deadchiafollower

[deadchiafollower]

[deadchiafollower]

so for MONTHS neopets has had this issue of transphobic trolls making the neoboards completely uninhabitable. posts talking about genocide and suicide baiting other users would stay up for over a day without mods stepping in. it got to a point this week where TNT dropped the ban hammer on ANY non-neopets related topics, including being trans

this understandably upset a lot of users, especially the trans community on neopets who could no longer talk about who they are. this lasted for a few days until tonight when the neopets team dropped this nothingburger of an apology on instagram:

thankfully people on neopets can smell bullshit and made their opinions very clear on the board. the crowd goes mild!

[deadchiafollower]

In case anyone did not see, the PR team finally put out their statement in favor of the LGBTQIA+ community and talk of reviewing the chat rules and moderation policies:

https://portal.neopets.com/news/april9-neoboard-announcement

They want to open a discussion with members of the community on how to address the moderation issues and it looks like there has been a thread created in the r/Neopets Discord server. I don't know if this is the only line of communication that is going to be used for this, I feel like a form or on-site discussion would be better, but if you are not a member of the discord already, you can use this link to join:

https://discord.gg/neopets

Note that is NOT an "official" Neopets discord, if you are not already aware, it is run by the same person who set up the Neopets subreddit and is entirely community moderated, but members of TNT are present and use it as another social media announcement conduit.

After you join and get access or whatever new members have to do, look for the "dev-updates" channel and find the latest message that has a link to a 2025 TNT Transphobe Moderation thread if you would like to participate in the discussion there.

Again, I really hope they open up alternative ways of gathering community feedback that are more accessible to people who don't have discord, I am not actually sure if this thread was requested by TNT or if the discord owners just set it up of their own accord, but as of right now it's the only place I know of to give direct feedback.

Edit: After taking 0.2s to review the thread myself (admittedly I hastily made this post just wanting to spread the word) It is definitely something that was created by the discord team only, and not by TNT, so it may or may not be taken into consideration officially, but we DO monitor the discord channels and facebook group (Neopets Nation) discussions frequently and use feedback from those place even if we are not posting responses in those discussions directly (we like to maintain some amount of distance, especially in NN where we would have to have shell accounts to avoid revealing our actual personal FBs)

So even if it is not official, don't hesitate to participate in community lead discussions, it helps to have dedicated spaces like the discord thread where we can see all the feedback in one place!

[deadchiafollower]

Transphobia in Neopets: Moderation Issues on The Neoboards

Screenshots 1 ★★ Screenshots 2

Unfortunately, harassment and targeting of trans users on the boards is nothing new and has become a deep-rooted problem within the website. Neopets moderation has a history of being inconsistent, unfair, and failing to provide clear motives behind the silencing and freezing of player's accounts, but things have gotten progressively worse over the past few years.

Users who have attempted to warn other players about interacting with transphobic people, or those who have spoken out against harassment, whether directed at themselves or others, have had their accounts silenced, or permanently silenced.

Some users have even been unfairly silenced for taking a stand and posting criticism about the state of moderation on neoboards, pointing out how moderation has left threads that show contempt for trans and queer users alone for up to 8 hours:

In one specific case, a player had all their accounts frozen. Minutes before this happened, they started building a petpage with a plea for better moderation, they were describing and tracking this issue and backing it up with screenshots of abusive messages and selective moderation.

The original motive behind the freeze was because it was found that the user had "one of multiple same-owner accounts being used to vote in the beauty contest", this motive was later disputed by the owner since they didn't remember doing this; After apologizing, Alice explained that the reason had been updated to "frozen for incorrect posts." Virha's accounts remain frozen/silenced.

TNT was confronted on the site's boards and social media platforms regarding the lack of moderation and accountability when it comes to handling transphobia. In response, TNT changed the name of the "General Discussion" board to "General Neopets Discussion":

This change bans any mention of "real life issues" or discussion not related to Neopets. Because of this, users have been getting silenced and threads getting deleted over mentioning harmless things, such as asking others what they are having for dinner, or mentioning that they are bisexual; Even when TNT had previously stated that users can maintain discussion of LGBTQIA+ topics:

This question was submitted and published back on July 30, 2021. The neoboard chat rules have yet to be updated:

Despite the change made to the Gendisc board, both the "General Neopets Discussion" and "Site Events" boards are currently being bombarded with harmful rhetoric, and many users who have displayed transphobic behavior have not faced consequences such as silencing or freezing of their accounts.

[deadchiafollower]

Neopets users being silenced for standing against transphobia

And some screenshots of what users have been dealing with on the Neoboards

★★Check some more screencaps here!★★

A board was made by an ambassador about community concerns and site rules

Some other bigotry: