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.