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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

#321

Post by arcticfox »

sukilot wrote: post #309
rsynnott wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

This seems semantic. For example, cheating is banned in many games, and if you cheat, you get banned. Banning cheating and cheaters is effectively the same thing.

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

#322

Post by rsynnott »

mynameishere wrote: post #116
milesskorpen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the Confederacy existed primarily to defend the institution of slavery. That puts it in same, short, list as Nazi Germany in my book.

Many countries in the western hemisphere had slavery at the time.

Not many, and realistically most were heading down the road to phase-out. None, as far as I'm aware, were putting the idea that _slavery must always exist_ in their constitutions. The CSA was bizarrely, uniquely, absolutist about the importance of slavery.

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

#323

Post by slg »

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…

Do we have to treat every one of these issues with the same gravitas? We are talking about people putting a traitorous and many would argue a racist flag on their virtual car in a video game. This isn't a sign of growth of authoritarianism world wide. I think your argument would be better served if it was saved for an issue with more pervasive ramifications than a video game.

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

#324

Post by jononor »

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.

This is only "easy" if you are a sysadmin by profession or hobby. That excludes the vast majority of people, 99% perhaps.

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

#325

Post by tpsssing655 »

csours wrote: post #249
zeveb wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The southern states seceded to preserve slavery; slavery was and is evil and they were wrong to secede in order to preserve it. But secession was and is constitutional, given the Tenth Amendment and no constitutional provisions against secession or mandating a perpetual union; the states had a right to do it, even though it was wrong. The southern armies did not fight for slavery: it was legal in the United States be…

> "Two non-contradictory things may be true at once: " Agree > "secession to preserve slavery was utterly contemptible;" Agree > "fighting honourably in self-defense is praiseworthy." Lost me here. Fighting in self defense is understandable and necessary sometimes, but in defense of what principles? Context cannot be ignored.

Protecting your family for a foreign invading army, Sure some rich folks have slave, but what do i have to do with it? Shouldn't i protect my home from invaders?

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

#326

Post by rickbutton »

beaner wrote: post #297
rickbutton wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to remember that the majority of these statues were not created after the civil war in order to remember them, but during the Jim Crow era in order to intimidate black people. The intent was never to teach history.

I don't know the history of that so I can't argue it. If you could link to some education on it, I'd like to read about it. I would imagine that it's possible in some circumstances for this to be true for some, mostly confederate figures. I'm really skeptical that that's true for figures like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

I don't have any resources to link, sorry.

The weird-power-dynamic-Lincoln statue with the freed black man aside, I generally agree on statutes of the founding fathers. I doubt a statue of Washington was erected in honor of his support for slavery.

In the greater context of what is happening in America right now, tearing down statues of Washington isn't necessarily about Washington himself. Instead, it is about challenging the idea that our historical figures (and America itself) are infallible.

If I may paint a picture, put yourself in the shoes of a black man in America in 2020. You see thousands of videos of police brutality, blatant racism, and disregard from those in power. A significant portion of the representatives in this country refuse to outright state that racism is still a problem in this country, but you see it with your very eyes every day.

However, you see these statues symbolizing this "ideal" version of America, where everyone is equal, which never actually existed. Further, when people challenge the existence of these statues (and by proxy, that non-existent "ideal") in the face of all of this inequity, they are defended orders of magnitude more intensely than the rights of actual-flesh-and-blood people. It's hard to look at a statue of General Lee, or even Washington, and see anything but a symbol of the fact that America at large cares more about the "appearance" of equality and equity than actually granting it to the people. If the people who defending these statues so vigorously also defended the civil rights of their fellow Americans with the same energy, I don't think we would see as much of a struggle over this.

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

#327

Post by generalk »

deadmik3 wrote: post #217
marcosdumay wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies aren't the only entities allowed to publish content on the World Wide Web Actually, the only entities with any capacity of publishing content on the WWW are a few tier 1 ISPs. If you push that rope you will discover that your capacity to publish anything you want is restricted by the policy of whoever hosts your servers, and their ISP, and their ISP's ISP. If the end-state of that evolution is every entit…

> your capacity to publish anything you want is restricted by the policy of whoever hosts your servers, and their ISP, and their ISP's ISP. this is obvious and anyone still unironically pushing the "just make your own" narrative is aware of it but has no other comeback

Hi, it's me, unironically pushing the "just make your own" narrative.

I posted a comment similar to this, but let me just lay cards on the table: if you want to publish child abuse images, or sell controlled substances, you're probably going to have a hard time finding hosting for that. Same if you want to publish content that violates US copyright law, which I agree with less but still applies.

The original question was "where can I speak 'in the public domain' online," and I'm fairly sure my answer holds.

Unless you were just trying to make some juvenile "any limits placed on my conduct online are invalid because Internet" argument, which I mean good luck with.

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

#328

Post by arcticfox »

reaperducer wrote: post #283

Why ban the players, and not just the design? I once ran a large online forum and set up a word filter to replace certain phrases with "fluffy bunnies" and other absurdities. It did a remarkable job of improving discourse once the foul-mouthed types realized their hateful messages were being massaged. Microsoft could use some kind of super-cool AI-drived ML-based image recognition to replace the flag with a rainbow f…

> Why ban the players, and not just the design?

This is a silly complaint IMO. If you break the rules, whatever they are, a ban is a completely reasonable punishment. A 1- or 2- strike policy gets the same result you are talking about with no "super-cool AI-driven ML-based image recognition"

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

#329

Post by openasocket »

RestlessMind wrote: post #286
moksly wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t want people to celebrate slavery in my garden, so I can understand why Microsoft wouldn’t want people to do it in theirs.

But there is a big difference between you and Microsoft. Microsoft is a business serving public, and hence subject to different regulations. For example, Microsoft cannot refuse to serve to women or brown people. You can choose to forbid entry to them in your private garden.

Sex and race are protected classes, using a particular image is not a protected class. I'd be quite surprised if there is any country in the world where you can't discriminate against someone using the confederate flag or some other iconography. And honestly I don't think there should be.

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

#330

Post by FireBeyond »

sukilot wrote: post #309
rsynnott wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It may have been made up, but I'm willing to bet that a not insignificant portion of people who are _now_ making it aren't doing so to make a point of saying "everything is just fine".

My town had an issue with a cop posing out with a bunch of 3%ers at their gun store. This is in the PNW, and the owner of the store, born and raised in the PNW, has a Confederate flag neck tattoo. This was during some street protests.

People can't credulously claim that the half dozen or so people there were all making an "OK" sign then, completely naively, "hey, all good, we're safe, just guarding our gun store". Or maybe they were just making an in joke based on the SCUBA store next door?

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