(We're somewhat new to Minecraft, so I may be missing something here.)
There was a vulnerability in the past that 2B2T users discovered, which enabled them to essentially track any player's activity and find the IPs of private servers, even ones run by family. They used it to grief even a server where only one person was logged in, AFK, at the time. Though unlikely, a hacker with a new vulnerability helping them to discover this kind of information could hypothetically find anyone's private group, drop in, and report.
EDIT:
The griefing tool is called Project Copenhiemer, and the user named orsond who is a member of the Fifth Column which created Copenhiemer, made a post about it here on this comment section page. Refer to their comment.
I totally get this. My support is for the sentiment Microsoft is expressing. As with so many things online without the actual commitment of real people who are culturally connected (e.g. Daniel and Scott for HN), it will likely go south.
They'll report for no reason, that's the point of trolling.
> And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up?
I have not played Minecraft, but I'd be surprised if the server admins of any game of such scale acted on logs.
Also, I wouldn't want my kids to be logged on a corporate server.
> And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old?
Are the rooms invite only? Then what's the point of Microsoft's draconian measures here? I thought the point was to censor public servers, but again, I haven't played this much.
In any case, this situation already looks like defeat for an online community.
I think my broader point is that I appreciate Microsoft saying they want Minecraft to be a profanity -free zone. There are plenty in the "online community" that seem to be quite happy being G-rated. My 9-yeae old has watched about 100 hours of YouTube from "Pixlriffs" and its been wonderful despite random zombie attacks or whatnot.
As an aside, have you looked into putting a whitelist on your server? It could provide a lot of peace of mind, especially when you're trying to keep it to just your kids and friends.
Public servers with hundreds of players and little to no barrier to entry - they'll be full of "trolls". All the 6 y/o has to do is join one, which takes about 5 seconds.
Yes.
> And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up?
Why do you think anyone will check the chat logs? That's too expensive at MS scale, it's an automatic ban. Only admins of private servers actually check the chat logs :)
> And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old?
There are thousands of public player run servers. Some are quite fun. Whatever your idea of fun is, there should be at least a hundred that match.
> (We're somewhat new to Minecraft, so I may be missing something here.)
You're missing all the communities that were built before MS tried to turn it into software as a service to justify their billion spent on Minecraft.