37 ms·

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

288 points by bdz 6y ago

otterley 6y ago
“...and nothing of value was lost.”
- ggreer 6y ago
  Isn't there a famous racing car that has the design? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Lee_(car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Lee_(car)
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > Isn't there a famous racing car It wasn't a racing car, and it was in a television show, and so what if there was? If there were a famous car from 1940s Germany with a nazi flag on it, does that make symbolically broadcasting nazism today fine behavior? The confederacy was a regime constructed explicitly to defend the practice of slavery. (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...)
    - otterley 6y ago
      The inability of HN commenters to grasp current cultural norms and the sensitivities of the people around them astounds me.
      - dang 6y ago
        This experience, which you've described well in just one sentence, is actually a consequence of how the site is structured. You might say "well, structure it differently then, so it doesn't suck". But giving up that structure would be bad, because although it is far from pleasant, it contains something that's both valuable and increasingly rare. What we need to do instead is find our way through the difficulty without cracking up. That's the question facing the community. HN is divided much as society at large is divided, just like any large-enough population sample. It's also a highly international site. Cultural norms vary more than people assume they do, especially when you factor in the international aspects. Since the debate and struggle right now is around just what "current cultural norms" ought to be, it isn't surprising that commenters disagree. The most important thing to realize about HN is that it's a non-siloed site. Everyone is in one big room here. That means you're far more likely to run into people who hold opposing views on these topics, and they may be the very same people who you agree with about other topics. This is very different from internet environments where users self-select into tribes (silos) and where the tribes are clearly identifiable. There, you know what awfulness to expect from the other side, you can dress up in the battle gear of the internet before confronting them, and you know that your own team will have your back. On HN, by contrast, you don't know what awfulness to expect, because the tribes are not identifiable and the community actually functions relatively well some of the time (don't get me wrong, it's the internet and there are a ton of problems—but, relatively speaking). This creates a feeling of normalcy and so people expect this place to be normal ("current cultural norms", as you say). Some of the time it does indeed feel that way, and then—blam, you run into something awful and hideous, something anything but normal, which you did not expect to encounter here and which hit you when your defenses were down. This comes across as a nasty shock. After a few of these shocks, the mind inevitably adjusts its view of the community from "normal place" to "painful nasty place", with the sense "HN is not what I thought it was". I'm going to guess that this is the reason why you use the phrase "astounds me". In other words, we're in a paradoxical situation where the HN community is objectively less divided and nasty than other places on the internet (which "solve" or, more precisely, defer this problem by segregating into silos), but it's still divided and nasty enough to create unexpectedly painful experiences, which makes it feel more divided and nasty. This has probably always been the biggest issue for HN's long-term survival, but it has taken years to begin to realize it, and of course current social pressures are intensifying and highlighting it. It's not clear yet what we can really do, let alone if it can survive in the long run, but from the beginning this place has been an experiment in staving off self-destruction for as long as possible (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20stave&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). I wrote another thing about the shock experience here if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
        iron0013 6y ago
        The “tribes” are easily identifiable on HN, it seems to me. For all of the most prolific HN posters, it is quite easy to predict which side of nearly any issue they’ll support.
        dang 6y ago
        Good point, but it takes a lot of familiarity before those lines become clear. At that point, the shock experience gets weaker, there is more a sense of "I expect that from this asshole", and the discussions become more like the ant wars on the rest of the internet. Even then, the community is big enough that you're going to regularly run into comments from users you either don't recognize, or didn't realize were of the opposing tribe (or opposing-tribe-adjacent, let's say). So the shock experience never goes away. But I think you're right that it's most intense for less-familiar users, and that explains why there are so many people who use HN for a little while, inevitably encounter the shock experience, feel hurt, and leave. That's a common occurrence and which pains me personally. The deeper point is that the site is designed to keep everybody together. It's not partitioned by friends or follow lists. There are no subreddits or social graphs. Design differences at that level are profound and affect everything.
        throwanem 6y ago
        It's not really all that hard to know what awfulness to expect. edit: That probably sounds more dickish than I meant it. I don't know a better place than HN for identifying clusters and following trends in the thought of "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". It's not only that, which is why I still come here. But that's the strongest theme by far.
        dang 6y ago
        > strongest theme by far Such perceptions are notoriously unreliable. People notice different things and weight them differently, based mostly on what they dislike: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Since everyone dislikes different things, everyone has a different weighted average, each reflecting their own preferences. In other words they are in the eye of the beholder, which explains why people come up with such wildly contradictory generalizations about HN. From my perspective, that's the strongest theme by far. Does my argument apply to my own perception? For sure. It has to.
  - Lendal 6y ago
    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 adults are confused and don't know why. Because people who are long dead thought it would be great fun to raise a generation of f3cking racist kids who would grow up and raise another generation of f2cking racists. It f8cking sucks to be in this situation. Thanks for nothing, ancestors.
    - ars 6y ago
      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-know-about-the-dukes-of-hazzard/ https://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/04/23-facts-you-might-not-...
      - Lendal 6y ago
        Maybe they had innocent motives, or maybe they didn't. It's irrelevant. Attempting to normalize a symbol that for millions of people stands for brutality, terrorism and oppression, doesn't change its nature for that population of people. Now you might say that it doesn't matter how those people feel. They're not us. They have their culture and we have ours. Well, what if 10 years down the road there was a new hit show in the Arab world where the characters were all very charismatic, wholesome and diverse, but their car had an ISIS flag on it?
        ars 6y ago
        > Now you might say that it doesn't matter how those people feel. They're not us. What?? How in the universe are you getting there? Talk about a strawman! The real explanation is much simpler: They didn't know the flag was racist. Because, despite attempts to rewrite history, until recently most people did not know that flag was racist. I mean, even the producer of the show, who went out of his way to hire black actors, did not even realize that about the flag. Today, things are different, I think most people know the flag is racist. But in the past? I suspect the vast majority did not realize it.
  - Tiktaalik 6y ago
    who cares
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    The owner was going to repaint it to no longer have that, interestingly https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-bubba-watson-confederate-flag-general-lee-20150702-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-bubba-wats...
vessenes 6y ago
This means that somewhere on the Azure cloud there is a resnet instance that only looks for confederate flags. I am inspired to write it a haiku: poor descent machine seeking orange tradition longs for better things
- ebg13 6y ago
  Orange?
  - notatoad 6y ago
    on the lookout for the General Lee charger i guess? i can only assume that counts for 99.9% of the confederate flags on forza.
  - ghshephard 6y ago
    Skin Color. Clever.
- filoleg 6y ago
  >This means that somewhere on the Azure cloud there is a resnet instance that only looks for confederate flags. Doesn't seem like that's the case according to the following quote: > 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.
i_am_proteus 6y ago
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.
- xxpor 6y ago
  The Maritime version is very slightly different. The Imperial Army version has the sun centered, while the Maritime version is slightly to the left. Practically speaking probably doesn't make that much of a difference though.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  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?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lopmotr 6y ago
    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.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      I don't exactly consider dropping two atomic bombs on top of hundreds of thousands of civilians an act of kindness. Americans also don't exactly apologize for their acts, still glorify their brutal heroes (and even people who fought against their own country). There's probably a whole laundry list of war crimes (and things that really should be war crimes) that the US has committed. And there are a lot of anti-American feelings across the globe.
minimaxir 6y ago
I wonder if the AI team at Microsoft has built a Confederate Flag Detector. I'd be curious how they got the training data for that.
- wmichelin 6y ago
  hmmm, maybe, just maybe, they'd feed it pictures of confederate flags
- darepublic 6y ago
  How about this: scrape Google images, apply those images to cars in Forza, use in-game screens of these cars with a cnn (I doubt it's actually this complicated but I think it makes sense)
tastygreenapple 6y ago
Seems like the systemic oppression cuts against racism, not in favor of it.
pathseeker 6y ago
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?
- buhhh 6y ago
  Private company. I don't care. Jumping from Microsoft doing a thing about this to a law being passed restricting speech is quite the stretch and would be against the 1st.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  This isn’t censorship.
  - otterley 6y ago
    Not Government censorship, anyway.
  - ta17711771 6y ago
    It...is. It's just not illegal.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I think it's hard to seriously argue that blanket prohibitions on using a particular symbol aren't censorship. Maybe there are reasonable arguments for censoring the confederate flag, but it's unhelpful to pretend that's not what's happening here.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    If the word censorship can only apply to censorship by the government, then the word "self-censorship" doesn't really exist.
  - daenz 6y ago
    That wasn't the question.
- 6y ago
monocasa 6y ago
For those talking about AI models > 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. Sounds like it's a manual process right now.
root_axis 6y ago
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.
- pfraze 6y ago
  It's newsworthy because there's a pretty significant debate occurring in the US about how private companies can moderate speech in their spaces. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is being actively relitigated by both parties (though it's not clear yet if anything will come of it).
  - root_axis 6y ago
    > Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is being actively relitigated by both parties I feel like I am taking crazy pills. We're talking about the creator of a video game banning the confederate flag in-game, we are a long way off from free speech rights in the supposed public square of a private enterprise. In what world can you imagine video game creators not being able to determine what kind of content is acceptable in their own game. I don't feel convinced that this is anything other than aggrieved culture warriors trying to make something mundane into a controversy.
    - pfraze 6y ago
      > I don't feel convinced that this is anything other than aggrieved culture warriors trying to make something mundane into a controversy. I don't wholly disagree, my point is that the culture war is hot right now over this specific topic and that's why it's news-worthy.
    - lopmotr 6y ago
      > In what world can you imagine video game creators not being able to determine what kind of content is acceptable in their own game. You're over-generalizing. If a game explicitly banned players from creating characters that look like black people, would you still make that comment? I'm sure you can at least see why others would find that newsworthy.
kevsim 6y ago
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?
- ebg13 6y ago
  > is the approach to detecting something as "regular" as a particular flag any different than any other image recognition task It can be. It doesn't have to be. Image recognition research existed long before the current trend of throwing the kitchen sink at a neural net. Practically speaking, the best outcomes always come from applying as many different techniques as you can justify and applying a controlled failure-scenario-aware synthesis to the results.
sacks2k 6y ago
I'm curious why the confederate flag should get special treatment. I had relatives murdered in the Alamo. Should the Mexican flag get banned because I'm offended by it? Every flag represents a group that has been in the losing side of a war and killed opposing citizens or soldiers. Yet, those flags aren't banned.
- namdnay 6y ago
  Without digging too deeply into semiotic philosophy, symbols are also defined by those who use them. 99% of people brandishing Nazi flags have horrific views, and use the flag to show their allegiance to those views, so we prefer people not to brandish them. Same thing for confederate flags
- manuelabeledo 6y ago
  > I had relatives murdered in the Alamo. Should the Mexican flag get banned because I'm offended by it? Given the treatment of slavery in both the Republic of Texas and the Empire of Mexico back then, I would say that you may not need to be offended about it.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Given the treatment of slavery in both the Republic of Texas and the Empire of Mexico back then Neither Mexican Empire was contemporaneous with the Texas revolution or Republic. The first Empire was earlier, the second Empire was later, roughly contemporary to the US Civil War.
    - manuelabeledo 6y ago
      You are right. I should have said Mexican Republic.
- milesskorpen 6y ago
  Because the Confederacy existed primarily to defend the institution of slavery. That puts it in same, short, list as Nazi Germany in my book.
drocer88 6y ago
What next? Tibetan flags? Uighur flags? Palestinian flags? Basque flags? Chechen flags? Israeli flags? South vietnamese flags? Taiwan flags? Dominion of Newfoundland flags? Black nationalist flags? Who's the judge?
- darepublic 6y ago
  The American left
- geodel 6y ago
  For sure, you are I are not. Racial justice activists are.
- gruez 6y ago
  Microsoft, which is party beholden to the court of public opinion.
- manuelabeledo 6y ago
  It depends. Which ones represent the right of owning dark skinned people? I would be happy if they ban those too.
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    What about the persecution and/or sterilization of a people?
  - ggreer 6y ago
    Before it was invaded by China, Tibet had serfdom and what most would consider to be slavery. Also Tibetan punishment for crimes often involved removal of eyes or amputation of limbs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy#Human_rights_in_Tibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy#H...
  - numpad0 6y ago
    4chan anons should have made a real flag of a nation as some sort of meme for slavery. That “white power” thing feels half assed now, just feeding the racists.
drno123 6y ago
A good move. However, French national anthem with the words “to arms, let an impure blood water our furrows!” should also be considered hare speech and therefore censored in all sports events.
gentleman11 6y ago
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. 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) 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
- moussasissoko 6y ago
  James McPherson, a Princeton Civil War historian says: “Probably 90 percent, maybe 95 percent of serious historians of the Civil War would agree on the broad questions of what the war was about and what brought it about and what caused it, which was the increasing polarization of the country between the free states and the slave states over issues of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery.”" Look at the secession documents from the states: At the very onset, on December 20, 1860, South Carolina declared that President-elect Abraham Lincoln’s “opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” On January 7, 1861, the ordinance signed in Montgomery that “it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the Slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States.” On February 2, 1861, Texas declared its decision to be “based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law.” On March 9, 1861, Arkansas’s George B. Smoote added a resolution: “Resolved, that the platform on the party known as the Black Republican Party contains unconstitutional dogmas, dangerous in their tendency and highly derogatory to the rights of slave states, and among them the insulting, injurious and untruthful enunciation of the right of the African race of their country to social and political equality with the whites.” On April 17, 1861 latecomer Virginia, provoked by Lincoln’s raising troops to suppress the already seceded states, declared “Lincoln’s opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery” as it cut ties with Washington. Tennessee was the 11th and last, its population divided on secession (eastern Tennesseans generally opposed it), but not on the slave issue.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hamandcheese 6y ago
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.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Most likely the primary reason why anyone would use the Confederate flag in Forza is to recreate the General Lee. There's probably General Lee replicas and scale models all over the world with not that much regards to the flag on the roof.
- throwanem 6y ago
  I was born and raised in Mississippi. You're wrong. Maybe you wouldn't have been when I was a baby. But that's been a long time ago now.
  - hamandcheese 6y ago
    I was born and raised in northwest Florida, which has plenty of the same sort of people.
major505 6y ago
Well, to bad if you wann recriate your own version of The Dukes of Hazzard
111234567890 6y ago
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.
soraminazuki 6y ago
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 public utility and is yet allowed to do whatever it wants because it's technically private property. If platforms want to censor, there should be at least more oversight than what we have today. 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. 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.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  This assumes that racists are putting confederate flags on their cars in good faith. Also, what kind of discourse is so precious that it should be respected on the ... Forza decal platform?
  - Rebelgecko 6y ago
    I don't think it's a good faith claim that everyone using one of the banned symbols is a racist 1. The current flag of Japan is based off of one of the banned symbols 2. Probably the most famous car in pop culture uses one of the banned symbols. Microsoft has gone as far as banning parodies of the General Lee that have none of the controversial symbols[0] If the flag of imperial Japan was banned due to its association with imperialism and colonialism [1], should the USA flag still be allowed[2]? IMO, the banning of the US flag would be excessive, but is also necessary if the rule is implemented in a fair fashion against all imperialist nations. [0]: https://forums.forzamotorsport.net/turn10_postst162853_offensive.aspx https://forums.forzamotorsport.net/turn10_postst162853_offen... [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Japanese_Empire_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Japanese... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases#/media/File:American_bases_worldwide.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military...
Aqua 6y ago
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. 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?
shultays 6y ago
Interestingly hammer and sickle is not in the list
- lopmotr 6y ago
  The list of "bad" ideas blows this way and that with the wind. It's not about what it was used for in the past or how much bad was done. It's about whatever mobs with pitchforks demand. They can always come up some reason like "used for hate" or "causes offense" or "safe environment" but they don't really mean it. Those are just rationalizations for organizations making decisions out of fear.
- slg 6y ago
  The list specifically says "including but not limited to". If you are implying that there is a leftist slant to their rules, I would point to the examples of banned offensive phrases that includes the anti-police "FTP" and "ACAB".
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  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 immutable characteristics. I know Tankies and Holomdor apologists exist - and their calls for guillotining billionaires are concerning - but I compare that to a person proudly displaying a (non-Hindu) swastika: it means that person is either a fascist who actively supports genocide - or is being an edgy teenager. Similarly proudly flying the Confederate battle-flag means they either actively support white-supremacy and subjugation of black people - or they're very ignorant of history and bought into the post-reconstruction propagandizing by Confederate apologists. That's the difference between what I feel those symbols mean.
  - sintaxi 6y ago
    A distinction without a difference if in both cases the conclusion is democide.
drtillberg 6y ago
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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- glangdale 6y ago
  I like how your slippery slope argument (itself a fallacy) kicks off with the fallacy that the pyramids were constructed by slave labor.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    Well, even if they were built by paid labor force comprised from free persons, they still glorify dead slaveowners, don't they?
    - raz32dust 6y ago
      No, they don't. What a certain symbol glorifies or does not glorify is not something you can measure objectively. It is an intersubjective reality. i.e, if enough people believe that pyramids glorify slavery, then it does! At the moment, you are the first person I have heard who thinks so. Confederate flags, on the other hand, are considered as glorifying slavery even by many people who support it.
- softwaredoug 6y ago
  The sole cause of the confederacy was defending the right for white men to own black slaves. All those other things were not solely about defending slavery.
  - 6y ago
softwaredoug 6y ago
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.
- jstanley 6y ago
  But, it's just a picture. If you want to put a swastika on your car, the punishment should be that you made yourself look stupid, not that you get banned from the game!
  - acdha 6y ago
    This assumes that people are acting in good faith. If someone uses a swastika it’s unlikely that they are otherwise a positive contribution to the community.
  - pfraze 6y ago
    People rally around symbols. That's why this is an issue right now; the US has a movement of white nationalists rallying around that picture.
- henriquez 6y ago
  Slavery was not the primary factor of conflict in the Civil War. Both Union and Confederate states owned slaves and engaged in slave trade. Conflating the Confederate flag with racism or white supremacy is a popular, but historically ignorant viewpoint.
  - softwaredoug 6y ago
    It was the cause. The election of Lincoln and John Browns raid were threatening to the south exactly because of their threat to slavery. The south was not only paranoid of a slave uprising, but also owned people was the bulk of their wealth. I think this skeptics SE is pretty good summary: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16275/was-slavery-the-principal-cause-of-the-american-civil-war https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16275/was-slave... And the Cornerstone Speech by the VP of the confederacy: > Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
reaperducer 6y ago
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 flag or something.
- ochoseis 6y ago
  I like this idea as long as it’s transparent that’s what’s happening, because it creates less of a wedge and is humorous to most. Booting people off a platform would lead polarizing resentment imho.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    I think it'd be funnier if it was done silently like shadowbanning, so the racist troll didn't know why people kept apparently innocently assuming he was gay. But I wouldn't expect MS to go for humour, especially not dealing with sensitive politics and audiences involving a lot of minors.
- GuiA 6y ago
  I played similar games when I ran forums, but really you're just shuffling the problem around. Bored trolls/extreme ideologues will be delighted to play cat and mouse with your measures, and will feel particularly proud of themselves when they circumvent them creatively. In the end, you have to decide what outcome you want - using half effective measures hoping that the racists will keep it down, or kicking them out and making it clear that they aren't welcome? You can't have it both ways.
- arcticfox 6y ago
  > Why ban the players, and not just the design? This is a silly complaint IMO. If you break the rules, whatever they are, a ban is a completely reasonable punishment. A 1- or 2- strike policy gets the same result you are talking about with no "super-cool AI-driven ML-based image recognition"
Semaphor 6y ago
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. We get many confused Americans on Reddit’s /r/Germany asking what’s up with all the confederate flags they see.
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
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. 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. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23715358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23715358
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cortic 6y ago
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.
racl101 6y ago
What if you're just a big fan of the Dukes of Hazzard? :(
aronpye 6y ago
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.
- theduder99 6y ago
  Yep, can you believe those Americans who displaced and treated native Americans so badly?
jmpman 6y ago
Now that I can’t introduce my kids to the Dukes of Hazzard, I need suggestions for other shows with exploding arrows....
swayvil 6y ago
When they came for the guys who added a confederate flag to their digital cars, I said nothing...
imheretolearn 6y ago
Just going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw
boublepop 6y ago
Next up: Steam will ban players who played as terrorists in counterstrike.
winrid 6y ago
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. Are we looking past intent and being too sensitive?
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  I would ask: what’s the joke?

288 points by bdz 6y ago

otterley 6y ago

“...and nothing of value was lost.”

ggreer 6y ago
Isn't there a famous racing car that has the design? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Lee_(car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Lee_(car)
- ebg13 6y ago
  > Isn't there a famous racing car It wasn't a racing car, and it was in a television show, and so what if there was? If there were a famous car from 1940s Germany with a nazi flag on it, does that make symbolically broadcasting nazism today fine behavior? The confederacy was a regime constructed explicitly to defend the practice of slavery. (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...)
  - otterley 6y ago
    The inability of HN commenters to grasp current cultural norms and the sensitivities of the people around them astounds me.
    - dang 6y ago
      This experience, which you've described well in just one sentence, is actually a consequence of how the site is structured. You might say "well, structure it differently then, so it doesn't suck". But giving up that structure would be bad, because although it is far from pleasant, it contains something that's both valuable and increasingly rare. What we need to do instead is find our way through the difficulty without cracking up. That's the question facing the community. HN is divided much as society at large is divided, just like any large-enough population sample. It's also a highly international site. Cultural norms vary more than people assume they do, especially when you factor in the international aspects. Since the debate and struggle right now is around just what "current cultural norms" ought to be, it isn't surprising that commenters disagree. The most important thing to realize about HN is that it's a non-siloed site. Everyone is in one big room here. That means you're far more likely to run into people who hold opposing views on these topics, and they may be the very same people who you agree with about other topics. This is very different from internet environments where users self-select into tribes (silos) and where the tribes are clearly identifiable. There, you know what awfulness to expect from the other side, you can dress up in the battle gear of the internet before confronting them, and you know that your own team will have your back. On HN, by contrast, you don't know what awfulness to expect, because the tribes are not identifiable and the community actually functions relatively well some of the time (don't get me wrong, it's the internet and there are a ton of problems—but, relatively speaking). This creates a feeling of normalcy and so people expect this place to be normal ("current cultural norms", as you say). Some of the time it does indeed feel that way, and then—blam, you run into something awful and hideous, something anything but normal, which you did not expect to encounter here and which hit you when your defenses were down. This comes across as a nasty shock. After a few of these shocks, the mind inevitably adjusts its view of the community from "normal place" to "painful nasty place", with the sense "HN is not what I thought it was". I'm going to guess that this is the reason why you use the phrase "astounds me". In other words, we're in a paradoxical situation where the HN community is objectively less divided and nasty than other places on the internet (which "solve" or, more precisely, defer this problem by segregating into silos), but it's still divided and nasty enough to create unexpectedly painful experiences, which makes it feel more divided and nasty. This has probably always been the biggest issue for HN's long-term survival, but it has taken years to begin to realize it, and of course current social pressures are intensifying and highlighting it. It's not clear yet what we can really do, let alone if it can survive in the long run, but from the beginning this place has been an experiment in staving off self-destruction for as long as possible (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20stave&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). I wrote another thing about the shock experience here if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
      - iron0013 6y ago
        The “tribes” are easily identifiable on HN, it seems to me. For all of the most prolific HN posters, it is quite easy to predict which side of nearly any issue they’ll support.
        dang 6y ago
        Good point, but it takes a lot of familiarity before those lines become clear. At that point, the shock experience gets weaker, there is more a sense of "I expect that from this asshole", and the discussions become more like the ant wars on the rest of the internet. Even then, the community is big enough that you're going to regularly run into comments from users you either don't recognize, or didn't realize were of the opposing tribe (or opposing-tribe-adjacent, let's say). So the shock experience never goes away. But I think you're right that it's most intense for less-familiar users, and that explains why there are so many people who use HN for a little while, inevitably encounter the shock experience, feel hurt, and leave. That's a common occurrence and which pains me personally. The deeper point is that the site is designed to keep everybody together. It's not partitioned by friends or follow lists. There are no subreddits or social graphs. Design differences at that level are profound and affect everything.
      - throwanem 6y ago
        It's not really all that hard to know what awfulness to expect. edit: That probably sounds more dickish than I meant it. I don't know a better place than HN for identifying clusters and following trends in the thought of "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". It's not only that, which is why I still come here. But that's the strongest theme by far.
        dang 6y ago
        > strongest theme by far Such perceptions are notoriously unreliable. People notice different things and weight them differently, based mostly on what they dislike: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Since everyone dislikes different things, everyone has a different weighted average, each reflecting their own preferences. In other words they are in the eye of the beholder, which explains why people come up with such wildly contradictory generalizations about HN. From my perspective, that's the strongest theme by far. Does my argument apply to my own perception? For sure. It has to.
- Lendal 6y ago
  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 adults are confused and don't know why. Because people who are long dead thought it would be great fun to raise a generation of f3cking racist kids who would grow up and raise another generation of f2cking racists. It f8cking sucks to be in this situation. Thanks for nothing, ancestors.
  - ars 6y ago
    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-know-about-the-dukes-of-hazzard/ https://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/04/23-facts-you-might-not-...
    - Lendal 6y ago
      Maybe they had innocent motives, or maybe they didn't. It's irrelevant. Attempting to normalize a symbol that for millions of people stands for brutality, terrorism and oppression, doesn't change its nature for that population of people. Now you might say that it doesn't matter how those people feel. They're not us. They have their culture and we have ours. Well, what if 10 years down the road there was a new hit show in the Arab world where the characters were all very charismatic, wholesome and diverse, but their car had an ISIS flag on it?
      - ars 6y ago
        > Now you might say that it doesn't matter how those people feel. They're not us. What?? How in the universe are you getting there? Talk about a strawman! The real explanation is much simpler: They didn't know the flag was racist. Because, despite attempts to rewrite history, until recently most people did not know that flag was racist. I mean, even the producer of the show, who went out of his way to hire black actors, did not even realize that about the flag. Today, things are different, I think most people know the flag is racist. But in the past? I suspect the vast majority did not realize it.
- Tiktaalik 6y ago
  who cares
- renewiltord 6y ago
  The owner was going to repaint it to no longer have that, interestingly https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-bubba-watson-confederate-flag-general-lee-20150702-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-bubba-wats...

vessenes 6y ago

This means that somewhere on the Azure cloud there is a resnet instance that only looks for confederate flags. I am inspired to write it a haiku: poor descent machine seeking orange tradition longs for better things

ebg13 6y ago
Orange?
- notatoad 6y ago
  on the lookout for the General Lee charger i guess? i can only assume that counts for 99.9% of the confederate flags on forza.
- ghshephard 6y ago
  Skin Color. Clever.
filoleg 6y ago
>This means that somewhere on the Azure cloud there is a resnet instance that only looks for confederate flags. Doesn't seem like that's the case according to the following quote: > 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.

i_am_proteus 6y ago

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.

xxpor 6y ago
The Maritime version is very slightly different. The Imperial Army version has the sun centered, while the Maritime version is slightly to the left. Practically speaking probably doesn't make that much of a difference though.
Hamuko 6y ago
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?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lopmotr 6y ago
  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.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    I don't exactly consider dropping two atomic bombs on top of hundreds of thousands of civilians an act of kindness. Americans also don't exactly apologize for their acts, still glorify their brutal heroes (and even people who fought against their own country). There's probably a whole laundry list of war crimes (and things that really should be war crimes) that the US has committed. And there are a lot of anti-American feelings across the globe.

minimaxir 6y ago

I wonder if the AI team at Microsoft has built a Confederate Flag Detector. I'd be curious how they got the training data for that.

wmichelin 6y ago
hmmm, maybe, just maybe, they'd feed it pictures of confederate flags
darepublic 6y ago
How about this: scrape Google images, apply those images to cars in Forza, use in-game screens of these cars with a cnn (I doubt it's actually this complicated but I think it makes sense)

tastygreenapple 6y ago

Seems like the systemic oppression cuts against racism, not in favor of it.

pathseeker 6y ago

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?

buhhh 6y ago
Private company. I don't care. Jumping from Microsoft doing a thing about this to a law being passed restricting speech is quite the stretch and would be against the 1st.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
This isn’t censorship.
- otterley 6y ago
  Not Government censorship, anyway.
- ta17711771 6y ago
  It...is. It's just not illegal.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I think it's hard to seriously argue that blanket prohibitions on using a particular symbol aren't censorship. Maybe there are reasonable arguments for censoring the confederate flag, but it's unhelpful to pretend that's not what's happening here.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  If the word censorship can only apply to censorship by the government, then the word "self-censorship" doesn't really exist.
- daenz 6y ago
  That wasn't the question.
6y ago

monocasa 6y ago

For those talking about AI models > 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. Sounds like it's a manual process right now.

root_axis 6y ago

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.

pfraze 6y ago
It's newsworthy because there's a pretty significant debate occurring in the US about how private companies can moderate speech in their spaces. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is being actively relitigated by both parties (though it's not clear yet if anything will come of it).
- root_axis 6y ago
  > Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is being actively relitigated by both parties I feel like I am taking crazy pills. We're talking about the creator of a video game banning the confederate flag in-game, we are a long way off from free speech rights in the supposed public square of a private enterprise. In what world can you imagine video game creators not being able to determine what kind of content is acceptable in their own game. I don't feel convinced that this is anything other than aggrieved culture warriors trying to make something mundane into a controversy.
  - pfraze 6y ago
    > I don't feel convinced that this is anything other than aggrieved culture warriors trying to make something mundane into a controversy. I don't wholly disagree, my point is that the culture war is hot right now over this specific topic and that's why it's news-worthy.
  - lopmotr 6y ago
    > In what world can you imagine video game creators not being able to determine what kind of content is acceptable in their own game. You're over-generalizing. If a game explicitly banned players from creating characters that look like black people, would you still make that comment? I'm sure you can at least see why others would find that newsworthy.

kevsim 6y ago

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?

ebg13 6y ago
> is the approach to detecting something as "regular" as a particular flag any different than any other image recognition task It can be. It doesn't have to be. Image recognition research existed long before the current trend of throwing the kitchen sink at a neural net. Practically speaking, the best outcomes always come from applying as many different techniques as you can justify and applying a controlled failure-scenario-aware synthesis to the results.

sacks2k 6y ago

I'm curious why the confederate flag should get special treatment. I had relatives murdered in the Alamo. Should the Mexican flag get banned because I'm offended by it? Every flag represents a group that has been in the losing side of a war and killed opposing citizens or soldiers. Yet, those flags aren't banned.

namdnay 6y ago
Without digging too deeply into semiotic philosophy, symbols are also defined by those who use them. 99% of people brandishing Nazi flags have horrific views, and use the flag to show their allegiance to those views, so we prefer people not to brandish them. Same thing for confederate flags
manuelabeledo 6y ago
> I had relatives murdered in the Alamo. Should the Mexican flag get banned because I'm offended by it? Given the treatment of slavery in both the Republic of Texas and the Empire of Mexico back then, I would say that you may not need to be offended about it.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Given the treatment of slavery in both the Republic of Texas and the Empire of Mexico back then Neither Mexican Empire was contemporaneous with the Texas revolution or Republic. The first Empire was earlier, the second Empire was later, roughly contemporary to the US Civil War.
  - manuelabeledo 6y ago
    You are right. I should have said Mexican Republic.
milesskorpen 6y ago
Because the Confederacy existed primarily to defend the institution of slavery. That puts it in same, short, list as Nazi Germany in my book.

drocer88 6y ago

What next? Tibetan flags? Uighur flags? Palestinian flags? Basque flags? Chechen flags? Israeli flags? South vietnamese flags? Taiwan flags? Dominion of Newfoundland flags? Black nationalist flags? Who's the judge?

darepublic 6y ago
The American left
geodel 6y ago
For sure, you are I are not. Racial justice activists are.
gruez 6y ago
Microsoft, which is party beholden to the court of public opinion.
manuelabeledo 6y ago
It depends. Which ones represent the right of owning dark skinned people? I would be happy if they ban those too.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  What about the persecution and/or sterilization of a people?
- ggreer 6y ago
  Before it was invaded by China, Tibet had serfdom and what most would consider to be slavery. Also Tibetan punishment for crimes often involved removal of eyes or amputation of limbs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy#Human_rights_in_Tibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy#H...
- numpad0 6y ago
  4chan anons should have made a real flag of a nation as some sort of meme for slavery. That “white power” thing feels half assed now, just feeding the racists.

drno123 6y ago

A good move. However, French national anthem with the words “to arms, let an impure blood water our furrows!” should also be considered hare speech and therefore censored in all sports events.

gentleman11 6y ago

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. 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) 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

moussasissoko 6y ago
James McPherson, a Princeton Civil War historian says: “Probably 90 percent, maybe 95 percent of serious historians of the Civil War would agree on the broad questions of what the war was about and what brought it about and what caused it, which was the increasing polarization of the country between the free states and the slave states over issues of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery.”" Look at the secession documents from the states: At the very onset, on December 20, 1860, South Carolina declared that President-elect Abraham Lincoln’s “opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” On January 7, 1861, the ordinance signed in Montgomery that “it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the Slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States.” On February 2, 1861, Texas declared its decision to be “based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law.” On March 9, 1861, Arkansas’s George B. Smoote added a resolution: “Resolved, that the platform on the party known as the Black Republican Party contains unconstitutional dogmas, dangerous in their tendency and highly derogatory to the rights of slave states, and among them the insulting, injurious and untruthful enunciation of the right of the African race of their country to social and political equality with the whites.” On April 17, 1861 latecomer Virginia, provoked by Lincoln’s raising troops to suppress the already seceded states, declared “Lincoln’s opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery” as it cut ties with Washington. Tennessee was the 11th and last, its population divided on secession (eastern Tennesseans generally opposed it), but not on the slave issue.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hamandcheese 6y ago

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.

Hamuko 6y ago
Most likely the primary reason why anyone would use the Confederate flag in Forza is to recreate the General Lee. There's probably General Lee replicas and scale models all over the world with not that much regards to the flag on the roof.
throwanem 6y ago
I was born and raised in Mississippi. You're wrong. Maybe you wouldn't have been when I was a baby. But that's been a long time ago now.
- hamandcheese 6y ago
  I was born and raised in northwest Florida, which has plenty of the same sort of people.

major505 6y ago

Well, to bad if you wann recriate your own version of The Dukes of Hazzard

111234567890 6y ago

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.

soraminazuki 6y ago

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 public utility and is yet allowed to do whatever it wants because it's technically private property. If platforms want to censor, there should be at least more oversight than what we have today. 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. 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.

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
This assumes that racists are putting confederate flags on their cars in good faith. Also, what kind of discourse is so precious that it should be respected on the ... Forza decal platform?
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  I don't think it's a good faith claim that everyone using one of the banned symbols is a racist 1. The current flag of Japan is based off of one of the banned symbols 2. Probably the most famous car in pop culture uses one of the banned symbols. Microsoft has gone as far as banning parodies of the General Lee that have none of the controversial symbols[0] If the flag of imperial Japan was banned due to its association with imperialism and colonialism [1], should the USA flag still be allowed[2]? IMO, the banning of the US flag would be excessive, but is also necessary if the rule is implemented in a fair fashion against all imperialist nations. [0]: https://forums.forzamotorsport.net/turn10_postst162853_offensive.aspx https://forums.forzamotorsport.net/turn10_postst162853_offen... [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Japanese_Empire_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Japanese... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases#/media/File:American_bases_worldwide.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military...

Aqua 6y ago

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. 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?

shultays 6y ago

Interestingly hammer and sickle is not in the list

lopmotr 6y ago
The list of "bad" ideas blows this way and that with the wind. It's not about what it was used for in the past or how much bad was done. It's about whatever mobs with pitchforks demand. They can always come up some reason like "used for hate" or "causes offense" or "safe environment" but they don't really mean it. Those are just rationalizations for organizations making decisions out of fear.
slg 6y ago
The list specifically says "including but not limited to". If you are implying that there is a leftist slant to their rules, I would point to the examples of banned offensive phrases that includes the anti-police "FTP" and "ACAB".
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
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 immutable characteristics. I know Tankies and Holomdor apologists exist - and their calls for guillotining billionaires are concerning - but I compare that to a person proudly displaying a (non-Hindu) swastika: it means that person is either a fascist who actively supports genocide - or is being an edgy teenager. Similarly proudly flying the Confederate battle-flag means they either actively support white-supremacy and subjugation of black people - or they're very ignorant of history and bought into the post-reconstruction propagandizing by Confederate apologists. That's the difference between what I feel those symbols mean.
- sintaxi 6y ago
  A distinction without a difference if in both cases the conclusion is democide.

drtillberg 6y ago

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.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
glangdale 6y ago
I like how your slippery slope argument (itself a fallacy) kicks off with the fallacy that the pyramids were constructed by slave labor.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Well, even if they were built by paid labor force comprised from free persons, they still glorify dead slaveowners, don't they?
  - raz32dust 6y ago
    No, they don't. What a certain symbol glorifies or does not glorify is not something you can measure objectively. It is an intersubjective reality. i.e, if enough people believe that pyramids glorify slavery, then it does! At the moment, you are the first person I have heard who thinks so. Confederate flags, on the other hand, are considered as glorifying slavery even by many people who support it.
softwaredoug 6y ago
The sole cause of the confederacy was defending the right for white men to own black slaves. All those other things were not solely about defending slavery.
- 6y ago

softwaredoug 6y ago

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.

jstanley 6y ago
But, it's just a picture. If you want to put a swastika on your car, the punishment should be that you made yourself look stupid, not that you get banned from the game!
- acdha 6y ago
  This assumes that people are acting in good faith. If someone uses a swastika it’s unlikely that they are otherwise a positive contribution to the community.
- pfraze 6y ago
  People rally around symbols. That's why this is an issue right now; the US has a movement of white nationalists rallying around that picture.
henriquez 6y ago
Slavery was not the primary factor of conflict in the Civil War. Both Union and Confederate states owned slaves and engaged in slave trade. Conflating the Confederate flag with racism or white supremacy is a popular, but historically ignorant viewpoint.
- softwaredoug 6y ago
  It was the cause. The election of Lincoln and John Browns raid were threatening to the south exactly because of their threat to slavery. The south was not only paranoid of a slave uprising, but also owned people was the bulk of their wealth. I think this skeptics SE is pretty good summary: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16275/was-slavery-the-principal-cause-of-the-american-civil-war https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16275/was-slave... And the Cornerstone Speech by the VP of the confederacy: > Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

reaperducer 6y ago

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 flag or something.

ochoseis 6y ago
I like this idea as long as it’s transparent that’s what’s happening, because it creates less of a wedge and is humorous to most. Booting people off a platform would lead polarizing resentment imho.
- notahacker 6y ago
  I think it'd be funnier if it was done silently like shadowbanning, so the racist troll didn't know why people kept apparently innocently assuming he was gay. But I wouldn't expect MS to go for humour, especially not dealing with sensitive politics and audiences involving a lot of minors.
GuiA 6y ago
I played similar games when I ran forums, but really you're just shuffling the problem around. Bored trolls/extreme ideologues will be delighted to play cat and mouse with your measures, and will feel particularly proud of themselves when they circumvent them creatively. In the end, you have to decide what outcome you want - using half effective measures hoping that the racists will keep it down, or kicking them out and making it clear that they aren't welcome? You can't have it both ways.
arcticfox 6y ago
> Why ban the players, and not just the design? This is a silly complaint IMO. If you break the rules, whatever they are, a ban is a completely reasonable punishment. A 1- or 2- strike policy gets the same result you are talking about with no "super-cool AI-driven ML-based image recognition"

Semaphor 6y ago

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. We get many confused Americans on Reddit’s /r/Germany asking what’s up with all the confederate flags they see.

ApolloFortyNine 6y ago

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. 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. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23715358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23715358

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cortic 6y ago

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.

racl101 6y ago

What if you're just a big fan of the Dukes of Hazzard? :(

aronpye 6y ago

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.

theduder99 6y ago
Yep, can you believe those Americans who displaced and treated native Americans so badly?

jmpman 6y ago

Now that I can’t introduce my kids to the Dukes of Hazzard, I need suggestions for other shows with exploding arrows....

swayvil 6y ago

When they came for the guys who added a confederate flag to their digital cars, I said nothing...

imheretolearn 6y ago

Just going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw

boublepop 6y ago

Next up: Steam will ban players who played as terrorists in counterstrike.

winrid 6y ago

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. Are we looking past intent and being too sensitive?

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
I would ask: what’s the joke?