Opinion on the merits of deplatforming

[teezzy]

Without intending to be overdramatic, I must admit this is something which I need to get off my chest. MetaCouncil has become an intimate community which I truly feel accepted by, and I cant help but believe a few of you will know exactly where I'm coming from with this thread.

Frankly put - I just can't take Era anymore. The cons have outweighed the pros. The bizarre moderation tactics and horde mentality which goes on over at that site is overwhelming. Seeing person after person getting banned, and threads being locked with little reason other than "we don't like talking about this here". Era/Gaf have been my "I'm bored, let me scroll on my phone" getaway for years now, but lord forbid you're a fan of Red Letter Media, Bill Maher, Chapo Trap House, Joe Rogan Experience, THQ Nordic games, Woody Allen films, Michael Jackson music, Dragon Quest OSTs, John Wayne movies, old Louis C.K. standup, earlier seasons of Roseanne, etc. The list seems everlasting, and each week it feels as though there's a new subject I have to walk on eggshells when attempting to discuss.

Pardon me for having the ability to separate the art from the artist. As if enjoying entertainment makes me any less confident in my own leftist socioeconomic political perspective. I can't handle the purity contest any longer. I'm tired, and I'm no saint.

Not everything mildly offensive is a gateway into the alt-right, and sometimes a joke is exactly that. I've come to realize that the Era community is no longer the clever bunch of nerds I once accidentally stumbled upon via a Silent Hill/Kindergarten Cop thread on Gaf years back. That community is dead in multiple ways.

Goodbye Era, my sweetest friend. Maybe our paths will cross again some day, but I'm taking a much needed break at the very least. Between MetaCouncil, and the PC Era/NHL Era Discord servers, there really isn't any justification in me retaining my account there. I finally see why Era is often lampooned elsewhere online, and the community will only continue to self-cannibalize.

 

[Kvik]

Congrats on the divorce!


Kidding aside, the good thing about the ERA community fallout is that we have a good chance to build our community here at MC. We already have all the cool people. We just need to raise our visibility via quality threads and contents.

 

[Alexandros]

I know lashman doesn't like it when we make references to other forums so I'll take your general premise and expand it to the larger issue of online discourse.

You have to be able to discuss things on a discussion forum. Discussion by its nature involves different points of view, some of which you may be diametrically opposed to. Enforcing some rules in order to create a pleasant and functional discussion environment is one thing, expelling any opinion that even slightly differs from your own is quite another.

I think that the tendency to be extremely militant in weeding out opposing viewpoints in online communities is based on the axiom that "deplatforming works". The idea is that if you completely remove ideas and opinions that you deem as unacceptable from the spotlight, those ideas will fade away and eventually disappear. My personal opinion is that deplatforming doesn't work at all. It simply provides people with a false sense of peace and normalcy as those ideas keep bubbling under the surface until they explode in a really bad way.

But if you are obsessed with the idea that deplatforming works, it's quite easy to fall into the trap of continuously expanding the range of idea and opinions that need to be deplatformed until even the slightest hint of a different opinion is considered unacceptable. At this point you don't have a discussion forum anymore, you have an echo chamber that blinds you to what is actually happening in the world.

 

[BlackRainbowFT]

I feel you. I had the same exact thought because of the RedLetterMedia thread. I mean, I watched many of their videos and, unless I'm terribly mistaken, they've always supported diversity, etc. I've seen them mock "manbabies" more than once, for instance.

Context matters. And referencing something or making fun of something doesn't mean endorsing it. It kind of reminds of "Resident Evil 5 is racist" (I mean, the game's setting IS somewhere in Africa...) or showing prostitutes in games like Mafia is "problematic" (well, duh. The world they're trying to depict is awful...).

This is why yesterday I went back to the other forum to check if it was any better and... yeah, it's even worse (that clown thread?).

The purple forum is frustrating (and I'm a socialist) but the orange one is downright scary/insane.

sorry lashman for mentioning other forums, but it's mostly to express how much I value fMC's levelheadedness.

Edit: fixed way too many typos...

 

[Swenhir]

[...]
I think that the tendency to be extremely militant in weeding out opposing viewpoints in online communities is based on the axiom that "deplatforming works". The idea is that if you completely remove ideas and opinions that you deem as unacceptable from the spotlight, those ideas will fade away and eventually disappear. My personal opinion is that deplatforming doesn't work at all. It simply provides people with a false sense of peace and normalcy as those ideas keep bubbling under the surface until they explode in a really bad way.

I completely agree. You don't "win" against human beings by silencing them. You only add to the pressure that, ironically, radicalizes them further.

I don't have the answer, you have many situations. There is the first case, that of some people you just won't reason with. They don't give a shit and they are here to stir trouble. On the other hand, you have another case, people with unpleasant, mild opinions that you are going to turn into monsters if you ban and silence them. What do you do about those?

The easy case is that of people who just want to be allowed a different opinion, one that doesn't automatically creates the rise of a reich in the western world. I think many platforms are failing to address this case by focusing on the other two.

I strongly believe this represents a wider problem in our society. We no longer seem to value wisdom and temperance. It's harder and harder to swallow our irritation and deal with educating those symptoms of immaturity. What can we do?

 

[Trisolarian]

I understand.

I made some silly threads, made some stupid posts and had some fun. But everything is dialed to 11 and I ended up being both frustrated by the relentlessness and how many times I felt worse about my day after interacting with people there.

 

[Rosenkrantz]

I'm thinking about leaving it as well. Just a couple of days ago someone implied that I'm a homophobic white supremacist while simultaneously telling me how I should feel about my treatment as an ethnic minority in my own country. Granted, I'm not a perfect human being, I can get angry, I can say something dumb, or, God forbid, didn't get my point across as intended because my grasp of English isn't the best in the universe, but at least I always try to be fair and respectful towards the others.

Still, if it'll help to build stronger MC, then I'm all for it.

 

[teezzy]

If we all can convince 1 person to join our ranks, we'll literally double in size. Js

 

[CommodoreKong]

Though I'm not going to leave Era (there can be interesting discussion and it's a great site for videogame and general news) but it does seem like the moderation has gotten worse and worse. The mods constantly let people derail threads if they agree with the derails (the Epic Games store stuff was pretty bad at first but it's gotten better, THQ threads are pretty bad now. Like I think the AMA they did was pretty bad and whoever approved that probably should be fired but I don't want to see it constantly derailing any thread about the company. Link to the mega thread about it and let people keep posting about it there), and the people doing it are usually the super hardcore people who think you need to be ideologically pure or you're the enemy (funny thing when writing this post I remember Obama warning about this very thing). Though I don't have a problem with certain speech being limited on the board (like pure hate speech, racist speech, etc) the mods often go way overboard. Honestly it feels a lot worse than GAF before the exodus. Of course you can't be critical of the moderation either or risk catching a warning or ban.

The red letter media thread was a good example, why fight back when you're probably going to catch a ban and just have certain people dog pile on you? They certainly aren't perfect (and do have what I consider shitty opinions, like kids shouldn't look up to superheros but only people in real life and that they have had some jokes that go a over the line) but it's silly to think they should be banned on the site despite the fact they constantly shit on stuff like racism and sexism in the movies they watch.

Let's not forget the wonderful experiment of combining EtcetEra and Hangouts. Anyone who looked at the activity of the two boards and spent a tiny amount of time thinking about it knew it would be a disaster but the owners of the board moved forward with it anyway despite the protest and they had to change it back right away because of course it was a disaster. The stubbornness of moving forward with that just showed how little the owners care about what users think unless they're facing mass protest.

I actually decided to support the site and buy a subscription because I wanted to see the site succeed but the board combination plus the bad moderation got me to cancel and I have zero plans to sub again unless major changes are made. It's really too bad because I would love to financially support the site but that's not happening right now.

I would love to see the site get better. I don't know if it's going to happen and hope it does.

 

[Alexandros]

I've been (and still am) part of several online communities over the years and moderation has been an issue in most of them, which is why lashman 's experiment on this site is interesting. Either because of people's tendency to abuse even miniscule amounts of power, a la the film The Experiment, or because the situation in the real world ends up seeping into the online world, the result is the same. At some point moderation is transformed from a precision tool to a blunt instrument.

 

[Le Pertti]

While I like ERA just fine I have also pretty much stopped posting there and only active here. I think for me it mostly just how I used ERA, I would pretty much only read threads with high drama and very toxic in nature, so it was never "fun" and the only thread I posted in was the steam thread(yeah I know PC thread.) and that thread moved so fast that I never felt up to date.

This place is pretty much SteamGAF/ERA the forum so of course I would feel at home directly.

 

[Swenhir]

I've been (and still am) part of several online communities over the years and moderation has been an issue in most of them, which is why lashman 's experiment on this site is interesting. Either because of people's tendency to abuse even miniscule amounts of power, a la the film The Experiment, or because the situation in the real world ends up seeping into the online world, the result is the same. At some point moderation is transformed from a precision tool to a blunt instrument.

The one thing that might concerns me a little is that, years from now when MC's userbase will have grown orders of magnitude, the ban button might become reddit's downvote. I believe making ban request history public is a huge and decisive step in helping this not happen and I'm quite optimistic about MC's future.

 

[Eferis]

I have nothing against Era but I just feel out of place in those communities, online or otherwise, that, from the get-go, tend to categorize people by groups and ignore all differences instead of considering each person as an individual. I don't really blame them for this but it's so far from the way I approach things and look at people that I'll always feel a bit out of place.

 

[zefah]

I lurk and post here, on Era, and even on GAF still.

I'm definitely saddened to see how the Era project has been progressing despite such a promising start with the community effort to migrate so many different parts of the community and lots of great talk about being inclusive and transparent. With that said, I think there is still a lot of good there.

The seemingly insatiable appetite for identifying and eradicating an ever expanding list of problems amongst prominent members of the community there is eery. I definitely need to check myself to stay out of discussion about social or political issues, despite them being a topic of interest to me. The acceptable parameters for discussion in such topics is becoming increasingly narrow and stepping out of them gets you labeled a hateful bigot.

 

[Futaleufu]

Last time I saw the forum they were banning people for liking Sasel, a youtuber who is known for not being PC at all.
I feel a lot more comfortable posting in GAF, at least there I know I'm not stepping on eggshells everytime I have an opinion.

I'm currently banned on ERA for calling cuck a cuck.

 

[Alexandros]

Last time I saw the forum they were banning people for liking Sasel, a youtuber who is known for not being PC at all.
I feel a lot more comfortable posting in GAF, at least there I know I'm not stepping on eggshells everytime I have an opinion.

I'm currently banned on ERA for calling cuck a cuck.

Calling people names isn't an opinion though, it's an insult. There's a big difference between being able to express an opinion that may be controversial and being allowed to insult people.

 

[Le Pertti]

But cuck isn't an insult if that's your thing. I would say it's kinkshaming if it can't be used in proper context.

 

[Alexandros]

But cuck isn't an insult if that's your thing. I would say it's kinkshaming if it can't be used in proper context.

I doubt it was used in that context. In most cases it seems to be used in a derogatory manner to describe people who 'pander to SJWs'. Calling people names isn't a discussion and it should be sanctioned appropriately.

 

[Le Pertti]

I doubt it was used in that context. In most cases it seems to be used in a derogatory manner to describe people who 'pander to SJWs'. Calling people names isn't a discussion and it should be sanctioned appropriately.

Yeah you are probably right, for me though I mostly hear it in other, more proper usage terms haha!

If he used it in the term you describe then yeah that's shitty, but I got the impression it was in its proper context? Maybe doesn't add much to the discussion anyway.

 

[Alexandros]

Yeah you are probably right, for me though I mostly hear it in other, more proper usage terms haha!

If he used it in the term you describe then yeah that's shitty, but I got the impression it was in its proper context? Maybe doesn't add much to the discussion anyway.

Indeed it doesn't. No good can come out of labelling people like that.

 

[Dandy]

I still read Era, but usually stick to a handful of watched threads while occasionally browsing Gaming for news. I rarely post though, mainly because it feels like your screaming into a hurricane. At least here I know people have read what I typed, even if they don't respond directly, thanks to the like button.

 

[BernardoOne]

I know lashman doesn't like it when we make references to other forums so I'll take your general premise and expand it to the larger issue of online discourse.

You have to be able to discuss things on a discussion forum. Discussion by its nature involves different points of view, some of which you may be diametrically opposed to. Enforcing some rules in order to create a pleasant and functional discussion environment is one thing, expelling any opinion that even slightly differs from your own is quite another.

I think that the tendency to be extremely militant in weeding out opposing viewpoints in online communities is based on the axiom that "deplatforming works". The idea is that if you completely remove ideas and opinions that you deem as unacceptable from the spotlight, those ideas will fade away and eventually disappear. My personal opinion is that deplatforming doesn't work at all. It simply provides people with a false sense of peace and normalcy as those ideas keep bubbling under the surface until they explode in a really bad way.

But if you are obsessed with the idea that deplatforming works, it's quite easy to fall into the trap of continuously expanding the range of idea and opinions that need to be deplatformed until even the slightest hint of a different opinion is considered unacceptable. At this point you don't have a discussion forum anymore, you have an echo chamber that blinds you to what is actually happening in the world.

Deplatforming is the most effective thing there is. And it doesn't blind you from anything at all. It's the opposite. People don't think racists stop existing if they get deplatformed.
But the effectiveness, growth and and propaganda are all effectively reduced by platforming

Milo is almost bankrupt after getting deplatformed
Voat, where the banned subreddits go is barely scraping by
Infowars has lost major sources of income.
Deplatforming 100% works letting piles of shit fester is what makes them grow and infect the mainstream. Cut that shit at the root and you prevent that.

But cuck isn't an insult if that's your thing. I would say it's kinkshaming if it can't be used in proper context.

the fact that dude is comfortable still posting in a forum filled to the brim with hate speech should tell you all you need to know about how is using the word.

 

[Trisolarian]

I lurk and post here, on Era, and even on GAF still.

I'm definitely saddened to see how the Era project has been progressing despite such a promising start with the community effort to migrate so many different parts of the community and lots of great talk about being inclusive and transparent. With that said, I think there is still a lot of good there.

The seemingly insatiable appetite for identifying and eradicating an ever expanding list of problems amongst prominent members of the community there is eery. I definitely need to check myself to stay out of discussion about social or political issues, despite them being a topic of interest to me. The acceptable parameters for discussion in such topics is becoming increasingly narrow and stepping out of them gets you labeled a hateful bigot.

I agree with vast majority on everything. What turned me off was the digging and expose of EVERYTHING, every yt channel, every twitch person. I was traveling during all the etika news and when I logged in.... fucking point of no return, god that was disgusting. I tried to jump into dog pile threads and expose threads and calm things down or say "slow your roll before you convict"... whew that got ugly fast.

Don't get it twisted, I had my moments but I promise to never bring them here. The fast pace of era tended to overwhelm me and any negative feelings just built until they exploded, mid thread.

Last time I saw the forum they were banning people for liking Sasel, a youtuber who is known for not being PC at all.
I feel a lot more comfortable posting in GAF, at least there I know I'm not stepping on eggshells everytime I have an opinion.

I'm currently banned on ERA for calling cuck a cuck.

It was the willingness to dogpile on people and attack them and look for ways to attack them in their own threads that sealed the deal on me leaving era. Like fuck, if you don't have anything nice to say, just don't fucking say it. That's a human being your insulting and telling them that their garbage when they ask for help. Example, your post.

 

[Alexandros]

Deplatforming is the most effective thing there is. And it doesn't blind you from anything at all. It's the opposite. People don't think racists stop existing if they get deplatformed.
But the effectiveness, growth and and propaganda are all effectively reduced by platforming

Milo is almost bankrupt after getting deplatformed
Voat, where the banned subreddits go is barely scraping by
Infowars has lost major sources of income.
Deplatforming 100% works letting piles of shit fester is what makes them grow and infect the mainstream. Cut that shit at the root and you prevent that.

I understand the concept and everything you said about people like Milo and sites like Infowars is true. My objection lies in what the actual result is. In medical terms I would liken it to treating the symptom instead of the cause of the disease. I believe that the state of the world today is indicative of the fact that unless you focus on educating people on why some ideologies are harmful and facing them head on, those ideologies will always find room to grow and resurface. Deplatforming provides a temporary sense of peace and quiet. A person expressing harmful ideologies has been defeated but the ideologies themselves remained unchallenged. Society has been trying to sweep its issues under the rug for decades and look where we are now.

So I think that the best way to actually defeat harmful ideologies is to talk about them, criticize them, debunk them and in the process create a populace that demagogues won't be able to sway. In my opinion that's the only way that society will actually progress towards a better future.

 

[BernardoOne]

I understand the concept and everything you said about people like Milo and sites like Infowars is true. My objection lies in what the actual result is. In medical terms I would liken it to treating the symptom instead of the cause of the disease. I believe that the state of the world today is indicative of the fact that unless you focus on educating people on why some ideologies are harmful and facing them head on, those ideologies will always find room to grow and resurface. Deplatforming provides a temporary sense of peace and quiet. A person expressing harmful ideologies has been defeated but the ideologies themselves remained unchallenged. Society has been trying to sweep its issues under the rug for decades and look where we are now.

So I think that the best way to actually defeat harmful ideologies is to talk about them, criticize them, debunk them and in the process create a populace that demagogues won't be able to sway. In my opinion that's the only way that society will actually progress towards a better future.

They are being talked about, criticised and debunked. Deplatforming just doesn't allow them to spread propaganda, grow and recruit. You will find that people that support deplatforming are the people that most criticise, debunk and actually do anything against these ideologies.

Again, letting shit fester and infect the mainstream is how stuff got to this point, not the opposite. Just see how much the US 2016 election was influenced by unchecked propaganda through Facebook.

Or look at 4chan. /Pol/ was supposed to be a containment board. It went unchecked and now the entire site and all the boards are infected with its fuckery.

 

[Trisolarian]

They are being talked about, criticised and debunked. Deplatforming just doesn't allow them to spread propaganda, grow and recruit. You will find that people that support deplatforming are the people that most criticise, debunk and actually do anything against these ideologies.

Again, letting shit fester and infect the mainstream is how stuff got to this point, not the opposite. Just see how much the US 2016 election was influenced by unchecked propaganda through Facebook.

Or look at 4chan. /Pol/ was supposed to be a containment board. It went unchecked and now the entire site and all the boards are infected with its fuckery.

Containment doesn't work online. Well... it doesn't work for every site. Some can handle it. Others.......

It would be nice if we could have discussions and talk about harmful ideologies but the internet really only seems to be good at spreading propaganda once a certain number of people join a discussion/can see your posts. No one will ever debate reparations or the flat tax well on twitter. Nor 4chan where its 50% trolls and lolz peeps.

 

[Alexandros]

They are being talked about, criticised and debunked. Deplatforming just doesn't allow them to spread propaganda, grow and recruit. You will find that people that support deplatforming are the people that most criticise, debunk and actually do anything against these ideologies.

Again, letting shit fester and infect the mainstream is how stuff got to this point, not the opposite. Just see how much the US 2016 election was influenced by unchecked propaganda through Facebook.

Or look at 4chan. /Pol/ was supposed to be a containment board. It went unchecked and now the entire site and all the boards are infected with its fuckery.

I have a very different opinion on that. Letting shit fester and infect the mainstream is indeed how stuff got to this point, but not because we didn't ban memes and fake news fast enough. People worldwide didn't turn into right-wing extremists overnight, or during the last few years that social media grew. People didn't massively vote for Trump or in my country for the Golden Dawn because of Twitter and Facebook. There are deep-rooted issues in our society that we refuse to tackle head on.

The main problem with deplatforming as I perceive it is that it creates a virtual reality of what society is really like. Even if you eradicate every bit of propaganda from the internet or the mainstream, harmful ideologies will keep festering, you'll just not be aware of them until they explode again.

 

[cosmicblizzard]

Deplatforming is the most effective thing there is. And it doesn't blind you from anything at all. It's the opposite. People don't think racists stop existing if they get deplatformed.
But the effectiveness, growth and and propaganda are all effectively reduced by platforming

Milo is almost bankrupt after getting deplatformed
Voat, where the banned subreddits go is barely scraping by
Infowars has lost major sources of income.
Deplatforming 100% works letting piles of shit fester is what makes them grow and infect the mainstream. Cut that shit at the root and you prevent that.

Deplatforming only works when 1. it is applied broadly, and 2. anything that can be considered even tangentially related is included in the deplatforming. The useful idiots, the effective dog whistlers, etc.

For every effective individual instance of deplatforming you can point to, you can just as easily point to a still visible entity that's not quite as far down the rabbit hole that will ultimately lead those people further down. Social media giants for the most part will only ban the worst of the worst, and that's not changing anytime soon, especially with how interconnected Youtube is. Certain ideologies are still getting room to breathe for no other reason than that being how the internet works. Alex Jones still has a visible footprint and some level of influence as do people worse than him that haven't been deplatformed. Milo is a special case because fucking with pedophilia in any way is way outside the overton window that it'll cross political lines as something to be unanimously denounced.

And the thing is I'm not convinced shoving it underground is effective either. Even countries with very strict hate speech laws are part of a new right wing rise worldwide. Clearly deplatforming wasn't the answer there.

 

[Stevey]

I check one thread on era (the motorbike one) and that's it.

This is my new home on the internet, even though I dint post that much.

 

[Trisolarian]

Deplatforming only works when 1. it is applied broadly, and 2. anything that can be considered even tangentially related is included in the deplatforming. The useful idiots, the effective dog whistlers, etc.

For every effective individual instance of deplatforming you can point to, you can just as easily point to a still visible entity that's not quite as far down the rabbit hole that will ultimately lead those people further down. Social media giants for the most part will only ban the worst of the worst, and that's not changing anytime soon, especially with how interconnected Youtube is. Certain ideologies are still getting room to breathe for no other reason than that being how the internet works. Alex Jones still has a visible footprint and some level of influence as do people worse than him that haven't been deplatformed. Milo is a special case because fucking with pedophilia in any way is way outside the overton window that it'll cross political lines as something to be unanimously denounced.

And the thing is I'm not convinced shoving it underground is effective either. Even countries with very strict hate speech laws are part of a new right wing rise worldwide. Clearly deplatforming wasn't the answer there.

Milo indeed was a special case. Guy got blacklisted by actual publishers/news orgs for his shit.

I don't have a problem with not giving someone a platform on a site you own, everyone can make up their owns rules if you're pulling in ad revenue. You also can't have people using your site to run harassment campaigns. Dogwhistle.... I hear those every day on TV. Can't ever get rid of those.

Using the government to deplatform anyone isn't something I'm used to, being from America. I understand that the EU in particular has very strong anti hate speech laws, although I'm not certain how often they are enforced to the letter. Regardless, using the government to stifle speech/hate hasn't worked wonderfully either, yeah I agree, govt can be a way forward using laws to target injustice/protect rights but stifling speech doesn't seem effective.

The best weapon is to not ignore it or try to shove it underground, just because its out of your sight doesn't mean a younger person isn't lapping it up.

 

[Futaleufu]

I doubt it was used in that context. In most cases it seems to be used in a derogatory manner to describe people who 'pander to SJWs'. Calling people names isn't a discussion and it should be sanctioned appropriately.

Actually this guy allowed his wife to bring her lover to live in their own home

 

[Alexandros]

Actually this guy allowed his wife to bring her lover to live in their own home

I saw that thread. Nowhere in his description did he seem like he enjoyed that situation, which would fit the way you called him (which would still be rude and inappropriate even in that case). His wife's lover was a woman so my guess is that he was hoping for some sort of harem situation and got blindsided by the fact that his wife had true feelings for her lover and not for him.

 

[Trisolarian]

I saw that thread. Nowhere in his description did he seem like he enjoyed that situation, which would fit the way you called him (which would still be rude and inappropriate even in that case). His wife's lover was a woman so my guess is that he was hoping for some sort of harem situation and got blindsided by the fact that his wife had true feelings for her lover and not for him.

I'd didn't even try to speculate, end of the day, we're all the expert on our own lives and at best others are a sounding board of kinds. My second to last post on era was to tell the OP to lock the thread and take some time for themselves to think and ignore era. Not to name call. Which is of course, a great way to be heard over the sound of so many people posting their VIOs. (very important opinions)

 

[Rosenkrantz]

The thing about deplatforming, while it feels good to see Alex Jones losing cash, people still can find his bullshit if they want. There are dozens of YouTube channels where neo-nazis can find their fix that aren't visible enough for YouTube to react or not straight enough to claim Free Speech abuse if action against them is taken. And what are we going to do with places where the actual action takes place? How are we going to deplatform someone from the chatroom we don't even know exists?

 

[Swenhir]

I think all the talk surrounding deplatforming misses the point. How you really fix this problem is by looking at the truth, by facing the circumstances and problems that pushed people toward these hateful viewpoints, actions and crimes. Silencing them does prevent the ideology and issues from spreading, but they will still be there and they will still be spreading it around them through other platforms in the future. Worse, as long as you do not address the problem - or even acknowledge that it exists - then the crisis will gain in magnitude.

Deplatforming is putting your head in the sand and for once I'd like people to acknowledge the real problems. That some of these people were bullied. That some of these people have abusive families. That some of these people have been born into ridiculously cult-like circles. Hate is not exactly born from a place of happiness. The list goes on.

You have to understand that by dehumanizing them, you are stopping them temporarily but also radicalizing them, pushing them to the extremes further. Engaging them is how you start to do something useful about the problem, in my opinion. At least to find out where they are coming from and how to stop it from happening again.

Understand that I'm not comparing their suffering to the people they inflict suffering on. Abuse, hate, violence and making a person's life miserable for no other reason than your prejudices is unforgivable. But these people come from somewhere and if you care to be serious about the problem, that "somewhere" has to be looked at.

 

[Alexandros]

The thing about deplatforming, while it feels good to see Alex Jones losing cash, people still can find his bullshit if they want. There are dozens of YouTube channels where neo-nazis can find their fix that aren't visible enough for YouTube to react or not straight enough to claim Free Speech abuse if action against them is taken. And what are we going to do with places where the actual action takes place? How are we going to deplatform someone from the chatroom we don't even know exists?

Indeed. These are my issues with deplatforming as the main strategy against harmful ideologies:

1. It doesn't target the cause of the issue, it targets the symptom and all it achieves is that it makes it go away temporarily.
2. It creates a warped perception of what society is actually like.
3. The boundaries of what should be deplatformed are ill defined.
4. It is literally impossible to implement on the necessary scale for it to be truly effective.
5. It breeds resentment even to people who do not support harmful ideologies.

The only solution to the actual issue, which is that people should know better than to adopt these harmful ideologies but they don't, is education, rehabilitation and integration. All modern societies have collectively agreed that this is the proper course of action for a variety of social issues. Sweeping an issue under the rug will not make it go away, I feel very strongly about that. I want everything out in the open so people have no illusions on what society is actually like. In the US specifically, Trump didn't happen because of social media. Social media simply exposed deep-rooted issues and brought them to the spotlight.

 

[Mitch]

I've moved from many communities over the last 15 years.

In 2013 I joined GAF and left 4chan behind. Then I moved to Era with everyone during the migration. Nothing changed when the community moved to a different forum. The way moderation is handled has gotten on my nerves more than once. Hyperbole, overreacting, dogpiling, you name it. It's all there and it gets worse every week.

This is why I typically lurk and refrain from posting. I'll still post there, but I think I'll make my way back into a community thread.

 

[unknownhero]

I always feel like I'm an outsider at that place. I mean I can post there but it feels like I'm just a visitor and that I don't really belong. I have a constant battle with depression and things would trigger it easy at some points. In example, i was accused of being a racist because I did not think turning lara into a black woman would be a good idea People called me racist, I got frustrated and so I made that thread. I remember some users concerned but when they heard about my last post they were all like "meh, fuck him." that fucking hurt me more than anyone can ever know and the sad fact is, if I did kill myself, they wouldn't have cared. hell, In fact, i was seriously thinking about doing so soon after. Of course, one of those who did that showed "concern" but i think it was more because he was being called out on it. After finding out that I was alive, he never replied to my last PM. I think he was secretly disappointed that I didn't, Don't get me wrong, there were others who concern was genuine and did keep in touch but that incident will forever remind me that I'm just a visitor and nothing more. No, I'm just trash to them.

also, for those wondering, the only reason why I didn't want a black lara was because with her current writers she would have been just a mass killer with a boring personality and i thought creating a new icon character as a black lady would have been superior.

 

[Alexandros]

I always feel like I'm an outsider at that place. I mean I can post there but it feels like I'm just a visitor and that I don't really belong. I have a constant battle with depression and things would trigger it easy at some points.

In many cases online discourse can resemble a schoolyard. People often behave like children online and by that I mean that they can be very cruel and not realize the consequences of their words and actions. Don't take it personally and always remember that the person addressing you in such a manner doesn't know anything about who you really are.

 

[Eferis]

In example, i was accused of being a racist because I did not think turning lara into a black woman would be a good idea

Hey I'm white and I was accused of being a racist towards white people because I said the Star Wars game character looks generic. I also had a black NBA player as avatar so some random person assumed a lot of stuff about me. It still makes me giggle.

 

[Rosenkrantz]

In example, i was accused of being a racist because I did not think turning lara into a black woman would be a good idea People called me racist, I got frustrated and so I made that thread. I remember some users concerned but when they heard about my last post they were all like "meh, fuck him." that fucking hurt me more than anyone can ever know and the sad fact is, if I did kill myself, they wouldn't have cared

Don't let it get to you mate. Era is very trigger happy about calling people names if something that they say don't align with Era's general consensus. God forbid sometimes you need to have an in-depth discussion on the issue.

 

[SRossi]

Calling people names isn't an opinion though, it's an insult. There's a big difference between being able to express an opinion that may be controversial and being allowed to insult people.

Well, they where allowed to insult a dead man and his wife no problem. But I guess that was only because his nickname was TotalBiscuit. People who called them out on that where banned, not the ones who called names.

 

[Alexandros]

Well, they where allowed to insult a dead man and his wife no problem. But I guess that was only because his nickname was TotalBiscuit. People who called them out on that where banned, not the ones who called names.

Don't remind me, that was disgusting.

 

[Trisolarian]

Well, they where allowed to insult a dead man and his wife no problem. But I guess that was only because his nickname was TotalBiscuit. People who called them out on that where banned, not the ones who called names.

That was ugly. Happened back when I was still heavily involved and the overall posting style was less nasty. Canary in the coal mine moment there. I won't even go into the past two weeks. I vaporized my account, I'm not heading back, metacouncil seems like a great community.

 

[Rosenkrantz]

I'm not going to defend TB's position on GG, but outside of that he seemed to be a decent guy who always cared about customers rights, why would anyone be happy about his death in such a young age?

Maybe I was lucky to never participate on GAF and only lurking in Games discussion before the split.

 

[SRossi]

I'm not going to defend TB's position on GG,

Oh I would. He never was a gamergater. He said most gaming journalism is shit. And he was and is still right. He never supported GG or what it stands for. Everyone, Bernardo included, who come with the shit argument "he supported GG, there was nothing to misunderstand, he is (was) a racist and sexist assholes" are just horribly, horribly wrong. And they can fuck themselves with their puberty shit, have some decency you fucks.

 

[m_dorian]

My stance on this and on things in general:

I have almost no patience on Nazis, racists, pedophiles and the lot. As such, people like the scum on THQN that associated the companies with the nazi-pedo site should have been fired and stopped being employed by a video gaming company. The fact that they still do is truly disgusting because they are getting away with it.

Aside from that i can agree that dogpiling has become a real problem there. I felt so uncomfortable reading Ge0force being dogpiled on the EGS sale thread and that was started and sustained by certain posters -that i feel they seem to enjoy some form of immunity- which made me reconsider my positive stance for this forum. A subtle pro EGS pro corporate stance that seems to be happening there is another reason i do not like read there as much as i did before.
That's when i found the place we are here.

I am always appalled when i read people that put the "muh gaemz" mentality above the perceived greater good.
But above all i do not want to read posts made by hostile assholes, posts and posters that associate with scummy assholes, threads that justify acts of some inconsierate assholes.
I have to deal with effing assholes all day, i do not want them winning on forums i frequent to discuss about my hobby.

I like it here. People treat people nicely or at least without hostility. There is no Mod above our heads but we do seem to discuss things just fine and being nice to each other. Sometimes this happens on the other forum too, the problem is that this seems to happen less and less with each passing day.

I like any forum where it's members behave nicely, show consideration and empathy and do not miss the forest for the trees.

 

[Wok]

my guess is that he was hoping for some sort of harem situation

I read parts of this thread. I don't think your guess is right. This person has no source of income, no other home, so he is totally dependent on his wife's leniency and financial support. There was nothing he could do: he has no say whatsoever, and is in an alarming situation (not because of his wife, but because of his total dependency, with currently no hope of a change). That was one disturbing thread, because of the context hidden behind the anecdote. I wish I had not read it.

 

[Nahkapukki]

My stance is this:


ResetEra thinks its none of these things while they have really secured the whole lot and now they are tangled together pumping ecstatically and overjoyed by their own company. We here know we are either dicks, pussies or assholes and we can appreciate that reality.

 

[BernardoOne]

Oh I would. He never was a gamergater. He said most gaming journalism is shit. And he was and is still right. He never supported GG or what it stands for. Everyone, Bernardo included, who come with the shit argument "he supported GG, there was nothing to misunderstand, he is (was) a racist and sexist assholes" are just horribly, horribly wrong. And they can fuck themselves with their puberty shit, have some decency you fucks.

LMAO
Bruh learn to fucking google. Plenty of fucking recepts out there. He was a gamergater. That's not up for debate.