Sony LISTENS to Voice Chats to Scan for 'TOXICITY' in Latest PS4 Update?!

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Thank you for the sane context here, vs clickbait misinformation. Its like Discord or any centralized service where others can create or put content there. It doesnt necessarily mean that the bosses are listening all the time (and there's nothing to suggest they are , though in SOME circumstances like with advertising, Amazon Alexa etc... they can listen all the time for their benefit ) but rather that other users can record stuff on the service as part of a the normal suite of tools they're given for clipping gameplay. Thus, that could be used in things like reports as well, and Sony is making people aware of it : "Hey, if you're playing on this console platform which has a dedicated share button, people might clip content of your character/avatar/gameplay for any reason we let them, including providing evidence when they report people". Not a big deal.

Even the always-listening voice assistant fear is an unsupported claim. The device is just waiting for a waveform that lines up with the wake words, and only then does it actively record. While people like to say "but you don't know," it's actually pretty easy to find out... you'd see a lot of 24/7 data traffic, even if you couldn't make out exactly what it was.

There's something in the human psyche that clings to the OMG-it's-always-listening fantasy more strongly than with other suspicions. I suspect it taps into an almost primal fear of being watched, and that it's easier to simply demonize voice assistants than to accept a complex reality about how ad tracking takes place.
 
I call bullshit on people being banned for "unknown reasons". People make that claim all the time, no matter how obvious the reason is.
A lesser known corollary to Dunning-Kruger is that many a-holes don't know they're a-holes.
 
Even the always-listening voice assistant fear is an unsupported claim. The device is just waiting for a waveform that lines up with the wake words, and only then does it actively record. While people like to say "but you don't know," it's actually pretty easy to find out... you'd see a lot of 24/7 data traffic, even if you couldn't make out exactly what it was.

There's something in the human psyche that clings to the OMG-it's-always-listening fantasy more strongly than with other suspicions. I suspect it taps into an almost primal fear of being watched, and that it's easier to simply demonize voice assistants than to accept a complex reality about how ad tracking takes place.

Voice assistant data has been subpoenaed by law enforcement multiple times (specifically related to or seeking non-triggered content, not "Alexa help call the police" or some such) showing that listening for wake word all the time" feature" can be utilized for a wider scope of information gathering and there are huge privacy vulnerabilities and loopholes. Likewise, elements such as other tech with microphones ostensibly only active "sometime" have picked up keywords during conversations and used them to serve further targeted advertisements even though the users didn't believe anyone was listening at the time.

Demonizing proprietary voice assistants and other surveillance capitalism technology is completely viable even just for their "normal/expected" behavior, much less "extra" features that end up mysteriously enabled when people get caught. Voice assistants can be beneficial and help their users, but not if they're basically an information gathering device working for someone else. I'd rather support Mycroft (mycroft.ai) an OpenHAB (openhab.org) as user-focused alternatives for a voice assistant or home automation system, predicated on open source technologies.
 
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This is not what you think. It is a ps5 feature that allows users to record and report toxic players. That includes any ps4 player. Don't overreact to clock bait videos. You really think Sony going to invest all this money to spy on 10s of millions of players ?
Automation of undesirable speech recognition for flagging and review is something that is already being done on many platforms, and considering how advanced telemarketing spammers, siri, and alexa and the like are getting, I wouldn't be surprised to see something implemented that would spy on users en masse in order to reduce overhead costs.

Of course the question becomes what is "toxic", and therein lies the rub when you find out there are just a handful of very powerful people that are on the boards of multiple companies and can dictate the direction of mass culture over billions. There's also a huge illusion of choice, just like in the supermarket aisle when you look at dozens upon dozens of different cereal brands, only to go online and see that its really just three parent corporations that own them all.
 
Even the always-listening voice assistant fear is an unsupported claim. The device is just waiting for a waveform that lines up with the wake words, and only then does it actively record. While people like to say "but you don't know," it's actually pretty easy to find out... you'd see a lot of 24/7 data traffic, even if you couldn't make out exactly what it was.
It doesn't have to be 24/7. Even periodic kB sized data is enough.
There's something in the human psyche that clings to the OMG-it's-always-listening fantasy more strongly than with other suspicions. I suspect it taps into an almost primal fear of being watched, and that it's easier to simply demonize voice assistants than to accept a complex reality about how ad tracking takes place.
Vault 7 says hi.
 
It's the best cure to the overblown problem being discussed here. It's futile, just like bitching about microtransactions. Gamers want to pay for those, just like they want season passes, bugged initial releases and sterilization of the multiplayer experience.

They might be the cure in your view, but they are simply not offered anymore and would be kinda useless on MOBA games for example.

I agree that I don't care for season passes or microtransactions, I typically don't support them. But they aren't really related to trying to punish users for poor conduct.
 
I wonder who or what determines "toxic" behavior. Is someone going to be able to get someone else in trouble for wrongthink?

I bet everyone has a very different idea of what's "toxic" on a personal level, but what companies determine to be toxic often comes down to simply having a different opinion on a certain President...
 
I wonder who or what determines "toxic" behavior. Is someone going to be able to get someone else in trouble for wrongthink?

I bet everyone has a very different idea of what's "toxic" on a personal level, but what companies determine to be toxic often comes down to simply having a different opinion on a certain President...
That's fair. I think there are universal things most people can agree on. Death threats, telling someone to off themselves, constant harassment, basically things that would get you banned in most places or kicked out of most groups and public spaces. However, if some 12 year-old wants to say they screwed someone's mother or that their opponent is "gay", whatever. Obviously we don't want every platform to end up like Twitter or YouTube where everything feels entirely arbitrary.
 


Sony is listening. No, seriously, they might be listening in on your voice chats to see if you're a good little boy or if you're going werewolf. A new PS4 update is causing controversy with gamers. Now, they CLAIM they're not RECORDING anything, but some users are finding themselves blocked for unknown reasons. This, coupled with recent news about game devs trying to purge the industry of "toxic" players does leave us going HMMM...

Sony seems to want to flush $$$ down the toilet and become Big Brother.






Seems that reading is hard. The update says that OTHERS can record you, WHICH IS NORMAL WHEN SPEAKING IN PUBLIC which is basically what you are doing. It also says that if someone else records you and sends it to Sony they can indeed analyze the recording and take appropriate actions.

BTW Microsoft has the same policy.

Most gaming companies have it if you read the terms of service regarding multiplayer, but I know, reading is hard.


Edit to add:


Communications monitoring. Xbox Live includes communications features such as text and voice direct messaging and real-time text and voice chat. In order to help provide a safe gaming environment and enforce the Microsoft Code of Conduct, we collect and monitor direct messaging, and text communications in live-hosted multiplayer gameplay sessions and other features of the service, such as activity feeds and clubs.

GameDVR. Any player in a multiplayer game session can use GameDVR to record their view of the gameplay taking place in that session. The recording can capture your in-game character and gamertag in the game clips created by other players in the gameplay session. Note that if a player uses GameDVR on a PC, audio chat may also be captured in a game clip.



There it is for the daft people, you can look into most multiplayer gaming services and they all have it, it is basically a legal requirement both to inform you that it is a possibility and that it can be used. Just don't be the person calling everyone other slurs in public, do it in private with your mates.
 
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Voice assistant data has been subpoenaed by law enforcement multiple times (specifically related to or seeking non-triggered content, not "Alexa help call the police" or some such) showing that listening for wake word all the time" feature" can be utilized for a wider scope of information gathering and there are huge privacy vulnerabilities and loopholes. Likewise, elements such as other tech with microphones ostensibly only active "sometime" have picked up keywords during conversations and used them to serve further targeted advertisements even though the users didn't believe anyone was listening at the time.

Demonizing proprietary voice assistants and other surveillance capitalism technology is completely viable even just for their "normal/expected" behavior, much less "extra" features that end up mysteriously enabled when people get caught. Voice assistants can be beneficial and help their users, but not if they're basically an information gathering device working for someone else. I'd rather support Mycroft (mycroft.ai) an OpenHAB (openhab.org) as user-focused alternatives for a voice assistant or home automation system, predicated on open source technologies.

Ah, but again, this is based on speculation and half-remembered stories. Those subpoenas for info? There's no indication they turned up evidence... because, as far as we can tell, Alexa isn't recording non-triggered content. In 2017, for example, a judge dismissed a murder case that hinged on Alexa data because, surprise, the smoking-gun recordings the police hoped for didn't exist. Just because investigators subpoena data doesn't mean they know how the technology works. Remember, law enforcement agents and lawyers are often technically ignorant — they're the ones who assume that Apple and others can and will crack end-to-end encryption on a whim.

The only actual instance of Alexa recording all the time, at least that I'm aware of, was a demonstrated exploit (since patched) with no evidence that Amazon or anyone else was using it.

There are legitimate concerns to have with voice assistants, such as the inadvertent recordings you mentioned and unnecessary history tracking. You may well have good reason to back open source assistants. However, as you've illustrated, they get caught up with the irrational fears — and it's far easier for people to believe these loudly shouted half-truths than people making more nuanced arguments based on hard facts. Sony is just the latest casualty of this tendency to look for the simplest answer instead of the correct one.
 
I say go for it. Ban the useless pieces of human trash that can't be civil. Or at least put them all in the same bucket. Let them go off screaming profanities at eachother and coming up with the worst threats like some kind of competition then swatting eachother. Do the world a favor.
 
I don't play online games, but the problem here is basically the problem with the Internet and humanity in humanity in general--without rules, human beings seem to crumble into uncivilized behavior.

All of the platforms--Internet, online gaming, social media were all designed with a utopian sense of openness that unfortunately is not realistic because of those that will use such openness for harm. Many of us in the civilized world follow rules with consequences (laws) that without which, would allow life as we know it to crumble into chaos. And for some reason the online world was created devoid of these rules with consequences, or more precisely, was created without any enforcement of the consequences. You know what happens when you have laws without enforcement? It's the third world. So the online world is the third world. And people that enjoy the third world will never want to be in the first and vice versa ime. I don't get why, but I've just seen it too often to come to any other conclusion. :(

So here we are trying to make the current third world nature of the Internet into the first world...and all the problems that this entails. If all of this was designed with enforceable laws and rules in place from the get-go, we would have never gotten to this point. But then again, the dark web might have been a lot more popular than it is now for those who want to muck around.
 
Even the always-listening voice assistant fear is an unsupported claim. The device is just waiting for a waveform that lines up with the wake words, and only then does it actively record. While people like to say "but you don't know," it's actually pretty easy to find out... you'd see a lot of 24/7 data traffic, even if you couldn't make out exactly what it was.

There's something in the human psyche that clings to the OMG-it's-always-listening fantasy more strongly than with other suspicions. I suspect it taps into an almost primal fear of being watched, and that it's easier to simply demonize voice assistants than to accept a complex reality about how ad tracking takes place.

Google and Amazon literally said they are always recording. Always.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...ice-search-iphone-android-desktop/2800403001/

In this article Google actually admitted they listen to everything the microphone is capable of hearing.

https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/goog...-confirms-why-people-dont-trust-big-tech.html

Google admits it:

https://m.businesstoday.in/story/go...ate-conversations-via-assistant/1/364104.html

Not an attack, just a point below.

Now about this time you probably skimmed over the first sentence, maybe the title of each link, but you havent read them. Chances are your brain is in a state of cognitive dissonance and you're formulating your defense. The human mind has to feel justified even if its wrong. Its psychology. Dont be afraid to embrace imperfection. Its really ok.

I am not trolling or attacking here. Just pointing out a psychological phenomena as well as rebutting your claim peacefully and respectfully as we should on here. And I ask to be counter-rebutted if you want with evidence as we certainly arent the only two reading the thread. Maybe we can both be informed more leaving than coming in. As a general rule, I tend to feel the more I know about something there is far more I dont know about said subject.

However, I agree this is a soapbox topic.
 
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Google and Amazon literally said they are always recording. Always.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...ice-search-iphone-android-desktop/2800403001/

In this article Google actually admitted they listen to everything the microphone is capable of hearing.

https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/goog...-confirms-why-people-dont-trust-big-tech.html

Google admits it:

https://m.businesstoday.in/story/go...ate-conversations-via-assistant/1/364104.html

Not an attack, just a point below.

Now about this time you probably skimmed over the first sentence, maybe the title of each link, but you havent read them. Chances are your brain is in a state of cognitive dissonance and you're formulating your defense. The human mind has to feel justified even if its wrong. Its psychology. Dont be afraid to embrace imperfection. Its really ok.

I am not trolling or attacking here. Just pointing out a psychological phenomena as well as rebutting your claim peacefully and respectfully as we should on here. And I ask to be counter-rebutted if you want with evidence as we certainly arent the only two reading the thread. Maybe we can both be informed more leaving than coming in. As a general rule, I tend to feel the more I know about something there is far more I dont know about said subject.

However, I agree this is a soapbox topic.

My defense? That it's actually a combination of sub-par journalism in some cases and inadequate reading comprehension in others.

I read those articles, and they don't say that Amazon and Google are always recording. Not at all. In the first piece, you have to tap on the microphone in the app to record without using the wake word. Go figure, it records when I explicitly tell it to. There's no mention of the app recording voices when you're simply looking around. In the second and third pieces? Google was admitting that it had people listening to 0.2% of the clips recorded when the speaker was triggered, not that it was listening constantly. Workers making quality checks would occasionally hear clips from when someone inadvertently said something that sounded like the wake word. That's still not great, but there's a big distinction between that and recording around the clock.

I also really don't appreciate you claiming that you're being peaceful and respectful in one breath while simultaneously accusing me of being too stupid (or in denial) to read a whole article and practicing "cognitive dissonance." It's arrogant and needlessly confrontational. Care to apologize?

This reinforces my earlier point — that many people genuinely don't understand how a given piece of tech works and prefer a fear-driven, often false explanation over the more complicated reality. It's easier to scream that Amazon/Google/Sony is spying on you at all times than to get mildly upset that they might have heard a small slice of one chat with your partner.
 
If you want to know what the tech giants can and cannot do, just read the complete terms of service. That usually clears the air pretty easily because the 'may' and 'can' words in those agreements might as well be 'will' from a legal standpoint.
 
I'm all for any effort to kill off mean and rude behavior in games. A game chat is public. There are no privacy concerns here.

Back when servers were community servers they were much better policed, because there was frequently if not always a server admin online. At least mine were.

If your in game communication didn't make your grandparents proud, then I didn't want it there. My servers, my rules and if someone didn't like it, I invited them to inspect the ban hammer.

Ever since the companies run their official servers they go completely unpoliced and unenforced which has just resulted in intolerable behavior.

It's about time polite in game chats get enforced. As my grandfather always said: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
 
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Is it that hard for people to run the stuff happening in the back of their brains through the front of their brains before it heads out the ol' pie hole?
 
I'm all for any effort to kill off mean and rude behavior in games. A game chat is public. There are no privacy concerns here.

Back when servers were community servers they were much better policed, because there was frequently if not always a server admin online. At least mine were.

If your in game communication didn't make your grandparents proud, then I didn't want it there. My servers, my rules and if someone didn't like it, I invited them to inspect the ban hammer.

Ever since the companies run their official servers they go completely unpoliced and unenforced which has just resulted in intolerable behavior.

It's about time polite in game chats get enforced. As my grandfather always said: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
So you want authoritarian speech police?

Also in the U.S. we have a right protected from both govt. and individuals. The right to speech freedom.

I absolutely disagree with your pov. But we are allowed to opinion however we want. I wont police you because you have a potty mouth. And as an American raised with the understanding of how precious and finite liberty is I will NOT demand someone else gestapo someone elses speech. Not sorry about that, men and women have died to protect what this new generation wants to obliterate - liberty.
 
Squeakers called my mom a whore and said they fucked my sister on PS3 COD and you know what?

I didn't die. Seriously not even a little.

My feelings were in tact.

What a soft world we live in these days.
Yeah, but why should you have to tolerate such hate speech? Imagine what would happen to someone who said that to your face? One shouldn't behave less dignified because there are less consequences. I mean, where's the integrity in people?
 
So you want authoritarian speech police?

Also in the U.S. we have a right protected from both govt. and individuals. The right to speech freedom.

I absolutely disagree with your pov. But we are allowed to opinion however we want. I wont police you because you have a potty mouth. And as an American raised with the understanding of how precious and finite liberty is I will NOT demand someone else gestapo someone elses speech. Not sorry about that, men and women have died to protect what this new generation wants to obliterate - liberty.
Ummm...you do realize that our freedom ends when it encroaches on someone else's freedom, right? Not to mention there are no 'freedom rights' on someone's private system. You can either abide by the rules or be banned/prosecuted for virtual tresspassing. If these type of consequences were enforced more often, the picture would be very clear on what's allowed and what's not.

The problem is for some reason it's high school all over again. And high school is where lifelong problems begin resulting in wasted lives and pain and suffering. Why in the world keep perpetuating that?
 
Yeah, but why should you have to tolerate such hate speech? Imagine what would happen to someone who said that to your face? One shouldn't behave less dignified because there are less consequences. I mean, where's the integrity in people?
"Hate speech"

It's called trash talk.

It's what people used to use in friendly competition.

That's what online play is, friendly competition. That problem is some people took it seriously.
 
So you want authoritarian speech police?

Also in the U.S. we have a right protected from both govt. and individuals. The right to speech freedom.

I absolutely disagree with your pov. But we are allowed to opinion however we want. I wont police you because you have a potty mouth. And as an American raised with the understanding of how precious and finite liberty is I will NOT demand someone else gestapo someone elses speech. Not sorry about that, men and women have died to protect what this new generation wants to obliterate - liberty.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the freedom of speech as guaranteed by the first amendment.

All the first amendment does is state that you cannot be persecuted by the government for expressing your opinion. That is the extent of freedom of speech. There is nothing else to it. It does not guarantee you the ability to speak. It just says that when you do, you cannot be charged with a crime for it.

An operator of a service, private or public, is not required to guarantee that you can say whatever you want. The whole "my server, my rules" applies no matter what.
 
"Hate speech"

It's called trash talk.

It's what people used to use in friendly competition.

That's what online play is, friendly competition. That problem is some people took it seriously.

Some of us, maybe even most of us, just want to hop on a server without constantly having to hear nonstop vulgarity, nasty racist shit, insults to people's mothers, etc.

It doesn't really matter what the intent behind what is being said is. It just gets really tiresome. For once it would be nice to get to play with people who behave like adults in polite company, not with people behaving like children constantly trying out the latest profanity they just learned.

Sadly most of us adults have too much shit to do, and only get enough time to occasionally play a game, so there isn't enough time to arrange meeting up with and playing with others, even online.
 
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I know its just so tough to mute the trash talker, better to just have companies dictact what you can and can't say/do.

The rules you agree to when you use a game or platform online already tell you what you can and can’t say or do. This is simply a way to enforce those rules.
 
Some of us, maybe even most of us, just want to hop on a server with it constantly havig to hear nonstop vulgarity, nasty racist shit, insults to people's mothers, etc.

It doesn't really matter what the intent behind what is being said is. It just gets really tiresome. For once it would be nice to get to play with people who behave like adults in polite company, not with People behaving like children constantly trying out the latest profanity they just learned.

Sadly most of us adults have too much shit to do, and only get enough time to occasionally play a game, so there isn't enough time to arrange meeting up with and playing with others, even online.
Your mute button must be broken.

Shame really.
 
The rules you agree to when you use a game or platform online already tell you what you can and can’t say or do. This is simply a way to enforce those rules.

they are not listening for toxicity or actively monitoring. this is basically more functionality to reporting and taddling.

The simplest way to address poor online chat behaviour is to use the ignore fuction. These days Outside of particularly toxic communities like Dota, no one talks much anyway, so I fail to see where the massive problem is.

Frankly the result of this kind of extra crack down will be less communication, as people won't want to risk the ban or their account because someone else was offended. You can already see this behaviour not just in games but in real social situations.
 
"Hate speech"

It's called trash talk.

It's what people used to use in friendly competition.

That's what online play is, friendly competition. That problem is some people took it seriously.
I get this too as you find this in the street racing world. But when it isn't obvious that it is in jest, the onus is on the speaker to clarify what they mean. And if it's not in jest, that's aggression, plain and simple.
 
I get this too as you find this in the street racing world. But when it isn't obvious that it is in jest, the onus is on the speaker to clarify what they mean. And if it's not in jest, that's aggression, plain and simple.
In a gaming environment it's always trash talk the onus is on no one to explain.

LOL aggresion over the internet. A fine sense of humor you have sir.
 
I know its just so tough to mute the trash talker, better to just have companies dictact what you can and can't say/do.
This is like saying that if people are robbing houses in your neighborhood you should just move. :ROFLMAO: Yes, moving does solve the problem, but if you're not supposed to have people robbing houses, that's the root cause that needs to be addressed.

afaik, most online communities have rules about conduct and one of the most fundamental concepts in those rules is don't harm, offend, harass others. Now, if grown adults can't read and behave, the company has a right to do what it deems necessary to enforce its rules.
 
Frankly the result of this kind of extra crack down will be less communication, as people won't want to risk the ban or their account because someone else was offended. You can already see this behaviour not just in games but in real social situations.
Excellent! So the 'if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all' rule will get followed. :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:
 
This is like saying that if people are robbing houses in your neighborhood you should just move. :ROFLMAO: Yes, moving does solve the problem, but if you're not supposed to have people robbing houses, that's the root cause that needs to be addressed.

afaik, most online communities have rules about conduct and one of the most fundamental concepts in those rules is don't harm, offend, harass others. Now, if grown adults can't read and behave, the company has a right to do what it deems necessary to enforce its rules.

You are making some seriously exaggerate conflations that do nothing to advance your point. Robbery, or even B&E and theft is not remotely comparable to someone spouting trash online.

Your attitude is part of the problem, you are enhancing victimization and infantilizing yourself rather than just being an adult and using the tools you literally already have at your disposal to deal with someone aggressive online.
 
Do you not see the difference between trash talk while gaming and slurs in a forum post?

If you can't then I can't help you.


Slurs are slurs, learn to taunt without profanity.
BTW I've been banned here for a month because someone said that what I had said (consoles were basically pc's) took a lot of balls and I answered "that you lack?" it was during the xb1 /ps4, it was a flame fest and yet that got me banned so yeah, private server, private rules, same shit happens with voice chat in games.


And if you can't understand that, mute your own mic, so you can yell obscenities alone in your room for your own pleasure.


The ammendment has absolutely nothing to do here, ffs learn how your legal system works people, Randy Marsh from South Park is more accurate than he should be.
 
Slurs are slurs, learn to taunt without profanity.
BTW I've been banned here for a month because someone said that what I had said (consoles were basically pc's) took a lot of balls and I answered "that you lack?" it was during the xb1 /ps4, it was a flame fest and yet that got me banned so yeah, private server, private rules, same shit happens with voice chat in games.


And if you can't understand that, mute your own mic, so you can yell obscenities alone in your room for your own pleasure.


The ammendment has absolutely nothing to do here, ffs learn how your legal system works people, Randy Marsh from South Park is more accurate than he should be.

Sticks and stones.

Also I'm not American so 1st amendment means nothing to me.
 
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