24 ms·

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 deplat

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...
  - 8note 6y ago
    For something you could use with a consistent approach: If they willingly undid their imperialism and colonialism, it's fine; the symbol is one of learning to not be racist If you had to invade and force them to stop it, and the regime ended while clinging to the racist policies, then it's bad
  - bastawhiz 6y ago
    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.
    - ies7 6y ago
      This will be one of my argument about changing the current master-slave or blacklist-whitelist terminology in tech.
      - themacguffinman 6y ago
        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.
      - dundarious 6y ago
        The word "slave" has not become divorced from its original context. I don't think that argument passes the smell test there.
      - bastawhiz 6y ago
        Is that the same argument? The country of Japan might not change its flag for whatever reason. That's their choice, and for them to sort out. Using inclusive language is different because I'm not forcing anyone to type Japan's flag. The origin of Japan's flag doesn't equate "things that are not okay" with skin tone. Your black coworkers today, if they descended from enslaved people brought to the US, have a very high probability of having a white ancestor who was a slave owner—it's part of their identity. Or maybe your coworker was one of the millions of Americans who were forced to work hard labor because of the exception to the thirteenth amendment [0]. It's truly personal. Imagine if "blacklists" were "irishlists": if it was just the origin that was racist, would we be having the same conversation that the origin and the intent can be separated? It's not necessarily hateful to use the "old" term—how could you have been educated on inclusivity when the word is common jargon? But is it racist or hateful to say "I'm actively choosing not to use an equivalent but inclusive term because I prefer the one that I have learned is discouraging or hateful to others"? Yes, probably, in the same way that confederate flag aficionados claim that it represents something different now, or it's the way things "always" have been. In fact, the term probably didn't exist in computing when your parents were kids. Inclusive language costs nothing [1] and most importantly, it's something that _you can control_. The difference is Microsoft regulating use of the Japanese flag, which they cannot change and which isn't celebrated as a racist symbol, and making the default branch on all new internal git repos "main," which they can easily change, costs ~nothing to do, and avoids terminology which isn't used to be hateful but which is derived from hate. [0] the old "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" [1] I wrote and landed a PR to change "whitelist" to "allowlist" in 20 minutes. Another team codemodded >1k instances of "blacklist" away in a day. Ymmv, but it's easy to simply stop using an old term and start using a new one, replacing the old one over time.
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  A lot of these are General Lee dukes of hazard recreations. I wouldn't immediately assume that everyone with the livery was a racist, more people collecting historic car livery.
- soraminazuki 6y ago
  > This assumes that racists are putting confederate flags on their cars in good faith. I wouldn't call them "racists" if I believed that. > Also, what kind of discourse is so precious that it should be respected on the ... Forza decal platform? It's not only games that are doing this.
aidenn0 6y ago
I want all controversial views to be deplatformed, because I don't see any other way that people will care enough about centralization to actually change.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I want all controversial views to be deplatformed That's a pretty controversial view. Expect to be deplatformed, citizen.
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  Accelerationism doesn’t work, and never has.
  - pooper 6y ago
    Thank you for sharing. I didn't know this term even existed. for others like me: > In political and social theory, accelerationism is the idea that capitalism, or particular processes that historically characterised capitalism, should be accelerated instead of overcome in order to generate radical social change. "Accelerationism" may also refer more broadly, and usually pejoratively, to support for the intensification of capitalism in the belief that this will hasten its self-destructive tendencies and ultimately lead to its collapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
  - drenvuk 6y ago
    I beg to differ. Without this pandemic and current US president the odds of us seeing the BLM movement would be nil considering the consistently slow burn that we've had over the past decades. Now that the swing has been so great in one direction more people will vote and more people will care. I don't like it but that's how it's working. People who are tired and apathetic lack the impetus to enact meaningful change.
    - iamstupidsimple 6y ago
      It goes both ways. There are just as many people who consider BLM to be an anarcho-marxist movement who hate white people. This is why accelerationism is bad, because it can radicalise literally everyone.
rsynnott 6y ago
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. I can't see any reason that imaginary car livery should have to, though.
- sukilot 6y ago
  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.
  - arcticfox 6y ago
    > That's an argument for banning swastikas, not banning anyone who displays a swastika. This seems semantic. For example, cheating is banned in many games, and if you cheat, you get banned. Banning cheating and cheaters is effectively the same thing.
    - octocop 6y ago
      Choice is still present, is a person who is paralyzed and unable to speak by default non-racist?
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        There is a huge difference between thinking bad thoughts and expressing or acting on them. You can be as racist as you want in your own head. No one is stopping that. You can express those racist thoughts all you want on your own property. But you have absolutely no right to express or act on those racist thoughts on someone else's property.
paulchap 6y ago
> 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. It _is_ private property. The companies in question are just exerting their rights. The users agreed to the ToS while signing up, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to cut off your access to their service, as long as it's within the legal bounds of the ToS. I don't think companies should be directly regulated/penalized for banning users. I do think however, that people should be more conscious of what they're signing up for. Consumer protection law should protect consumers, not their convenience.
- naasking 6y ago
  > It _is_ private property. The companies in question are just exerting their rights. The users agreed to the ToS while signing up, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to cut off your access to their service, as long as it's within the legal bounds of the ToS. So by parity of reasoning, companies that pollute within the bounds of the EPA's restrictions are also perfectly within their legal rights, and so shouldn't be chastised or further regulated, right? Of course that's nonsense, because we're all interested in a better civilization, which occasionally means reviewing and accounting for the negative externalities of which we might have been previously unaware. So please stop using this point against people raising concerns over how corporations are acting. There are legitimate concerns over the negative externalities of policing speech and banning people on private platforms with no recourse for appeal.
  - PCI-eX16 6y ago
    Your argument makes no sense. It's a complete non-sequitur unless you want the federal government to enact laws that enable them to micro manage every form of communication. That would get laughed out of the SCOTUS in an instant.
    - naasking 6y ago
      > It's a complete non-sequitur It's quite literally not a non-sequitur. The parity of reasoning in both cases is clear: they are the same argument, I just swapped the details. Every good regulation is intended to address some negative externality. Before a regulation is enacted, people point out the negative externalities and how they're harmful and that we should do something about them. Maybe they have some idea what that entails, maybe they don't. You can't consistently dismiss such concerns by arguments like, "it's private property", while simultaneously supporting other regulations, like those enforced by the EPA, that also restrict one's rights to use one's property. > unless you want the federal government to enact laws that enable them to micro manage every form of communication I don't know what a good solution would be, I just know negative externalities in this case do exist. You can continue to deny them, you can accept that they exist but deny their importance, or you can accept they exist and that they are important, and so participate in a dialogue about how they should be addressed.
heymijo 6y ago
I am obtusely aware that Germany has banned hate speech and imagery relating to Nazis yet remains a democracy with mostly free speech. Am I wrong? If no, how have they accomplished this?
- tomp 6y ago
  You’re wrong. Someone was criminally prosecuted because he insulted Erdogan. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37554167 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37554167 They eventually dropped he case, probably because of the public uproar, but to even consider such a criminal case definitely isn’t a hallmark of a “freedom of speech” society.
  - nl 6y ago
    > Someone was criminally prosecuted because he insulted Erdogan. No they weren't. He was never prosecuted - an investigation was opened after a complaint by Erdogan and then dropped before charges were laid. From your own link: "Erdogan then filed a complaint alleging that he had been insult" and "The prosecutors in the western city of Mainz said they had not found sufficient evidence to continue the inquiry against Jan Boehmermann." Additionally: "Mrs Merkel added that the authorities would move to repeal the controversial and little-used Article 103 of the penal code, which concerns insults against foreign heads of state, by 2018." Which was done[1]. Seems a pretty good example of a functioning democracy. [1] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/service/cabinet-overturns-l%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9-section-of-criminal-code-413376 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/service/cabinet-overt...
- chockablocker 6y ago
  Germany has in the past prosecuted anti-fascists for using a strike-through of a swastica. There were some considerations for changing the law, but I don't recall what happened to it. https://www.dw.com/en/minister-wants-to-legalize-anti-nazi-swastikas/a-2191932 https://www.dw.com/en/minister-wants-to-legalize-anti-nazi-s...
greenie_beans 6y ago
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.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  Congratulations on that, btw! Watching this shit finally come down in your hometown feels REALLY GOOD.
- soraminazuki 6y ago
  > 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.
  - greenie_beans 6y ago
    The system is working exactly as intended, that’s why we have systemic racism. If you look at the history of Reconstruction in the South and how it ended and gave rise to Jim Crow rule, you’ll see that we are very much an intentional system of white supremacy.
    - soraminazuki 6y ago
      I think it's fair to say that the public opinion has shifted significantly from that point, and if democracy was working in its most ideal form, it should be protecting the rights of black people. But the point is that even with the best of intentions, supposed "solutions" to any sort of problem won't always be effective and could end up making the situation worse if people don't think through. Racism matters, but how you solve it equally matters as well.
jasode 6y ago
>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, For some topics such as the Confederate flag, you don't even have to complicate the discussion with "private company vs public utility". E.g., tax-payer government funded public schools also banned kids from wearing the Confederate flag on shirts because they were "disruptive". In some cases, the free speech advocates fought the rule and yet the ban was upheld by courts even on appeal: https://www.google.com/search?q=confederate+shirt+banned+public+school https://www.google.com/search?q=confederate+shirt+banned+pub... In other words, even if the government nationalized Microsoft into a state-owned enterprise, we'd still be having this debate about free speech being censored.
slg 6y ago
Do we have to treat every one of these issues with the same gravitas? We are talking about people putting a traitorous and many would argue a racist flag on their virtual car in a video game. This isn't a sign of growth of authoritarianism world wide. I think your argument would be better served if it was saved for an issue with more pervasive ramifications than a video game.
tptacek 6y ago
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.
- soraminazuki 6y ago
  It's not only games that are doing this, and that was only part of my argument about the potential impact it has.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    This is a story about a race car game.
    - soraminazuki 6y ago
      Which is part of a broader trend. I also don't find the "it's just a game" argument convincing either. Just take a look at how Reporters without Borders use Minecraft to evade censorship in opressive regimes. For-profit companies would be happy to censor these types of content too if the mechanism exists and are given free reign without any sort of oversight. https://uncensoredlibrary.com/en https://uncensoredlibrary.com/en
      - tptacek 6y ago
        Minecraft is also a video game. You are equating video games with public utilities.
ryandrake 6y ago
Today it's racists--fine. Hell with em. If you're young, you have many years ahead of you. A lot of time for culture and norms to keep changing and evolving. I guarantee that one day, you're going to wake up as an old person, and something that you like that's innocuous today will have been deemed terrible and hateful by a future generation. Maybe even for good reasons. You'll be kicked off platforms, called ignorant, and shunned for being associated with this now-controversial thing. It's going to be confusing. You're going to feel as though the world has gone off in some crazy direction and left you behind. I'm not saying have empathy for racists. But maybe we could try to put ourselves into the shoes of someone for whom time and culture are moving too fast and imagine how disorienting and confusing what's going on today might be for them. I'd guess that these people might want to lash out at the rest of the world who suddenly seem to be against them. Or turn inward into hermits and avoid society. I don't really understand it, but I'm still young enough to keep up with all this change. But I feel I'll be left behind eventually. It'll probably happen to us all.
- NikkiA 6y ago
  I've found through my years that it's relatively easy to keep an eye on trends and when something or someone becomes problematic to society, to evaluate why that'd be and let go of it from your life. My first example of this came when I was ~7 and Robinsons' badges that I'd been collecting since a toddler were seen as an image of racism. It didn't take much work to accept that they were no longer acceptable and that while fun to collect, their time had passed. As it happened, at around that time collecting Star Wars figurines became the de jour thing, so there was something new to enjoy in it's place. Some people still swear that the badges' meaning is divorced from the racism, and still collect them to this day. I don't know how they can really. For info on the badges I'm talking about: http://www.golligosh.co.uk/ http://www.golligosh.co.uk/
- gamblor956 6y ago
  The Confederate battle flag has been around for 150+ years. It was, from the very beginning, a symbol of treason, of racism, of owning other people as property, of being allowed to rape and murder other humans without consequence. Those who want to "celebrate" their Southern "heritage" have plenty of symbols and flags to choose from that don't have inherently racist and treasonous implications.
beervirus 6y ago
> 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. Very true. For example, there are definitely places where antisemitism is becoming more and more socially acceptable.
causality0 6y ago
Unfortunately no part of the internet is a public venue. There is no internet street corner, no "common carrier" internet phone company, no internet post office. Everything you do is subject to the whims of shareholder value. If tomorrow enough people decided left-handed people are the scum of the earth to affect Youtube's bottom line you'd start seeing left-handed videos demonetized. If enough people decided left-handed people don't deserve a voice to make a racket with their hosting providers and registars you'd see left-handed communities purged from the internet with no legal recourse whatsoever. In the real world that's only happened to Nazis and terrorists but I suspect we'll see it expanding as people realize the power an angry mob can wield. It's a bit fascinating that media which attempts to censor this content seems to have worse problems with it than media which doesn't. There's nothing illegal about sending Nazi content through the mail but the mail isn't utterly swamped with Nazi newsletters but places like video games seem to fight an endless battle to keep half their users from turning racist.
- iamstupidsimple 6y ago
  I disagree. The internet is a place and it's special - far greater than the sum of it's constituent parts (servers, networking gear, websites, etc..) might all be privately owned, but the concept of the network itself is free and shared.
  - causality0 6y ago
    Yes. I'm just saying it would be beneficial if there were a public alternative to services like Gmail, Youtube, Facebook, offered to the users at cost, and only moderated to the degree necessary to comply with the law. Perhaps in exchange for this "neutral media carrier" the user accounts should be linked to a Social Security number and with their real names attached to anything they publish. Nobody blames the postal service for delivering racist newsletters or pirated DVDs or drugs. The responsibility lies solely on the user, who is prosecuted if their conduct exceeds the scope of the law. We need that for the internet.
    - iamstupidsimple 6y ago
takeda 6y ago
I understand removing confederate flags and movements from public areas, but I don't think it is necessary to ban people for using it in games like Forza. I mean Microsoft can do whatever they want, but it is overreacting. Most people who would use it wouldn't have any bad meaning behind it and most likely would be used more as a joke. When playing Forza I remember I liked skin that made my car look like a beater car, and it was so fun winning races in car that looked like it would fall apart at any moment.
- cgrealy 6y ago
  The difference is that your beater car skin doesn't remind an entire demographic of a time a whole bunch of people went to war so they could keep said demographic as property. If you want to be funny about the confederate flag, go do an open mike. There's no context in a racing game... so while it might be some hilarious meta-commentary on the ridiculousness of racism, the only thing another player sees is "there's someone who wishes they could still keep slaves".
  - Kallrian 6y ago
    You’ve never heard of the Dukes or Hazzard have you? Their 1969 Dodge Charger is one of the most iconic cars in tv history, and Forza happens to have a ‘69 charger as a drivable car
    - cgrealy 6y ago
      No, I’ve heard of them. When I was a kid, I actually had a General Lee windup car, before I knew anything about the history of the civil war. And then, I grew up. You can still drive a charger if you want. Now you just can’t paint a racist flag of treason on it.
0x8BADF00D 6y ago
> 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. In this instance, it’s a public company and one particular game. Some companies don’t allow you to wall hack or use aim assistants. Others will allow you to use hacked clients, like Minecraft anarchy servers. It should be up to the company to moderate, as you sign a TOS agreement with them when signing up or purchasing their game. Government oversight is not needed here, because it’s a contract between an individual and a corporate entity.
tarkin2 6y ago
Allowing it legitimises the racist ideas. Yet racist aggressors have legitimised many horrors through victimhood.
bluntfang 6y ago
>Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way. You're talking about video games. You're talking about not expressing racism in video games.
roenxi 6y ago
> 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.
- redisman 6y ago
  Besides- how is Forza Motorsports in any way like a public utility? It is one of hundreds of online racing games run by a private company.
gameswithgo 6y ago
> I think Snowden had a point when he said that the answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. Having grown up and seen the Internet come into being, I feel like all evidence suggests the opposite of that.
- 6nf 6y ago
  You believe censorship works?
  - krapp 6y ago
    If it didn't work, no one would be opposed to it.
    - 6nf 6y ago
      That’s WHY I’m opposed to it: because it doesn’t work. It just annoys people but it doesn’t actually work.
      - krapp 6y ago
        If censorship is merely annoying, but otherwise ineffective, why do people keep portraying every act of moderation that any site performs as a slippery slope towards global Orwellian dystopia? Why are people worried about cancel culture and "SJWs" and the "Left" purging conservative voices and "erasing history?" Why are some adamant that we need to have the government force all platforms to allow all forms of speech without moderation in order to combat the absolute, near Stalin-like censorship power that social media is perceived to have over all human communication? Just reading this thread makes it obvious that people are worried about a lot more than merely being annoyed by it.
        toast0 6y ago
        Censorship is pretty good at suppressing the words or images that are being suppressed. It's not very good at suppressing the thoughts or feelings that are considered wrong. Nazi symbols are banned in Germany, but they still have neo-Nazis. It's unfortunate when artistic works have a banned symbol and so the work is suppressed, and that art becomes hard to obtain and difficult to discuss with others.
larsenwolf 6y ago
At my company we’ve taken a stand against cancel culture. We do not believe that anyone should be compelled to sign away their freedoms as part of our working relationship. The right to free speech is just that—a RIGHT. There’s more than enough legal precedence to manage our workforce effectively.
- cgrealy 6y ago
  Can you elaborate? I don't really get how this is relevant to the discussion at hand.
swayvil 6y ago
Really? Adding a confederate flag to your car == racist?
tw04 6y ago
> 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. With is why the KKK was allowed to run full page, front page ads in national newspapers 60 years ago. No? We’ve always allowed private companies to block content they deemed unworthy, regardless of whether they were relied on by the public.
- soraminazuki 6y ago
  Ordinary people don't have the resources to run a newspaper ad, so it's not what I was referring to. I had things like your email and social media accounts in mind, where banning has consequences other than not being able to deliver hate speech.
jorvi 6y ago
> I think Snowden had a point when he said that the answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. Yes! A lot of people get angry when you tell them that, but I think that people should be able to say vile, hateful things. Not because those things contribute anything meaningful to society, but the only way you can possibly have a chance to challenge the views of those people is by knowing that they have those in the first place.
- fwip 6y ago
  Do you think that black people should debate the confederate flag in the marketplace of ideas of the Forza Motorsport Decal Upload form? When they see that the car next to them in a race is full of hateful symbols, they should reply by quickly going into their car customization screen and equipping their "BLM" decals?
Consultant32452 6y ago
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.
- genoapol 6y ago
  >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. I agree with this sentiment but history shows how quickly this can spiral out of control. If these symbols (stars and bars and all its variations) were not directly tied to domestic terrorism and other various forms of violence, it would be easier to create room for learning. Unless a balance is struck, we leave historically disenfranchised minorities to be potential future victims of the majority's ignorance.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    The only thing I see spiraling out of control is a moral panic being ginned up by a race baiting media.
R0b0t1 6y ago
There are laws in some states where squares or common areas of apartment buildings are considered public for the purposes of speech, etc. I think we will eventually see this gravitate online. One case heard was about an apartment complex which made up some absurd percentage of a district. If people were barred from distributing fliers it would have seriously upset campaigning in that district.
Phylter 6y ago
As the world becomes more authoritarian what these platforms do to censor on their own won't matter. Governments will mandate whatever they want in the future regardless of what platforms do today. I totally get what you're saying though, it's the tyranny of the majority. What happens if the majority of people decide to censor the truth of history because it's not politically correct? What happens if they decide that the confederate flag and what it stands for needs to be stricken from the history books? These things should not be glorified but should be remembered so we don't tread the same horrible road again against some other group of people. But glorifying it is kind of what they're trying to prevent now by removing it from games.

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...
- 8note 6y ago
  For something you could use with a consistent approach: If they willingly undid their imperialism and colonialism, it's fine; the symbol is one of learning to not be racist If you had to invade and force them to stop it, and the regime ended while clinging to the racist policies, then it's bad
- bastawhiz 6y ago
  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.
  - ies7 6y ago
    This will be one of my argument about changing the current master-slave or blacklist-whitelist terminology in tech.
    - themacguffinman 6y ago
      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.
    - dundarious 6y ago
      The word "slave" has not become divorced from its original context. I don't think that argument passes the smell test there.
    - bastawhiz 6y ago
      Is that the same argument? The country of Japan might not change its flag for whatever reason. That's their choice, and for them to sort out. Using inclusive language is different because I'm not forcing anyone to type Japan's flag. The origin of Japan's flag doesn't equate "things that are not okay" with skin tone. Your black coworkers today, if they descended from enslaved people brought to the US, have a very high probability of having a white ancestor who was a slave owner—it's part of their identity. Or maybe your coworker was one of the millions of Americans who were forced to work hard labor because of the exception to the thirteenth amendment [0]. It's truly personal. Imagine if "blacklists" were "irishlists": if it was just the origin that was racist, would we be having the same conversation that the origin and the intent can be separated? It's not necessarily hateful to use the "old" term—how could you have been educated on inclusivity when the word is common jargon? But is it racist or hateful to say "I'm actively choosing not to use an equivalent but inclusive term because I prefer the one that I have learned is discouraging or hateful to others"? Yes, probably, in the same way that confederate flag aficionados claim that it represents something different now, or it's the way things "always" have been. In fact, the term probably didn't exist in computing when your parents were kids. Inclusive language costs nothing [1] and most importantly, it's something that _you can control_. The difference is Microsoft regulating use of the Japanese flag, which they cannot change and which isn't celebrated as a racist symbol, and making the default branch on all new internal git repos "main," which they can easily change, costs ~nothing to do, and avoids terminology which isn't used to be hateful but which is derived from hate. [0] the old "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" [1] I wrote and landed a PR to change "whitelist" to "allowlist" in 20 minutes. Another team codemodded >1k instances of "blacklist" away in a day. Ymmv, but it's easy to simply stop using an old term and start using a new one, replacing the old one over time.
ganoushoreilly 6y ago
A lot of these are General Lee dukes of hazard recreations. I wouldn't immediately assume that everyone with the livery was a racist, more people collecting historic car livery.
soraminazuki 6y ago
> This assumes that racists are putting confederate flags on their cars in good faith. I wouldn't call them "racists" if I believed that. > Also, what kind of discourse is so precious that it should be respected on the ... Forza decal platform? It's not only games that are doing this.

aidenn0 6y ago

I want all controversial views to be deplatformed, because I don't see any other way that people will care enough about centralization to actually change.

reaperducer 6y ago
I want all controversial views to be deplatformed That's a pretty controversial view. Expect to be deplatformed, citizen.
leadingthenet 6y ago
Accelerationism doesn’t work, and never has.
- pooper 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing. I didn't know this term even existed. for others like me: > In political and social theory, accelerationism is the idea that capitalism, or particular processes that historically characterised capitalism, should be accelerated instead of overcome in order to generate radical social change. "Accelerationism" may also refer more broadly, and usually pejoratively, to support for the intensification of capitalism in the belief that this will hasten its self-destructive tendencies and ultimately lead to its collapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
- drenvuk 6y ago
  I beg to differ. Without this pandemic and current US president the odds of us seeing the BLM movement would be nil considering the consistently slow burn that we've had over the past decades. Now that the swing has been so great in one direction more people will vote and more people will care. I don't like it but that's how it's working. People who are tired and apathetic lack the impetus to enact meaningful change.
  - iamstupidsimple 6y ago
    It goes both ways. There are just as many people who consider BLM to be an anarcho-marxist movement who hate white people. This is why accelerationism is bad, because it can radicalise literally everyone.

rsynnott 6y ago

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. I can't see any reason that imaginary car livery should have to, though.

sukilot 6y ago
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.
- arcticfox 6y ago
  > That's an argument for banning swastikas, not banning anyone who displays a swastika. This seems semantic. For example, cheating is banned in many games, and if you cheat, you get banned. Banning cheating and cheaters is effectively the same thing.
  - octocop 6y ago
    Choice is still present, is a person who is paralyzed and unable to speak by default non-racist?
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      There is a huge difference between thinking bad thoughts and expressing or acting on them. You can be as racist as you want in your own head. No one is stopping that. You can express those racist thoughts all you want on your own property. But you have absolutely no right to express or act on those racist thoughts on someone else's property.

paulchap 6y ago

> 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. It _is_ private property. The companies in question are just exerting their rights. The users agreed to the ToS while signing up, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to cut off your access to their service, as long as it's within the legal bounds of the ToS. I don't think companies should be directly regulated/penalized for banning users. I do think however, that people should be more conscious of what they're signing up for. Consumer protection law should protect consumers, not their convenience.

naasking 6y ago
> It _is_ private property. The companies in question are just exerting their rights. The users agreed to the ToS while signing up, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to cut off your access to their service, as long as it's within the legal bounds of the ToS. So by parity of reasoning, companies that pollute within the bounds of the EPA's restrictions are also perfectly within their legal rights, and so shouldn't be chastised or further regulated, right? Of course that's nonsense, because we're all interested in a better civilization, which occasionally means reviewing and accounting for the negative externalities of which we might have been previously unaware. So please stop using this point against people raising concerns over how corporations are acting. There are legitimate concerns over the negative externalities of policing speech and banning people on private platforms with no recourse for appeal.
- PCI-eX16 6y ago
  Your argument makes no sense. It's a complete non-sequitur unless you want the federal government to enact laws that enable them to micro manage every form of communication. That would get laughed out of the SCOTUS in an instant.
  - naasking 6y ago
    > It's a complete non-sequitur It's quite literally not a non-sequitur. The parity of reasoning in both cases is clear: they are the same argument, I just swapped the details. Every good regulation is intended to address some negative externality. Before a regulation is enacted, people point out the negative externalities and how they're harmful and that we should do something about them. Maybe they have some idea what that entails, maybe they don't. You can't consistently dismiss such concerns by arguments like, "it's private property", while simultaneously supporting other regulations, like those enforced by the EPA, that also restrict one's rights to use one's property. > unless you want the federal government to enact laws that enable them to micro manage every form of communication I don't know what a good solution would be, I just know negative externalities in this case do exist. You can continue to deny them, you can accept that they exist but deny their importance, or you can accept they exist and that they are important, and so participate in a dialogue about how they should be addressed.

heymijo 6y ago

I am obtusely aware that Germany has banned hate speech and imagery relating to Nazis yet remains a democracy with mostly free speech. Am I wrong? If no, how have they accomplished this?

tomp 6y ago
You’re wrong. Someone was criminally prosecuted because he insulted Erdogan. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37554167 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37554167 They eventually dropped he case, probably because of the public uproar, but to even consider such a criminal case definitely isn’t a hallmark of a “freedom of speech” society.
- nl 6y ago
  > Someone was criminally prosecuted because he insulted Erdogan. No they weren't. He was never prosecuted - an investigation was opened after a complaint by Erdogan and then dropped before charges were laid. From your own link: "Erdogan then filed a complaint alleging that he had been insult" and "The prosecutors in the western city of Mainz said they had not found sufficient evidence to continue the inquiry against Jan Boehmermann." Additionally: "Mrs Merkel added that the authorities would move to repeal the controversial and little-used Article 103 of the penal code, which concerns insults against foreign heads of state, by 2018." Which was done[1]. Seems a pretty good example of a functioning democracy. [1] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/service/cabinet-overturns-l%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9-section-of-criminal-code-413376 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/service/cabinet-overt...
chockablocker 6y ago
Germany has in the past prosecuted anti-fascists for using a strike-through of a swastica. There were some considerations for changing the law, but I don't recall what happened to it. https://www.dw.com/en/minister-wants-to-legalize-anti-nazi-swastikas/a-2191932 https://www.dw.com/en/minister-wants-to-legalize-anti-nazi-s...

greenie_beans 6y ago

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.

egypturnash 6y ago
Congratulations on that, btw! Watching this shit finally come down in your hometown feels REALLY GOOD.
soraminazuki 6y ago
> 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.
- greenie_beans 6y ago
  The system is working exactly as intended, that’s why we have systemic racism. If you look at the history of Reconstruction in the South and how it ended and gave rise to Jim Crow rule, you’ll see that we are very much an intentional system of white supremacy.
  - soraminazuki 6y ago
    I think it's fair to say that the public opinion has shifted significantly from that point, and if democracy was working in its most ideal form, it should be protecting the rights of black people. But the point is that even with the best of intentions, supposed "solutions" to any sort of problem won't always be effective and could end up making the situation worse if people don't think through. Racism matters, but how you solve it equally matters as well.

jasode 6y ago

>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, For some topics such as the Confederate flag, you don't even have to complicate the discussion with "private company vs public utility". E.g., tax-payer government funded public schools also banned kids from wearing the Confederate flag on shirts because they were "disruptive". In some cases, the free speech advocates fought the rule and yet the ban was upheld by courts even on appeal: https://www.google.com/search?q=confederate+shirt+banned+public+school https://www.google.com/search?q=confederate+shirt+banned+pub... In other words, even if the government nationalized Microsoft into a state-owned enterprise, we'd still be having this debate about free speech being censored.

slg 6y ago

Do we have to treat every one of these issues with the same gravitas? We are talking about people putting a traitorous and many would argue a racist flag on their virtual car in a video game. This isn't a sign of growth of authoritarianism world wide. I think your argument would be better served if it was saved for an issue with more pervasive ramifications than a video game.

tptacek 6y ago

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.

soraminazuki 6y ago
It's not only games that are doing this, and that was only part of my argument about the potential impact it has.
- tptacek 6y ago
  This is a story about a race car game.
  - soraminazuki 6y ago
    Which is part of a broader trend. I also don't find the "it's just a game" argument convincing either. Just take a look at how Reporters without Borders use Minecraft to evade censorship in opressive regimes. For-profit companies would be happy to censor these types of content too if the mechanism exists and are given free reign without any sort of oversight. https://uncensoredlibrary.com/en https://uncensoredlibrary.com/en
    - tptacek 6y ago
      Minecraft is also a video game. You are equating video games with public utilities.

ryandrake 6y ago

Today it's racists--fine. Hell with em. If you're young, you have many years ahead of you. A lot of time for culture and norms to keep changing and evolving. I guarantee that one day, you're going to wake up as an old person, and something that you like that's innocuous today will have been deemed terrible and hateful by a future generation. Maybe even for good reasons. You'll be kicked off platforms, called ignorant, and shunned for being associated with this now-controversial thing. It's going to be confusing. You're going to feel as though the world has gone off in some crazy direction and left you behind. I'm not saying have empathy for racists. But maybe we could try to put ourselves into the shoes of someone for whom time and culture are moving too fast and imagine how disorienting and confusing what's going on today might be for them. I'd guess that these people might want to lash out at the rest of the world who suddenly seem to be against them. Or turn inward into hermits and avoid society. I don't really understand it, but I'm still young enough to keep up with all this change. But I feel I'll be left behind eventually. It'll probably happen to us all.

NikkiA 6y ago
I've found through my years that it's relatively easy to keep an eye on trends and when something or someone becomes problematic to society, to evaluate why that'd be and let go of it from your life. My first example of this came when I was ~7 and Robinsons' badges that I'd been collecting since a toddler were seen as an image of racism. It didn't take much work to accept that they were no longer acceptable and that while fun to collect, their time had passed. As it happened, at around that time collecting Star Wars figurines became the de jour thing, so there was something new to enjoy in it's place. Some people still swear that the badges' meaning is divorced from the racism, and still collect them to this day. I don't know how they can really. For info on the badges I'm talking about: http://www.golligosh.co.uk/ http://www.golligosh.co.uk/
gamblor956 6y ago
The Confederate battle flag has been around for 150+ years. It was, from the very beginning, a symbol of treason, of racism, of owning other people as property, of being allowed to rape and murder other humans without consequence. Those who want to "celebrate" their Southern "heritage" have plenty of symbols and flags to choose from that don't have inherently racist and treasonous implications.

beervirus 6y ago

> 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. Very true. For example, there are definitely places where antisemitism is becoming more and more socially acceptable.

causality0 6y ago

Unfortunately no part of the internet is a public venue. There is no internet street corner, no "common carrier" internet phone company, no internet post office. Everything you do is subject to the whims of shareholder value. If tomorrow enough people decided left-handed people are the scum of the earth to affect Youtube's bottom line you'd start seeing left-handed videos demonetized. If enough people decided left-handed people don't deserve a voice to make a racket with their hosting providers and registars you'd see left-handed communities purged from the internet with no legal recourse whatsoever. In the real world that's only happened to Nazis and terrorists but I suspect we'll see it expanding as people realize the power an angry mob can wield. It's a bit fascinating that media which attempts to censor this content seems to have worse problems with it than media which doesn't. There's nothing illegal about sending Nazi content through the mail but the mail isn't utterly swamped with Nazi newsletters but places like video games seem to fight an endless battle to keep half their users from turning racist.

iamstupidsimple 6y ago
I disagree. The internet is a place and it's special - far greater than the sum of it's constituent parts (servers, networking gear, websites, etc..) might all be privately owned, but the concept of the network itself is free and shared.
- causality0 6y ago
  Yes. I'm just saying it would be beneficial if there were a public alternative to services like Gmail, Youtube, Facebook, offered to the users at cost, and only moderated to the degree necessary to comply with the law. Perhaps in exchange for this "neutral media carrier" the user accounts should be linked to a Social Security number and with their real names attached to anything they publish. Nobody blames the postal service for delivering racist newsletters or pirated DVDs or drugs. The responsibility lies solely on the user, who is prosecuted if their conduct exceeds the scope of the law. We need that for the internet.
  - iamstupidsimple 6y ago

takeda 6y ago

I understand removing confederate flags and movements from public areas, but I don't think it is necessary to ban people for using it in games like Forza. I mean Microsoft can do whatever they want, but it is overreacting. Most people who would use it wouldn't have any bad meaning behind it and most likely would be used more as a joke. When playing Forza I remember I liked skin that made my car look like a beater car, and it was so fun winning races in car that looked like it would fall apart at any moment.

cgrealy 6y ago
The difference is that your beater car skin doesn't remind an entire demographic of a time a whole bunch of people went to war so they could keep said demographic as property. If you want to be funny about the confederate flag, go do an open mike. There's no context in a racing game... so while it might be some hilarious meta-commentary on the ridiculousness of racism, the only thing another player sees is "there's someone who wishes they could still keep slaves".
- Kallrian 6y ago
  You’ve never heard of the Dukes or Hazzard have you? Their 1969 Dodge Charger is one of the most iconic cars in tv history, and Forza happens to have a ‘69 charger as a drivable car
  - cgrealy 6y ago
    No, I’ve heard of them. When I was a kid, I actually had a General Lee windup car, before I knew anything about the history of the civil war. And then, I grew up. You can still drive a charger if you want. Now you just can’t paint a racist flag of treason on it.

0x8BADF00D 6y ago

> 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. In this instance, it’s a public company and one particular game. Some companies don’t allow you to wall hack or use aim assistants. Others will allow you to use hacked clients, like Minecraft anarchy servers. It should be up to the company to moderate, as you sign a TOS agreement with them when signing up or purchasing their game. Government oversight is not needed here, because it’s a contract between an individual and a corporate entity.

tarkin2 6y ago

Allowing it legitimises the racist ideas. Yet racist aggressors have legitimised many horrors through victimhood.

bluntfang 6y ago

>Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way. You're talking about video games. You're talking about not expressing racism in video games.

roenxi 6y ago

> 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.

redisman 6y ago
Besides- how is Forza Motorsports in any way like a public utility? It is one of hundreds of online racing games run by a private company.

gameswithgo 6y ago

> I think Snowden had a point when he said that the answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. Having grown up and seen the Internet come into being, I feel like all evidence suggests the opposite of that.

6nf 6y ago
You believe censorship works?
- krapp 6y ago
  If it didn't work, no one would be opposed to it.
  - 6nf 6y ago
    That’s WHY I’m opposed to it: because it doesn’t work. It just annoys people but it doesn’t actually work.
    - krapp 6y ago
      If censorship is merely annoying, but otherwise ineffective, why do people keep portraying every act of moderation that any site performs as a slippery slope towards global Orwellian dystopia? Why are people worried about cancel culture and "SJWs" and the "Left" purging conservative voices and "erasing history?" Why are some adamant that we need to have the government force all platforms to allow all forms of speech without moderation in order to combat the absolute, near Stalin-like censorship power that social media is perceived to have over all human communication? Just reading this thread makes it obvious that people are worried about a lot more than merely being annoyed by it.
      - toast0 6y ago
        Censorship is pretty good at suppressing the words or images that are being suppressed. It's not very good at suppressing the thoughts or feelings that are considered wrong. Nazi symbols are banned in Germany, but they still have neo-Nazis. It's unfortunate when artistic works have a banned symbol and so the work is suppressed, and that art becomes hard to obtain and difficult to discuss with others.

larsenwolf 6y ago

At my company we’ve taken a stand against cancel culture. We do not believe that anyone should be compelled to sign away their freedoms as part of our working relationship. The right to free speech is just that—a RIGHT. There’s more than enough legal precedence to manage our workforce effectively.

cgrealy 6y ago
Can you elaborate? I don't really get how this is relevant to the discussion at hand.

swayvil 6y ago

Really? Adding a confederate flag to your car == racist?

tw04 6y ago

> 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. With is why the KKK was allowed to run full page, front page ads in national newspapers 60 years ago. No? We’ve always allowed private companies to block content they deemed unworthy, regardless of whether they were relied on by the public.

soraminazuki 6y ago
Ordinary people don't have the resources to run a newspaper ad, so it's not what I was referring to. I had things like your email and social media accounts in mind, where banning has consequences other than not being able to deliver hate speech.

jorvi 6y ago

> I think Snowden had a point when he said that the answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. Yes! A lot of people get angry when you tell them that, but I think that people should be able to say vile, hateful things. Not because those things contribute anything meaningful to society, but the only way you can possibly have a chance to challenge the views of those people is by knowing that they have those in the first place.

fwip 6y ago
Do you think that black people should debate the confederate flag in the marketplace of ideas of the Forza Motorsport Decal Upload form? When they see that the car next to them in a race is full of hateful symbols, they should reply by quickly going into their car customization screen and equipping their "BLM" decals?

Consultant32452 6y ago

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.

genoapol 6y ago
>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. I agree with this sentiment but history shows how quickly this can spiral out of control. If these symbols (stars and bars and all its variations) were not directly tied to domestic terrorism and other various forms of violence, it would be easier to create room for learning. Unless a balance is struck, we leave historically disenfranchised minorities to be potential future victims of the majority's ignorance.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  The only thing I see spiraling out of control is a moral panic being ginned up by a race baiting media.

R0b0t1 6y ago

There are laws in some states where squares or common areas of apartment buildings are considered public for the purposes of speech, etc. I think we will eventually see this gravitate online. One case heard was about an apartment complex which made up some absurd percentage of a district. If people were barred from distributing fliers it would have seriously upset campaigning in that district.

Phylter 6y ago

As the world becomes more authoritarian what these platforms do to censor on their own won't matter. Governments will mandate whatever they want in the future regardless of what platforms do today. I totally get what you're saying though, it's the tyranny of the majority. What happens if the majority of people decide to censor the truth of history because it's not politically correct? What happens if they decide that the confederate flag and what it stands for needs to be stricken from the history books? These things should not be glorified but should be remembered so we don't tread the same horrible road again against some other group of people. But glorifying it is kind of what they're trying to prevent now by removing it from games.