For the last several months, a community splinter known as the Naggers Gang or NG has existed across several discord servers. This splinter discord, which has been deleted and reformed on multiple occasions, has served as a hotspot for hate speech, targeted and coordinated harassment, doxxing, personal information shared for malicious purposes and illegal content.

Staff received a report with detailed logs, screenshots and photographs from NG, which initiated an investigation. The fact that the server has been deleted and reformed on more than one occasion and that there are multiple splinter groups has hindered our investigation, but we were able to obtain full logs and attached media from one such server. While there were approximately 100 users who had at least some presence on this server, during our investigation we separated out those users who had a more prominent role and/or more egregious offenses for action.

As a result, the following users have been permanently banned from Smogon:
Caasi
Flares
ILoveMilk
ithrowrocksatkids
NG Spencer
p2
pasy_g
SAYUZE
yeezyknows
There are also several other users in the chat who are already permanently banned from Smogon but whose behavior would have warranted them being included in the above list. Their presence has also been documented in case of any appeal.

We have also reported all cases of illegal activity, as well as the server itself and our recorded logs, to Discord.

In addition, there are many other users who contributed to the problematic culture of the chat and in some cases engaged in activity that would certainly be actionable if they occurred in an official Smogon space. However, they did not rise to the level of the above-listed users. Therefore, these users will be issued warnings, infractions and in some cases staff demotions where appropriate.

Ultimately, Smogon is responsible for creating a community that is safe and welcoming for all users. While we typically do not intervene in off-site behavior except when it involves user safety, the fact that NG has as a whole become a breeding ground for hate speech and has bled over on multiple occasions into the Smogon community at large, we felt it was essential to act.

We have also developed some policy changes that will be implemented in the near future to better address situations such as this. One such change is the creation of a new global rule:

With the important social component of our community, it is natural that users will sometimes share personal information (such as pictures or [first] names) or experiences, especially in social threads or servers. However, the fact that this info has entered the public domain to a more or lesser degree does not give you a license to use it to make fun of or attack users. If you're unsure where your meme falls on the line between a playful jab and harassment, then we advise that you not try your luck.

Malicious use of personal information is quite a few notches above generally insulting other members and as such will result in a three month 3-point (ICBB) infraction; naturally this will be escalated on subsequent or particularly extreme offenses.
Remember: hate has no place on Smogon. If we find evidence of other communities similar to this one, we will similarly act.