MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by jacobolus » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

DevKoala wrote: post #472

jacobolus wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

It also weaponized the outrage and ruined the lives of innocent people. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... I don’t understand how people can justify the collateral damage; it is going too far.

This case seems to involve a white supremacist jerk experiencing road rage, then tricking a Latino guy into making the hand gesture, taking a photo, and then publicly lobbying his employer to fire him. Both the white supremacists and the intolerant and incurious (exclusively white) investigators/managers at the man’s company end up looking horrible.

But this doesn’t seem too relevant to the confederate flags in video games case.

Not everyone knows that white supremacist internet trolls have appropriated the OK hand gesture, but everyone living in the US understands that the confederate battle flag and other confederate symbols represent slavery, white supremacism, and treason.

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

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Post by snowwrestler » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

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…

It's way more efficient to just keep a graphic from being uploaded, than it is to set up a super-cool AI ML system that constantly monitors every car for unapproved imagery.

If we hypothesize that it would take X level of effort for MS to centrally detect and alter the graphics of every car, we can conclude it would be at most X/accounts effort (way easier) for each human player to detect and remove the same graphic from each of their own cars.

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

#513

Post by jcranmer » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #488

philwelch wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The 1619 project said it was one cause, not the sole cause , as > that one primary reason the colonists fought the American Revolution was to protect the institution of slavery. This assertion has elicited criticism from some historians and support from others. > We stand behind the basic point, which is that among the various motivations that drove the patriots toward independence was a concern that the British woul…

The British Caribbean held (far) more slaves than British North America did, and did not abolish slavery until 1833. One of the principal reasons that these Caribbean colonies did not follow the North American colonies in revolt was that they were far more terrified of slave revolts, as slaves were a much larger fraction of their population than the case in any North American colony.

Personally, I think the existence of the nonrebellious slave-driven plantation economies in the Caribbean undercuts the argument that protecting slavery was a major motivation for those colonies that did revolt.

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

#514

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #305

remmargorp64 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People can speak freely without restrictions using their own resources.

What you are asking for is to force other people to set up platforms for people to speak, which is a very different thing.

Freedom of speech has always applied to the former, but never the latter.

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

#515

Post by ars » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

Lendal wrote: post #401

ggreer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a famous racing car that has the design? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Lee_(car)

Dukes of Hazzard was my second-favorite TV show as a kid, (next to CHiPs.) It saddens me that the symbol was foisted on me and millions of other kids throughout history and not just from the TV show. Turns out there was never a time that that flag stood for anyone's "heritage." It always was a symbol of hate. I don't know why people would do that to children. Now memories of my childhood are darkened, and millions of…

It was not used as a racist symbol in the show. That's what this whole discussion is about. For example:

"After the first season, it distressed producer Gy Waldron that the cast was entirely white. So in subsequent seasons, visiting federal agents that investigated Boss Hogg were black, as was the sheriff of the adjoining Chickasaw County."

https://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/04/23-facts-you-might-not-...

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

#516

Post by acdha » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #447

acdha wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it’s not a public space and the harm is far less than a beating. A hosting company can have terms of service just like any other business and the only real restrictions are legally-protected classes, and even that has context. Think of it like going to a coffee shop: they can’t kick you out for being Catholic or male but they can ask you to leave if you are harassing other people, not following public hea…

> Except that it’s not a public space and the harm is far less than a beating. As in "you can't speak any more, because your website is offline". A gag is the offline equivalent. > Think of it like going to a coffee shop I believe that example would be more accurate if we all lived in company towns, where no public space exists and your presence, and speech, is merely tolerated under normal circumstances, but you hav…

> > Except that it’s not a public space and the harm is far less than a beating.

> As in "you can't speak any more, because your website is offline". A gag is the offline equivalent.

Again, a private company choosing not to use their resources to support your speech is not a gag. You are still free to pick any one of thousands of other options and you are free, even encouraged, read their terms before signing any contract.

Your Gmail comparison is similarly invalid: beyond the extreme rarity of that, when you choose to accept Google’s terms for getting free email service you are, well, accepting their terms. People have chosen for decades to register their own domains to avoid needing to update addresses and outside of uncommon legal situations this will avoid needing to do so.

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

#517

Post by pmiller2 » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

DevKoala wrote: post #472

jacobolus wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

It also weaponized the outrage and ruined the lives of innocent people. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... I don’t understand how people can justify the collateral damage; it is going too far.

Yeah, it's terrible that people can be fired for literally no reason in this country. This wouldn't have happened in a country that has any semblance of workers' rights.

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

#518

Post by BEEdwards » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #469

ryandrake wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today it's racists--fine. Hell with em. If you're young, you have many years ahead of you. A lot of time for culture and norms to keep changing and evolving. I guarantee that one day, you're going to wake up as an old person, and something that you like that's innocuous today will have been deemed terrible and hateful by a future generation. Maybe even for good reasons. You'll be kicked off platforms, called ignorant…

The Confederate battle flag has been around for 150+ years. It was, from the very beginning, a symbol of treason, of racism, of owning other people as property, of being allowed to rape and murder other humans without consequence. Those who want to "celebrate" their Southern "heritage" have plenty of symbols and flags to choose from that don't have inherently racist and treasonous implications.

That 5 years of traitorous heritage, it's very telling that's the part of their culture they want to focus on...

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

#519

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

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.

If that's what you got out of this, I'm not sure what to say.

I even used the SCUBA shop, which is next door, for reference.

No-one that I've seen has advocated that the OK sign be abandoned for divers. I've been mid mouthful at a restaurant when a server has asked how my food is and I've made this sign and not been called a racist.

However, should I and half a dozen of my buddies, armed an in full tactical gear, standing 10 ft from a BLM protest, waving my Confederate flags, all choose to make this sign for a photo, then a _reasonable person_ may choose to interpret this as "we know exactly what we're implying here, and we're not all just telling the cameraman that "everything is perfect"."

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

#520

Post by paulchap » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #453

PCI-eX16 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

I don't think that laws that dictate companies how they have to manage their property are inherently bad. > Consumer protection law should protect consumers, not their convenience. My comment was targeted at the claim that mild censorship on privately owned platforms should be regulated in such a fashion, because their users depend on it. If you sign up for something, you should know what you sign up for. It's perfectly alright if you disagree with their measures. That doesn't mean you should call upon a body of law to penalize them. If Mrs. Fisher doesn't like the fact that her landlord is asking her to lock the door on her way out, she shouldn't be lobbying for the OPEN IT act. She should settle matters responsibly, or... move?

Basically, I'm just saying I found the grandparent a bit... overkill ;-)