Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media
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Is the way this is being implemented more or less:
- Upon receiving a report for racist/bigoted speech on a private platform…
- RGL determines whether to invest some time to investigate the issue fully
- If so, RGL dedicates some time to investigate and determine an appropriate punishment if necessary
If so, I don’t see any major issue with this, especially if applied to the invite divs, just speculation that there would be a LOT of reports, and potential abuse of the system by targeting players with plenty of “evidence” laying around.
But, if there’s a large amount of reports, fair enough. If we play into that idea, I imagine the dedication of time would be determined per report, and if the team starts getting swamped, I imagine many of the lower profile reports will not go very far into the investigation process, and thus we’d see more of the higher profile cases.
Regarding the argument that RGL would be policing private discords: It doesn’t seem to be an active policing. I doubt RGL would be actively joining discords to collect evidence. It would be up to someone on the server to leak that private info and report it to RGL. So, unless you have some “traitors” on your private slur-vers, you’d be fine.
Regarding the freedom of speech memes: RGL is a private platform, and is free to associate with whomever it pleases. If you wish to pass laws that would require that RGL does not punish players in response to reports of bigotry that occur in private platforms, then please contact your local and state politicians (assuming you’re in the US). Arguing the importance of free speech makes sense at a governmental level, but not at this level.
On the overall, concerns of privacy being invaded are invalid, IMO. RGL would be receiving the reports from individuals with access to “private” data, not seeking access to that or more data.
So far, the most reasonable and fair argument against this would be the bit about admin/mod overload. The next best being maaaybe the speculation of players abusing the system in some way, though I wonder how effective an abuse mechanism it would be.
I don’t think the arguments hold water overall, and I think it would be fine to see how RGL handles the potential problems that could arise from it.
I am not RGL so I do not claim that my assessments of how they might implement the rules are not necessarily accurate.
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@Kastaling said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@darzie People used to say hurtful shit to my face all the time in real life and guess what I did? I got thicker skin. It requires much, much thinner skin to be able to handle someone saying something in a private discord that hardly affects you than to handle it getting said to your face.
Stop letting other people have power over you and your life will be much better.
I typed up a long fucking reply to this and then I realized it’s pretty off topic because fundamentally I don’t think policing private discords will be functional in a way that will help the league (which you seem to agree with to some extent).
Everything I said on slurs being hurtful has already been said previously, so I think we agree to disagree on what is an appropriate reaction to slurs in one’s own personal life.
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I finally get to write my response.
To put it bluntly, the top levels of RGL is filled with players who actively spew hate speech, whether by spoken word, or on Discord servers (specifically not the RGL discord). I’m personally of the opinion that RGL should accept reports of these actions and subsequently punish such players for promoting/using hate speech. In addition, I believe RGL should tighten the punishment from being timed bans, to being permanent bans.
While filled might be a bit of an exaggeration it’s definitely a thing, but RGL should not accept any reports of anything happening outside of their league/services. I’m 100% for RGL policing their own services, but they aren’t Steam/Discord/Twitter/Youtube or whatever the hate speech is occurring on those aren’t their services, it’s up to those services to punish those people accordingly, not RGL.
Permanent bans are not really much of a solution if from my understanding of what you said in the RGL Discord is correct and you want retroactive bans to be issued for rule breakers. You’d be gating off a huge chunk of the community and be most likely driving the community to make a new league and ditch RGL for overreaching that far.
RGL is totally able to ban people for off platform actions, but if they wish to continue to prosper as the premier NA TF2 league they would likely never do that, it would hurt their playerbase especially at higher levels if your statement about the higher levels of RGL being filled with players that spew hate speech is true. What’s going to happen to Invite/Adv or Challenger? Wouldn’t those divs become infinitely worse?
Firstly, allowing players who are actively known by players in the community to use hate speech is incredibly damaging to the image of RGL. RGL understands this and institutes their current rules (as given above). However, their stance on not “policing” the private discords or other media options players use still indirectly harms RGL’s image. In particular, there are a couple of private servers that come to mind that are filled with only RGL players where hate speech is used flippantly. My particular stance is that RGL should allow players to report these instances (with screenshots or voice recordings only) and punish the accused accordingly. RGL does not need a section of their community being thinly veiled wolves in sheep clothing. RGL does not need players who are “perfect saints” in matches and scrims, but are openly abusive to entire swathes of humanity everywhere else.
RGL really doesn’t have much of an image to uphold unless they are really trying to turn a profit from the league that most people see as for fun. Which I highly doubt is the case since almost if not all the staff are volunteers. It could attract more new players, but RGL seems to already do quite a great job of attracting more and more players without needing to police outside of their platform.
Also your statement about screenshots being used as proof for outside abuse is really bad, it’s very easy to fake a Discord screenshot and “incriminate” someone for some baseless claim. Voice recordings are great proof if the person’s voice is well known, but what’s the difference between recording someone’s voice in a private discord call without permission and recording someone’s voice on a phone call without permission. That’s a huge breach of privacy and disrespectful.
If people behave on RGL they should be allowed to stay and participate within the league, if they don’t find a team because they’re an unlikable asshole it’s on them, and if they break one of RGL’s rules they get banned. For me and most likely other people it’s not an issue of bans, I’m 100% for RGL enforcing it’s current rules. It’s an issue of RGL having defined boundaries and I think the boundaries RGL sets in their rules currently are very clear and could definitely become extremely vague if they broadened their rules to apply to other services.
Arguments have been made that players should be allowed to have free speech, however there is a common misconception with this argument: You are totally able to say the n-word, for instance. However, there are consequences that can occur by doing so. RGL can punish offenders to the maximum of their ability, a permanent ban, if they so choose and it is not infringing on your right to free speech.
I agree with this, while free speech does exist there are consequences. Should people really be punished with a perma ban for a statement they made in private though? It seems very controlling and like I said people would go off and probably try to form their own less restrictive league.
In reality, I can find no reason personally that RGL does not adopt a “once and done” ban system for hate speech, and I see no reason that players cannot report hatespeech/harassment against an entire race/sexual orientation/gender from a player outside of the RGL platform. If the argument is that there is not enough staff, I will gladly dedicate as much time and effort as I humanly can to assist in bettering the league.
This kind of scorched earth tactic isn’t that impactful in the grand scheme of things. While you’d have no more of the bigoted players allow in RGL who would be left? I’d think a majority of the people that tolerate those problematic players would follow them to a new league instead of playing a more restrictive league without their friends/better players.
Not trying to be rude, but if you ever in a position to make these changes to better the league. RGL would be just be dead, or it wouldn’t be nearly as competitive as it is currently in top levels of play. RGL would just be a joke to people.
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@HA-Johnny YES, EXACTLY
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So now we are suggesting essentially restricting pug servers?
I’m a pug runner in a pug server that was created for the express purpose of having total free speech, this would be completely invalidating that principle.
I ask this, does the benefit of satisfying a small group of people outweigh the negatives of policing large swaths of the community for saying words that people don’t like?
Once again, I say this; grow thicker skin.
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@Kastaling A majority of the people in this league is against the ability to say slurs. This is proven in previous league surveys.
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@Kastaling said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
I ask this, does the benefit of satisfying a small group of people outweigh the negatives of policing large swaths of the community for saying words that people don’t like?
this isn’t about slurs, this is about where reports should be accepted. people already agree that using the N word on RGL platforms is bad. we are incredibly sorry that your opinion is unpopular
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Also, consider the fact that censoring people only radicalizes them, and even if you ban all the people that say slurs (as stupid as that would be), you would still have people that don’t publicly say them.
You would still be playing with people that actively are racist, transphobic, sexist, etc… They just choose not to publicly express it. Should we get into policing their thoughts too?
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@cyclowns Yes I understand that, but this is about whether saying slurs in private areas should be bannable. Which my statement still applies to.
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@Mothership A majority are against having slurs in official scrims and matches. I’m confident that if the league was polled about whether RGL should police off-platform speech, the majority vote would turn against that.
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@Iso said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@Mothership A majority are against having slurs in official scrims and matches. I’m confident that if the league was polled about whether RGL should police off-platform speech, the majority vote would turn against that.
that is correct.
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@cyclowns Again, forums are public. Separate argument.
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@Mothership “against that”, meaning against the league putting new rules in place. Not “against slurs” in general.
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@HA-Johnny This is ABSOLUTELY a violation of privacy because RGL has 0 right to police what happens outside their platform. Players already have solutions to deal with racism off platform, and it is not RGL’s place to police that.
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@cyclowns All of those situations have nothing to do with the core issue here, which is RGL policing what player say in PRIVATE SERVERS. In example one RGL forums are public, not private. In example 2 that is not an example of RGL doing the policing. Same with the third.
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@Iso said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@Mothership “against that”, meaning against the league putting new rules in place. Not “against slurs” in general.
my original statement was toward the “satisfying the minority” part of the argument.
A majority of the community is against the usage of slurs, however a majority of the community is also against the policing of private areas.
To be completely honest, I am not sure what we debating here anymore as I dont think anyone agrees that we should be policing private places. Its beyond RGL’s scope and resources. Its just unfeasible.
@Papaya said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@HA-Johnny This is ABSOLUTELY a violation of privacy because RGL has 0 right to police what happens outside their platform. Players already have solutions to deal with racism off platform, and it is not RGL’s place to police that.
RGL can literally do whatever they want. They do do whatever they want within their platform due to the actions of users outside their platform. Its 100% within our right.
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Whilst I do believe saying the RGL Verified Funny Word should be very frowned upon, I do not believe RGL admins and moderators should be policing team discords and group chats searching for people who violated that rule, I believe you’re removing the players right for privacy in their own discords, policing discords in general already takes long enough, let alone doing that to the couple hundred discords that RGL Players/Teams have not even including PUG discords is going to be way too much for the unpaid volunteers that RGL has. While i do agree with some things you said, I believe that its a very aggressive statement to make especially with some of the people in this league. That means players who thought they were safe with their privacy guarded in their own discord can get banned for an extremely petty reason. I believe if you’re constantly being harassed they’re simply a block away and you’re 100% fine.
I think you’re overthinking this way too much to enforce a rule that’s already hard enough to enforce as is, all this would do is put more harm on players that would otherwise be saints if they didn’t say it.
Open to talk about it.
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@Mothership There are people here arguing for policing private servers such as @Xenagos and @cyclowns
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@Kastaling said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
Also, consider the fact that censoring people only radicalizes them,
citation needed
You would still be playing with people that actively are racist, transphobic, sexist, etc… They just choose not to publicly express it. Should we get into policing their thoughts too?
no one has pushed that position in the past, present or future, so I don’t know where you’re pulling these opinions from
@Iso said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@Mothership A majority are against having slurs in official scrims and matches. I’m confident that if the league was polled about whether RGL should police off-platform speech, the majority vote would turn against that.
sure, i imagine this will lead to a survey at some point
@Papaya said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@HA-Johnny This is ABSOLUTELY a violation of privacy because RGL has 0 right to police what happens outside their platform. Players already have solutions to deal with racism off platform, and it is not RGL’s place to police that.
people keep saying “police” like RGL is going to lock you up for saying the n word. why is RGL not allowed to make decisions based on things that happen off platform?
@Papaya said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@cyclowns Again, forums are public. Separate argument.
you keep saying ‘public’ when you mean ‘RGL-affiliated’
@Papaya said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@cyclowns All of those situations have nothing to do with the core issue here, which is RGL policing what player say in PRIVATE SERVERS. In example one RGL forums are public, not private. In example 2 that is not an example of RGL doing the policing. Same with the third.
what makes RGL different from the person that owns the discord server banning someone?
@Papaya said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@Mothership There are people here arguing for policing private servers such as @Xenagos and @cyclowns
“i should say that I’m not even necessarily FOR everything said in the OP. this is mostly just because I think it’s logistically difficult, and it doesn’t really solve the actual issue here, which is the TF2 competitive community’s culture and general attitude towards a lot of shit”
…also, I fail to see what that has to do with anything. even if I did agree with this, I’m just one person, obviously there would need to be a league survey to decide any actions actually taken
@clin said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
Whilst I do believe saying the RGL Verified Funny Word should be very frowned upon, I do not believe RGL admins and moderators should be policing team discords and group chats searching for people who violated that rule, I believe you’re removing the players right for privacy in their own discords, policing discords in general already takes long enough, let alone doing that to the couple hundred discords that RGL Players/Teams have not even including PUG discords is going to be way too much for the unpaid volunteers that RGL has.
with @HA-Johnny’s suggestion of just only going off of information in reports, none of this is really that big of an issue
@Papaya said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@cyclowns All of those situations have nothing to do with the core issue here, which is RGL policing what player say in PRIVATE SERVERS. In example one RGL forums are public, not private. In example 2 that is not an example of RGL doing the policing. Same with the third.
the point of 2/3 is that they were analogous to RGL. just because I didn’t use the word ‘RGL’ doesn’t change anything.
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the problem with a lot of these arguments is this fourms post only applys to tf2 comp like so ur trying to cut weeds with nail clippers (it doesnt work -_- i tried) ur only doing one thing at a time theres like 90 billion communites in tf2 alone that are equally as racist an homophobic as rgl but trying to fix rgl isnt a thing that might or can be done with people from other tf2 groups coming to tf2 there really isnt a point and if u really want to grow comp just like how hl at least used to be then baning said people wont really be a good idea cause they get banned then leave rgl has a ton of problems that are very rooted there is no point sometimes u just have to cope people are toxic but at the end of the day this is just petty an kind of sad iv played tf2 for like 6-7 years people are just toxic my guess is you havent played as long as i have an i wish u the best