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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

#721

Post by soraminazuki »

greenie_beans wrote: post #317
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…

They're banning a hateful symbol. That's totally fair game for censorship. I don't know where you come from, but in my home state where we JUST THIS WEEK removed the Confederate emblem from our state flag, only people with real hatred towards non-white people use that symbol.

> we JUST THIS WEEK removed the Confederate emblem from our state flag

That was long overdue, but it has little to do with the point that I'm trying to make. What I'm saying that we should be more careful about what we wish for, especially for something as dangerous as censorship, because things never work out the way we want it to. If the system worked as intended, there wouldn't be a problem of systemic racism now.

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

#722

Post by jniedrauer »

stass wrote: post #661
jniedrauer wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be? I don't recall it ever being used as a symbol of discrimination against one specific group... unless you mean landlords?

That's right, it's just a symbol that has been used historically to kill tens of millions of people, enslave many more millions, and violently steal other people property. No hate here at all, nothing to see.

No hate against a specific group. The cross has been used as a symbol in the slaughter millions over the centuries. But it is not generally used as a symbol to threaten any one specific group.

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

#723

Post by themacguffinman »

ies7 wrote: post #679
bastawhiz wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The origins of a symbol are mostly pointless, it's the intent of its use. It's a hard argument to say that everyone form Japan is a racist because their flag is based on a banned symbol. The confederacy existed _because of racism_. Its only purpose (and continued purpose) is to identify with a movement founded solely on the basis of hate.

This will be one of my argument about changing the current master-slave or blacklist-whitelist terminology in tech.

Not sure how you can argue that the purpose of master-slave or blacklist-whitelist terminology is to identify with a movement based on hate. Unlike the confederate flag, it was never a good bet that people using those words are racist.

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

#724

Post by soraminazuki »

tptacek wrote: post #508
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.

It's not only games that are doing this, and that was only part of my argument about the potential impact it has.

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

#725

Post by dundarious »

ies7 wrote: post #679
bastawhiz wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The origins of a symbol are mostly pointless, it's the intent of its use. It's a hard argument to say that everyone form Japan is a racist because their flag is based on a banned symbol. The confederacy existed _because of racism_. Its only purpose (and continued purpose) is to identify with a movement founded solely on the basis of hate.

This will be one of my argument about changing the current master-slave or blacklist-whitelist terminology in tech.

The word "slave" has not become divorced from its original context. I don't think that argument passes the smell test there.

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

#726

Post by 6nf »

krapp wrote: post #708
6nf wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You believe censorship works?

If it didn't work, no one would be opposed to it.

That’s WHY I’m opposed to it: because it doesn’t work. It just annoys people but it doesn’t actually work.

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

#727

Post by numpad0 »

lopmotr wrote: post #290
Hamuko wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't really understand that. Would they also ban anyone for adding the insignia for United States Army Air Forces? What about writing "Enola Gay" on the side of a car?

Imperial Japan was extremely cruel to the people in the places it invaded - which was a lot. Human experimentation, massacring civilians, torture, comfort women. They were basically the Nazis of Asia. They also didn't apologize for it, still glorify their brutal heroes and teach disinformation about it to their schoolkids. Chinese people still have a strong anti-Japanese feeling.

To be frank, Japanese people(myself included) is somehow extremely cruel by default to anyone, and there’s an aspect that those defaults compounded in the war rather than those soldiers became cruel.

Like we still torture young subordinates in workplace to death and laugh at them, today, like pouring beer into an Italian shoe and get the new girl to swallow it, I never had to come across such things but some of us still do, just not as obscenely atrocious as treating completely innocent and defenseless local residents like a dog playing with plushes.

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

#728

Post by naasking »

filleduchaos wrote: post #662
8note wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flags are very powerful symbols. Suppose trump took down all the American flags in the whitehouse and replaced them with Russian flag, or if Obama had taken them down and replaced them with the Isis flag. There's no world in which that would be taken lightly

It's a perennial source of amazement that so many Americans don't realise that literal political symbols are actually, you know, political. Flags, anthems, pledges, coats of arms, etc - these are (benign) nationalist symbols and displaying/rendering them is inherently a political choice.

Amazed or not, symbol or not, political or not, a person displaying a flag is quite literally not propaganda. Honestly, look it up: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda

And I'm not American in case you were referring to me.

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

#729

Post by ItsDeathball »

freehunter wrote: post #627
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you're flashing an "OK" sign in clear view, I would understand that to mean things are okay. If you're flashing the sign below the waist so very few people would notice, I would understand that to mean "I'm giving this sign to very few people and only those in that community would understand what I'm saying". Context matters.

Generally, flashing that sign below the waist is a juvenile game where if one's friend sees the sign, one is entitled to punch them in the genitals (or something to that effect). That would be my first assumption before any kind of racism.

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

#730

Post by Consultant32452 »

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…

There's a different aspect of all this that troubles me and it has to do with projecting malice into people when it's unwarranted.

One example is all the actors and such who did positive and loving impersonations of people which happened to involve wearing dark makeup. I completely understand the this practice is distasteful, but do we really need to go back years and cancel Kimmel for impersonating Chris Rock from a place of love and adoration?

I also understand the feeling some others have when they see the Confederate flag. I grew up in the South. I'm confident many people I grew up with do not associate the Confederate flag with slavery or racism. For them it's merely a symbol of rebellion against authority.

In my opinion banning the Confederate flag is fine. Banning black face, also fine. But neither of those things is sufficient to prove a person is racist. This current moral panic is taking us to dark places. Racism is real. Evil is real. Witch hunts are bad. We need more love in the world, we need to give people the space to be ignorant or wrong without being evil so we can welcome them out of the darkness instead of forcing them into it.

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