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PA Could End XBL Bigotry W/ 1 Strip
WannaDev
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Heavy for a first post, I know, and not a new topic, but something I saw recently made me too upset not to consider how this issue could be fixed. I think it can be, and I think PA is in the best position to do it, with very little effort.
We all know of the issue, and the greater of us have experienced it. Be it race, gender, religion, or sexuality, XBox Live is an intolerant place for anyone that's not a 20 something heterosexual white male American protestant. (I single out XBox Live here for three reasons. 1- I have the most experience with it. 2- It is an American company subject to the social scrutiny of this audience. 3- Xbox Live is commonly perceived as the most pronounced source of such problems.)
The debate is always centered upon those spewing the hate speech. Why? Here's the thing. It's not hard to locate bigotry in online gaming. On the PC, it's often the Wild West. The consoles, however, are different. They are highly moderated portals over which Sony and Microsoft have complete control. I get that you can't auto-ban every reported player, because that's incredibly easy to abuse, but ,as the linked video above shows, all it takes is a strawman GamerTag to have the bigots line up to report themselves.
In short, Microsoft could quite easily do more to prevent this. They could actively pursue hate speech over their closed network and mercilessly bring down the ban hammer. The ease with which this can be done so is evident in any given night's gaming session. Imagine how different the portal would be if even only you had the power to remove any player you witnessed behaving in such a way. Thus, it can be seen that Microsoft's efforts against this element in their community is token at best, and an insult to the intelligence of their consumers. Microsoft simply does not try to get rid of the bigots. Why?
Microsoft wants the bigots' money.
They are a large enough group to be something we've all dealt with, and thus Microsoft sees them only as a large part of their consumer base. They want that consumer base happy. This is why Microsoft takes no real action against them. The token effort allows them to pretend as if they are not the problem.
Through their inaction, Microsoft endorses bigotry.
And that's where I think PA could come in. I welcome a debate on the subject, but I firmly believe these statements to be not only factual but obvious. Microsoft will only respond to one thing, money. What affects their bottom line? Their consumers. What do we informed consumers need to do? Inform them that we know what is going on and demand actual action. How do we do so? The press. Anyone here knows that PA is the single most influential media outlet in this industry. It is their unfortunate burden, then, to be so often forced into the role of stewards of a culture. These guys only wanted to make dick jokes. Yet, social responsibility has been thrust upon them.
If PA were to put up a single, simple strip conveying the message that it is Microsoft's inaction that results in the bigotry within their community, the company would have no choice but to address the issue in a meaningful way.
We all know of the issue, and the greater of us have experienced it. Be it race, gender, religion, or sexuality, XBox Live is an intolerant place for anyone that's not a 20 something heterosexual white male American protestant. (I single out XBox Live here for three reasons. 1- I have the most experience with it. 2- It is an American company subject to the social scrutiny of this audience. 3- Xbox Live is commonly perceived as the most pronounced source of such problems.)
The debate is always centered upon those spewing the hate speech. Why? Here's the thing. It's not hard to locate bigotry in online gaming. On the PC, it's often the Wild West. The consoles, however, are different. They are highly moderated portals over which Sony and Microsoft have complete control. I get that you can't auto-ban every reported player, because that's incredibly easy to abuse, but ,as the linked video above shows, all it takes is a strawman GamerTag to have the bigots line up to report themselves.
In short, Microsoft could quite easily do more to prevent this. They could actively pursue hate speech over their closed network and mercilessly bring down the ban hammer. The ease with which this can be done so is evident in any given night's gaming session. Imagine how different the portal would be if even only you had the power to remove any player you witnessed behaving in such a way. Thus, it can be seen that Microsoft's efforts against this element in their community is token at best, and an insult to the intelligence of their consumers. Microsoft simply does not try to get rid of the bigots. Why?
Microsoft wants the bigots' money.
They are a large enough group to be something we've all dealt with, and thus Microsoft sees them only as a large part of their consumer base. They want that consumer base happy. This is why Microsoft takes no real action against them. The token effort allows them to pretend as if they are not the problem.
Through their inaction, Microsoft endorses bigotry.
And that's where I think PA could come in. I welcome a debate on the subject, but I firmly believe these statements to be not only factual but obvious. Microsoft will only respond to one thing, money. What affects their bottom line? Their consumers. What do we informed consumers need to do? Inform them that we know what is going on and demand actual action. How do we do so? The press. Anyone here knows that PA is the single most influential media outlet in this industry. It is their unfortunate burden, then, to be so often forced into the role of stewards of a culture. These guys only wanted to make dick jokes. Yet, social responsibility has been thrust upon them.
If PA were to put up a single, simple strip conveying the message that it is Microsoft's inaction that results in the bigotry within their community, the company would have no choice but to address the issue in a meaningful way.
WannaDev on
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Also, what makes you think giving players the ability to mark someone behaving inappropriately wouldn't be abused to the point of uselessness?
In an internet-like environment, there's potentially anonymity, civility, and open communication. Choose two.
I don't mind that so much - it's their service, they can do what they want with it, and people will use it or not depending on how MS uses it. I'm just not sure it's feasible for MS to be policing every player's communications while still maintaining a robust multiplayer service.
As I point out in the post, I get why XBL's "report player" function is weak. It WOULD be abused to hell if it guaranteed a ban. Which is why Microsoft has, as you indicated, weakened it "to the point of uselessness."
When I asked above how different YOU think XBL would be if YOU had the authority to ban people you witness being bigots, one must assume that authority is being vested in the one person due to their incredible responsibility and moral fibre. It's not a real world scenario of course, that's why Microsoft pays people to live up to that standard. If they do have a team of such people, however, why is this even an issue?
I don't think we should want them to. One day it's something like this that sounds reasonable, next day it's no one can criticize MS without getting banned. And saying the free market will fix it is not a reasonable answer given that the industry is basically a monopoly between like 2, maybe 3 console makers.
What's arbitrary? Here's a list of words and phrases blatantly intended for the sole purpose of attacking someone based on the fact that they do not belong to the majority demographic of the service. If they come over your headset, your XBL account goes away.
Insult my skill, my mother, my voice, or what I've said over the mic using whatever vulgarities you wish. That's an entirely different world from marginalizing individuals based upon their identity and minority status.
It is fallacious to pretend that this represents some great moral grey area.
Okay. So then my position is that that should be removed from the ToS.
Mostly because I'm just interested to see what kind of slurs are applied to such a username.
But it might not work, because I'm guessing such a username would likely get reported/banned really quickly.
Really? I'm sure I can think of some edge cases. How about welfare queen? That clearly has a racial undertext. Is it ban worthy? Or we could just make up some new epithets. Banning a word does not ban the idea behind it.
They seem to be exceedingly ban-happy, actually. Going so far as to hand out perma bans for relatively small things. Remember: an xbox perma ban locks your CONSOLE, which means to get around it you actually need to fork over a few hundred more bucks as well as creating your new troll ID.
The issue seems to be volume. There are a crazy number of people being pricks in an online game service. If you assume about an hour's work to ban one (paperwork to prove the ban is legit, time spent reading the report and tracking down the user to verify it, paperwork to notify of ban), exactly how many people does MS need to employ to keep XBL "sane"?
Yeah, it's a huge community issue. It's not really MS or Sony's issue as much as they have to deal with trying to enforce a ruleset on a group of people who are pretty much convinced that being any more heavy handed than lightly chiding you = OH MY GOD OPPRESSION.
Anywho, I don't think an actual player report function with hard effects bound to it would do much. Even if you made it something idiotic like 50 reports in a week = suspension, you're going to wind up with some dude disliking someone, and getting 49 friends to report them.
Dedicated server admins already do this on a server-to-server basis, but a community platform like live or steam could enable similar moderation over multiple games. Each group might have a white list and a black list and server admins of different games could subscribe to the lists of different multiple groups at will. You could also do stuff like auto-mute or auto-team picking based on the blacklists/whitelists.
That assumption doesn't add up though. If that were the case, it would have taken MSoft 124 YEARS to enact the ~1 million bans handed out in response to the piract of Modern Warfare 2. In that case, as well as the other mass bans that have come down over time due to modding and piracy, the bans have come down quickly and decisively. As others have discussed, this is a private and closed system. Justice is not a necessity.
The only reason that I can see that more leniency is given to bigotry is because piracy and modding directly affects Microsoft's bottom line. The implicit message here is that hate is acceptable, but thievery is not.
And this is fallacious, because it changes depending on the makeup of whatever lobby you are currently in and being a protestant has nothing to do with how you are perceived online.
A PA strip might influence them, but the problem with X-box live reporting is that anybody can report anybody and lie about it. So then you are going to have a mod listen to a person to see if they actually say those words out loud, and record it because hearsay isn't exactly going to stand up in a court case. Plus you can't have rules that eliminate the bigotry just as laws that mandate racial equality can't remove racism.
Plus you have to figure out all the words that are offensive. Can I still say cock-sucker, motherfucker, ass-fucking bitch. Technically saying the first to a dude implies he's gay, and the third has some elements of that as well. Plus who's being the prick first. The people I'm playing with for sucking and dragging me down with their shittastic play, or me for calling them out on it?
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Or make use of peer-monitoring through player-sent reports, which as already discussed is unreliable at best.
Generally the idea behind using your audience is to bring an issue to the attention of people who don't know about it. But everyone who is affected by it (XBL multiplayers) already know about it. People who aren't affected by it don't have accounts, so how are they going to affect MS's bottom line?
And this is just absurd.
Did their comic about an 800 pound grizzly being smaller than a controller make them usher out the small controller? No, they probably planned that from the onset of complaints.
Do their comics about Halo sucking cause Halo games to stop being made? Nope.
Have ANY of their comics done ANYTHING, good or bad, that wasn't just a small subset of people who were probably already believing what the comic says?
Dunno Kal. Did you do anything to stop the violence in Darfur, or are you guilty of genocide?
PSN has the same issues, PC gaming has the same issues, pretty much any multiplayer gaming system has the same problems. MS in this case is just the largest player to try and place the burden on. And the one more than likely to suck a ton of bullshit "oh my god M$ is trying to ruin the internets by banning people for using words!" backlash.
It's the game devs themselves that would implement word filters, and since a lot of the bile is voice based, good luck and god speed on locking this all down.
What needs to happen is the players themselves fighting back against the bullshit, and stop making the internet a safe haven for being a total douchebag. No more apologizing for people who just act dickish online with "they're really nice in person, they just like getting a rise!" and shit.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
More than one strip, really.
Of course it's not PA's fault. PA has spoken out against such issues on many occasions.
But, to take your analogy and run with it - a close examination of the issues in Darfur DOES implicate US in the conflict. The conflict there is funded by oil revenues. Therefore, I know that my country's dependency on foreign oil plays a role in it. Therefore I have donated and volunteered to charities in an attempt to offset the harm I've unknowingly done.
I didn't do anything on purpose, but that doesn't excuse me from social responsibility.
I imagine side 1 is significantly more than side 2 of the equation. So, MS chooses the status quo.
Rigorous Scholarship
But I'm really curious as to how bad it could be.
For now I'm happy playing single player games. Ha.
In technical terms, it's called an Internets.
1: They can get away with it
2: The community doesn't discourage the behavior
3: The individual is comfortable because no one knows the true identity of a person
I remember when Blizzard toyed around with the idea of removing anonymity for SC2 and people lost their minds. Why? Because anonymous posting and reporting and everything else; shields you from people eventually finding out that the person sayings horrid things (Or really any activity good or bad) is also the same person who has a family of 5 and is a manager at some paper company.
Is this a good idea? I doubt any of the proposals here are that amazing. Until people stop being rude to one another, this kind of behavior will exist to some degree, or the costs associated with implementing the fix will be too high (like user reports which can easily be abused, or too much money for no economic tradeoff) I think the only way this stuff ends is if multiple companies, big ones, together implement systems to prevent, for lack of a better term, "hate speech". But that might run afoul of laws that prevent collusion between major companies within an industry (Maybe some antitrust but I don't know)
Are changes to the policy a "correct or morally good" idea? I am not sure. Anonymity is a pretty important part of gaming (Or else the blizzard reaction wouldn't have been so fierce). In the end though, i'm not sure what the community gets out of all this.
You essentially wound up with the community exposed to anonymous people who would remain anonymous while harassing. That formula they had would have done nothing but resulted in increased harassment, as the harassers were not exactly being outed.
I'm pretty sure there are some massive privacy laws that would prevent mass 'outings' of bigoted or offensive behavior though, and that's pretty much all that would put a dent in this. The gamble that you don't just expose that enough people are out and out bigots that they become comfortable doing it in a non-anonymous setting again.
Hell, look at your facebook feeds. Those are completely not anonymous, and full of pretty vile shit from people who when out in public act like perfectly nice folks, but turn around and post how Japan getting mauled is payback for Pearl Harbor.
This isn't something MS can fix, because it's not an XBL problem. It's not even a technical problem. It's a cultural problem.
So, the whackjob you just killed in a MW2 game can potentially find out who you are IRL?
Rigorous Scholarship
To Kildy:
There are not any legal (I mean actual laws, as opposed to the ToS or EULA) rules that I am aware of that would prevent you from outing individuals as Haters as a consequence of their speech in games. There are common law slander/defamation laws that could be used to combat against abuse or incorrect additions to a "haters list" (But still making a hater's list isn't likely to occur because lawsuits would likely follow becuase of the slander/defamation tort liability)
That's not just a judgement MS has made. It's a judgement that gaming - as a whole, both producers and consumers - has made.
Besides, whenever we do get official regulations, it's never the rational people running it. It's always the James Dobsons freaking out over covered-nipple titties being shown on the Super Bowl.
But take this into consideration:
Do you know how much work it took to shape the PA boards into what it's become currently? The sheer number of back-breaking man hours it took the Moderators and Administrators to dish out to curve what is now considered the standard post here?
You are literally looking at a decade of work of polish and shine just to get how we are today, and we are but a small community in the grand scheme of the web. To even attempt to get similar results with an online community that dwarfs ours substantially would take a hell of a lot of time, money, resources, and nothing short of a small army of like-minded individuals who are on call most of the day to buff and polish the issues we have presented here. We're talking many, many years before the roots of their labor begins to spring up.
I don't see it happening to be honest. It's too much work for too little gain for a company who's more focused on turning a good financial yearly profit.