Minecraft Forums

Quote from Nimphina»

We do not speak of that place.

It's mere mention brings fear to the staff.

Pain, Pain... N' Suffering.

Quote from GDog_0»

These forums have been crazy active lately because of this archive thing.

conspiracy: they announced that they were archiving the forum to bring back the activity and on June 15th they'll say "actually, since it's so popular again we'll keep it around". repeat every time the activity slows down.

edit: oops wrong account

Me trying to escape the inevitability of time as it surrounds and consumes me despite my threats to ban time from the forum.

...as long as people follow the rules we'll be lenient, if you'd like to chat and reminisce and give the community a nice send out you're more than welcome to. This is the end of an era for everybody here, some of us have spent our entire adult lives here. As long as everybody is kind spirited, feel free to chat away for old times sake -- just remember, your posts will last forever, make them count! I'll send a prize to the person who makes the last post ever. Also we'll likely have some sort of event in the coming weeks to celebrate the forum and everybody's memories here

Despite the, uh ...interesting... times we have had here in off-topic, it has been a good time and I appreciate every person who contributed to the forum over the years, even if I'd like to forget the PPNS saga.

Quote from ScottoMotto»

I am not European so I do not know the details or the processes used in drafting and implementing this legislation or its implementation. That said I am greatly affected by its consequences on this site. This has to do with the age of the users at time of their posts? Or opt-in language or what?

I just don't see how laws can be applied retroactively to historical material. Surely EU regs didn't intend that? Especially since most likely a huge percentage of the people who were underage at the time are over age now. Can you imagine if YouTube removes all of its videos produced by underage creators? What would happen to Minecraft videos then?

You can read about the law online by searching for "GDPR". The law is comprehensive and covers all aspects of collecting, using and managing user data. A fundamental component of this law is consent, meaning data collectors must obtain consent for a wide variety of actions, including the transfer of data. That means to be compliant with the law we were obligated to obtain consent from every user in the European Economic Area to transfer their data. Many users did not provide their consent and as a consequence we were not legally allowed to transfer their data. This was an intended consequence of the legislation. YouTube would have to go through the same process if it were sold.

There are a lot of moving parts and considerations when it comes to the acquisition of a company, this is especially true when it involves one of the biggest companies in the world in a process that they have never gone through before. At no point did anybody make a decision out of spite. Hard decisions had to be made, and certainly those decisions aren't without consequences, but it's a mischaracterisation to suggest that this was anything other than a best effort made by people operating on tight timelines with many constraints and considerations.

As a company I believe that we have demonstrated that we are committed to understanding the value of community and importance of content through our actions -- even when we shut down a website, we archive it rather than allow it to disappear from the internet -- and I'm hoping that people understand that this is as painful for us as it is for you. I would never claim that losing content is a good outcome but it was the best available outcome given everything that we had to deal with. I think it's very important to understand the actions that were taken in the context of a company that is worth $800,000,000,000 in an environment where regulators are looking very seriously at companies like Amazon.

There's no pressure on me from above, although our formal communications were authored with the Amazon legal department heavily involved, my comments here do not have any legal review and I'm free to say what I choose -- especially as we're no longer a part of Amazon.

Assuming the petition is related to the post (and the post is allowed) then it is fine to include a link to a petition.

Quote from Metamorphic_Fish»

That's a good question, thank you for raising your concerns. Although we share a name and origin, CurseForge is now a part of Twitch and no part of CurseForge remains under Curse Media. Due to the way that CurseForge was tied in to Curse Voice (which has since become the Twitch App) that meant that CurseForge was an integral part of the Twitch business and so it has remained with Twitch, it is not part of Curse Media. Fandom have acquired Curse Media only, which is made up of community websites (like MCF, mmo-champion, mtgsalvation.com, futhead.com), D&DBeyond, Gamepedia and our advertising representation business.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Quote from KillerDragn75863»

No such option exists for me, all I got is the link to go to twitch to manage my account. I have a 8 1/2yr old account im trying to reclaim. https://www.minecraftforum.net/members/KillerDragn .

If an account has a nickname then it does not need to be reclaimed. You appear to have a separate issue caused by the absence of a Twitch association between the Minecraft Forum account in question. Please submit a support ticket and we can help: https://www.minecraftforum.net/meta/support

Quote from monotonehell»

The content of threads is not private information - it is publicly posted information. I think you need to speak to your lawyers again regarding content versus personal data as it seems there's been a misunderstanding of the task at hand.

I cannot speak to reasoning behind the decisions made by Amazon's lawyers as I am not a legal professional, however I am confident in the decisions they have made. Given the high stakes (just today Google was fined €50,000,000 for GDPR violations) it is understandable that they would exercise caution.

I appreciate that this is deeply unfortunate and has far reaching consequences for the community but it was determined to be the right course of action to comply with our legal obligations. This forum has been my entire career, for the last decade I have watched the forum grow post by post and it is very sad to see so much of the history wiped out. I would love for there to be a way to save the history but our legal obligations come first.

Quote from 123fendas»

So are you saying that the reason as to why my thread was "automatically marked as Deleted" is

? Will my thread eventually reappear?

No, the post you're referencing applied only during the processing period. For clarity:

Starting on January 12th we began to delete all users who had not consented, after all users had been deleted then we began to delete their public content. This process took more than 24 hours, so there was a period where content was available that would eventually be deleted. The process finished on January 14th.

The current status of the situation can be found in this announcement: https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/forums/forum-discussion-info/2944101-regarding-disappearing-threads-posts-and-users

I will edit my comments in this thread to add reference to the new status announcement.

Quote from Robijnvogel»

For clarity: the situation is that posts have been soft deleted and while there is no technical reason we cannot restore posts, it is effectively impossible for us to restore them because we do not have any tools available, and doing it post by post by hand would take hundreds of moderator hours, potentially thousands depending on the reclamation rate. I am not willing to commit the forum staff to that, I think it would be deeply unfair to expect volunteers to perform that task.

The intention is for an automated process to be built and launched -- that's what the form is for expressing an interest in -- but I cannot guarantee that will happen due to the resources required. Realistically, if that process is launched then we expect to see full recovery of all posts belonging to reclaimed users, if that process isn't launched then I do not expect to see the majority of posts restored.

I have let moderators make a decision on an individual basis if they wish to restore posts of reclaimed users, however I haven't publicised this in the announcement because I don't wish moderators to be inundated with requests.

Quote from _zombiehunter»

As one of the 1 million affected users, I would like to note the following:

1 - The notification emails you sent out were sent to my old (now unused) email adress I used when joining the forums 6 years ago, not to the current email I provided to my Twitch account, which the forum uses now. This is the reason I did not notice the transfer right away until my threads and posts have been deleted. I still haven't recieved any information why you did it this way, but I'm pretty certain something went wrong here.

2 - I've never seen any pop-up appearing on the forums hinting the transition to Fandom. It is not completely out of question that add-block ate it, but that's still strange as it only blocks web elements that are explicitely marked as adds. I've seen all other pop-ups appearing in the past too, even the one telling people to transfer their forum accounts to Twitch. Why would exactly this one be supressed by add-block? (Also, please don't come with "why u not deactivate add block? blablabla ... I've cought malicious stuff through adds in the past, also at least 90% of adds on the internet are pure cancer, especially the ones with sound. Not even talking about how much faster websites load with add-block ... the MC forums are no exception here. I'm not turning it off, never again!)

So yeah, I was completely unaware this purge is happening. I totally understand the GDPR and it's not a bad law, but it requires every company to give people a clear option to consent or opt out of any kind of data usage or data transfer. I did not recieve this option in any proper way. I get the feeling there might have been a few mistakes on your side, or not? I mean, the transition to Twitch worked flawlessly ...

I'm sure I'm not the only one having years worth of forum posts deleted out of nowhere, so what do you guys think? Anyone else out there who recieved zero information before having his stuff deleted?

1. I am sorry that this has happened. I cannot speak to the methodology through which we identified your contact address but I believe it was based on the email address we were sending all other contact to. There is the possibility that there was a forum bug (independent of this process) which incorrectly referenced your email address.

2. AdBlock and similar plugins work by identifying elements and scripts on a webpage it believes to be bad and interferes with them; from simply removing elements to blocking requests, there are a lot of different ways which these plugins can modify the behaviour of a website. The consent pop-up we used depended upon a consent service we operated within Curse but outside the Minecraft Forum and so it's possible that your browser plugin identified the system as bad by virtue of it being hosted on a separate domain and blocked it. This is, unfortunately, a risk you take when using a plugin like AdBlock.

The transition to Twitch ownership in 2016 did not involve any consent process, so it is not comparable, as there were no user facing changes. The transition into Twitch was before GDPR came into force, meaning that we did not need to seek consent from any users to transfer their data (in the same way we did not seek consent from non-EEA users during the Fandom transition).

I have posted an announcement clarifying the situation and steps forward: https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/forums/forum-discussion-info/2944101-regarding-disappearing-threads-posts-and-users

Quote from rabidgoodra27»

Does this only apply to European users?

Quote from Videogamer555»

@criticsquid Why not keep the threads and posts up, under an anonymized name like "User90283479327"? Then if that user reclaims their account, you can reactivate their real username. Some old threads posted by inactive users contain links to downloads like mods that may otherwise be lost forever, due to these threads being posted by old users who won't ever visit the forum again. Content produced should NEVER be deleted, because of its usefulness to others.

As I understand it we cannot do that, it would not comply with our legal obligations. I agree that content should not be deleted and that it is very unfortunate content has been deleted but we were obligated to do so to comply with our legal obligations, if we could have avoided this we absolutely would have, it's as painful for us as it is for everybody else.

During December we announced that Fandom (previously known as Wikia) had entered into an agreement to acquire Curse Media from Twitch, Curse Media is the company which owns the Minecraft Forum and various other video game websites, such as Gamepedia (home of the Minecraft Wiki). That deal closed this week and Curse Media is now owned and operated by Fandom.

Due to recent changes in European law -- specifically, the introduction of the GDPR -- a company must obtain opt-in consent from users located within the European Economic Area to transfer ownership of their data during acquisitions. Each user that we identified as being covered under this law was given multiple opportunities to consent to the transfer of their data, through emails and an on-forum pop-up (which displayed every 5 minutes until consent was obtained).

Last week, prior to the close of the deal, we closed our consent opt-in service and began removing all content from the Minecraft Forum that we did not have consent to transfer to Fandom ownership. This process involved the removal of around 1 million users and 10 million posts. As a consequence of this removal of data there are a large number of posts and threads that are no longer available on the Minecraft Forum. We appreciate that this is very disruptive but it was necessary to meet our legal obligations under the GDPR.

At this time we are unable to offer the ability to restore deleted posts.

FAQ

1. My account was deleted and I would like to continue using the forum

You are welcome to continue to use the Minecraft Forum if your account has been deleted, you can either create a new account or reclaim your previous account. Reclaiming you previous account is easy, first log in to the Minecraft Forum and then go to My Account and enter your nickname in the form at the bottom of the page. After you have reclaimed your account you will be able to continue to use the forum however your posts will not be restored. Please note that by reclaiming your account you are providing consent for your data to be transferred.

2. I am trying to visit a thread that has been deleted ("HTTP Code: 404 Status Text: error", or "Not found")

Unfortunately many of the most popular threads on the forum were created by users within the EEA who did not consent to the transfer of their data. Their threads have been deleted and unless we obtain their consent (through the reclamation of their account) we will not be able to restore their thread.

3. My account was deleted but I do not remember being asked for my consent

Each user identified as being within the EEA would have received 4 emails to the email address their account is registered under, additionally a pop-up was displayed on every Minecraft Forum page every 5 minutes. Due to the use of AdBlock and NoScript by some users the consent pop-up may have been blocked.

4. I would like my posts restored

At this time we will not restore posts and threads.

If you have a question that is not covered here please respond to this thread, or if you would like to speak directly to our support team please submit a ticket. Please do not privately contact Minecraft Forum staff members to ask for your posts to be recovered.

The author of the thread did not consent to have their data transferred from our previous owner, which we were required to obtain by law, therefore the thread has been deleted. You can learn more about the specifics of that here: https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/forums/forum-discussion-info/2943486-what-is-up-with-all-the-user1234567-names

I am sorry for any inconvenience this causes.