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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

#351

Post by caymanjim »

user982 wrote: post #331
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pride in what? Heritage of what? The South has hundreds of years of history. Why are the 4 years of the Confederacy so celebrated?

It's also not the flag of the Confederacy (as in the nation). No one uses that. What everyone uses is the Confederate Battle Flag, which is specifically the flag of the army of secessionists. There's no rational argument that it represents Southern culture.

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

#352

Post by beervirus »

softwaredoug wrote: post #278
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.

The sole cause of the confederacy was defending the right for white men to own black slaves. All those other things were not solely about defending slavery.

That's not even true. The confederacy also stood for the cause of self-determination, and the right of a state to remove itself from the union that it had voluntarily entered.

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

#353

Post by UncleMeat »

haram_masala wrote: post #228
UncleMeat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, that'd be a good outcome for the confederate flag. It is a hate symbol and exists almost exclusively to project hatred towards black people.

I don't think this is accurate. There are, or perhaps until recently were, a large number of people in the South who flew that flag out of a sense of regional pride and cohesion, and who had absolutely no problem with black people. Of course, that's not enough to forgive flying it - as a Jew I wouldn't be happy about a German person flying a Swastika, even if the only meaning it had for them was a benign pride in Ger…

There are definitely people who have been bamboozled into recognizing it as a symbol of abstract southern pride - but the connection remains. Regional pride can be a valuable thing. But "Southern Pride" should not just exist among white southerners. It should include the whole south, and using a symbol of the enslavement of black people doesn't exactly bring black southerners along for the ride of southern pride.

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

#354

Post by PCI-eX16 »

sirmarksalot wrote: post #287
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It’s apples and oranges. Companies should be free to regulate hate speech on their platforms. The government should not regulate speech in the public domain. The actions of private companies on private property (virtual or otherwise) are an entirely different domain than government intervention. Even if you remove the censorship angle, it can be argued that moderating hate speech is simply good business sense. Pe…

I think that's a dodge. It implies that there is something inherently different between government power and other forms of power. And yes, there are subtle differences, like use of force, but at the end of the day, power is power. To be clear, I don't think Microsoft has done anything wrong here, but I don't think free market economics is the right angle to take. Imagine if it were Facebook or Twitter instead of jus…

There is something inherently different between "the government is sending you to prison for doing that" and "a private entity will prevent you from using their service for doing that", yes, even if that service is Facebook or Twitter.

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

#355

Post by ceejayoz »

kukx wrote: post #252
iron0013 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the surprise of no one who isn’t a hopeless naif, Parler has turned out to ban and censor far more than Twitter ever did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23684512

Well, but did they really ban more accounts than Twitter? I highly doubt it, just for the reason that Twitter is older and has more users overall. But if there are any stats that you can point us to, I can be convinced.

Going off raw numbers is a silly strawman.

Parler claims to be a free speech platform, but their new content policies are stricter - no offensive usernames, no porn, etc.

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

#356

Post by Darmody »

kube-system wrote: post #222
Darmody wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to be punished in any way for what you say, you don't have freedom of speech. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that there's nobody physically preventing you from talking.

"consequence" doesn't necessarily imply a punishment or something at odds with your freedom. For example: If you bad mouth a friend, they might no longer be your friend. This isn't a punishment for your actions or a restriction of your freedom.

Yes, but we're not talking about that here. Not being allowed to play a game you bought is a kind of punishment.

Will they also ban anyone who posts and Hindu swastika? Or the face of Che Guevara? Or anything related to ancient Rome? Or anything related to the Ottomans? And I could keep going and going and going.

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

#357

Post by openasocket »

Leherenn wrote: post #140
iameli wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing so would probably require amending the First Amendment, which I think would do more harm than good. But Germany seems to have implemented such a system without becoming a dystopian hellscape. Seems a pretty nice place to live.

Not an American, so feel free to correct me. It seems to me that there are already plenty of laws that breach the 1st amendment if you interpret speech as absolutely any speech (e.g. death threats, libel, ...). And it is constitutional because the current interpretation of speech is narrower than "everything". Doesn't that mean that, if there were the will to do it, free speech could be reinterpreted (by the supreme…

Yes and no. Yes, the supreme court is the ultimate interpreter of the constitution, and could theoretically decide that the 1st amendment does not cover hate speech. But there's so much precedent around this that it is profoundly unlikely.

If there really was the will to do it, it would be by passing a constitutional amendment. If you aren't familiar, there is a process by which the constitution can be modified, and this can be done to completely rewrite or contradict the current text. But it's a very difficult hurdle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Unit...

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

#358

Post by jeegsy »

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…

I'm assuming that swastikas have much more universal unpopularity than the confederacy flag. Heck, in 2020, MS just voted to remove confederate symbol from the state flag. SO I dont think the comparison is all there.

My concern with these sort of deplatforming moves while understandable, is they tend to drive these bigoted ideas underground. So maybe they cant express it publicly but boy, do they find other ways to do it as certain church members' families can attest. I don't have a definite solution but there is something to be said for using informal social pressure (i.e confederate decal dude all of a sudden not finding anyone to play with, because people quit the game as soon as they see the flag) rather than deplatforming.

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

#359

Post by naasking »

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…

> There's no reasonable expectation that you are able to spread racist propaganda in a car racing game

Merely displaying a flag seems like a pretty generous interpretation of "propaganda". It certainly doesn't fit any definition of which I'm aware.

Perhaps there's an argument for banning such symbols, but don't use hyperbole to try and prove your point, you just undermine the legitimacy of this effort.

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

#360

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

filleduchaos wrote: post #344
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reminder that the Confederate battle flag was in use for less than five years and solely as an icon of a conflict that was very much about the (rather racist) keeping of chattel slaves. Before trotting out the "it's a symbol of heritage" line, ask yourself exactly what that heritage is.

Have you never been to a southern state? It's been flown ever since the war and has been detached from the war and attached to southern identity. It's part of the culture here.
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