When I made friends with my pal rosy she said " your not one of those British womanizing stalkers are you " ,“I said no”, she said “all right then”. Been pals a couple years now.
Women have to put up with so much nonsense online and everywhere else, always have to be on there guard, it’s a shame.
But it’s real.
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awwww-ladies stalk on here 2 n men pretend 2 be ladies etc…some ppl. think it is a dating site–ALSO some very WEIRD ppl.—like guys asking me 2 call them 2 talk poker etc.etc…
I have like 4 lady friends on here who tell me men stalk or stalked them–that is so sad ppl. do it:(.
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Tell them to go silent-like you. LOL. Not trying to be mean to you, but seriously, just mute the “you know whats”.
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It is very sad anyone would Stalk any members in the Replay Community and will not be allowed per site rules. Below is just the beginning of the site rules and I consider Stalking definitely in the rudeness category.
Welcome to the Replay Poker Community
Thank you for joining the friendliest poker community on the internet! In order to ensure that our players can enjoy our friendly, yet competitive atmosphere, we have a few rules we ask you to follow. While these guidelines don’t encompass every possible situation, we strive to use our best judgment when taking action on an account. This allows us to offer everyone a fun place to play their favorite game.
If anyone even observes someone stalking, Please report the player, reference a hand number and contact a Moderator ASAP. This type of behavior is totally unacceptable.
Except several people have reported some very disturbing behavior with zero action from Replay.
I will say that has not been my experience - the few times I’ve had to reach out to support I’ve always got a more than satisfactory response - but that doesn’t excuse the silence here.
When people who have played here for years and have nearly 500 active friends are telling you they don’t feel like they can play on the site anymore, there’s a bigger problem than “perceived stalking”. “Totally unacceptable” would pretty much describe my feelings on how this has been handled so far.
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To be a bit more constructive, what I would like to see is Replay announce that they are examining their policies around this to see if there’s ways they could prevent or address this better.
For example, does displaying gender actually do anything positive for anyone? It’s very hard for me to imagine that it does. (I asked AI and about the only positives it could come up with was gender affirmation and self expression, but given Replay only offers 2 choices, it’s hardly covering those bases all that well).
Obviously there’s no silver bullet here, but it also seems clear that putting the onus on people to report stalking isn’t a solution either.
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These ladies told me they reported it MANY times… nothing happened:(
They do-they tell me the guys follow them 2 every table–creepy guys:(
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In general Replay support for abusive users is seriously not good enough. The player who routinely harassed me wouldn’t been banned for life in most online gaming communities for a fraction of the offenses I reported. At the very last, they would’ve been permanently muted from using chat. Instead, this player today is still active on the site and has full communication privileges. This is a person who doxxed my personal details after looking me up on social media, and repeatedly making abusive comments involving my parents’ real names. Just unthinkable levels of indifference from the people who moderate the site. In one of my complaints I used “I don’t feel safe” language, thinking these would be magic words that triggered an escalation. Nope!
I also do not understand or agree with the policy that users are never entitled to specific information about a resolution when reporting abuse. If a player is being stalked and feels actually unsafe in their real life, they deserve to know what’s been done to remedy the situation. These are very serious issues that transcend a free online poker game, but Replay clearly fails to treat them with a commensurate level of gravity and transparency.
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Yeah, that makes no sense to me, and runs counter to every experience I’ve had with Replay support. It wouldn’t surprise me that lawyers would recommend saying nothing, but they will also tell you what you can fairly safely say if you tell them that you need to communicate something to the players.
I also just wonder if whatever legal advice their policies are based on is outdated now. The online safety act (Online Safety Act: explainer - GOV.UK) is law now in the UK, and there’s similar laws in a bunch of other countries these days. I would think they probably leave themselves far more exposed to litigation by doing nothing here than by addressing it. (But ya know, not a lawyer, none of this is legal advice, etc, etc.)
Whatever the reasoning, it really sucks that anyone going through this has to not only deal with the stalking but also with feeling like they’re being ignored.
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I’m just guessing this individual made these comments about you and your parents in the table chat.
Did you copy the chat or note the hand numbers and include it with your complaint to Staff?
I would think Staff needs actual evidence of the abuse before they can take any action e.g., muting or banning them etc.
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Thanks to all for raising your concerns. We take these situations seriously and have staff that investigate each and every report we receive. We can’t speak about specific situations, however, and would ask that all further replies avoid direct mention of any usernames and contact us at support instead. If that occurs, we’ll need to close the thread.
It is not against our current terms and conditions for someone to join any table they’d like so long as they are polite within chat and play by the rules. But we do recognize that some people will try to intimidate and frustrate others within those guidelines.
We ask anyone who feels as though another player is being verbally abusive, revealing personal information, or has crossed the line from competitive intimidation to invasive behavior, please report them to us immediately so we can gather more details.
We also welcome general feedback, including any features or tools you feel would empower you at the table, though keep in mind that we cannot implement anything that would allow a player to block another from joining.
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I’m a bit confused about what the possible resolutions are currently?
If your current terms and conditions don’t allow you to do much, then you should probably make that clear (and then update them so that you can do something). It doesn’t really matter how seriously you take these situations if you’re unable to impose serious sanctions.
I do have another suggestion though. I think that “Last Seen” should only be visible to friends. There really isn’t any reason I can think for non-friends to need to know that. Not exposing that to players who aren’t in the friends list makes stalking harder - can’t just refresh a page and see exactly what table/game anyone is at, you’d have to search through a bunch of them. That might be cumbersome enough that it prevents at least some people from repeatedly searching for someone.
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I have a stalker. sometimes he is taller than me. sometimes he same height as me. sometimes he is smaller than me. I only see him when I’m standing outside and sun is out. follows me everywhere I go. even mimics my moves.
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I have a case in with Replay at the moment. This person has been stalking older women for over a year trying to drive them from the site and is even currently cryptically bragging in his profile about his latest victim having recently left the site. He has a high ranking which is a concern. So far support has advised me not to post it in the forum and the evidence issue has come up. Surely there is a way to stop individuals from watching others and to block their chat or something as decided by the user. And surely it is in Replay’s interest to sort out this challenging situation as they are people buying chips and supporting the site long term. I am currently checking with a current victim / friend if they are happy for me to elaborate on this here so please keep the thread open. This is a very important duty of care issue. I rate this site and the support function, they have always been good and fair with everything to date but this is falling into a grey area where the damage to the site users is obvious but hard to work out what rule is being broken or if a new rule is needed
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Here’s an interesting solution - make games anonymous for blocked users. They can still join any table or play any tournament, but they only see Seat 1, Seat 2, etc on the tables (including replayed hands) and in the lobbies. Player profiles/rankings, notes and chat would also have to be unavailable, but really this shouldn’t be too hard to implement.
Add a tag to the blocked players name (like happens for mods and player reps), so the other players at the table know they are blocked and can’t tell who they are.
Someone would be able to get around this, but not easily without breaking the T&C’s, and if that happens they can just have their account banned.
Anonymizing the tables is a fairly soft punishment and shouldn’t need the same level of evidence as actually blocking someone from playing. It also doesn’t need to be permanent.
I can’t see why the site can’t implement a block system. You have a friends list. You could also have a block list. Anyone on your block list cannot PM you and cannot search you to find your current table(s).
Now that sucks----------sorry 2 hear that—that must be a sick person 2 do that:(
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I like the idea of a block system keeping others from seeing your activity on the site or simply only allowing friends to view this info. I don’t know the technical issues with implementing that step but it would make it much more difficult to track others on the site so it’s something I’ll pass along to the rest of the staff to consider.
@lihiue I understand the frustration. There are steps we can take to remove people that cross that line, however, tracking them in the past has been difficult. We need to be sure of what’s going on before we take action on any accounts as well. We want to be able to help those that need it while also ensuring privacy and that a group of players can’t get rid of another person from their table just because they don’t like them.
To gather additional evidence we will sometimes reach out to people to get times and tables where something occurred. @CarpWhisperer, I mentioned in your message to me that I would do that with your friend. We don’t comment on specific accounts but I did and got some additional info that should resolve your friend’s problem.
Admittedly, these methods are slow but we are working to be sure everyone gets the help they need. We’re also always open to ideas on how to improve players’ experience on the site.
As for @wildpokerdude… maybe a seat, cool towel, and some lemonade will help there. 
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