I could think of no better outcome then him shutting it down. That won’t happen, but it would be epic.
What’s the saying…“you mad bro?”
Why would I be mad those social media sites are not popular, despite them claiming free speech? I mean, he could improve one that seems to meet his guidelines but he does not want to. That does not make me angry.
It also does not make me angry he does stock stuff like he has always done. That is what he does, he buys and invests in things. Twitter has decided they are not interested in being taken over. So, that is that.
The only people who have much reason to be mad are stockholders who may be unhappy he is mucking with the stock prices with his antics.
If consumers want “free speech” then they will use the “free speech” platforms instead of Twitter - or any other site that enforces basic rules. That is a great thing about our system, people have choices and can vote with their money/engagement time.
People should keep in mind though, “free speech” protects us from being arrested by the Government for speaking out about political leaders, policies, etc. Our founders knew what it was like to have an Authoritarian regime that killed or imprisoned people who spoke up against the King or Nobility.
It does not stop private property owners and companies from having rules and enforcing them by throwing people out.
Ironically, since this thread is about diversity and inclusion, I will draw a parallel here with something conservatives argue.
Why race, sexuality or gender swap a character, like making a female Thor, African American Heimdal, gay Superman, doing an all female Ghostbusters or any other number of things?
Much like you saying why can Elon buy and change this company conservatives say why don’t you make your own new stories, worlds or characters? Much like you said, the alternatives don’t seem as popular - it’s like someone is buying something for the name brand and distorting it into what they want it to be, despite the people who enjoy it not wanting it to change.
Just a thought exercise…
I have already completed that thought exercise and considered it when I was posting about Twitter.
I have mixed feelings on stories - because there are purists who demand a story stay exactly the same forever, no matter how many movie versions or books are made. Others who like to see artistic change to tell the core story a different way or from a different perspective.
I think both have value. I HATE changes from books to movies in most cases. Looking at you LOTR. Then there are other things like the familiar King Arthur legends being told through the eyes of a different character such as his sister. That was a fascinating book (Mists of Avalon).
I think ultimately though, overtaking a franchise vehicle to fundamentally change the core character falls into the category of things I don’t like. Adding other chars and perspectives though as the story and sequels goes on, does not bug me.
When it comes to Musk though, he does not need to buy something popular to capitalize on the existing audience. He is the richest person in the world (probably) and has a massive personal following on various online platforms. Setting up and marketing his own social media site would be very very easy and successful. Far easier than trying to take an existing site and change it.
This is my favorite part.
The social media sites that do promote “free speech”, and lets make sure we are on the same page here, no private company is beholden to the First Amendment of the Constitution of The United States of America, its simply a choice to adhere to it, but they are vastly more popular then outlets would like you to think they are.
This is actually a boon. By the time the person has been castrated on one of the “popular” social media sites, they are welcomed into the free speech alternative and never have to go back to the “moderated” (censored) sites.
The issue with many, in fact all but one from what I have seen, start off popular, but as soon as they start to become “moderated” (censored) people leave the platform. The last bastion of online free speech is super popular, but has almost no exposure because of, low and behold, censorship. Who would have though a free speech social media site would be under attack from all sides. Oh ya, its now, that’s how we do things…now.
I was watching video earlier today someone compared how twitter handles say bullying vs TikTok.
They said use this scenario, 10 people bully 1 person.
Twitter bans 10 people and loses the revenue of 10 people but keeping 1
TikTok bans the bullied person, losing the revenue of 1 but keeping 10
Even the person making the statement said how much that sucks, but if you are focusing on business and revenue, TikTok is the way to go. And it sucks that supporting jerks makes more money…
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I just remember a time where everyone would ignore the jerk and the jerk would eventually be without an audience. Man, those were good times.
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From a purely $$ point of view, that may hold true. However, long term if you let that happen all the rest of the good people leave and you have a toxic cesspool.
Sometimes companies actually do what is moral even if it is not the most financially lucrative. I mean, companies can make more money dumping raw waste into the environment, ripping people off with false products, price gouging, unfair workplace practices, etc.
That does not mean they SHOULD do it. I am a fan of kicking bullies to the curb where they belong. In the case of WoW - that is what a perma ban is. It means the company fired the person as a customer even if keeping them would make more money. They would rather at least TRY to have a decent gaming environment than a free for all where anything goes no matter how vile.
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The fact that people can still ask this after all the lawsuits and other scandals is exactly why such a position is needed.
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It’s called “virtue signalling”. And I agree, it should be the best person for the job regardless of who they are, because that would be what is best for us players and the stock holders.
Citation needed. I personally have never seen the evidence that supports this claim.
Been here for 16 years, and I would disagree.
When people were held to the standard of personal responsibility, to avoid, block and ignore the players who were jerks the game suffered far less turnover. The volatility of the game, from what I can tell, is a direct result of allowing players feelings to dictate the interactions of social discourse in the game. There are other things, more then I could mention in a paragraph, but being hyper focused on making sure the community is nice to one another, my opinion, was a detriment to the population of the game.
I agree 100% with you. Sadly in the case of Twitter, a lot of the good people left and what is left is only a cesspool. What some see a Heaven others see as Hades. It’s almost like different people are different and it’s best when we all just agree to disagree.
I am a fan of kicking bullies as well but much like this thread shows, a lot of times people have differing views of what a bully is. Some on here would argue the people in the thread on the right are bullies, others would argue people on the left are bullies. Sadly, the only way to resolve this is someone like a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer who may very well already have a stance on which side is correct and not be willing to hear either side.
Oilitical views destroy rational thinking and decent human beings. One people start down that path, they dehumanize their “opposition” in order to “win at all costs”. In the end we are all just people and deserve respect, even if we disagree
I don’t think this applies to Blizzard though.
When the game was created and new, Blizzard punished almost no one. You had to do some severe shenanigans to piss off Blizzard. The players knew this, and took it into their own hands. Their method of dealing with the situation best represents itself in the server black lists that were available at the time.
Players could add people to the black list, and as the player in question did more and more bad things, their bad reputation would rise. Then, when you were forming a group, or inviting people into a guild, you could search for these jokers. At that point you could take the responsibility yourself and still invite this person who has a bad reputation if you so choose to.
People are very good at self moderation when you allow them to be.
Though, now people feel as though the authority should be mommy and daddy and punish all those who do wrong in their eyes. It creates a system where when the authority has to choose between the two sides, they are then held to that standard, and can never go back.
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Which worked while we were unable to easily name change and server change - and before we had all the merges/CRZ.
Holding people accountable with consequences like excluding them from groups means knowing a recognizable identifier (name).
What you describe though is reality - act like a jerk and people don’t want you around. These days it comes in the form of reports - enough of them with valid logs and you get a time out. Social media does it too - enough reports (as in the user base not being happy) and it gets looked into.
Now, if nobody reports someone then they skate away home free.
The results are the same though - the population uses tools to cause the troublemaker to be removed or excluded. Black list or reports that result in a time out. Same end result of removing the person others don’t want to be around.
Blizzard chose getting a little bit of scratch, over the players ability to self regulate their populations. Wait, that doesn’t sound like Blizzard…oh, never mind that sounds exactly like Blizzard.
I will give you another story from around that time. Somewhere between the end of Wrath and beginning of Cata. I was jaw jacking with some people in Orgrammar. I was using my normal profane laced language, as one does, and my brother who was in the conversation was reported enough to get temp banned by Blizzard. He immediately appealed the report and was exonerated by Blizzard because, in their own words, “He did not bypass the profanity filter to allow the language to be seen by those who wish not to see it.”
Fast forward a few years, and outside Mogoshan Vaults (spelling /shrug) I said three profane words, again, not bypassing the filter, and I was sent a nastygram from Blizzard because of my language. In a few short years, we went from personal responsibility to people intentionally reporting people with their profanity filter off so they can get people in trouble.
Blizzard took a side. And from all the evidence we have access to, it was the wrong one.
One gave every player the agency to make the decision on their own. The other relies on the authority to punish the wrongdoer, even if what they did was within the scope of their own statements from the past, as my previous example shows.
The filter has never ever been an excuse that allows people to use profanity in game. They rules have been in place since the start but you used to have to come to the website and put in a ticket about the infraction so few people bothered. The penalty then was a suspension from the game.
Then they added right click report which captures the name, server, chat channel, and logs. That lets the GM review and penalize far easier - logs are right in front of them vs having to search based off ticket info. They also have an auto squelch for mass spam reports. In 2016 they added the Silence which removes social features instead of a Suspension. The hope was people would learn from that and stop it. Sadly, it did not, so they are back to tacking on Suspensions again if needed.
We mostly used black lists for loot ninjas and guild drama queens on my server, not so much being a potty mouth.
What changed over time was the ease of reporting, and to a degree the lighter penalties now.
Source on the profanity filter not being an excuse to break the rules (besides the thousands of CS posts where people come complain about their silence or suspension for “just using common words”)
Mature Language Filter (aka The Profanity Filter)
- This can be activated within your Interface Options: Main menu (ESC key by default) Click Interface > Social and check - Mature Language Filter.Once enabled, all inappropriate words in our profanity database will be filtered and masked to appear as jumbled characters, such as ‘*##@&’.
Note: The filter does not excuse the language used. The filter serves as a temporary shield, to help parents of minors and others who do not wish to see it, to block it. Our policies prohibit the use of both clear and masked inappropriate language.
What a terrible echo chamber this thread has become.
I wasn’t making the excuse. Blizzard did when they overturned my brothers penatly.
I was giving you an anecdotal from previous experience I have been witnessed to. I could also link the YouTube video from when the right click report feature was implemented, and the 30 guild members reported the priest for saying good things about Blizzard in general chat, then being auto banned in seconds. They had to alter their system after that.
You could add to the list anything you wanted. But, no one would care if you put on there “HexcrafterMcLeetsauce has a potty mouth.”
Ya, because no one talks in general now, for fear of being punished. Not like fear of being obligatorily banned for the worst comments known to man, like race, ethnicity, past atrocity, ect. No, now its people don’t dare say anything in general unless its happy or they want a time out. Fear of speaking is not a good thing. It creates animosity, and sometimes to the point where people won’t deal with it anymore. I have known people who have left for this reason. It happens and it doesn’t need to.
I didn’t change the meaning of this, Blizzard did with how they responded over the course of time in their own game. It is up to them in regards to what rules they adhere to or ignore. It still doesn’t change the fact of how people view Blizzard’s decision making. My opinion, 100%, is that Blizzard hired CS/GM agents who are inept at their position. Their lack of ability to understand and follow transcribed sets of rules and regulation set forth by Blizzard has forced Blizzard to restrict players based on these detrimental employees. Blizzard has no choice but to hire these dregs to fulfill their stance on Diversity and Inclusion. Their limitation on hiring people who have a base understanding of the English Language and the morality of Voldemort.
In all of human history we know that the more you censor the exchange of thoughts between people, the more divisive the conversation becomes. It splits people down the middle into two sides, those with a voice, and those without. Those people who have been silenced don’t just disappear.
Blizzard didn’t have these issues before the censorship started. Didn’t need to police the community until they created an issue themselves. Didn’t need to hire a Diversity and Inclusion manager, until they lost the respect of the people they chose to pander to years ago.
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It depends on who she may hire, or have the authority to hire. Honestly, we won’t even know, or have an idea until we see where the game goes in the future. If you get creators talking about how the game “needs to reflect real life” or some other nonsense like that, then you know it’s finished. Those sort of statements are the kind you hear from content creators who are more interested in being activists as opposed to just making something fun. It’s really been evident in the comics industry for a while, and of course in Hollywood. Only time is going to tell.
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That was a lot of hyoptheticals just to say “I disagree”.