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 Galas wrote:
I'll quote myself:

 Galas wrote:
Companies don't invade peoples privates lifes and morally judges them based on their ideology. At least, sucesfull ones don't.

?

That image was taken from the /r/freemagic group. I didn't underline anything personally.

This is a free market of luxury products. WoTC are free to do what they want. People is free to give them feedback. WoTC is free to ignore that feedback and bann people that give that kind of feedback. In some years, we'll know if that was a good move.

You have an interesting definition of "free" if you think being banned for giving feedback qualifies.

Of course I have no horse on this race so I can understand people that his emotional about this issue. Blizzard pushed me away from World of Warcraft after butchering the lore (I know, very different from "ideological" purge, but whatever). I was SO invested in that game and universe. After that I have learn to not become "fan" of anything. I enjoy products as long as they appeal to me. Companies don't deserve to be emotionally invested in them and their products. Thats a life of suffering.

It's not the product itself which is suffering. People are getting kicked out of their communities for asking reasonable questions. WotC is working with gaming stores to pretty much ensure that they will get kicked out of their gaming stores too. This isn't about the game. This is about their friends, the people they play with, the hobby that they love. They are getting excluding from the very environment that currently defines part of their personality and character, with no hope of appeal. In many of these geeky hobbies, there's a lot of overlap. Do you think that getting publicly banned from playing Magic will resort in you being able to easily switch to playing Legend of the 5 Rings instead? That community won't accept you either.

A counterpoint would be Marvel, which simply started making terrible products. They didn't start banning people from attending Comic Con. People were more than happy to leave Marvel. They could still go to comic book stores and still chat with their friends about different comics. The product sucking doesn't start branding people with a scarlet M that will follow them to new hobbies.

 Sqorgar wrote:

This is a free market of luxury products. WoTC are free to do what they want. People is free to give them feedback. WoTC is free to ignore that feedback and bann people that give that kind of feedback. In some years, we'll know if that was a good move.

You have an interesting definition of "free" if you think being banned for giving feedback qualifies.

I believe companies are free to negate to have relations to anyone they want for whatever motive they want. Even for sexist, racist and/or reasons related to sexuality. Society will make the business more open to customers success, so is a natural evolution towards inclusivity.

Obviously, as I have said first, I don't believe in discriminating people for ideological reasons, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed for other people, groups or companies to have that right of free of association.
I agree with you, marginalizing people for their ideas is a dick move, but even if I think is a bad thing to do, I believe they should be free to do it.

So they state that MTG was created by members of the LGBT crowd and that they don't want the "Pepe crowd", I.e. the most obnoxious, toxic trolls in a movement of hate towards minorities including those who invented the game itself and their loved ones? You really consider the Pepe crowd to be an ideological movement?

You call that an ideological purge??

It's preventing a hostile work environment.

You are literally saying that MTg wanting to ban donkey-caves who are proud to be donkey-caves is an ideological movement.

It would be like telling a business owned by black people that refusing to serve the Klan is an ideological purge.

Do you think MtG should allow Klan members to post freely on their servers? If not, how do you differentiate between the Klan and the Pepe crowd?

 Galas wrote:
I believe companies are free to negate to have relations to anyone they want for whatever motive they want. Even for sexist, racist and/or reasons related to sexuality. Society will make the business more open to customers success, so is a natural evolution towards inclusivity.

Obviously, as I have said first, I don't believe in discriminating people for ideological reasons, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed for other people, groups or companies to have that right of free of association.
I agree with you, marginalizing people for their ideas is a dick move, but even if I think is a bad thing to do, I believe they should be free to do it.

WotC sells their product to a distributor. The distributor sells the product to a comic book store. The comic book store sells the product to a customer. Does Wizards of the Coast have the right to tell the comic book store who they can sell Magic cards to? Can WotC dictate what sort of players a comic book shop allows to play Magic in their store? Maybe create little signs that they intend to hang in the shop about who is welcome there?

WotC has a Magic tournament. A Magic tournament player creates a youtube video about how he is opposed to the destruction of Civil War monuments. Does Wizards of the Coast have the right to ban this player from tournaments because of an opinion he expressed outside of the tournament, that is unrelated to any product that Wizards sells? Can they ban him from a digital version of the game that he already owns and has invested thousands of dollars into, despite him not having violated any terms of service or code of conduct? To justify their banning, does Wizards have the right to go through this player's youtube and twitter history to find additional material they object to?

Whether you think Wizards has the right do any of these things, I think you'll agree that they are overstepping that right in this case and setting a particularly dangerous precedent if other companies would follow. What if someone posted an opinion about Civil War monuments and was suddenly banned from accessing his entire Steam library? Or had their cell phone service disconnected? Or had their kid's private school expel his child? Or had a restaurant decide to not serve him? Or had a doctor refuse to treat him? Where do you think a person's right to free speech is trumped by a corporation's right to choose who they do business with?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So they state that MTG was created by members of the LGBT crowd and that they don't want the "Pepe crowd", I.e. the most obnoxious, toxic trolls in a movement of hate towards minorities including those who invented the game itself and their loved ones? You really consider the Pepe crowd to be an ideological movement?

You call that an ideological purge??

It's preventing a hostile work environment.

You are literally saying that MTg wanting to ban donkey-caves who are proud to be donkey-caves is an ideological movement.

It would be like telling a business owned by black people that refusing to serve the Klan is an ideological purge.

Do you think MtG should allow Klan members to post freely on their servers? If not, how do you differentiate between the Klan and the Pepe crowd?

It sounds good, until you realize that they can just call someone a Pepe troll and cast them out even when that's not true. And if anyone says, "wait a second, I know you told me that person was bad, but how do you know? What did you base your decision on?" then they label THAT person a troll and get rid of them as well. That's not how an open, inclusive community works, it's how a cult works.

People like this will hide behind moral authority and say that what they want to do is help. Really what they do is use that moral authority to impose control and to instantly tar the name of anyone who disagrees with the way they're running things. They say they only want to get rid of bigots and trolls, but the language they've used basically states as plain fact that doing anything other than unquestioningly accepting whatever they say makes you a bigot and a troll. What they do, they do in bad faith. Again. that's not how you create a safe and welcoming environment, that's how you create an environment of paranoid, repressed informants. I really do believe that you will find the same psychological principles of control and authority at work in religious fanatics and cults.

A reputable organization doesn't come right out and say that asking questions or seeking proof is grounds to be labeled a non-person. Someone with true moral authority will embrace transparency, honesty and clarity, because those are the things that are necessary to create a safe and welcoming environment. From what I've seen, people who do otherwise do it because they have something to hide, or they know that their actions and ideas are indefensible so they can't suffer having them questioned. Couple that with the fact that a vast majority of these people are straight white males using nebulous threats against women and minorities as a pretext for social control, and alarm bells should be going off.

but banning users doesn't result in them simply going away. They come back with a different name or simply just become a serial harasser for your forums and the moderators. More than once, I was woken up in the middle of the night because my forum had been attacked by users I had banned and was filling up with goatse pictures and what have you - these posters were bad before, but banning gave them a purpose.

I can assure you there are ways to make bans work.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Do you think MtG should allow Klan members to post freely on their servers? If not, how do you differentiate between the Klan and the Pepe crowd?

It would go off topic to address the seething contempt displayed in this post, but to answer your question: if they didn't violate any rules, then I think they should be allowed to post freely on their servers - and the difference between the KKK and the Pepe crowd is that the KKK employs violence, threats, and murder towards their ends, while the Pepe crowd employs a cartoon frog. This isn't the first time in this thread that someone has compared their ideological opposites to the KKK or Nazis. Do you really believe that?

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I believe companies are free to negate to have relations to anyone they want for whatever motive they want. Even for sexist, racist and/or reasons related to sexuality. Society will make the business more open to customers success, so is a natural evolution towards inclusivity.

Obviously, as I have said first, I don't believe in discriminating people for ideological reasons, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed for other people, groups or companies to have that right of free of association.
I agree with you, marginalizing people for their ideas is a dick move, but even if I think is a bad thing to do, I believe they should be free to do it.

WotC sells their product to a distributor. The distributor sells the product to a comic book store. The comic book store sells the product to a customer. Does Wizards of the Coast have the right to tell the comic book store who they can sell Magic cards to? Can WotC dictate what sort of players a comic book shop allows to play Magic in their store? Maybe create little signs that they intend to hang in the shop about who is welcome there?

WotC has a Magic tournament. A Magic tournament player creates a youtube video about how he is opposed to the destruction of Civil War monuments. Does Wizards of the Coast have the right to ban this player from tournaments because of an opinion he expressed outside of the tournament, that is unrelated to any product that Wizards sells? Can they ban him from a digital version of the game that he already owns and has invested thousands of dollars into, despite him not having violated any terms of service or code of conduct? To justify their banning, does Wizards have the right to go through this player's youtube and twitter history to find additional material they object to?

Whether you think Wizards has the right do any of these things, I think you'll agree that they are overstepping that right in this case and setting a particularly dangerous precedent if other companies would follow. What if someone posted an opinion about Civil War monuments and was suddenly banned from accessing his entire Steam library? Or had their cell phone service disconnected? Or had their kid's private school expel his child? Or had a restaurant decide to not serve him? Or had a doctor refuse to treat him? Where do you think a person's right to free speech is trumped by a corporation's right to choose who they do business with?

I agree that WoTC should give him a compensation for banning him from the digital version of the game if he hasn't broken any kind rule of that game service.
I disagree with your last pharagraph. The right to free speech is the right to say whatever you want without the goverment punishing you. But theres too the freedom of association, and people is free to don't want to associate with people they disagree with for whatever reason they may have.
In all of your examples, I'll say yes, those companies have rights to negate services to whatever they want for whatever reason they want. In examples like the Steam or the School one I'll say too that the user has a right for compensation if those business broke their own terms of service, and the user has paid in advance for services that have been denied to him.
The doctor example one is a tricky one. I believe live or die jobs like those (Policemen, Firemen, etc...) should be exempt from the right of free asociation. They should to their job without any kind of personal bias if they are public. If they are private? Is a different matter.

Now, I'll add, that even if I believe in those rights, I choose to not spent my time in echo-chambers. Theres a reason Dakkadakka is the forum where I'm more active. But if people want to stay in echo-chambers, more power to them.

 Luciferian wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So they state that MTG was created by members of the LGBT crowd and that they don't want the "Pepe crowd", I.e. the most obnoxious, toxic trolls in a movement of hate towards minorities including those who invented the game itself and their loved ones? You really consider the Pepe crowd to be an ideological movement?

You call that an ideological purge??

It's preventing a hostile work environment.

You are literally saying that MTg wanting to ban donkey-caves who are proud to be donkey-caves is an ideological movement.

It would be like telling a business owned by black people that refusing to serve the Klan is an ideological purge.

Do you think MtG should allow Klan members to post freely on their servers? If not, how do you differentiate between the Klan and the Pepe crowd?

It sounds good, until you realize that they can just call someone a Pepe troll and cast them out even when that's not true. And if anyone says, "wait a second, I know you told me that person was bad, but how do you know? What did you base your decision on?" then they label THAT person a troll and get rid of them as well. That's not how an open, inclusive community works, it's how a cult works.

People like this will hide behind moral authority and say that what they want to do is help. Really what they do is use that moral authority to impose control and to instantly tar the name of anyone who disagrees with the way they're running things. They say they only want to get rid of bigots and trolls, but the language they've used basically states as plain fact that doing anything other than unquestioningly accepting whatever they say makes you a bigot and a troll. What they do, they do in bad faith. Again. that's not how you create a safe and welcoming environment, that's how you create an environment of paranoid, repressed informants. I really do believe that you will find the same psychological principles of control and authority at work in religious fanatics and cults.

A reputable organization doesn't come right out and say that asking questions or seeking proof is grounds to be labeled a non-person. Someone with true moral authority will embrace transparency, honesty and clarity, because those are the things that are necessary to create a safe and welcoming environment. From what I've seen, people who do otherwise do it because they have something to hide, or they know that their actions and ideas are indefensible so they can't suffer having them questioned. Couple that with the fact that a vast majority of these people are straight white males using nebulous threats against women and minorities as a pretext for social control, and alarm bells should be going off.

You have some good points, but if Magic does behave that way they soon have no customers. However, you also have to consider that maybe they do have reason to ban the people they've banned, and those people, being trolls, are stirring up drama. There is a middle ground here, and it probably isn't the slippery slope you think it is.

Also, stop with the asking questions straw man. We both know that's not what they were talking about. They perfectly described the "just asking questions" strategy, a specific troll tactic.

Sorry, but that's a bit too convenient.

"Why are you asking so many questions? Are you a non-believer trying to stir up doubt in our faith?"

They are literally setting up a way for anyone who questions them to be branded as a heretic.

"Where is the proof for this specific claim you've made?"

"It's stickied at the top, this is a warning not to ask for more proof."

"I've seen that and it doesn't actually prove anything, don't you have any more information?"

"We have spoken. 'Just asking questions' is a strategy that bigots and trolls use. WITCH! WE'VE GOT A WITCH OVER HERE!"

It's just not how any decent community or organization is run.

And if you don't have any filter against Just Asking Questions, you get Dakka US politics threads.

It's just not how any decent community or organization is run.




I assure you there is a middle ground between anarchy and tyranny.

Sure there's a middle ground. Here on Dakka, there are entire subjects which are subject to censorship. No debate, no discussion.

BUT, the difference is, that you can go over to the Nuts & Bolts forum and ASK the mods about their thought process, and they will patiently explain it to you in detail. They may not change the policy, but they're at least transparent and open about it, and they don't simply ban anyone who brings it up.

There's this weird way to deal with questions: answer them. It should be easy if you have the slightest bit of confidence behind your principles and actions; confidence which can be bolstered by real evidence, experience, and a transparent record of behavior.

If it's easier to simply shut someone up than it is to answer their questions, it's pretty likely that you don't have a way to answer their questions without harming your own position.

I'm not entirely sure WoTC going all Dolores Umbridge is really going to take off in many FLGS games,yes MTG is the lifeblood for many of these stores but given the WoTC's benign neglect of those stores they aren't going to be sticking up Edicts of Inanities and damaging their business' for someone else's Crusade, obviously bad behaviour needs to dealt with but that's the business' owners call.

I was baffled by the Pepe thing, I wasn't sure how the chicken bird pet from Warcraft had got hi-jacked without Blizzard taking action, goggle tells me its not the same Pepe

I don't think saying 'we don't want bullies in our community' really equates your behavior with someone who literally tortures a teenage boy for trying to tell people that a magical racist terrorist has come back to life.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
I'm not entirely sure WoTC going all Dolores Umbridge is really going to take off in many FLGS games,yes MTG is the lifeblood for many of these stores but given the WoTC's benign neglect of those stores they aren't going to be sticking up Edicts of Inanities and damaging their business' for someone else's Crusade, obviously bad behaviour needs to dealt with but that's the business' owners call.

My hope is that the pledge itself is a half assed attempt to placate the community and not the opening salvo in a war for control - but if Wizards wants to push its purity pledge, most comic book stores aren't in a position to fight back.

 Spinner wrote:
I don't think saying 'we don't want bullies in our community' really equates your behavior with someone who literally tortures a teenage boy for trying to tell people that a magical racist terrorist has come back to life.

true at least Tom Riddle was real as opposed the non-existent toxic player tsunami threat we all need saving from...

 Spinner wrote:
I don't think saying 'we don't want bullies in our community' really equates your behavior with someone who literally tortures a teenage boy for trying to tell people that a magical racist terrorist has come back to life.

It sure does when you use "fighting bullies" as a pretext to set up a system of coercive social pressure, with a proscribed system of beliefs which conveniently cast anyone who questions them as a "bully".

Just because they're using nice words that give you the warm and fuzzies doesn't mean they're nice people. That's usually where the whole proof and transparency thing comes in. "Good guys" don't demand that you take their word as truth and threaten you with punitive action when you ask them to ante up. That is, in fact, what bullies do. Even if they do have good intentions, they are creating an entrenched power structure of the type that is prone to abuse because it's inherently authoritarian and opaque. And who is in charge of that power structure? Again, it is almost entirely the exact type of people they themselves have singled out as the most dangerous and over-represented in positions of authority.

They have created an unsafe environment that is vulnerable to abuse of power, which by design silences anyone who speaks against it. Is that what you would do if you wanted to stop things like sexual harassment or provide a safe environment free of bullying?

Also, all of that is abstract. This specific community has already proven beyond a doubt that it has absolutely no problem with bullying, doxing, or making threats, and that they will cover for the bad behavior of some within their own ranks (to include cases of literal sexual harassment and assault) while excommunicating others sight unseen. If you are concerned about bullying and sexual harassment, you should be pretty skeptical of guys like this, even if they're speaking words you want to hear.

But if we don't bann potentiall bullies from our forums and FLGS, how will we win the war agaisn't Eastasia?

 Galas wrote:
But if we don't bann potentiall bullies from our forums and FLGS, how will we win the war agaisn't Eastasia?

but Winston told me we was at war with Eurasia

Breitbart picked up the story. This is going to make the situation blow up, I think. Now, Wizards will be standing firm against the Alt-Right, and everybody they ban will be labeled as white supremacists.

 Sqorgar wrote:
Breitbart picked up the story. This is going to make the situation blow up, I think. Now, Wizards will be standing firm against the Alt-Right, and everybody they ban will be labeled as white supremacists.

White ? I think you'll find the main problem is them counterspelling Blue supremacists devote as they are to unfun...

And make no mistake, they will now most certainly find themselves under siege from people who actually are members of the alt-right or white supremacists. They've made themselves a target.

So, have they been effective at keeping their community safe from bullies and alt-right trolls? Obviously not. They've turned it into a front for a culture war.

Is this an easier way to deal with things than by being transparent and accountable? Would their actual political enemies have an argument against them and be able to drum up that kind of support if they were demonstrably effective at what they claim their goal is? If they were, at this point they could simply point to their documented record of behavior and say, "Go ahead, take you best shot. Everything we've done has been honest and it's all here in black and white, because that's how we operate." Problem solved. Alt-right silenced.

Omg, if this becomes other "gate" I'm out. I'll let the vultures fest in the corpse of the "debate" they will create for the sweet sweet dolar dolaridos.

Too late, it's already done.

It has been fun boys! I avoided Gamergate (I was so good at that, that I didn't even known it happened until months after it has ended) and I'll do the same here.

 Luciferian wrote:
Too late, it's already done.

but on the upside the article got them 8 million players back

 Galas wrote:
It has been fun boys! I avoided Gamergate (I was so good at that, that I didn't even known it happened until months after it has ended) and I'll do the same here.

Probably the wiser path to take. I've pretty much said my peace as well, and now unfortunately for questions of my own impartiality outlets like Breitbart will probably make nearly the exact same arguments. So not much point in going on for me, either.

I don't like politics been involved, I understand politics and ideology can related, but politics means you have to accept an ideological "package deal" and you may disagree on many of them.

Also if a subject such as this becomes political, it will create the same issue Gamergate had, it draws a line and people are then assigned to the two major political opponents even if this is completely false.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I don't like politics been involved, I understand politics and ideology can related, but politics means you have to accept an ideological "package deal" and you may disagree on many of them.

Also if a subject such as this becomes political, it will create the same issue Gamergate had, it draws a line and people are then assigned to the two major political opponents even if this is completely false.

Which is exactly what culture warriors want on both sides. Their entire game plan is to foster situations like this and then chase everyone out of the middle onto one side or the other. Enemies are worth just as much as allies in their game because they give you a fight and a purpose. feth the fringes!

Gamergate could have all been avoided if Ms Quinn had just put lootboxes in her games...fact

(think i might have over-stepped here, have asked for deleting )