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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

#501

Post by bluntfang »

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…

>Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way.

You're talking about video games. You're talking about not expressing racism in video games.

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

#502

Post by pmiller2 »

octocop wrote: post #372
arcticfox wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Choice is still present, is a person who is paralyzed and unable to speak by default non-racist?

It's not like they can say or do anything racist, so the net effect is the same as if they were not racist.

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

#503

Post by snowwrestler »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #446
filleduchaos wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep throwing around words like "heritage", "southern identity" and "culture", but are most often very hard pressed indeed to explain what exactly is the identity or culture that is best represented by what's at the very least a flag of sedition/treason (even if we leave out the racist overtones). I mean, it's not like I'm wholly unsympathetic to failed secessionist states and their symbols/paraphernalia. Peop…

People are hard pressed to explain what is the identity or culture best represented by what's a flag of sedition/treason It's just a symbol of identity or culture, like most flags. There's a massive cultural difference between the rural south and the highly populated coastal cities. The flag to many is a symbol of that difference, and has many of the psychological undertones that makes the "don't tread on me" flag po…

There are a lot of people in the South who do not show or like the Confederate flag, even in rural areas.

And there are a lot of people outside the South who do show and like the Confederate flag.

So while I agree that it's a symbol of an identity and culture, I don't think it's a geographic regional identity and culture.

I think you're arguing in good faith based on your own experience, but I would gently suggest this is an opportunity to consider a wider variety of data and perspectives.

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

#504

Post by gamblor956 »

philwelch wrote: post #459
softwaredoug wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They're not wrong. For the Southern colonies, participation in the American Revolution was part of their effort to maintain slavery.

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

#505

Post by softwaredoug »

henriquez wrote: post #481
morley wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the old saying that if you know nothing about it, the Civil War was about slavery; if you know a little about it, it was about state's rights; and if you know a lot about it, it was about slavery. The "states rights" trope was a deliberate attempt of a few Southern, revisionist historians to blunt their racist past. The truth is that the South seceded because their states wanted the right to hold slaves. http…

Yes I believe slavery was the straw that broke the camel’s back but it wasn’t the primary factor of conflict. Slavery and protecting the property of rich plantation owners was not the reason poor southern kids were fighting and killing their own family members. To completely dismiss the more prominent factors at play including states rights as “historical revisionism” is itself historical revisionism.

The question is complicated, but slaveholding was not some thing just done by rich gentry. There was a long-tail of slaveholders with just a handful of slaves. With white slaveholding families in the confederacy comprising 20-50% of white families...

https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/the-extent-of...

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

#506

Post by renewiltord »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #420
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…

>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. Really? When I've seen this done, all that happens is you end up the 'approved' word. Everyone knows what it means though. So I guess if all you care about is the…

On reddit there's a bot on some reddits that replaces the n-word with 'basketball americans'. It has this effect.

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

#507

Post by tptacek »

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 not ban the players? The game platform will do fine without them. Accommodating them --- tracking the number of "strikes" they've received, etc --- costs resources. There's a finite amount of resources; why spend any of them on these particular players?

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

#508

Post by tptacek »

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 think it's dangerous when platforms function like a public utility and is yet allowed to do whatever it wants

This is a race car game.

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

#509

Post by edoceo »

donmcronald wrote: post #429
FireBeyond wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

This is the first time I've heard of that. I can just imagine being somewhere loud and giving the ok / perfect symbol to a friend across the room and then being called a racist. Damn, that's scary.

A thumbs up is still acceptable and has not yet been hijacked by assholes.

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

#510

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

runako wrote: post #454
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.

> 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…

The fact that it isn't a symbol of southern heritage for everyone doesn't mean it's not a southern symbol for many.

Are you suggesting that African-Americans identify with the Confederate battle flag...?

No, and nothing in my comments suggested that. It makes sense that they wouldn't since their relatives probably didn't after the war. For many people, their relatives did identify with the flag. It probably started as something racist by the survivors of the war, but morphed into what it is today, something that isn't considered racist by most around where I live. Do you really think NASCAR, a big business, would have previously allowed it to be flown if it was universally considered a hate symbol?

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