Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 870 posts

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

#451

Post by gamblor956 »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #310
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…

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.

Southern pride is another way of saying "treason against the U.S." that resulted in the mass murder of hundreds of thousands so that a few people could treat other people as property.

The winner gets to make the rules. The South has had 150+ years to celebrate their treason. It's more than enough time that the winners put that symbol to rest.

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

#452

Post by user982 »

Spivak wrote: post #425
user982 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nazi flag was in much longer actual use than the Confederate flags. If anything, the Nazi flag has a more legitimate "heritage" defense than the Confederate one.

But are you counting the years the Confederate flag has spent after being adopted? I think the fundamental argument here is this: clearly the Confederate flag has been spoiled -- the racists won out and now people associate the flag more with racists than Southern/rural pride. What should happen? There are people who I think have a legitimate non-racist benign claim to the flag but they're now in the minority and bei…

> clearly the Confederate flag has been spoiled -- the racists won out and now people associate the flag more with racists than Southern/rural pride.

This postulates that the Confederate flag did not start out spoiled by racism.

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

#453

Post by naasking »

PCI-eX16 wrote: post #410
naasking wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It _is_ private property. The companies in question are just exerting their rights. The users agreed to the ToS while signing up, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to cut off your access to their service, as long as it's within the legal bounds of the ToS. So by parity of reasoning, companies that pollute within the bounds of the EPA's restrictions are also perfectly within their legal rights, and so shouldn't…

Your argument makes no sense. It's a complete non-sequitur unless you want the federal government to enact laws that enable them to micro manage every form of communication. That would get laughed out of the SCOTUS in an instant.

> It's a complete non-sequitur

It's quite literally not a non-sequitur. The parity of reasoning in both cases is clear: they are the same argument, I just swapped the details.

Every good regulation is intended to address some negative externality. Before a regulation is enacted, people point out the negative externalities and how they're harmful and that we should do something about them. Maybe they have some idea what that entails, maybe they don't.

You can't consistently dismiss such concerns by arguments like, "it's private property", while simultaneously supporting other regulations, like those enforced by the EPA, that also restrict one's rights to use one's property.

> unless you want the federal government to enact laws that enable them to micro manage every form of communication

I don't know what a good solution would be, I just know negative externalities in this case do exist. You can continue to deny them, you can accept that they exist but deny their importance, or you can accept they exist and that they are important, and so participate in a dialogue about how they should be addressed.

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

#454

Post by runako »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #360
filleduchaos wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> attached to southern identity

Southerner here. The South is a very diverse place with a sizable African-American population.

Perhaps I'm just missing all the African-Americans who proudly fly the Confederate battle flag, but my perception is the flag is used by a small subset of white southerners as an anti-virtue-signaling device.

Are you suggesting that African-Americans identify with the Confederate battle flag flown in service of keeping their ancestors enslaved, or did you mean that the flag had attached to a particular subset of Southern identity? Please expand, I'm curious.

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

#455

Post by [deleted] »

tedunangst wrote: post #396
notyourday wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so they did it all over NYC subway a few years ago. To a point where I had to do a double take before I realized it was just an Amazon promo. There are quite a few Eastern Europeans and Jews in NYC. Why was that OK?

Are there pictures of these subway swastikas? (no, of course not.)

[deleted]

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

#456

Post by baddox »

FireBeyond wrote: post #330
sukilot wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Note that all symbols are their meaning are made up. To say "this gesture is a symbol of X" is to say "people made up that this gesture is a symbol of X."

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

#457

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #392
paulchap wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's dangerous when platforms function like a public utility and is yet allowed to do whatever it wants because it's _technically_ private property. It _is_ private property. The companies in question are just exerting their rights. The users agreed to the ToS while signing up, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to cut off your access to their service, as long as it's within the legal bounds of the ToS.…

> " It _is_ private property. The companies in question are just exerting their rights. " So is Facebook and yet those applauding this are up-in-arms about FB's policies. Seems like a double standard.

No, it's really not. I can be very unhappy with what FB is doing and want it to change without disputing in any sense that it's their right to have that policy.

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

#458

Post by catalogia »

jcranmer wrote: post #435
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you never been to rural NY? The Confederate flag flies all over the place there, and I rather suspect that very few of those flying it are doing so because of Southern heritage.

> Have you never been to rural NY? The Confederate flag flies all over the place there

Many times, and I can earnestly say I've never seen that. Nor in rural Pennsylvania for that matter, which I would otherwise characterize as slightly less sophisticated than NY. Are there racists in that region? Certainly. But I can't recall ever seeing somebody in those states flying the confederate flag.

I'm sure it's happened before, I'm sure you can find me local news reporting on instances of it. But it's definitely not a common sight.

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

#459

Post by philwelch »

softwaredoug wrote: post #415
philwelch wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not wrong. It just doesn’t matter. The American Revolution has been cast by revisionist historians as another war to preserve slavery while protesters have toppled and threatened states of abolitionists, Union generals, and Abraham Lincoln.

That’s like saying criticizing Nazi Germany doesn’t matter because the kaiser was maybe antisemetic during WW1 too. There’s no morality because maybe someone else was bad too. Its rank whataboutism. We can evaluate morality from not great, to bad, to really really bad. We can make judgments about individual situations on their merits. The “merits” of the confederacy are really really bad! Also you’re nutpicking[1] -…

For reference, characterizing the American Revolution as a war to preserve slavery was literally the central focus of a project that was published in the New York Times and that public schools are adopting as curriculum. It isn’t fair to characterize it as “nutpicking” when the nuts hold that degree of institutional power.

FWIW I agree with you about the Confederacy and about Confederate symbology, and I think I said that at the very beginning. But to a large number of increasingly powerful people, the facts don’t actually matter. And to some degree, they never have: consider the differing treatment of Nazi and Soviet symbology. They will use the facts when they suit them, and invent new facts when they don’t.

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

#460

Post by jacobolus »

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.

Here’s a NY Times summary: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/us/ok-sign-white-power.ht...

> The 4chan hoax succeeded all too well, and ceased being a hoax: Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white nationalists began using the gesture in public to signal their presence and to spot potential sympathizers and recruits. For them, the letters formed by the hand were not O and K, but W and P, for “white power.”

Post reply on HN