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

#571

Post by beaner » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #431

beaner wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment. When we idolize figures who we believe did good things, we project a guide line from the past into the future for ourselves to follow. When we erase history, we lose this guidance and direction. It's no mistake that the mob is responsible for the destruction, because a lack o…

> History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment. I think that framing minimizes the extent to which we can and do choose how we portray history in order to choose how we see ourselves.

Choice is certainly a factor and I don't think it needs to be minimized. If we choose well and isolate and elevate symbols of positive and productive principles, we create better guidance for ourselves and for future generations.

Part of doing this well is being able to isolate properly, identifying what made historical figures exceptional, and being able to forgive sins which are considered sinful now, but were common behavior in the past. If you can't do that, you can't preserve people as symbols of principles at all, because the morality of the moment is not guaranteed to be held forever.

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

#572

Post by roenxi » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

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 because it's technically private property.

I agree with the direction, but that is the core of a bad argument; if a principle doesn't apply in important cases then it isn't really a principle. It is exactly the same as the "free speech except for things I don't like" crowd. Companies can and should have the power to choose who they serve.

Corporations making decisions about who they serve based on the character of their customers and pressure from intolerant groups is indeed a highly risky political strategy. But the risk is from the power of intolerant and their ability to declare it a 'good outcome' rather than from the corporations themselves.

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

#573

Post by acdha » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #533

acdha wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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 con…

> 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. Right, again, there aren't thousands of other options. If you want to host your site, you need a domain. That limits yourself to a hand full of registrars. And you need somebody to transmit traffic, if you hold any kind of controversial opinion, you need DDOS-protection.…

There are thousands of hosting options: don’t forget that many companies offer hosting under various customer domains as well as your own.

If you want your own domain you can check any company on this list:

https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accreditation-qualif...

Similarly, network capacity and servers are available from many companies around the world.

If your content is so toxic that you can’t find anyone in the world to provide even basic network connectivity, it might be time to ask whether you’re using “controversial” as a synonym for “illegal”. That happens to groups like ISIL, but even that’s not completely successful, and it’s extremely unlikely that anyone reading this has “international takedown” as a realistic threat.

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

#574

Post by beaner » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #407

beaner wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're still taking as a foregone conclusion that (all of) the statues represent bad men with evil ideas, and that's what I'm disagreeing with.

Then it's a good thing people aren't toppling statues randomly.

I mean all of the statues that are in fact being toppled.

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

#575

Post by edoceo » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

s- wrote: post #565

edoceo wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thumbs up is definitely offensive in some cultures

Right, it's offensive in Iran (according to a quick DDG) - but offensive != hijacked and repurposed.

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

#576

Post by umvi » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #466

umvi wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being controversial... I'm going to go ahead and say that Japan doesn't care about racism like America does. Japanese people are extremely racist, but you just don't know it because Japan is 99+% Japanese with But the ethnic minorities that _do_ live there live in segregated apartment complexes, etc. to prevent "mixing with the natives".

Why does everything have to ba racism? Can’t they just be xenophobic? Or maybe nationalist?

Is there a significant difference between being "xenophobic" and "racist"? Seems like semantics...

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

#577

Post by moksly » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

RestlessMind wrote: post #430

openasocket wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sex and race are protected classes, using a particular image is not a protected class. I'd be quite surprised if there is any country in the world where you can't discriminate against someone using the confederate flag or some other iconography. And honestly I don't think there should be.

In this specific comment, I am not discussing what are the dimensions along which discrimination is permitted vs the ones where it is not. I am simply pointing out to moksly (GP) that what individual people are allowed to do in their gardens is very different than what private businesses are allowed to do in the US.

But your example is a strawman, there is no difference between Microsoft and me as far as preventing people from putting a slavery celebration picture on their virtual cars.

Companies have been filtering which words you’re allowed to use as your username, in chats, as your e-mail address. Filtering what kind of pictures you’re allowed to put on your cars is no different than that.

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

#578

Post by mistermann » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #493

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.

That won't happen; context matters. If you're posing with the confederate flag and a bunch of guns during a BLM protest, and flashing the OK hand symbol, it's going to be taken very differently from just using that same gesture to a friend in a random grocery store or something.

Context or innocence does not protect you:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article...

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

#579

Post by umvi » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

innocenat wrote: post #416

umvi wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being controversial... I'm going to go ahead and say that Japan doesn't care about racism like America does. Japanese people are extremely racist, but you just don't know it because Japan is 99+% Japanese with But the ethnic minorities that _do_ live there live in segregated apartment complexes, etc. to prevent "mixing with the natives".

> but you just don't know it because Japan is 99+% Japanese with Racism is discussed on Japanese SNS quite often. There are also frequent demonstrations both for racism and against racism. I think the reason people don't really know because it's wasn't actively reported, even on Japanese media. Additionally, there are 2.93 millions foreigners in Japan [0]. Japan population is 127 millions. That's already 2.3%, and no…

True, it used to be <1% but the share has been growing over the past decade.

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

#580

Post by undersuit » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

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.

I don't think there was a moral panic. Just a reaction. Slurs come from somewhere. The N-word didn't just spontaneously appear in every one's dictionary the night after it was first used. What if we could have stopped the N-word when the 4chans of 1400 started using it?