Jump to content

Politics, Controversy, and Free Speech on the Internet


cowgirl bebop
 Share

Recommended Posts

think its an awful change and will only be used in selective circumstances when it benefits the moderation team but spamming ‘free hong kong’ and drawing a parallel between china and lotc anywhere past a fleeting joke is ludicrous 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Another thing subject to the personal whims of admins and moderators which will inevitably be used as a tool to ban players with little proper reason.

 

The admins must stop stretching their ever-expanding tentacles out to where they don’t belong, and leave the players alone.

 

First its the ever liquid phrase ‘harrassment’ and now it’s the ever liquid phrase ‘political’. What’s next? Are we ever going to get a solid definition of what these words actually mean in relation to the bans, or are we just gonna leave it in the hands of individual staff members? Everyone knows how that turns out.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The fact that people keep saying we say free Hong Kong as if it’s a joke is disgusting.  We are very serious about the matter and include it in our statements as a show of suppprt for that issue.  We couldn’t give a **** about Minecraft points for it. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, UnBaed said:

The fact that people keep saying we say free Hong Kong as if it’s a joke is disgusting.  We are very serious about the matter and include it in our statements as a show of suppprt for that issue.  We couldn’t give a **** about Minecraft points for it. 

#FreeHongKong

Link to post
Share on other sites

I’ll be voting LibDem on 12th of december to oust the Tories from my constituency.

Link to post
Share on other sites

 

Shannon, I have read the entirety of your post and I agree with the importance of freedom of speech. If you are from a country that steps on your rights and restricts this, that really is unfortunate and I wish there was more I could do to help personally. The issue I have with your whole post is it ignores what is really going on in a lot of these political discussions which is the spreading of radical views. It is really difficult from a moderation perspective to decide what political debate is appropriate and what is inappropriate You might think it is a cop-out to just say it is off-limits, but, that is not what we are saying. We are just saying that political discussion should be continued in private, off-platform. Out of OOC chat, out of the general Discord and New Player Discord. 

 

I was recently dealing with a ban appeal, and a friend of the banned player approached me. He told me a pretty typical story of how this other player deserves a second chance because of how he has had a lot of negative influences by other players on the server. They have fed him racist programming and such through interacting with him in-game and in Discord. That is a tragedy, that our platform is being used to spread hate and racism. Groups of players are using our server to recruit impressionable youths into racist or extremist ideologies. 

 

I, along with most, grew up partially on the server. I remember people posting anti-Semitic memes on the forums openly and the horrible situation of the last U.S. presidential election. I wish I would have tried to learn about politics from the real world instead of from racist teens on the internet. I was taught much in the same way as our previous banned player by listening to Coaster sing racist songs in Teamspeak and listening to the old White Rose guys scream about Alphas and what they thought about minorities. I was deluded into thinking that was acceptable because everyone else said it was cool to have free speech. 

 

Just today, there was a conversation in LOTC general discord about how female moderators are not as good at handling conflict as male moderators just because of their gender. I think deplatforming this type of expression is perfectly acceptable, and will help our server grow and become a better community. 

 

LOTC is about Minecraft roleplay, and that really should be it. It is not an edating service. It is not a place for racists to connect. It is not a place for political organization and discussion. Most online communities I have come across, whether on Reddit, different forums, or in other games, have a similar policy to this. 

 

Let me pitch another scenario. Imagine you are a new player and you log into LOTC Discord for the first time. You are not sure you want to play on this server, so you check out the General Chat on LOTC Discord to see what is up. You jump into a racist, sexist, classist debate. Do you think many people are learning anything from this, or are people just wanting to argue for the sake of it? I tell you, if I was joining today, I think I would just hit the Leave Server button. 

 

In the thread, many have talked about policing toxicity. You can not expect us to police toxicity and also allow people to say whatever they want. The Mods do not have time to read the public discord and play judge to players’ political debates. This is unreasonable and prevents them from working on things like lowering modreq wait times or implementing new war systems.

 

Maybe my experience on the server is not typical, but, I think it might provide some insight into our thought process. Some might accuse us of not thinking this through at all, but, there were many nights of conversation between different members of the staff team leading to this policy rollout. I think it is a positive step towards fixing some of the problems facing our community. 

 

I would be a fan of leaving the Debate section open to public discourse about IRL issues, but that is just me. Throw up a NSFW warning or something. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

We forgetting they also banned discussion of "controversial topics" which means you cant complain about telanir ruining the server with every thread he makes, or the pedo  issue that, if published now, would of been locked, hidden and warning points distributed 

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, UnBaed said:

The fact that people keep saying we say free Hong Kong as if it’s a joke is disgusting.  We are very serious about the matter and include it in our statements as a show of suppprt for that issue.  We couldn’t give a **** about Minecraft points for it. 

The fact that you are doing it on a Minecraft server of all places really shows me that you aren’t... you really believe this is the best place to sprout the message when there are COUNTLESS of social media and political networking resources available? Have you even written a letter to your local congressmen or woman about the issue? Have you gone to any real-life panels or online forums dedicated to helping solve the controversy? Have you donated money to charities dedicated to helping support the freedom of Hong Kong? My guess is, probably not.

 

Get the cotton-brained juvenile antics out your head and approach the situation as a mature and reasonable adult, not in some millenial “hurr hurr derr bOOMers r sH1t” mentality.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Topic locked, thank you to everyone who contributed to this discussion. This topic in particular is retroactively sanctioned and content here will not be warned but this does not apply to posts elsewhere.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...