not Sony servers..So, it has a right to intervene in how the members play and MUST MAKE SURE that the base of this product shouldnt be violated whether intentionally or unintentionally.. Think of it like you hit someone else's car without intending it, is this give us a right not to be punished and even not incur other car's costs? I guess everyone would say no, because otherwise ill-minded people will abuse this and harm other people and say i didnt intend it at the end. This will eventually end up with the society's crash. 

We love this site because of the basics. we love it because it provides us very well and with reaching the info easily for this competition. we paid this site for these thus it can cover its costs more easily and continue to provide us well.. Soo we shouldnt leave any crack for hackers and more dangerously hacker seeking people to sneak through our wall into our home.. 

Of course there are many innocent people in these waters although i dont think they are as many as the community thinks but still there are. maybe this will happen to me some day too but still current disputing system should work in these cases but investigation team should perform a more thorough investigation about the said user's profile and if they decide they are really innocent in hacking there is no need to ban from joining boosting sessions and to give a strike soo the player would still have a two flags before banning completely but still they should hide the game COMPLETELY not the said trophies only as proposed in whitelisting.. because we really really really should discourage the real evil. the members also should feel the responsibility of this. if they take the risk with their PSNP registered account then they should incur the cost.. They may like playing modded games or have an obsession collecting all trophies in all gta or cod series alike, then why do not they create secondary accounts to quench their thirsts about those games but come here and spoil our home. In short, these sorta things should never be allowed  IN ANY CASE!! 

 

And decision takers shouldnt look at the poll result since it can be easily manipulated by the ill-minded players I guess reading what people said is much more dependable.. 

 

and I wanna ask something, why is this new process called white listing? English is not my native language so I don't know whether this term is used specifically for these cases or just an invention, otherwise red lists or blue lists or whatever can be more appropriate as white is a colour generally about purity ?

 

Anyway, i hope what will happen will be good for us all in this matter, Happy gaming everyone!! 

Edited April 19, 2018 by Darpiom

[Dav9834]

Quote

 

PSNP should be in a position to say how the members play.. Yes, this is a product profit seeking private entrepreneurship 

 

I understand what you're saying, but saying that exactly would cripple most gaming sites, especially those that are for profit. There'd be sooo much flaming. 

I think you meant to say something else.

 

Remember what Microsoft was pushing years ago.

Sony jumped to the occasion to say you can share games normally. 

It's different from telling you how to play,

but it's in the same category of telling the consumer what to do. 

And obviously Sony did good. 

 

 

Finally disputes and flags are for cleaning up the leaderboards NOT punishing people. A lot of people just want to punish, but that's not what this is about. 

 

Quote

 

and I wanna ask something, why is this new process called white listing? English is not my native language so I don't know whether this term is used specifically for these cases or just an invention, otherwise red lists or blue lists or whatever can be more appropriate as white is a colour generally about purity 
 

 

 

You said it yourself, white = purity.

A red list or black list would be for banning people, not exonerating them. 

I dunno about blue lists. 

Edited April 19, 2018 by Dav9834

[ars]

@Darpiom PSNP is not affiliated with Sony and is absolutely in no position to say how any Sony's customer plays their own Sony games on their own Sony gaming systems. PSNP is only in a position to say how they feature their precious leaderboards. Us two being PSNP members, which is what you refer to, we opt-in for certain behaviour on the site in order to gain access on them. 

 

Here's the thing, however: PSNP has around 240 thousand members based on the forum accounts alone. PSNP tracks 3,5 million accounts. That means the amount of people PSNP tracks, who never opted-in for anything PSNP does, who are not PSNP members, exceed the number of actual members on this site fifteen to one. If you thought PSNP is in a position to impose any sort of a moral code on people it datamined from a third party site without their prior consent, think again. Frankly few of us would have a problem with much of anything this site does, if the site kept it to people who willingly agreed to gain access to it.

[Darpiom]

@ars, I already said that here is not Sony servers and its just a forum based on competition.. And clearly every forum has its rules and breaking the rules shouldnt be free, right?

https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/52663-what-constitutes-a-flag/

I cant find any base in my mind the reason of hacking or (more dangerously) waiting to be hacked to earn a trophy getting rewarded in leaderboards while the rules clearly state against that.. Of course we can't restrict players how to play but players cant break and spoil the rules of communities they join, right? In my first post, I already expressed if they want to play it this way they should use a dummy account not PSNP account ?

 

@Dav9834, well i really used the word punishment just once but in an imaginary car example not against the people who caused these discussions and I just wanted to emphasize that players should know their responsibilities too with their PSNP registered account if not,  the site must take necessary measures. I agree with your thoughts about punishing and even find mods a little bit rude sometimes in some disputing cases againts someone who already faces with a huge loss of reputation publicly.. And in my first post, I offered just hiding the game (NOT ONLY RELATED TROPHIES) but no other sactions which are much more heavy, as you see its not a punishment.

 

As to white list, its not really that important and asked just out of curiosity if there is a term in English specificly for these sort of situations. Its name can be whatever whomever wants ?

Edited April 20, 2018 by Darpiom

[ars]

@Darpiom I repeat PSNP has harvested account information from over 3,5 million Sony's customers, of which 241 thousand are verifiably registered users of this site. So on the leaderboards, only one user in fifteen has actually agreed to any "rules" or requested they be there in the first place.

[Darpiom]

So that means we have to do nothing against cheating, let everyone saying "ooh no! I didnt intend that, I was just there!" pass, then? 

[ars]

Am I seriously this poor at making myself understood? There are over 3 million people who never asked to be on PSNP leaderboards. PSNP put them there without asking them.

 

No one is getting punished for enjoying their gaming exactly the way they like, because that's a personal freedom. Furthermore all that customer data being harvested off Sony's servers by PSNP without anyone agreeing to it makes this wholly not their problem. It makes it PSNP's problem. And yours, apparently.

 

Installing operating systems on your legitimately owned devices does not equal a hit-and-run, or murder, or any other outrageous metaphors I've heard over the years. This is the fact: you don't like that, you don't put someone who does that on your leaderboards. Which brings us back to the question why were millions of people put there without asking anyway?

 

In any case, this thread is about people who didn't even do such a thing, but get punished as "cheaters" anyway. Because that's what flagging people as cheaters is. Their "crime" was joining a public lobby and playing a game.

 

Calling for punishment (including death, we've seen it) against people who are simply playing games constitutes very much hate speech. Think about that for a second.

[AloneBert-]

I think that white list is a great idea. There are only several games which deserve it and it will make happy anyone. Got wrong timestamps? Okay, just your time won't count but you still on leaderboard. And it'll be great for anyone who want to play bo2 so they can play it and not fear modders or even get unobtainable trophy and have completed set cause c'mon trophies were made for good emotions. That's not a big deal since there are only several games where hackers can pop your score as I know.

 

Also want to say that we already have white list of games where you can pop trophies too fast.

 

And recently games like BUlletstorm and Unreal Tournament 3 became obtainable with using of special software (though no hacking but when you enter lobby in BO2 you actually don't hack anything).

 

Anyway I don't care about any conclusion cause I don't play PS3 and play new games usually.

[mekktor]

On 20/04/2018 at 2:45 AM, Darpiom said:

Seems that decision taken what to do about this matter but i still want to express my thought about white listing but first of all the OP @ProfBambam55deserves a special thanks for starting such a quality discussion and his overall approach all along the thread's lifespan..

 

I heavily object whitelisting in any form because;

 

I dont really understand and think positively about the people who seeks for legit trophies while they know everywhere is full of hackers!! especially I don't understand when there is a chance that they can get these trophies in private sessions like gta 5. here is a perfect example of what i am trying to say in this thread

https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/59371-i-need-help-with-hacked-online-level-trophies

here the player getting hacked unintentionally but succeds to revert back the process, (after that) yet still seemingly goes to a public session and earns the infamous Run like the Wind trophy which is unobtainable without hacking.Aren't you like wtf happens here?.. What can be the people's motivation to lurk around in these places.. there are thousands of people who earns this kinda trophies still on the leaderboard.. if we start applying whitelisting, wouldn't we promote such things?  then am i a fool that i m not playing gta online afraid of getting hacked? 

 

Are you suggesting that people who play online games and have their trophies hacked were "asking for it"? In the GTA V example you gave, the only way to guarantee you won't get hacked trophies is to not boot up the online at all. Because even if you play invite only lobbies, you often get booted back into public lobbies without a choice in the matter. Is it reasonable to expect people to just not play the game at all then?

 

And no, whitelisting wouldn't necessarily promote or encourage hacked trophies. For example, the whitelist could be implemented so that if you have hacked trophies in a game, that game doesn't count towards any stats at all but you also don't have to hide the game on your console to stay on the leaderboards. So if you go seeking out hacked trophies you gain... absolutely nothing. You just aren't actively punished for being a victim of hackers.

 

On 20/04/2018 at 2:45 AM, Darpiom said:

and I wanna ask something, why is this new process called white listing? English is not my native language so I don't know whether this term is used specifically for these cases or just an invention, otherwise red lists or blue lists or whatever can be more appropriate as white is a colour generally about purity

 

The basic idea of a whitelist is that it is a list of things that is allowed/accepted, which is in contrast to a blacklist for things that are banned/excluded. I'm sure it originally came from the idea that white = good and black = bad, but in this context it has nothing to do with the purity of trophies or games or whatever.

[Otonio_Bruno]

@ars

 

What you've wrote in past few posts is complete horse manure. All the data that PSNP displays here is publicly available from Sony servers, and if your profile is set to public in any Sony console, you're allowing everybody to see it. PSNP just gather information of any profile that is MANUALLY typed into their search function and if it isn't in their database, it gets added. And even then, they stay as 'unregistered' users, i.e they're not part of the website. If someone has a problem with a website posting their PUBLIC PLAYSTATION PROFILE DATA, their solution is quite simple: make your info private.

 

So, please, stop the bullcrap about 'people not agreeing' shtick. Public information is public.

 

 

 

Edited April 23, 2018 by Otonio_Bruno

[ars]

Read and weep, @Otonio_Bruno.

 

https://www.eugdpr.org/gdpr-faqs.html

[pinkrobot_pb]

If you want to drag the GDPR into this discussion then that should start with Sony and not PSNP. Do users give their explicit consent for a public user profile that is so easy to scrape by PSNP and tons of other sites? I know I did not, if you want to disable that you need to do it yourself.

Edited April 24, 2018 by pinkrobot_pb

[ars]

That's going to be interesting, which party (or both) is accountable for a site using identifiable data from a third party site. Eg. Facebook - Cambridge Analytica affair the immediate effect was that of Facebook's plummeting stock, while Facebook is researching in to the matter and will deal with CA separately in the future. But that has a lot to do with USA not having a proper data privacy legislation to this date. In the EU the process is wholly illegal already and the ICO searched under warrant CA's offices in London, UK. Thus the EU official would primarily target the party that was misusing the data.

 

In any case I dragged the GDPR into this discussion a long time ago already, my response to Otonio was about all the time I cared to spend on someone who decided to crash in the thread with a slur of insults and zero clue. My baseline support for the whitelist is PSNP's inability to carry out consistent process when treating the leaderboards, which allows the fringe hate elements on the site an excuse to isolate and bully individuals based on the games they play.

[Otonio_Bruno]

16 hours ago, ars said:

Read and weep, @Otonio_Bruno.

 

https://www.eugdpr.org/gdpr-faqs.html

 

Oh, you mean a European Union regulation about the internet? No, thanks, I'll pass reading that. I despise any type of internet regulation by the government.

[Sergen]

@Otonio_Bruno & @ars, I've seen you guys were discussing the GDPR being put in place and I've left my opinion about it here. 

 

This website doesn't only show you people's trophy lists publicly, it also is a judging platform for the profiles. When someone is flagged, the site is basically telling them "we don't like your profile, you're not welcome here". Hiding trophies on a profile isn't visible on Sony's servers, but when a person hides some trophies on their profile, a H icon is on their profile to tell us how many trophies the person has hidden. Hiding trophies is a privacy option on your profile and maybe the person wants to also keep the amount of trophies they are hiding private, but this website does not respect that privacy and informs people that the trophies are hidden and informs people of the amount of trophies that are hidden.

 

The other thing this website shows that isn't accessible through Sony's servers if you view people on the console's XMB is the time stamp of a trophy to the second, on PSN you can't see that someone got a trophy at 21:30:08, you would only see 21:30 and at times the seconds between trophies being earned have been used against a person when they were flagged. Sony's official servers don't inform you that a person has cheated on their servers, but when a person is flagged on this website, the stat on this website that describes them is "Cheaters Removed". Other websites have adapted and started only allowing people to show their profile on the website if they add themselves to it. I will also mention that I don't currently know of a way to see a person's country on the official PSN servers, for in-game leaderboards that display country that I am aware of, you need to set the country of your choice within the game itself. The only geographical information I am aware of that is officially available on PSN is the person's languages that they can speak. 

 

In the past, it was also required that a person had to purchase a premium membership to have the opportunity to report trophy lists that they deemed illegitimate, this was partially using the opportunity to publicly humiliate a person's trophy list from Sony's servers as an incentive for monetary gain. Aside from that, the dispute threads are public on this website, but I believe there isn't a disclaimer to mention that, on other websites when someone fills out a contact form about something they don't expect that members of that website's forum are going to be able to view that and comment. When you make a dispute thread public, you are using that person's information from the PSN servers against them to create an environment where they are pretty much bullied for the way they play their games, or for the games they play in general. 

 

Aside from that, the rule about "indirectly identifying" someone could apply here too, as people use their full name as a PSN ID at times, my own full name is one that nobody else in the world currently has as their full name so I would be easily identifiable based on that and my full name could be considered as "personal data". Currently this website sells people the opportunity to enhance their public image based on their publicly available profile on PSN, this is done through the "Trophy Cabinet" feature which is more often than not a way for a person to add their ten favourite trophies to a list, I'm not sure how the legality of this would work but it is selling people information from Sony's servers to a degree. Furthermore, @ars did mention the fact that a small minority of people who are on the leaderboards for this website actually have an account for the website, this does add a profile to the website without their consent and at times, the website has labelled people who aren't members of the website as a cheater for things they did on a game. In-fact, people who weren't initially members of the website have felt like they were forced to sign up to the website to address the flag on their trophy list after they were reported. 

 

Another thing this website has made publicly available that isn't visible directly through the PSN servers is the opportunity to see specific stats like number of trophies the person earned on a Tuesday. While this is highly unlikely to happen, what if someone who's PSN ID is "James_Smith" or something, earns vita trophies on a Tuesday and is googled by co-workers who see that they were earning vita trophies on a Tuesday during work hours? Wouldn't that be something that could be used to personally identify James Smith and likely affect his personal life because his trophy earning pattern could be something that co-workers use against him in the workplace? Like I said, this probably won't happen but it is something that someone can't see on the PSN servers that would be visible on this website and would likely have a negative impact on someone's personal life. 

 

I think personally I was consenting to my profile being on this website as I remember adding my own trophy list to the site shortly after I started using my account, but some people don't have that choice because other people added their profile to the website. In other competitions, only people who sign themselves up are allowed to participate, so maybe by default the website could show their profile, but they do not include them on the leaderboards or let them see the in-depth stats on their profile until they verify themselves to this website by signing up. I do have a lot of respect for this website, the only negative in regards to trophy tracking for me is that the white-listing has not been applied to games that people innocently play without intending to hack. I'm not a law expert by any means, but I will say that when someone is accused of a crime, they can plea "not guilty by reason of insanity", which can at times also mean that the person who committed the offence was unaware that what they did was breaking any rules of course it has to do with the person's mental state, like they literally don't know what they're doing. But the insanity plea could also kind of be used for a person who joined a modded lobby, as they wouldn't know what was happening within the game until they are convicted, considering a lot of the people who join a modded lobby likely don't know of their existence until it is too late.

 

The other thing is that within the ToS of PSN, no rules prohibit a person from joining a public modded lobby to unlock trophies on a game with time stamps that are close together, so when a person sees no rule like that in the ToS of PSN, they could think it wasn't something that would penalise them on this website either. While you could say "it's against the rules of PSNP", that's a rule PSNP has created to benefit its own agenda and people who were randomly added to this website by someone else are also flagged breaching this rule without even being a member of the website. I won't mention the ToS of PSN too much as this website has clearly shown that it will allow people to breach the ToS for personal gain regarding trophies, by allowing them to boost multiplayer trophies, use multiplayer glitches to gain an unfair advantage and create alt accounts on PSN to get another region's games with false information. But I will say that when a rule doesn't exist in Sony's book, people likely don't expect that rule to be applied somewhere else, especially if they were unaware of this website's existence until they got flagged. I've made plenty of analogies about this situation, but I will make another one and that is, when someone is driving a car drunk with passengers, if the driver is pulled over they will be convicted of driving under the influence, while the passengers won't be convicted of any crimes. Flagging people for joining a modded lobby is like convicting passengers of a drunk driver of driving under the influence because they were in the same car as that person. Sony bans modders, but they don't ban the people who joined the lobby through the in-game public search option and in this case, it should be the duty of the company that has the affected game and Sony to give punishments to the guilty people, if they don't care then why does this website care?

 

What I've written above might be a mess as I am tired and without sleep, but I think you get the point. 

Edited April 29, 2018 by Sergen

[hBLOXs]

On 4/19/2018 at 10:27 PM, ars said:

That means the amount of people PSNP tracks, who never opted-in for anything PSNP does, who are not PSNP members, exceed the number of actual members on this site fifteen to one. If you thought PSNP is in a position to impose any sort of a moral code on people it datamined from a third party site without their prior consent, think again.

At the same time you don't know the number of people who are using this site to look at their own stats but never bother to sign up because a once a week update is enough for them or they might even use up to 5 ad hoc updates of their own profile a day. I know I used this site for at least a year before I ever signed up to gawk & marvel at my own stats. It wasn't until I also wanted to use a trophy card for my signature at PST that I created a user here.
And of course PSNP can dictate which of those datamined stats it wants to display in what form. As long as they stick to exactly the rules every psn user has agreed to in their privacy settings they can do exactly that. It just coincides with a 'moral code'.

 

On 4/20/2018 at 10:04 PM, ars said:

No one is getting punished for enjoying their gaming exactly the way they like, because that's a personal freedom. Furthermore all that customer data being harvested off Sony's servers by PSNP without anyone agreeing to it makes this wholly not their problem. It makes it PSNP's problem.

As of right now, you are signing away your right to complain about this by setting your 'shared information' to visible for 'anybody' in your psn privacy settings.
Furthermore, people who have been added on here randomly by strangers and are unaware of that fact most likely won't feel violated by not being included in any leaderboards. Being unaware of them & all. If they become aware and don't wish to be ranked here - even though they kind of tacitly agreed to it by choosing 'games/trophies visible to anybody' they can easily remove their stats from here.

 

On 4/20/2018 at 10:04 PM, ars said:

Installing operating systems on your legitimately owned devices does not equal a hit-and-run, or murder, or any other outrageous metaphors I've heard over the years.

If we have to get petty about other people's choices of metaphors: It does though. Being murdered in real life is the death of you. Allowing to display any form of illegitimate trophy unlocking on a site which has one main purpose: showcasting trophies earned and providing comparisons of them with others in leaderboards is the death of them.
The 'crime' done against profiles on here is as egregious as a killing, no matter if it's committed via hit-and-run or an elaborately plotted murder. Just because having a cheated profile won't get you prison time in real life does not mean it's not the most serious offense on this site. On the other hand, being murdered or a murderer won't take away your trophy accomplishments on here. That's what makes it an equivalent.

 

On 4/21/2018 at 4:18 AM, mekktor said:

In the GTA V example you gave, the only way to guarantee you won't get hacked trophies is to not boot up the online at all. Because even if you play invite only lobbies, you often get booted back into public lobbies without a choice in the matter. Is it reasonable to expect people to just not play the game at all then?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I only ever experienced that if all players didn't meet up in a private lobby beforehand. At least that's how I remember it, not having touched ps3 GTA5 since 2015.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

This website doesn't only show you people's trophy lists publicly, it also is a judging platform for the profiles. When someone is flagged, the site is basically telling them "we don't like your profile, you're not welcome here".

That's unfair and not true. When someone is flagged and the flag is upheld even after dispute MMDE, grimy & everybody else go out of their way to assure the flagged member that they're welcome to participate in everything else the site has to offer.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

Hiding trophies on a profile isn't visible on Sony's servers, but when a person hides some trophies on their profile, a H icon is on their profile to tell us how many trophies the person has hidden.

Hidden trophies are indirectly visible on  Sony's servers, just not as noticeable. But if somebody had 10k trophies, 8k of which are hidden and he appears as a lvl12 to you, you'd immediately notice it.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

Hiding trophies is a privacy option on your profile and maybe the person wants to also keep the amount of trophies they are hiding private, but this website does not respect that privacy and informs people that the trophies are hidden and informs people of the amount of trophies that are hidden.

 

This website respects that privacy option exactly to the extend that  Sony does, really. See my example above. Somebody who has only hidden 2 games for whatever reason would not be noticeable to you unless you take the time to go through his whole list, add up all his trophies and uncover the difference. Or, you know, you go to a place that does all that math all for you.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

The other thing this website shows that isn't accessible through Sony's servers if you view people on the console's XMB is the time stamp of a trophy to the second, on PSN you can't see that someone got a trophy at 21:30:08, you would only see 21:30 and at times the seconds between trophies being earned have been used against a person when they were flagged.

You got a point there. Although you can still enter anybody's psn id & view their lists in the order of trophies earned. So, no, a 1 second time lapse vs. a 3 second is not visible. But 42 trophies all unlocked in the same minute, in reverse order still is. Because Sony's lists display them very much sorted by those invisible seconds too.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

I will also mention that I don't currently know of a way to see a person's country on the official PSN servers, for in-game leaderboards that display country that I am aware of, you need to set the country of your choice within the game itself. The only geographical information I am aware of that is officially available on PSN is the person's languages that they can speak. 

RE5 Versus comes to mind which displays your country next to your id. It comes down to whatever third parties are picking from your readily made available privacy settings. Most don't bother with the country, some, leaderboard sites for obvious reasons included, do.
You do have point that you can't explicitly exclude it anywhere but Sony not having a privacy setting for country pretty much puts the blame back on them. I have no doubt that if you could make your country visible to 'friends only' this site would respect that too.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

Aside from that, the dispute threads are public on this website, but I believe there isn't a disclaimer to mention that, on other websites when someone fills out a contact form about something they don't expect that members of that website's forum are going to be able to view that and comment.

It does mention that your dispute will be reviewed & commented on by members of the community at least twice in the thread https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/46667-dispute-rules-format/
Is it really asking too much of a disputer to do a little research before blindly using the contact form? Sony doesn't re-print all their ToS on their contact form either. You'll have to dig into it yourself before you contact them & ask for a refund, for example.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

When you make a dispute thread public, you are using that person's information from the PSN servers against them to create an environment where they are pretty much bullied for the way they play their games, or for the games they play in general. 

I've never seen anybody in their dispute threads being bullied for what games they play in general, are you kidding? To me it goes back to doing a little research beforehand.
If you care enough about a flag you received and you care enough to dispute it even though you already know that your brother's cousin unlocked those trophies with a savefile being put on your ps3 by a modder on an offline ps3 during a powerout years ago then you should care enough to accept the difference between legitimately and illegimitatley earned trophies.
Even the most innocent victim should realize that their cheated trophies don't belong on the same leaderboards as non-cheated ones. Otherwise, why be offended by the term 'cheat' at all?

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

Another thing this website has made publicly available that isn't visible directly through the PSN servers is the opportunity to see specific stats like number of trophies the person earned on a Tuesday. While this is highly unlikely to happen, what if someone who's PSN ID is "James_Smith" or something, earns vita trophies on a Tuesday and is googled by co-workers who see that they were earning vita trophies on a Tuesday during work hours?

Again, anything but the seconds on trophy unlocks is visible jus tas directly through the psn servers. You just can't directly sort by them. But nothing's stopping your co-worker to go through your list directly on psn, highlight all days you were supposed to not game and make life difficult for you.
Except Sony has a clause against stalking other members while also putting the burden of shared information on their members. This site allows for more extensive sorting by certain criteria but it also allows you to remove your profile entirely, without having to delete your psn id.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

but some people don't have that choice because other people added their profile to the website

See above. Nothing but seconds is 'made public' here that searching your id on psn wouldn't also show.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

so when a person sees no rule like that in the ToS of PSN, they could think it wasn't something that would penalise them on this website either.

Sony has put itself completely in the clear here by saying that '3rd party sites might require you to abide by their own, additional rules'. Only if those rules are conflicting with Sony's do Sony's rules 'outrank' the third party ones. And I'm pretty sure that we've had the part where hacking conflicts with Sony's ToS linked in many threads. It's there they're just not enforcing it.

7 hours ago, Sergen said:

But I will say that when a rule doesn't exist in Sony's book, people likely don't expect that rule to be applied somewhere else, especially if they were unaware of this website's existence until they got flagged. I've made plenty of analogies about this situation, but I will make another one and that is, when someone is driving a car drunk with passengers, if the driver is pulled over they will be convicted of driving under the influence, while the passengers won't be convicted of any crimes. Flagging people for joining a modded lobby is like convicting passengers of a drunk driver of driving under the influence because they were in the same car as that person.

Not really, because nobody has ever been flagged for simply being in a modded lobby. A better analogy would be possession of counterfeited money. Also not a very good one as you're not being audibly and visually notified that you've just received counterfeited money but the consequences are similar.
If you detect counterfeited notes among your hard earned cash and decide to continue possessing it instead of having it destroyed you're facing prosecution for that, if found out.

 

[Sergen]

10 hours ago, hBLOXs said:

At the same time you don't know the number of people who are using this site to look at their own stats but never bother to sign up because a once a week update is enough for them or they might even use up to 5 ad hoc updates of their own profile a day. I know I used this site for at least a year before I ever signed up to gawk & marvel at my own stats. It wasn't until I also wanted to use a trophy card for my signature at PST that I created a user here.
And of course PSNP can dictate which of those datamined stats it wants to display in what form. As long as they stick to exactly the rules every psn user has agreed to in their privacy settings they can do exactly that. It just coincides with a 'moral code'.

 

As of right now, you are signing away your right to complain about this by setting your 'shared information' to visible for 'anybody' in your psn privacy settings.
Furthermore, people who have been added on here randomly by strangers and are unaware of that fact most likely won't feel violated by not being included in any leaderboards. Being unaware of them & all. If they become aware and don't wish to be ranked here - even though they kind of tacitly agreed to it by choosing 'games/trophies visible to anybody' they can easily remove their stats from here.

 

If we have to get petty about other people's choices of metaphors: It does though. Being murdered in real life is the death of you. Allowing to display any form of illegitimate trophy unlocking on a site which has one main purpose: showcasting trophies earned and providing comparisons of them with others in leaderboards is the death of them.
The 'crime' done against profiles on here is as egregious as a killing, no matter if it's committed via hit-and-run or an elaborately plotted murder. Just because having a cheated profile won't get you prison time in real life does not mean it's not the most serious offense on this site. On the other hand, being murdered or a murderer won't take away your trophy accomplishments on here. That's what makes it an equivalent.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I only ever experienced that if all players didn't meet up in a private lobby beforehand. At least that's how I remember it, not having touched ps3 GTA5 since 2015.

That's unfair and not true. When someone is flagged and the flag is upheld even after dispute MMDE, grimy & everybody else go out of their way to assure the flagged member that they're welcome to participate in everything else the site has to offer.

Hidden trophies are indirectly visible on  Sony's servers, just not as noticeable. But if somebody had 10k trophies, 8k of which are hidden and he appears as a lvl12 to you, you'd immediately notice it.

This website respects that privacy option exactly to the extend that  Sony does, really. See my example above. Somebody who has only hidden 2 games for whatever reason would not be noticeable to you unless you take the time to go through his whole list, add up all his trophies and uncover the difference. Or, you know, you go to a place that does all that math all for you.

You got a point there. Although you can still enter anybody's psn id & view their lists in the order of trophies earned. So, no, a 1 second time lapse vs. a 3 second is not visible. But 42 trophies all unlocked in the same minute, in reverse order still is. Because Sony's lists display them very much sorted by those invisible seconds too.

RE5 Versus comes to mind which displays your country next to your id. It comes down to whatever third parties are picking from your readily made available privacy settings. Most don't bother with the country, some, leaderboard sites for obvious reasons included, do.
You do have point that you can't explicitly exclude it anywhere but Sony not having a privacy setting for country pretty much puts the blame back on them. I have no doubt that if you could make your country visible to 'friends only' this site would respect that too.

It does mention that your dispute will be reviewed & commented on by members of the community at least twice in the thread https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/46667-dispute-rules-format/
Is it really asking too much of a disputer to do a little research before blindly using the contact form? Sony doesn't re-print all their ToS on their contact form either. You'll have to dig into it yourself before you contact them & ask for a refund, for example.

I've never seen anybody in their dispute threads being bullied for what games they play in general, are you kidding? To me it goes back to doing a little research beforehand.
If you care enough about a flag you received and you care enough to dispute it even though you already know that your brother's cousin unlocked those trophies with a savefile being put on your ps3 by a modder on an offline ps3 during a powerout years ago then you should care enough to accept the difference between legitimately and illegimitatley earned trophies.
Even the most innocent victim should realize that their cheated trophies don't belong on the same leaderboards as non-cheated ones. Otherwise, why be offended by the term 'cheat' at all?

Again, anything but the seconds on trophy unlocks is visible jus tas directly through the psn servers. You just can't directly sort by them. But nothing's stopping your co-worker to go through your list directly on psn, highlight all days you were supposed to not game and make life difficult for you.
Except Sony has a clause against stalking other members while also putting the burden of shared information on their members. This site allows for more extensive sorting by certain criteria but it also allows you to remove your profile entirely, without having to delete your psn id.

See above. Nothing but seconds is 'made public' here that searching your id on psn wouldn't also show.

Sony has put itself completely in the clear here by saying that '3rd party sites might require you to abide by their own, additional rules'. Only if those rules are conflicting with Sony's do Sony's rules 'outrank' the third party ones. And I'm pretty sure that we've had the part where hacking conflicts with Sony's ToS linked in many threads. It's there they're just not enforcing it.

Not really, because nobody has ever been flagged for simply being in a modded lobby. A better analogy would be possession of counterfeited money. Also not a very good one as you're not being audibly and visually notified that you've just received counterfeited money but the consequences are similar.
If you detect counterfeited notes among your hard earned cash and decide to continue possessing it instead of having it destroyed you're facing prosecution for that, if found out.

 

 

Well, @Thropy_Hore has been a victim of being flagged wrongfully (https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/48508-gionascm2s-dispute/) while nothing was done about his flag on this website, although I messaged @MMDE with a lot of evidence to support his case against the wrongful flag. The trophies that he earned "out of order" even had threads about them being glitched and not unlocking in people's first run of the campaign for COD WAW, but when he made his dispute, the flag was kept on the website. He has joined a modded lobby for Black Ops II and gotten Big Leagues on the game since then, but that is simply because after being flagged wrongfully for a game he did legitimately he felt like there was nothing to lose by doing another COD game. Also, I will say that the disputes are still set out as a way that embarrasses people and mislead them because the dispute is made public but without any disclaimer, all it has is a text box saying "you can dispute the flag here and make sure you include any supporting evidence here" and not "by submitting a dispute, you agree that this will be available publicly for members of the forum to scrutinise", the person normally has to be informed of the rules shortly after the flag is approved because the box on someone's profile doesn't inform them of the rules whatsoever. Unlike your argument about counterfeit money, when a person has joined a modded lobby and the trophies unlock for them, they naturally might just sync the trophies because they're unaware that what happened was wrong until this website punishes people for it. 

 

When you join the online for a game, a lot of the time there's a long list of terms and conditions that also go with it, so when someone's country is displayed on a game it is possible they agreed to that within a game, but James_Smith from Ireland might not want people to know he's from Ireland and this website displays his country flag with his PSN ID after a stranger added his profile to the website, although his account never played online on a game that had his country visible on the leaderboard. Simply showing someone's trophy list to this website is public information, but you could say it might be something a person wishes to keep private when they earned 1500 trophies on a Tuesday, there should still be a disclaimer and the website should end up adapting and only allowing people who want to see their profile on this website to do so, not let anyone add any person without their consent. But aside from that, when a person hides games and trophies, they don't consent to the amount of trophies they have hidden being displayed on third party websites, it's a privacy option for your profile because people likely don't want any record of that game's trophies on their profile, but when someone has hidden a specific amount of trophies and someone sees that on this website they would likely have questions asked to them about the amount of trophies that are hidden. When someone goes into a store and uses counterfeit money unintentionally, the money is simply not accepted by the cashier and they often have the chance to walk away without any criminal conviction, but when someone joins a modded lobby for a game they are instantly convicted upon syncing the trophies for the game. When you go to a store with counterfeit money, you're still allowed to go back to that store to spend real money if it is a wrongful misunderstanding, but when someone syncs their trophies for a game with a modded lobby, they never have the chance to redeem that game on their profile once the trophies have been synced. 

 

I've also seen plenty of disputes where the person who is flagged says something like "I didn't think this would be public, I thought I was messaging a mod of this website" and like I said when someone inputs information that could be used publicly on a website there's normally a disclaimer and an agreement they need to accept, but that's not the case when a dispute goes public. I think if people were informed about the dispute going public, a lot of people wouldn't dispute the flag to begin with. I'll also say that although it's not the intention of the mods to embarrass the person who makes a dispute, it does naturally embarrass them when they are flagged and it shows on this website and some people don't act professionally and instead post negative things against the person who is disputing the flag to make them feel worse about it. I saw one dispute where the person who was flagged was a victim of a modded lobby and he said "I've done all my trophies legit but when I played this game a hacker started unlocking trophies for me" and most comments on the dispute kept re-iterating the point by saying "why are you lying? These trophies are clearly hacked", the person who made that dispute likely didn't think they did anything wrong because they joined a public lobby on the game but this website was here to make sure they were blasted for innocently playing a game. 

 

Nobody should feel like their game choices have to be dictated by a website that plays God with their trophies, I do consider it playing God with someone's trophies if they can be flagged for something that doesn't require them to mod their console or use someone else's save, as joining a modded lobby on those games can be done by any unsuspecting gamer who plays the game for fun. The debug menus for the Jak games aren't considered "cheating" although they manipulate a feature that was only supposed to be used by game developers for their own personal gain to unlock the trophies for the game, this is cheating worse than joining a public modded lobby and unsuspectingly having trophies earned for you, but people don't bat an eye to that because it's "within the boundaries set by the game". Aside from that, there are people who help others get the Minecraft platinum by allowing them to join the world that has already been made in a way that allows someone to get all trophies within minutes, this is using someone's save file to benefit yourself but it's allowed because it's online for a game. Joining a trophy world on Minecraft and using the debug menus on Jak games are something a person can only do if they are aware of it, yet people who join a public lobby and have trophies unlocked for them are being penalised because somehow that is wrong while methods where people willingly go online for a game to get the trophies in seconds with someone else's work are allowed. There's no rule on PSN prohibiting people from joining modded lobbies that auto-unlock trophies but there are rules on a variety of games that prohibit people from boosting online stats for the games, yet this website allows that and also gives people a platform to get those trophies with other people through the Gaming Sessions page.

 

Like I said before, the only negative about trophy tracking that I can personally mention is the fact that people do get flagged for joining modded lobbies for games when they use the in-game public search option. Although there have certainly been people who modded their trophies for games to actually get the platinum quickly, there are also countless other people who don't intend to have trophies modded for them that it happens to. I just can't wait until this kind of modding comes to PS4, because any methods people suggest for PS3 won't work because the trophies sync immediately. You're also putting people who joined a modded lobby and earned trophies within it in the same category as people who used a save file to hack trophies or used CFW to manipulate trophy time stamps without playing the game because flagging people isn't differentiated on the leaderboard. I wouldn't say a person who joined a modded lobby with the in-game public search function is a "cheater" if they weren't willingly hacking the game, but someone who uses the debug menu on the Jak games definitely is a cheater because they're willingly manipulating a game to achieve trophies with time stamps that are impossible to achieve when the game is played legitimately. 

Edited April 30, 2018 by Sergen

[MMDE]

5 minutes ago, Sergen said:

Well, @Thropy_Hore has been a victim of being flagged wrongfully (https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/48508-gionascm2s-dispute/) while nothing was done about his flag on this website, although I messaged @MMDE with a lot of evidence to support his case against the wrongful flag. The trophies that he earned "out of order" even had threads about them being glitched and not unlocking in people's first run of the campaign for COD WAW, but when he made his dispute, the flag was kept on the website.

 

They have 2 flags btw. BO2 certainly isn't wrong, and WaW idk.