You probably got swept up in the Suspicious User heuristics that Twitch uses now. Mods and Broadcasters should still see your chats. Message a moderator of the channel and explain the situation. They can remove your account from the shadowban from that channel.
It probably means lots of users from that VPN’s gateway IP have been reported/banned/manually added to the Suspicious User restriction list.
I doubt it has anything to do with Linux, and I guarantee it’s not a move to flip you off for trying to guard your privacy as an innocent person.
The issue is that a lot of the things you can do to hide your identity online are the same things people doing bots or harassment do, because they work.
So, their system learns that pattern and when you match it you get caught up. There is no good way to tell users apart when doing offensive security like this, other than waiting for accounts to start spamming the n-word in chats and ruining the stream experience, which is the thing this system is mean to prevent.
Don’t get caught up in privacy paranoia - there are much bigger fish they’re trying to fry than someone who just doesn’t want ad networks tracking them.
VPNs exist and then boom IP bans no longer matter. Hell, some ISPs give you a new IP if you just restart your modem. IP bans sweep up clusters of users behind large gateways like college dorms or carrier-grade NAT.
IP bans do not work and I’m sure twitch seldom uses them, the exceptions being VPNs and cheap/free VPS services.
Compromised accounts logging in from VPNs are a thing, and most Twitch users probably can’t be trusted not to be reusing passwords across literally everything.
Now, on the other hand, the number of breaches has gone way up recently. Microsoft has pushed AD and Exchange into the cloud recently. And they just had several instances where keys were stolen and passwords were left in the clear for months after they were notified, as well…
Well we have no solid evidence but it’s certainly within the realm of possibility.
You probably got swept up in the Suspicious User heuristics that Twitch uses now. Mods and Broadcasters should still see your chats. Message a moderator of the channel and explain the situation. They can remove your account from the shadowban from that channel.
It probably means lots of users from that VPN’s gateway IP have been reported/banned/manually added to the Suspicious User restriction list.
I doubt it has anything to do with Linux, and I guarantee it’s not a move to flip you off for trying to guard your privacy as an innocent person.
The issue is that a lot of the things you can do to hide your identity online are the same things people doing bots or harassment do, because they work.
So, their system learns that pattern and when you match it you get caught up. There is no good way to tell users apart when doing offensive security like this, other than waiting for accounts to start spamming the n-word in chats and ruining the stream experience, which is the thing this system is mean to prevent.
Don’t get caught up in privacy paranoia - there are much bigger fish they’re trying to fry than someone who just doesn’t want ad networks tracking them.