I got the exact opposite impression from the article- it was trying to show Bidenâs compassion, which I believe is legitimate. He legit comes off as compassionate to me.
I had the same reaction. I canât see how you read that piece as critical of Biden unless youâre just looking for a reason to criticize the Post. If anything, it went way over into the âBidenâs a good guyâ territory as opposed to sociopathic Roomba territory.
An earlier version of that Biden funeral piece on Twitter carried the headline / tagline that âmanyâ allies thought Biden was squandering valuable time by going to funerals; that it wasnât the best use of a Presidentâs time. Thatâs where the adverse reaction is coming from, not the the actual content, but to the social media spin.
That and the history of the writer who has shit on Biden for going to church.
In other news, the TTS guys seem to think that being gay or trans is a fetish and will ban you for it.
But you can go on about how youâre a straight dude and being straight is the proper way to be all day and they donât care.
Bad news for them is that all the big YouTube board game people seem to have found out and arenât happy.
Well, it is a form of isolation, for sure. And at least in the winter itâs not that hot.
Reading between the lines, itâs perfectly plausible that there was no ill intentâmoderation set to trigger on words like âgayâ or âtrannyâ used in chat because theyâre often used in a derogatory sense. Moderation team wasnât able to communicate successfully what the rules were because theyâre not well-defined. They donât want chat about sexuality precisely to avoid this kind of situation. It canât help but feel like a minefield and Berserk has my sympathy here. If I were them, my solution would be to sincerely apologize, then just rip out global chat from the client. Once a community reaches a certain size, moderation is an impossible problem.
Yes! And next we should rip out global chat from the globe.
I donât think itâs possible to have a real-time, open-to-all, large-scale, anonymous, online chat platform that doesnât pretty quickly devolve into toxicity.
I may have sounded sarcastic but I wasnât disagreeing⊠I think twitter, facebook, etc really prove your point. :)
Itâs a tough problem. When people get together, if the platform (be it an app or a face to face venue) is attractive, and a community forms, folks will want to chat about things. These things will not always be limited to whatever brought them there in the first place. Trying to restrict conversations to only specific topics is pretty much impossible, if only because anything worth discussing inevitably will cross over into many other topics. Itâs how life works.
I was a volunteer sysop in the old Compuserve game forums ages ago. Moderating chat even on a paid service like that was a nightmare sometimes. As online editor at CGM, too, more of the same, this time on a free platform. If you donât moderate, though, you end up with a cesspool. The automated filtering option is attractive to people, but we all know how wonky and arbitrary those get, though really they arenât that much more arbitrary than when a platform tries to write strict rules for use by human mods.
No clue what the solution is. Making chat not anonymous has its own set of problems, depending on how you define anonymous, and depending on how willing the platform owner is to prioritize behavior over money.
The global chat channel on TTS is particularly cesspool-ish. Dunno why they even have it, TBH. Seems like way more trouble than itâs worth. If I were them Iâd close it down and let Discord handle it.
See the problem they seem to have run into is that you can talk about sexuality all you want if youâre talking about straight sexuality. And they specifically referred to being trans or gay as being political and/or a fetish.
So their whole defense breaks down pretty fast when someone is quoting them.
I wont disagree there. Itâs the case of most global chats. But they do have it and they do moderate it, so at the end of the day itâs on them.
Itâs a NYC mayor, so really they could probably have their own thread since every NYC in my lifetime has been corrupt, idiotic and/or crazy.
Also an ex-cop, but not a cop any longer.
Iâm going with WTF.
Having now read the official Discord and sampled a bit of the thousands of pages of messages since this morning, they done fucked up. Theyâve run afoul of the internet gender scolds.
Berserkâs only move now is to abjectly apologize for their ignorance and throw themselves on the mercy of the court.
Well, given that the first few decades of Internet discourse were dominated by a relatively monolithic, white, male, hetero-normative paradigm that brooked no opposition, turnabout might just be fair play.
This is a perfectly plausible explanation for that.
CHRY: It has nothing to do with LGBTQ+, it doesnât matter whether youâre this or the other, even cis/het/straight or whatever, the tabletop sim global chat is not the place for it.
Xoe: Funny because discussion of being cis or straight does not get you kicked/banned
CHRY: Not necessarily, but same is the case for LGBTQ+ terms. The filter list is packed with significantly derogatory terms in relation to LGBTQ+.
Xoe: I get kicked in seconds at the mention of being gay, but whenever I joke about being straight I never get kicked.
CHRY: âStraightâ is too ambiguous as a term for automatic filtering and is practically never used in negative connotation. For fairness sake I have issued a temporary ban for these aforementioned messages as itâs clearly trolling/being deliberately disruptive/discussing sexuality.
Hereâs the quote:
Xoe: Okay, so that makes sense to me, so then, why is it that I get kicked for sharing that Iâm gay? Or banned for asking if being gay is considered family friendly?
CHRY: Discussing sexuality has no place in global chat.
Xoe: Why not?
CHRY:
Xoe: So, then it isnât considered family friendly then
Is gender considered inappropriate for chat too? Like sharing that Iâm trans?
CHRY: Tabletop simulator is about playing tabletop games, not a place to discuss sexuality, fetishes, politics. Keep that to your private lobbies or public chats where these things are the topic at hand.
This could be interpreted as calling trans a fetish or politics. Or it could be interpreted as generalizing the rule from sexuality to also fetishes and politics. So hereâs a case of a mod probably using bad wording.
Aside: Iâm not sure why Xoe elides the link to the global chat rules in the transcripts she posts. Here it is: Chat Rules - Tabletop Simulator Knowledge Base
From the perspective of just desserts, sure. From the perspective of actually trying to change peopleâs minds, this tactic is unlikely to work.