Microsoft: No Special Policies for Halo 4 Sexism
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
So, nothing changes and this sort of thing will still continue to go largely unpunished.
Boooo, Microsoft. I almost thought you were making progress there for a moment.
Boooo, Microsoft. I almost thought you were making progress there for a moment.
This almost made me crack up at work. Oh ho ho... Too good. If only the world worked like that. Maybe things I was offended by would disappear too. Like kittens.
OT: I figured they wouldn't stick to this quite as strongly as they said they would. It never really bothered me though. Nowadays my xbox is broken, so can't really play Halo anymore, even when I did I mostly played the campaigns and custom zombie maps. Woooh.
Well to be honest I'm enough of a believer in free speech where I don't care for policies that specify this kind of thing. I personally feel that even "hate speech" is a right. In paticular on the internet and online sources I feel a sort of "wild west" mentality should reign.-Dragmire- said:
As I've said before, a lot of why I think this is because I'd rather it be sorted out verbally, especially on the internet where people should be pretty anonymous, than continue to fester. If some guy is just talking smack, even if it's racist, sexist, or bigoted, nothing bad is going to come of it. If the guy really believes it, letting him rant is probably better than forcing him entirely underground where he'll develop even more of a persecution complex and be encourgaed to take action.
I tend to look at things like the KKK as an example, the KKK was a huge and dangerous force for a long time because it was a secret society of sorts. Now that it's outed it's become kind of a joke. I'd rather listen to an idiot rant and rave where I can keep an eye on him, rather than deal with someone hiding who I don't suspect anything from who decides to kill me in my sleep for whatever insane reason motivates him.
A lot of people tend not to think of it that way, but the way I see it hateful words do hurt, but getting shot, stabbed, or lynched hurts a lot more, and that's more likely to happen if you don't know it's coming, and if ranting gets this out of the system of someone who is for real without violence, so much the better.
Of course then again I don't think there are many real racists and such left, the threat of such largely being a political tool. Not that it matters if they are out there in numbers or not. Any way it goes over something like XBL or whatever it's generally just kids being arseholes and trying to get a rise out of people. Truthfully most of the people on XBL are young enough where they don't have any set lifelong positions anyway, who you are as a kid or teen and who you are as an adult tend to be very differant.
Well, yes and no. It depends on whether the place is open to the public or not. Tom's Bowling Alley might have some problems being a publically open business. The typical loophole used for such things is to post signs prohibiting loitering or solciting, but you'll also notice a lot of places don't have signs for that.Devoneaux said:
It's sort of like how you can't eject a person from a building for being black, hispanic, or whatever else. In the case of the KKK they could claim discrimination the same way, and similar suits have been won in the past.
That point aside (which is a technicality and exception more than anything) what your bringing up is a point I frequently speak in opposition of. Nowadays almost all platforms for communication are privatly owned, which means private citizens have the right to effectively censor the ideas of others and dictate who has a platform and who does not. This involves TV, Radio, The Internet, and similar things. I have issues with the idea of private citizens wielding more power than the goverment to control other citizens, especially on this scale.
Previously there was a standard called "Equal time" which put in a requirement that to express any signifigant viewpoint, you also had to allow the other position an equal amount of time to express themselves on your platform (more or less). Guys like Moviebob have spoken about supporting the dissolution of this, but mostly because it's so far worked to surpress opinions they don't like for the moment (though it could eventually swing the other way, which is the issue with anything like this, people are short sighted in supporting what benefits them right at the moment). I feel that such policies tend to be important to standing off what amounts to private control of free speech.
With the internet in paticular the idea was to get around all of the imposed limits on other media, but as more businesses get involved, and it becomes more mainstream, it's gradually been limited as a medium of free expression outside of anyone's regulation, with private censorship rights being demanded by the people running forums and such.
Understand that I wasn't attempting to make a legal arguement, so much as state what I feel is a basic human right. Your correct right now that it is possible for private citizens to limit each other on their property, or on their forums. I do not think this should be possible, and I actually make statements about this all the time in hopes that eventually some day what I'm saying will catch on before it's too late and we wind up losing our right to free speech which is gradually being eroded.
Despite how it might seem to some I'm no great lover of hate speech, I however feel it's important, and it also occurs to me that radical shifts in attitudes have been known to happen. Should attitudes change you might very well find yourself in a position where it's the guys who want to spew the "hate speech" unopposed controlling the platforms and stifling the opposition. Such things always seem impossible until they happen.
As a result I feel Microsoft is infringing on a basic human right, and doing wrong, not that what they are doing is nessicarly illegal, just that it probably should be.
Look at it this way, we just voted for control of the Federal Goverment, and the people pretty much decided Obama should be in charge. We however agree as a society that even an elected official there by the will of the majority as slight as it might be, does not have the right to engage in censorship of this sort. From my perspective it's insane to say that a company with a lot of money, elected by no one, should have more power to strip away a fundemental right than the bloody President. It's fine if you disagree with me, but that's how I think.
Much like my sentiments on unions and workers rights, this is one area I happen to be far left on. Such thoughts (especially when it comes to workers rights) are among the reasons I really disliked Romney, although I voted for him as the lesser of evils (though mostly on the merits of not wanting Obama for a second term due to the fact that he will be able to do more due to not worry about re-election), I figured he wouldn't do crap in 4 years and there was a chance of getting rid of him if someone better comes along. Now we're pretty much stuck with a jerk who can actually do something rather than a jerk who at least can't (from my perspective). At any rate I only ramble about this because it surprises people occasionally given my right wind rants how far left I am on certain issues.
... It HAS tits. And the "on fire" part can be remedied shortly.L34dP1LL said:
OT: in other words, lots of big words, and nothing about to happen. Clarifying that Halo 4 is no exception from everything else on Xbox Live is just another way of saying that they'll happily continue damming the river with cheese graters.
I understand that there needs to be a general set of rules and guidelines for a service like Xbox live and such, but aren't there client side tools like muting and "BLOCK ALL COMMUNICATIONS" buttons people when someone starts spewing shit?
I run into a lot of games where people just spam it over their headsets and I just mute them. I don't cry to admins or to valve to ban them. Honestly it's more annoying have muted someone, then hear 20 people chime in "ERMAGERD HE'S BEING SO ANNOYING MAKE HIM SHUT UP!"OverweightWhale said:
The problem is that "Jerk" is subjective and leads to political censorship and similar things. By many people's standards on these forums someone who is merely as strongly right wing as they are left is a jerk. Likewise someone speaking against a product you promote is going to be considered a "jerk" by the company sponsoring a site even if the person in question happens to be right, allowing companies to control information by making it so that anything negative simply cannot find the same level of promotion as the information they want to spread, a problem when it comes to shoddy goods and such.Devoneaux said:
My basic attitude is actually similar to yours, but in reverse. Basically if you want to do something that is in any way publically accessible, there should be no content control, except maybe efforts to keep a forum on topic (as long as the topic itself is not weighted). If you want to run your own little message board police state, that's fine, as long as it's private and the people accessing it specifically agree to that, and the general public cannot view what is such biased and controlled content without themselves agreeing to it.
The issue is that someone's abillity to start their own forum doesn't give them the same level of platform of exposure as one financed by a big company or whatever. Being able to scream on a soapbox to a crowd isn't going to carry the same weight as major website, national televised news network, or massively circulated newspaper. This basic truth is why things like the "equal time" doctrine used to exist.
Allowing private censorship makes it far too easy for someone to pretend there is a consensus or truth being presented on their site and convince other people that this is the case (a hypothetical neutral observer or participant) when that's not the case. A site sponsored by a company that allows people to only discuss how wonderful it's products and policies are, isn't conveying the whole picture to those seeking information, it becomes a gigantic exception. People might argue "that's just how things are" but I tend to feel they don't HAVE to be that way.
To me, trolls and jerks, genuine ones, are actually a small price to pay for freedom of speech, there is always a cost, and I consider that occasional annoyance a far lesser evil than allowing private citizens to control what each other can say. The current system allowing control to a platform's sponsors basically amounts to giving the rich a formal right to control what everyone else can be heard saying. It doesn't matter what you think if you've got a private forum nobody is likely to ever find, and the other guy has a site visited by hundreds of thousands or viewers, or his own TV network.
See, right now most people who support the left wing end of things tend to mostly rant about income taxes and the like which is frankly idiotic, and one of the reasons why I have so little respect for those who identify entirely with the left wing. That's a relatively trivial issue compared to basically allowing those with resources to limit the freedom of speech of others. You'll notice neither Romney or Obama even remotely touched these kinds of issues out there, which is why I had so little respect for either and basically voted my party. In paticular I think Obama is a hippocrit because for all his left wing posturing he stays away from the big issues that matter. In the scheme of things I actually care less what % the very rich pay from their wealth in taxes, the numbers involved in running a country like the USA mean that it's going to have a trivial effect to the bottom line, poor people just like the idea of social payback. On the other hand the issue of private censorshop, equal time, and similar things are things that radically effect everyone and the actual balance of power, as that kind of control is what allows the 1% to potentially wield the
kind of power that they have.
I tend to look back at Ted Turner's old attempt to declare himself God King Of All Media, the goverment pretty much had to step in to prevent him from establishing a massive, and untouchable information monopoly. I think the same basic issue applies even without a monopoly, whether it's one guy, or simply those with the resources to build and maintain information large scale information infrastructures, one person or group of people should not have the abillity to control another's abillity to express themselves or access to information.... with a few notable exceptions like actual national security (there are exceptions to every rule, and that's one of the reasons why for all my free speech posturing I'm pretty much anti-Wiki Leaks.. something I could go into at length but would get increasingly off topic). In the final equasion I consider some 9 year old girl seeing some middle aged pedo's junk a trivial price to pay for a fundemental human right.
Also for the sake of arguement I'll say that I don't really have an issue with people talking smack, even violently, about the goverment or public figures. To me it's no differant than people making it clear that want to kick my ass or bomb my employer, just on a differant scale. The exception here occurs when it turns into actual conspiricy. To me The Secret Service going after some kid because he said he'd like to blow the president's head off on Facebook or whatever is stupid, it's quite differant if they actually catch him making plans on how to do it. A basic declaration of anger and exasperation is one thing (and usually pretty obvious, even if it leads to other activity later the actual elevation to that level as opposed to it's potential is very important), actually talking about plans to get a White House Tour on a day you know The President is there (where sometimes The President will greet tourists, or you might walk past the Oval Office and see him), and blow his head off with an all-plastic Zip Gun you plan to hide in your shoe and fire by stomping, is something entirely differant.
Or to put it another way: I'd personally love to see Obama and enough of his senior staff get blown up to more or less force a lack of confidence vote in whatever goober would be left in the chain of command and was never expected to hold that position, and a new election. Of course to be honest I'd probably feel similarly about Romney if he got elected despite voting for him as the lesser of evils. Simply put I was totally dissatisfied with our choices as president and a real crisis like that might actually produce unexpected cantidates, and potentially get someone closer to the man we need running the country.
If The Secret Service wants to arrest me for that, it would suck, but also be a huge waste of resources. I mean sure potentially it might go from rhetoric to me actually trying to make ti happen, but heck potentially some billionaire might decide to throw a dart at a phone book from his death bed, have it land on my name, and make me rich enough to found my own country too.
What's more I feel I have the right to express an opinion like that, hating your goverment is pretty much a tradition in a free country. That's why there are seperate crimes like conspiricy to commit murder, or treason.
Not to mention that I'd think anyone who takes comments like that on the internet seriously has issues. For example, I don't actually think that. After all I mentioned before I'd hate to see Obama die because then my own sense of nationalism would force me to rally behind the office if nothing else.
Damn straight. you know me by now. always preferred the thicker skin approach to things.GunsmithKitten said:
This is why I like PSN over Xbox live, the community there I find is much more mature "for the most part anyway" IMO I think Microsoft likes it when it gets to ban people, because they know most of those people who are willing to pay for Xbox live are also willing to go out and buy a new console if they get banned.
On PSN it's a different story, it's free so Sony doesn't have this elaborate robust complaint and evidence-based system. You don't like somebody you put them on your ignore list, problem solved you can't hear or talk to them. You get banned on PSN odds are you are you had it coming. Xbox live I hear tosses out suspensions and banns like they're going out of style, and since the consoles life is coming to an end soon it probably has a lot to do with increased bans, just a way of increasing more sales before the 720 hits the market.
On PSN it's a different story, it's free so Sony doesn't have this elaborate robust complaint and evidence-based system. You don't like somebody you put them on your ignore list, problem solved you can't hear or talk to them. You get banned on PSN odds are you are you had it coming. Xbox live I hear tosses out suspensions and banns like they're going out of style, and since the consoles life is coming to an end soon it probably has a lot to do with increased bans, just a way of increasing more sales before the 720 hits the market.
