Just giving my 2 cents as usual,
Communications
On the communication side, I was hoping with the new hires we would be getting more public posts and that seems to be happening, at least when comparing to what it was in 2024. I think I like the new formats of having small but more frequent posts, focusing on different topics, but I still have a few pointers:
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Breaking changes like Removal of Lua 5.3 Support probably should have been announced at least a few weeks in advance. Even though the risk of breaking Escrowed scripts was minimal, I have already seen a few that did but weren’t caught in the Experiments section. I think the feature branch could have been publicly announced in a sort of “Request For Comment” post, giving it a bit of time for resource creators to see.
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The community spotlights are great, but need to be frequent. We’ve already skipped May and June is also coming to an end. I can’t begin to imagine how many people have requested to be included, so maybe a more organized way of requesting that is needed? A channel on Discord?
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Regarding official forms of communication with the team, I think this also needs to be organized and centralized. Currently there are multiple semi-private means of doing it (#the-place on the main Discord, the lounge on txAdmin/txHub, releng, now even qbox has a lounge) on top of which you could just DM elements. Most if not all of these should be combined into one channel, at least for the purposes of communicating with elements. Of course the other channels could remain as a way for large server owners to talk amongst themselves. That does leave out the problem of it being an exclusive big boy club, but I guess DMs would still be open for others.
Compliance
Regarding compliance, I would love for a bit more transparency, but I understand that’s not always possible. It would be great to have approximate numbers on how many servers have had action taken against them in one of the monthly posts, to server as a warning to other servers. Also, since currently the compliance team seems to group offenses by type (for example recently targeting servers using maps from other games), in these posts you could also remind owners of specific points in the PLA, like the “importation, misuse, or association of other IP in the project, including other Rockstar IP” clause in this example.
I also disagree personally with the fact that certain Code of Conduct violations are given an instant permanent ban without warning, when they are very open to interpretation. A big example seems to be the “glorification of hate groups or real-world militia groups” rule, which has never been elaborated on. What “gangs” are fine and what aren’t? “Yakuza” and “Triads” have both appeared in GTA games but are seemingly not fine as servers have been taken down for using them. They are also both a collective name for organized crime groups in Japan and China and not actually the name of a group in particular.
Accounts
I wasn’t aware of the fact that you can transfer assets shortly after receiving a server suspension. That loophole will probably be closed soon.
About fake boosts, it’s hard for me to gauge how many servers are using such services but I do have a few in mind that are suspicious. Requiring some sort of play time or activity seems like a great idea because I’ve seen more than once players reporting that their boosts “disappeared”, which actually turned out to be their account being compromised but the “hacker” staying dormant until they purchased boosts. On that note, there should probably be a summary of servers you’ve boosted easily accessible somewhere and maybe players should be educated on the “Apps” section in the forum settings that allows you to see and remove devices using your account.
While we’re on the topic of accounts, since the recent legitimacy changes, it’s no longer possible to use the same Rockstar account on 2 PCs to play FiveM. This makes sense but it’s causing issues for people that used to share a PC or account and no longer do. Since FiveM remembers the R* account you first used, they were still sharing the account unknowingly and the only fix right now is to manually delete a folder. There probably needs to be a button somewhere in the Connections page on the main menu to allow easy unlinking now.
Portal
No real comment here, agree with everything you said.