Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media
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RGL deals with cases that occur in RGL sanctioned discords, servers, and scrims/matches, because it is their right to do so since its their service, RGL does not however own discord as a whole nor anyones private steam messages etc, its not their place to be regulating private areas
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another issue is what actually constitutes a “public environment”. are team chat channels private? sure. are the forums private? obviously not. are PUG discords private? that’s more arguable. i would say no, because generally anyone can join a pug group, but people are treating n-word slinging in a pug group chat as if its like “just some jokes with a couple boys” when there’s like 80+ people in most pug groups
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if someone made their own publicly accessible forum that isn’t affiliated with RGL in any way, a large amount of RGL users used it to discuss the league/gameplay, and they did rule-breaking shit on there, does that qualify as ‘private’ because its not RGL branded?
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@cyclowns Again though I would argue that it IS a private forum in regards to being policed by RGL because said server isn’t associated with RGL at all. RGL does not have a monopoly on competitive TF2, and if a private pug server chooses to allow slurs, then it is their choice. RGL shouldn’t be allowed to ban players for using slurs in pugs because the pugs have nothing to do with RGL as an organization (even if they happen to contain players who play in RGL)
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@cyclowns and thats the problem, its a whole lot easier to just ignore it as a whole and just accept that it will happen because if you act upon that it will lead to those toxic players becoming even more toxic and as a result making the community worse and giving the league a worse reputation since they “crossed the line”
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@cyclowns Yes, that forum is private. Pug discords are private. Team chat channels are private too. Anything that is officially run by RGL is public I’d say.
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Wasn’t there a site created that combed all of the logs and counted how many times a certain UID would say the nword or other slurs? The number of accounts that had more than one is actually astounding and if we were to ban every single player on that list permanently you would have a very, very small community. One which would be smaller than our already tiny community. I at the very least think that banning people permanently for the usage of “funny words” is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
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@Iso It’s in no way preventing someone from saying whatever they want.
@Papaya [1002.2] - Harassment / Flaming / In-Game Toxicity
In misconduct reports, comments made on public league platforms (i.e. official RGL forums, RGL Discord servers, league match comms) or during scrims and matches will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Context and circumstances are extremely important factors to consider when investigating such reports.Conversely, comments made on private platforms (i.e. Steam messages, private Discord servers, Mumble, Twitch, etc.) will not play a large factor in acting against players accused of misconduct. RGL does not believe it is fair to police the words and actions of players in a private setting and therefore will not apply much scrutiny to these reports unless we suspect a genuine intent to harm or threaten another player.
@Kastaling I mean exactly what I wrote. If you walk into a store and tell the owner to go fuck themselves, and they refuse to server you, that’s not infringing on your free speech.
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@Xenagos The rule you specified specifically states that RGL does not police players in private settings currently. The exception is exactly that, and exception, not a rule. If RGL were to implement bans for what people say in private servers it would most definitely be a negative and novel thing.
“@Kastaling I mean exactly what I wrote. If you walk into a store and tell the owner to go fuck themselves, and they refuse to server you, that’s not infringing on your free speech.”
Also, in that above point ^ the equivalent would be a teammate telling someone to stop saying racial slurs, not RGL handing down a ban. There is a difference between consequences from an institution and consequences from peers. Free speech DOES protect you from consequences from an institution such as RGL.
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@cayorne said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
if you act upon that it will lead to those toxic players becoming even more toxic and as a result making the community worse and giving the league a worse reputation since they “crossed the line”
citation needed
@Papaya said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@cyclowns Again though I would argue that it IS a private forum in regards to being policed by RGL because said server isn’t associated with RGL at all. RGL does not have a monopoly on competitive TF2, and if a private pug server chooses to allow slurs, then it is their choice. RGL shouldn’t be allowed to ban players for using slurs in pugs because the pugs have nothing to do with RGL as an organization (even if they happen to contain players who play in RGL)
would a pug group be wrong for disallowing players banned in RGL for harassment/cheating/etc, because its not something that happened on their platform? just because it’s not THEIR platform doesn’t make it any less public of a space
@Kastaling said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@cyclowns Yes, that forum is private. Pug discords are private. Team chat channels are private too. Anything that is officially run by RGL is public I’d say.
scrims aren’t ‘officially run by RGL’ and yet a majority of people agree that they should still be moderated in some way. why this specific distinction that “outside of RGL = completely private” and not one that actually makes sense, i.e. publicly accessible spaces are public?
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@Papaya The exception still exists, therefore RGL still polices what happens in private.
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@Xenagos Your post literally contradicts what you and the poster are trying to accomplish. ???
And that is not a comparable situation in my eyes. A large gaming organization and a small store are in no ways comparable in terms of that free speech.
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@cyclowns in my experience talking to people in the league, people are already pissed about rgl overreach already, and there is barely any major shit as of now, you will piss off a lot of people and those people will become actively anti-rgl
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@Xenagos Yes, but it is disingenuous of you to act like RGL does this consistently or often and then use that as an argument to validate them taking their actions even futher.
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@cyclowns RGL scrims are moderated because, I imagine, they are official RGL scrims taking place between RGL teams. A notable yet fair exemption to that rule.
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@cayorne Especially because the TF2 competitive community is much smaller than the Overwatch competitive community right now.
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@Papaya I never said RGL did it consistently or often. I never used it as an argument for RGL to take things further. I’m just stating it’s something they already do.
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@Xenagos Ok, but how does that justify them taking even further action to police private interactions between players?
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@cayorne said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@cyclowns in my experience talking to people in the league, people are already pissed about rgl overreach already, and there is barely any major shit as of now, you will piss off a lot of people and those people will become actively anti-rgl
anecdotes mean literally nothing, I don’t care if you and your buddies don’t like big bad sigafoo or whatever. as I mentioned earlier a majority of people supported more moderation in scrims and more moderation in general. obviously there would need to be surveys for a change as big as the ones mentioned in the OP and we shouldn’t just go off the word of whatever the loudest players say
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@Papaya I’m not saying it does. My point the entire time is that this isn’t a free speech issue.