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MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

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Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#301

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

glangdale wrote: post #275
drtillberg wrote: post #271

For the next act we'll censor images of the pyramids of Egypt, which were constructed by slave labor. And then we'll ban texts of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which was influenced by an enlightenment thinker, Voltaire, who also supported the slave trade. And for our next act we'll ban images of Washington, D.C. with its columns and white marble, which glorifies Roman slave-owning society.

I like how your slippery slope argument (itself a fallacy) kicks off with the fallacy that the pyramids were constructed by slave labor.

Well, even if they were built by paid labor force comprised from free persons, they still glorify dead slaveowners, don't they?

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#302

Post by throwanem »

dang wrote: post #211
otterley wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inability of HN commenters to grasp current cultural norms and the sensitivities of the people around them astounds me.

This experience, which you've described well in just one sentence, is actually a consequence of how the site is structured. You might say "well, structure it differently then, so it doesn't suck". But giving up that structure would be bad, because although it is far from pleasant, it contains something that's both valuable and increasingly rare. What we need to do instead is find our way through the difficulty withou…

It's not really all that hard to know what awfulness to expect.

edit: That probably sounds more dickish than I meant it. I don't know a better place than HN for identifying clusters and following trends in the thought of "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

It's not only that, which is why I still come here. But that's the strongest theme by far.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#303

Post by generalk »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #141
generalk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies aren't the only entities allowed to publish content on the World Wide Web, you know. You're free to build whatever discussion platforms you like, or you could just, y'know, publish a website.

While true if you run something small that goes unnoticed, we still have gatekeepers once you get to a certain size. Good luck taking payments if Mastercard blacklists you.

I will definitely agree that payment processing is subject to limitations I don't agree with. Many adult-oriented websites have found it difficult to find payment processors, even when their businesses comply with the relevant laws.

But if we're answering my original parent comment of "where can I speak freely online," we're probably not discussing payment processing.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#304

Post by luckylion »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #239
daenz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Companies should be free to regulate hate speech on their platforms. The government should not regulate speech in the public domain. While I agree, please direct me to where I can speak "in the public domain" online.

Easy. Set up your own web site and put whatever you want to say on it. If the hosting company takes you down, host it yourself. If ICANN takes it down, host it on Tor. There are always ways to bypass corporate control of speech. You may have to completely forgo the benefits provided by the corporate web sites, but nothing is stopping you from making your own platform.

> If the hosting company takes you down, host it yourself. If ICANN takes it down, host it on Tor.

That's a bit like "if the police beats you up in public, you're still free to speak your mind in your basement" though.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#305

Post by daenz »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #239
daenz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Companies should be free to regulate hate speech on their platforms. The government should not regulate speech in the public domain. While I agree, please direct me to where I can speak "in the public domain" online.

Easy. Set up your own web site and put whatever you want to say on it. If the hosting company takes you down, host it yourself. If ICANN takes it down, host it on Tor. There are always ways to bypass corporate control of speech. You may have to completely forgo the benefits provided by the corporate web sites, but nothing is stopping you from making your own platform.

I think there's a deeper underlying issue here, and that is that some people don't actually want a place online where people can speak freely without restrictions. They will claim that the internet is already "free enough", and will cite "workarounds" similar to yours, but when pushed, will admit that having a place online, very accessible to the average person, with effectively very few restrictions on speech, is a bad idea. Are you someone who believes this?

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#306

Post by jfarmer »

ricktdotorg wrote: post #256
umvi wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being controversial... I'm going to go ahead and say that Japan doesn't care about racism like America does. Japanese people are extremely racist, but you just don't know it because Japan is 99+% Japanese with But the ethnic minorities that _do_ live there live in segregated apartment complexes, etc. to prevent "mixing with the natives".

> But the ethnic minorities that _do_ live there live in segregated apartment complexes, etc. to prevent "mixing with the natives". source for this? my experience: my wife is Japanese, i have visited JP many times, we know a ton of non-Japanese immigrants living in Japan and they all live wherever the heck they want to live. i've never heard of non-native minorities being segregated either officially (government) or…

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/07/02/issues/no-...

https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/housing-discrimina...

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/17/national/social...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-discrimination-fore...

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#307

Post by beaner »

mikepurvis wrote: post #295
beaner wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment. When we idolize figures who we believe did good things, we project a guide line from the past into the future for ourselves to follow. When we erase history, we lose this guidance and direction. It's no mistake that the mob is responsible for the destruction, because a lack o…

So the statues belong in museums and history textbooks, not the public square: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/19/destroying... It feels tired to still be repeating this when so many others have said it, but Germany is capable of learning about Hitler and Nazism without the monuments glorifying it; Americans can learn about Robert E. Lee without the whitewashed monuments everywhere. And anyway, there w…

I think you're still taking as a foregone conclusion that (all of) the statues represent bad men with evil ideas, and that's what I'm disagreeing with.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#308

Post by naruvimama »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #214
newyankee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swastika is a sacred symbol in Hinduism. The original inspiration for Hitler was hooked cross. You will commonly find swastika painted across homes in India.

> Swastika is a sacred symbol in Hinduism. The original inspiration for Hitler was hooked cross. No, the inspiration was the Indian swastika. Same reason he wanted to call himself "Aryan". (The swastika is also a sacred symbol in Buddhism, for reference. One day someone will petition to have 卐 removed from the relevant Chinese Unicode block.)

Why was it then called the hooked cross?

Hitler appropriated a Hindu/Buddhist symbol that is more than 5000 years old, and as you say it would be erased out of the digital world.

Isn't it time to return the original meanings and intent of these symbols.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#309

Post by sukilot »

rsynnott wrote: post #280
soraminazuki wrote: post #221

While it's emotionally pleasing to see racists being kicked out of online platforms, another side of me feels wary of these tactics. For starters, being deplatformed from major online players today would have serious consequences. Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way. I think it's dangerous when platforms function like a…

I assume Microsoft never allowed, say, swastikas. There's no reasonable expectation that you are able to spread racist propaganda in a car racing game (or for that matter in an actual car race; I think those tend to have very strict rules around decoration). I can see an _argument_ that Twitter, say, should be forced to pander to racists. I don't buy that argument, mind you, but I can at least see the thought process…

That's an argument for banning swastikas, not banning anyone who displays a swastika.

And before you say "come on, swastikas are pretty extreme", remember the moral panic we just went through when 4chan trolls convinced people that the OK hand sign was a "one-sided version ofna White Power" sign and got people fired from their jobs for making the sign.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#310

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

rsynnott wrote: post #280
soraminazuki wrote: post #221

While it's emotionally pleasing to see racists being kicked out of online platforms, another side of me feels wary of these tactics. For starters, being deplatformed from major online players today would have serious consequences. Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way. I think it's dangerous when platforms function like a…

I assume Microsoft never allowed, say, swastikas. There's no reasonable expectation that you are able to spread racist propaganda in a car racing game (or for that matter in an actual car race; I think those tend to have very strict rules around decoration). I can see an _argument_ that Twitter, say, should be forced to pander to racists. I don't buy that argument, mind you, but I can at least see the thought process…

The Nazi flag is inarguably racist propaganda. The Confederate flag, however, has for decades been a symbol of southern pride for many people. I read somewhere recently that over 40% see it as a symbol of heritage more than racism.
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