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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

#551

Post by skinkestek »

edoceo wrote: post #509
donmcronald wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember from back when I picked up Norwegian litterature, a short story or essay or something that ended with something along the lines of: "cucumbers is the only thing that hasn't been deemed unhealthy yet. Hurry up and eat cucumbers while they are still healthy!"

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

#552

Post by reaperducer »

fzeroracer wrote: post #388
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…

In your online forum case, what exactly do you do when toxic users wisen up and start working around your filter? Do you ban them or just continue letting them flaunt the rules?

In your online forum case, what exactly do you do when toxic users wisen up and start working around your filter?

It didn't happen. The system worked fine for the 15ish years I was running it, with about 30,000 daily active users.

The offenders just got bored and moved on.

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

#553

Post by djsumdog »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #475
shultays wrote: post #265

Interestingly hammer and sickle is not in the list

I think mainstream historians would argue that Soviet Communism was terrible - but it wasn't an ideology based on hate or subjugation. Displaying the Hammer and Sickle likely means you stand for unity with the working-class and seek an egalitarian society - or you have grievances with the current system of capitalism - and not that you hate on any particular group of people, and especially not for any of their immuta…

It's still entirely subjective.

> "but it wasn't an ideology based on hate or subjugation"

This is really stretching. I doubt may people who supported the Nazis early on would have thought their party was going to commit genocide. You don't see cognitive dissonance while you're in it.

The Confederate Flag does represent Treason and many declarations of independence mention defense of slavery explicit in the first two paragraphs. However, if the Confederates has succeeded, there's a good chance they would have ended slavery anyway. There were a lot of moral concerns around slavery at that time. The Constitution and Declaration of Independence, at that time, did not directly mention the word "Slave," not to mention it started to fade internationally not long after.

In that case, slavery could have been seen as just an artifact of a previous, ignorant group of their population, that also founded the country. And no mistake, between Iraq, the Iranian-Contras, the School of the Americas, MKUltra .. the Union/US has done terrible terrible things around the world to extract resources in the name of democracy.

You can't say something is going to turn out while you're in the center. Looking at the current anarco-anti-cap left groups right out, some of their action are fascistic.

Inhibiting the freedom of people to speak their minds and express their unpopular or controversial opinions is a dangerous path to go down, and many on the progressive-left are already showing contempt for the freedom of speech.

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

#554

Post by Y_Y »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #534
baddox wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

It's a really odd social phenomenon. It's one thing to say "We don't like X and find it in poor taste. Please don't do that" I don't like it when folks say such things, but I understand it. Instead, what many folks seem to be saying is that based on one thing they can tell what the person is like inside . It's an amazingly-broad generalization and people seem to be enormously confident of themselves when they make it…

that must be because you're a racist

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

#555

Post by zeveb »

gamblor956 wrote: post #495
softwaredoug wrote: post #281

I don’t see how you can make a good faith argument the confederate flag is any different from a swastika. Both represent institutions built solely for racist motives and the subjugation of another race.

Both represent institutions built solely for racist motives and the subjugation of another race. The swastika was used by multiple cultures for thousands of years before it was co-opted by the Nazis. The confederate flag was created for the sole purpose of committing treason so that some people could enslave others. Not even remotely the same thing.

> The confederate flag was created for the sole purpose of committing treason

Secession is not treason. The Tenth Amendment reads in whole: 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people'; the Constitution does not delegate the power of separating a state from the union to the United States, nor does it prohibit secession to the individual states, nor does it mandate a perpetual or irrevocable union; therefor it is plainly true that secession is constitutional.

Moreover, the same Constitution states 'Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.' Neither advocating for secession nor actually seceding consists of levying war against the U.S. or adhering to their enemies.

One might argue that the secessions of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee & North Carolina, coming as they did after the battle of Fort Sumter, constituted treason, but one might instead argue that secession itself was not adhering to the enemies of the U.S., but rather those states removing themselves from the union.

None of the following is support for any of the actual secessions of any of the states: each state which seceded did so to preserve the profoundly evil practice of slavery. It is constitutional to secede, but deeply wrong to have done so for that reason.

But it is extremely important to be precise about words. The Confederates were evilly wrong about slavery and race, but they were not traitors.

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

#556

Post by notahacker »

naasking wrote: post #491
notahacker wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implicit argument that an inability to display Confederate flags on others' property generates comparable negative externalities to environmental damage is certainly a bold one, and not, I would argue a better one than the more usual argument that private entities are bound to facilitate freedom of speech by the US constitution. You'd have a tough time persuading me any externalities generated by user generated C…

> The implicit argument that an inability to display Confederate flags on others' property generates comparable negative externalities to environmental damage Attack the strongest interpretation of an argument, not the weakest. Your choice to focus on this flag incident and ignore the wider context that I described of platforms of all kinds censoring speech and banning people reveals the flaw in this sort of response…

Has there ever been a time when businesses didn't ban users from saying and doing things they didn't like on their property? The only trend seems to be that this time it's perceived racism which is the target, rather than stuff perceived as being vulgar or blasphemous or against their family values or age inappropriate or off topic or too critical of the platform owner, and you'll have trouble convincing me that this time [and especially this particular instance] it's not considerably less alarming than most existing forms of corporate moderation.

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

#557

Post by kube-system »

ceejayoz wrote: post #535
kube-system wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> interim guidelines Implying they already expect to reevaluate this decision? While this statement sounds reasonable at face value, these kind of important distinctions really need to be codified in law, not left up to prosecutorial discretion. Vague speech laws plus a great degree of prosecutorial discretion is exactly how a lot of brutal regimes oppress dissenters while justifying their actions.

> Vague speech laws plus a great degree of prosecutorial discretion is exactly how a lot of brutal regimes oppress dissenters while justifying their actions. Sure, but it's also how a lot of non-brutal regimes keep laws from growing out of control with silly edge cases. If you are harassing someone, law enforcement doesn't have to consult the legislated list of 23,784 actions that constitute harassment. That seems re…

Harassment laws are common in the US and don't have to enumerate a large list of different actions that constitute harassment.

The clarification that you just quoted above from the Director of Public Prosecutions is only one sentence in length but it would entirely change the meaning of the law, if a clarification like that were actually in it.

US harassment laws are not a list of 23,784 actions that constitute harassment either. Here's an example of one state's law. It is clear and specific, something all laws should be: https://definitions.uslegal.com/h/harassment/

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

#559

Post by DanBC »

kube-system wrote: post #557
ceejayoz wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vague speech laws plus a great degree of prosecutorial discretion is exactly how a lot of brutal regimes oppress dissenters while justifying their actions. Sure, but it's also how a lot of non-brutal regimes keep laws from growing out of control with silly edge cases. If you are harassing someone, law enforcement doesn't have to consult the legislated list of 23,784 actions that constitute harassment. That seems re…

Harassment laws are common in the US and don't have to enumerate a large list of different actions that constitute harassment. The clarification that you just quoted above from the Director of Public Prosecutions is only one sentence in length but it would entirely change the meaning of the law, if a clarification like that were actually in it. US harassment laws are not a list of 23,784 actions that constitute haras…

English law combines acts, statutes, statutory instruments, but also case law. The law is built to adjust to a changing society.

You might be interested in this programme (from 2013, so there have been some changes since then) that explains how it works: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01sn9cf

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

#560

Post by filleduchaos »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #510
runako wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

> 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.

I am saying this as gently as possible: the majority of bigots don't walk around thinking or saying "Wow I sure am a bigot!". They mostly just think of themselves as normal people with normal values.

> Do you really think NASCAR, a big business, would have previously allowed it to be flown if it was universally considered a hate symbol?

There is a team in the NFL that is named a literal slur against indigenous Americans. I am not quite sure where one would get the idea that the US sports industry is a bastion of sensitivity.

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