Been behind, but on TWiT Leo is talking about supporting online anonymity, yet his own chat room ...

[G+_Eddie Foy]

Been behind, but on TWiT Leo is talking about supporting online anonymity, yet his own chat room blocks IP's from his own sponsor ProXPN.  Viewer beware.

[G+_Bostjan Cadej]

What?

[G+_Eddie Foy]

Use the TWiT sponsor ProXPN and try to log into the live chat.  You are blocked.

[G+_Jerry Ham]

It is unfortunate, but I imagine the reality is that chat abusers and trolls likely use VPN services to try to get around being blocked via their ISP IP address. Probably similar to how several sites (example - the Verge) have turned off commenting due to all the trolls and abusers. These folks are why we can't have nice things (not VPN users in general, but abusers and trolls). I like to think that anonymity is something to be supported, but then I remember that monkeys fling poo and the internet enables humans to fling poo farther and wider than monkeys ever dreamed of. It is hard to blame Leo or TWIT or any of the other services when they get tired of poo flingers.

[G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ]

I think you mean, "chatters beware". Viewers can use any proxy they'd like to watch live programming or DL content.

 

If you want to be upset, be upset with the folks who will literally spend hours a day trying to get past filters and bans, just to spout off a few lines of insults.

[G+_Monte Bourque]

If those same people spent the same amount of time away from their parents basement to contribute to society, the world would be a much better place.

[G+_Jeff Brand]

Promotion of a privacy measure does not prevent TWiT from using its countermeasure. Blocking IP ranges that are known as sources of abuse is a minor measure that's being used to keep trolls away from TWiT's employees, guests, and rest of the community.

 

There's no registration, let alone a "real name" policy to join the chat. If that's not private enough, there are other ways to anonymize your traffic.

[G+_Jason Marsh]

Definitely a result of the aforementioned poo-flingers. Perhaps a more relaxed approach would be to put a temporary block on the /20 where the offending comment comes from. It could be done automagically when a person is booted from chat. I'm not familiar with the size of the IPv4 address space available to the VPN services, so this may not cast a wide enough net. Perhaps an incremental approach, doubling the blocked subnet with each booted offender from same subnet or something like that. I'm sure the trolls could try real hard and get it down to a /8 ...