Transparency for suspended accounts and appeals process | Voters

Transparency for suspended accounts and appeals process

CunningStunt

A player has recently been banned because he is a skilled low level player, because of this he had presumedly received mass reports from the opponents and the moderators suspended the player without providing a reason or evidence or even any way to appeal the suspension. Having review his games and undertaken 400 investigations personally, it is clear there is no cheating in his games.

Moderators should provide exact and detailed reasons for suspending PAID players of the community
Provide evidence of the breach of community guidelines
There should be an appeal process where the ban can be reviewed and overturned in an expedited manner (24-48 hours)

It is simply not fair that low level skilled players are arbitrarily banned with no recourse to overturn the ban, appeal or even see the reason why they are banned. I have even reported players who are obviously cheating, yet when i review their profiles no action is taken against them and they continue, despite the evidence being blatant and obvious, probably because the account is only flagged after a significant volume of reports, meaning the ban and suspension policy is unfit for purpose and needs to be completely overhauled.

May 29, 2026

kamilska

yes got banned for being bad btw

VibrantRiver842

It's awfully common in many interactive websites, be it forums or some kind of browser-based games, that moderation is done by 100% anonymous moderators (in some websites so anonymous that you can't even see who moderated or banned you), and for there to be absolutely no way nor mechanism to defend yourself or appeal your case. Some sites have gone through the effort to provide users to appeal their cases, but in later years more and more have gone that first route, I suppose because it's the easy least-effort way. It's indeed absolutely not fair because people who get falsely moderated or banned have no recourse, not given even the possibility of explaining what happened, not even in situations where the explanation would be very simple and would clear things up quickly and easily. Such extreme moderation policies also lend themselves to abuse (as it allows a group of dedicated bad actors to harass innocent people with false reports and fabricated claims, with no consequences.)

Intrepid

I agree that there should be an appeals option for players whom have been banned on accusations of cheating. I too have played rounds were I've been plunked in real life travel locations, or have very niche knowledge of the history or geography of a region/country/city and may appear as cheating to some less experienced or knowledgeable players. Thank you @CunningStunt on your initiative for putting forth this petition and supporting the community.

Suchttti

agreed

Juliette

I appreciate that Geoguessr can't make public all the evidence behind bans,  that it takes resources to manually review reports across multiple rounds and that there is probably a flood of new accounts cheating that they want to catch asap. 
However, especially for accounts in which people have invested a lot of time (e.g. above a certain level so different game modes are taken into account - not just duels), there ought to be a way to appeal and for there to be a panel, ideally containing some trusted community members, to do a proper review of enough rounds, including non-reported ones, to form a proper and non-automated conclusion. It'd be nice if the player had a chance in this process to respond to any specific accusations. 
Investigations is fine as a triage system but I hope it isn't used as the only way to make decisions. If you play enough games, you do sometimes get lucky, you do eventually get rounds from places you know in real life, you get repeats and you end up with strange niche knowledge, all of which can look like cheating, especially if you just look at the single round. (And sometimes you do just get interrupted in real life playing moving!)  
I'm not a fan of alts, but they are currently allowed and as such there also needs to be some way to make sure that they don't get mass-reported and automatically suspended/banned. Go and play a bit of unranked team duels and you'll see how quickly you get accused of cheating if you half-know what you are doing!

Ethan

I agree too

Time

I agree

Moonbow

Strongly agreed.

trollsroyce

I support this. Getting into the game and investing in it can be extremely hard if you get banned for it: there is no knowing if another account of yours would get the same random treatment.

second❤️lena

yeah, i strongly agree with your comment and i think that the devs. should take into account your opinion in the nearby future. on the other hand, i think that it's really important to provide transparency.

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