Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media
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I appreciate the good criticism and feedback Alto. I’ll try my best to answer best I can.
I will go ahead place the disclaimers here: This discussion was started before I was even awake on the day of the posting, and eventually we were asked to move to the forum. I figured no one else would really do it, so I decided to stick my neck out and make the post. There is no clout to be gained here, if anything it’s probably only going to(or already has) hurt my reputation. I don’t mind it, because for the people that will look down upon my reputation, I probably wouldn’t want to interact with them in the first place.
I am passionate about human rights issues, even if I am not personally affected by them. I’d go so far as to say I’m a pretty politically active debater, as I quite enjoy public discourse. You are correct in stating I am not doing this solely out of concern for the league itself, but for those that potentially could/would be affected by something I think should be curbed. I do know people in my life who have been affected by hate speech, but I prefer to try and keep as objective a view as possible in regards to my emotions when I make arguments.
With all of that said…
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I can understand your argument, and would like to raise an objection that pug groups are essential. I find it incredibly unlikely that people will grow to higher level TF2 based solely on scrim time and matches alone. Consistently throughout my career I’ve been instructed or advised to join pugs to improve. It is not absolutely necessary, but I think players would severely hamper their growth and improvements by not taking this advice. Which then leads to the issue at hand of all the pug groups I’m aware of being filled with the toxic behavior.
In the case of using a game of CSGO or LoL as a reference: The main difference is that we are treating this as a competitive league, not going onto the ranked ladder. The actual comparison would (for NA) the LCS, LCS Academy, and Collegiate League for LoL (using this as a reference as I know the most about it.) To explain the similarities for those unaware: the LCS would be considered the Invite/Div-1/Challenger of TF2, the Academy would be the Div-2/Adv/Main, and Collegiate would be IM and lower. In all of these cases, as competitive leagues sponsored or run by Riot Games, they are subject to rules that include punishment for Hate Speech used by teammates. Fines, suspensions, bans, etc. These players are subject to it out of game too, so they must always be on guard in that situation if they wish to continue playing the game competitively under Riot Games.
I think it’s completely reasonable to assume that RGL can have the same capacity to handle such issues, if they so desired. If I missed anything to respond to in your post, feel free to let me know and I’ll address it, but I believe I got everything.
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@vibeisveryo
I have not addressed the “thick skin” argument for that exact reason. I would actually say I have pretty thick skin. It does not pain me to see someone called the n-word in front of me for instance. I am sympathetic to the issue, however people like to assume the two are interchangeable.
To your second post: enforcing the system is not fool-proof as I mentioned, but I think it is something that would prove difficult to start with, but given enough time would mellow out and become manageable as eventually the problem will dissipate due to bans or people hiding away their hate speech much more carefully.
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@Ampy said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
I can understand your argument, and would like to raise an objection that pug groups are essential. I find it incredibly unlikely that people will grow to higher level TF2 based solely on scrim time and matches alone. Consistently throughout my career I’ve been instructed or advised to join pugs to improve. It is not absolutely necessary, but I think players would severely hamper their growth and improvements by not taking this advice. Which then leads to the issue at hand of all the pug groups I’m aware of being filled with the toxic behavior.
Hopefully RGL Pugs on launch will help mitigate this, with greater accessibility and reach than Discord Pugs.
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@Kastaling said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@Ampy Once again, I say this; GROW THICKER SKIN.
How does one grow thicker skin though? Saying this as your solution is dumb as there is no proven solution to stop the pain from hate speech.
I will say however, I think the current system with RGL is good. I don’t want all off-platform hate speech to be punishable, because that would just start huge shitshow. I do agree with the current rules of punishable harassment however. Which include:
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Verbal abuse, offensive behavior, or hate speech made towards a player (through any medium) that makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened
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Threatening to dox or harm another player
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Stalking
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Circumventing another player’s block over Steam/Discord/other social media"
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he’s not the team leader?
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@vibeisveryo said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
and it should respond to reports only for public places or RGL spaces - say, twitch streams that anyone can access, or public forums (TFTV, ETF2L, what have you) or public chats.
This is the bit that is different from the current policy – non-RGL-owned publicly accessible spaces are currently considered offplatform just like private Discords.
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People are all over this thread trying to defend anything racist or sexist as some sort of “lol get thick skin”, “all in good fun and you don’t get the comedy”, or “protect muh free speech to say the n word”.
Keep fighting the good fight guys.
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Im so excited we’re adding more unnecessary regulations to further filter out people who just wanted to play a videogame in an already niche community. This will never backfire.
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Why is it so crazy that racist people should be held accountable for the slurs that they spew. It’s not a lot to ask someone to not say slurs especially considering how ever changing our world is, and giving hate speech a platform isn’t at all a way to further this community.
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i would love for people to get banned for saying the funny words but in the long run its not worth it fixing, like that legit means u would have to fix every gaming community an i highly doubt rgl has that power i dont like it but its probably not fixable gg
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@Teapot Are you seriously trying to discredit people’s valid opinions based on flimsy to 0 evidence? What does him having the German flag on discord have anything to do with what he is actually saying? To me it is clear that you chose to attack the person because you don’t actually have a rebuttal to their arguments.
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because the ability to play a game in a certain community isnt a platorm, and acting like it is really gives me more of a virtue signaling vibe than actually giving a care, obviously saying stuff in game and making a toxic environment should get you penalized but the internet isnt a living place, its a hobby and its not a place where everyone always wants to act up to some kind of standard. you can argue saying those words is in poor taste, and id agree, but its just some people’s sense of humor. if rgl could scan our brains and ban everyone whos ever said a slur, i think 80% of us would be gone
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@Kawaiyi Spewing slurs in official matches and scrims is a huge problem which RGL is actively cracking down on (good thing). Spewing slurs in a private discord or DM’s is not a problem. How does someone saying slurs in a private discord remotely effect you or your matches and scrims? Answer: it dosen’t. Therefore RGL has no right to police what player say in private.
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RGL rules shouldn’t have a reach outside of their own league, period. The idea that someone is banned from leagues because of what they’ve done on a private server during a game that isn’t affiliated with RGL is ludicrous. Considering RGL already has a vice-grip hold on the NA TF2 scene, it’s basically suggesting that anyone who is even interested in competitive TF2 has already pre-emptively silently agreed to RGL’s rules without having read them. If the logic, “It’s in private DMs, just block the toxic person” applies, then so does the logic of, “It’s in a private scrim, just don’t scrim these guys”.
If RGL truly believes they should be allowed to have a policing reach outside of their own league, first offenses need to be met with a warning first because you can’t assume every single person playing a non-RGL match is aware of RGL rules and punishments. This isn’t the NFL, most people here are not trying to hold up the image of a league they only play on a couple weeks at a time for a couple of months.
Adding to that, this is going against some of RGL’s own conducted surveys.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16d3WXhzithdFS2waxHEyyQgV-nPT_iUucGFqItyPg-o/edit
RGL favored the answers of some polls over others (And all the polls in Survey #2 were basically the same question three times). The majority of the time when the polls were very clear about the moderation affecting outside scrims, people said, “Only in extreme cases”. And then the polls STOPPED being clear and only said the vague term “scrims”, never off-platform or league matches. It’s possible this could’ve caused skewed results as people voting did not know they were agreeing to outside moderation when answering those specific questions. But they were VERY certain about “Only extreme cases” when asked specifically if RGL should have a bigger hold outside of their league.
If RGL is going to justify enforcing their rules outside of league matches, they need to do “2021 Conduct Polls” and be very precise about their wording. It’s more than obvious a lot of the community is not happy with how much of a reach RGL moderation has and you can’t handwave it away with, “Just don’t be a bigot” as if that’s the root of the problem. Throwing out bans like candy doesn’t solve the problem any more than a gated community stops crimes. It just makes the competitive TF2 community dwindle.
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@Kawaiyi Asking players not to be racist within league matches, scrims, public forums ETC is reasonable. Threatening bans for players who say these things in private where it has absolutely no bearing on other players is absolutely unacceptable. Player’s actions in private have 0 bearing on the league or its reputation because like I said, they are private actions.
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@Papaya said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:
@Teapot Are you seriously trying to discredit people’s valid opinions based on flimsy to 0 evidence? What does him having the German flag on discord have anything to do with what he is actually saying? To me it is clear that you chose to attack the person because you don’t actually have a rebuttal to their arguments.
The guy whose other Discord tag is “ᛋ Right-Wing Death Squad ᛋ”. Yeah, I’m sure it’s a total coincidence. Just an innocent Deutschophile
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@Papaya Why are you typing so much