While it's emotionally pleasing to see racists being kicked out of online platforms, another side of me feels wary of these tactics.<p>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 public utility and is yet allowed to do whatever it wants because it's <i>technically</i> private property. If platforms want to censor, there should be at least more oversight than what we have today.<p>Another problem with censorship is that it's not always about being right or wrong. A lot of the time, it's more about power or popularity. Thankfully, many corporations today are in favor of diversity and inclusivity, at least on the surface. However, things do change, and it's not always for the better. There are worrying trends of growing authoritarianism worldwide, and I think now is a good time to consider how censorship could be used against us.<p>Finally, racists are racists and no amount of censorship won't change what they are. I think Snowden had a point when he said that the answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship.
Interesting that the Japanese rising sun flag is mentioned alongside the swastika and the stars and bars; the rising sun flag remains in contemporary use by the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force.
Why ban the players, and not just the design?<p>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.<p>Microsoft could use some kind of super-cool AI-drived ML-based image recognition to replace the flag with a rainbow flag or something.
For the next act we'll censor images of the pyramids of Egypt, which were constructed by slave labor. And then we'll ban texts of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which was influenced by an enlightenment thinker, Voltaire, who also supported the slave trade. And for our next act we'll ban images of Washington, D.C. with its columns and white marble, which glorifies Roman slave-owning society.
This means that somewhere on the Azure cloud there is a resnet instance that only looks for confederate flags.<p>I am inspired to write it a haiku:<p>poor descent machine<p>seeking orange tradition<p>longs for better things
I’m not convinced that everyone who displays a Confederate flag is doing so out of hate (despite the history behind the symbol). It seems classifying it as a hate symbol and banning it only gives it more power as a hate symbol, and will also upset plenty of non-raciest southerners in the process.
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.
For those talking about AI models<p>> Microsoft will not automatically ban players that create designs with these controversial images; instead, the original designer will need to be reported by submitting a ticket.<p>Sounds like it's a manual process right now.
Image recognition people - is the approach to detecting something as "regular" as a particular flag any different than any other image recognition task? Or are you still just pumping in a ton of training data and doing hotdog/not hotdog?
Heh, I wonder how many Germans will get hit by this. Because here, the confederate flag can imply you are a racist, but it can also mean that you are someone who likes country and truckers and has little to no knowledge of US history.<p>We get many confused Americans on Reddit’s /r/Germany asking what’s up with all the confederate flags they see.
Why is this newsworthy? Random video game publisher implements arbitrary rule in video-game land. Seems to me like the goal of this story is just to stir up controversy over something that's not at all important. Anyone who plays a lot of online games knows that game publishers regularly ban users for a wide variety of arbitrary reasons, even mundane profanity is enough to earn a ban or suspension in many popular games.
Honest question. For those of you happy that these censorship policies are being implemented by companies in reaction to pressure, do you believe that the ideal end-goal would be 'anti hate speech' laws like those of Germany?
There should be some legal consequences to including terms like offensive and otherwise objectionable. They are so very vague and subjective they could be used to apply bigoted, sexist even racist standards on customers.
I am not very familiar with the American civil war. The way people talk about it seems weird to me though: it is as though the entire southern United States were overcome by an irresistible race hatred and they started a war in order to ensure their white supremacy- but mostly out of ignorance of the morals of this.<p>I have a hard time believing the entire southern United States was only fighting for the right to own slaves. Wasn’t that a factor that was emphasized later? What other reasons were there for the war? (Considering the slavery issue though, thank goodness they lost)<p>Edit: thanks for the responses. I couldn’t have imagined the pro-slavery position was so outspoken and blatant, it’s a bit of a culture shock. Economic incentives are perverse
It's truly terrifying to see the number of people calling for limits on speech similar to ones in Germany. [1] The right to freedom of speech was seen as so important, it was put first on the bill of rights.<p>For anyone who cares about socialism, there was a time where it would have been argued that all talk for socialism should be banned. As for Communism, that undeniably would have been banned in the 50s, if it hadn't been before then (they did try in the 20s, but was eventually overturned). And countless other causes that at one time, over 90% of constituents were against.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23715358" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23715358</a>
What if you are just being funny? Like you create a truck and put the Confederate flag on it. It could be intended as humor I suppose.<p>Are we looking past intent and being too sensitive?
Just going to leave this here:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw</a>
I'm not American, but I don't understand those of you who support such decisions. The world of politics is infecting various gaming communities with politically driven changes that in many cases aren't supported by the actual users(or majority of the users, anyway). It's worrisome that many companies succumb to the demands of the mob just because they want to be left alone.<p>On another note, the fact that it's just the confederate flag and swastikas is deeply disturbing and acts as sound evidence that those are American problems. What about soviet symbols? Overall, the total number of soviet victims vastly exceeds those of Nazis or the victims of American slavery, why is everyone so one-sided in that aspect?
Soon it will be the American flag itself because someone somewhere will find it offensive. It’s not hard to imagine how it will go down, the American flag should be banned because something something slavery, something something oppression, something something offensive.
For those who are curious about the confederate flag - that is displayed, that isn't the confederate flag. It's the Battle flag. I know everyone wants the confederate flag removed but that isn't the confederate flag which is being removed.