SocialClub PSA - Be careful of songs you share!

[Pißwasser Time]

Has anyone else received a Takedown Notice from R* over your liked/shared songs?

 

My gf received the following notice after clicking 'share' for a song she liked from the in-game car radio. She had no idea that the game posted some potentially offensive album artwork to her Social Club Wall, and it apparently offended someone and they reported it to R*.

 

We opened a support ticket, and I'll update this post with the outcome.

 

Original offending wall post:

 

I don't blame R* for protecting the community (and especially children, despite this being a Rated M game), but for now, we're setting our profiles to private until this gets resolved. Also, one more complaint could trigger an account suspension. I'm sure, however, Rockstar will correct this particular incident.

 

Well, just thought I'd pass on a heads-up...

 

UPDATE:

Here is the response to the support ticket asking for clarification of the Takedown Notice. -Looks like a 'canned response' (below)...

 

 

So, the ticket is now being escalated to a manager, and I'll update this post again with the outcome...

 

Edited Friday at 06:48 PM by Pißwasser Time

[Spider-Vice]

That's strange. Album arts aren't hosted on the Social Club directly, they're hosted by Spotify, and there's plenty of other suggestive artwork used in music that's shared on the Social Club. All a song share is, is an embed of a Spotify widget where you can play the song.

 

I assume someone for some reason manually reported your partner's share and someone who does Social Club content moderation took it down.

[UpdateHater]

i don't even see the point, they worrying about kids seeing suggestive album artwork when you can have a full on private dance in game, what a werid way of saying "we don't mind teenagers playing our game as long as they don't go into the strip club" might as well make you put your DoB in so the strip club gets unlocked on your 18th birthday lol.

 

i don't care about teens playing gta myself either, most of the stuff in gta a teen has likely already seen but this is just hypocritical.

[Pißwasser Time]

(Update to topic added above...)

[ambi3nt]

Yeah those vegetables at support have no clue what that radio sharing even is. What a joke.

[Spider-Vice]

Song shares aren't UGC/user generated content so I'm not sure how exactly they can act upon that, it's not like you uploaded some porn or whatever as a Snapmatic or Job thumbnail. Does seem like a case of Support being overzealous because someone reported your partner's share manually, as I don't think they manually moderate people's profiles unless reported.

 

I've shared plenty of Spotify songs without issue over the years, so it's definitely someone in Support being overzealous. This has nothing to do with enforcement from R* themselves, it's just whoever is dealing with that situation is incorrectly treating it as you having uploaded explicit content yourself.

[Electronic Farts]

The Social Club photos front page is full of modded female characters in revealing clothing, but a built-in feature that makes a post automatically to your wall, due to explicit cover art is bad.
In an 18+ game. So stupid.

[DeathNyx]

I don't get... isn't GTA itself a 18+ game with prostitution, suicide and drugs? i mean, you get warnings for a ingame feature? They are really strange...

 

However since Social Club support are bot generated messages i bet you can get clarifications if you report it.

Edited Saturday at 05:21 PM by DeathNyx

[Gaffa]

What a time to be alive...

 

Thanks to OP for posting and raising awareness. 

Edited Saturday at 10:24 PM by Gaffa

[DrEeveell]

The Social Club is just a website. It can be accessed by anybody, not just people with game accounts, right? So the age restrictions of the game itself won't apply to the SC.

Still, the support staff are idiots.

 

[Pedinhuh]

4 hours ago, DrEeveell said:

So the age restrictions of the game itself won't apply to the SC

I'm quite sure that you can't register to SC if you're under 18, and you need to register to see the kind of content in question.

 

All of this just shows how little thought and care remains on that website.

[Spider-Vice]

You can register to SC if you're under 18, the limit is actually 13-16 (depending on country of registration). From 13 to 18 you'll just have restricted functionality IIRC, there is a variable on your account named "Minor: true/false". Regardless this is a Support snafu and not really something R* necessarily enforces lol. Thousands of people share Spotify songs on Social Club and this hasn't been heard of until now - someone reported this specific thing manually for whatever reason, Support person for some reason thought it was explicit UGC (it's not) and flagged it erroneously.

[Lonely-Martin]

To quote the great Vinmy Jones in Snatch...

 

"That's a bit strong, innit!?!!!"

 

Someone's out to flex their customer support/moderator badge.

[Yellow Dog with Cone]

Honestly, the worst part is that that's not even the version of the song used on Kult FM, the one used in-game it's the studio version from the album Loaded while the artwork shown in the R*SC (and the official Kult FM Playlist by R* on Spotify) is from a live album by The Velvet Underground.

 

It's such a miniscule detail yet it irks me lmao