No one should have to “grow a thicker skin”: Valorant studio commit to harsh penalties for harassment
No one should have to “grow a thicker skin”: Valorant studio commit to harsh penalties for harassment
Riot games have committed to a series of new measures to curtail harassment and hate-speech in Valorant
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Though there is enough to be said about racism and homophobia, I think we should also be really careful with not overshooting in the other direction. I used to love shit talking with a small group of friends. No, I'm not a racist, I'm a minority, but we have a different kind of humor, which is not politically correct and we use it to kind of vent about real issues. I do know that we'd be banned in a heartbeat (we have been before) and for what? We never bother anyone, we never stalk or hareass anyone and typically were in our own little group.
I do think people should grow a thicker skin as yes yes a thousand times yes, racism is bad, homo/trans/bi/whatever phobia is bad, it's all bad, but these days you need to watch every word you say lest you want to get banned. Calm down, don't ban people over jokes that in your eyes are tasteless.
There is a wide gap between some shit talking and the vile hatred you see people spewing online.
Telling people to harden up when smack talking their mother or their gameplay might fly.. but idlt does not apply when people tell you to kill yourself in Ernest, Harras you outside a game.
With gaming becoming more mainstream, the tight knit communities playing on curated servers and policed by community admins have been replaced by platforms hosted by big tech and infested by the assholes that used to be too cool for gaming and the basement dwellers that used to be isolated and are now emboldened by their fellow basement dwellers, rednecks, and other generally unlovable people.
For sure, if they follow you outside the game that is a big hard red line there, but then again, I always keep things like that very separate.
Never had anyone telling me to kill myself, but in other instances where they'd get annoying I'd simply mute them and continue playing. That is what I Mena with thicker skin.
There will always be racists and bigots, I don't think you can stop it completely while the harder you try to control it, the more restrictive you become and the more you suck the fun out of it.
Well, the fun should be in some light banter. Someone reported for vile hate speech should get a system wide mute as a warning for some time and if they cannot behave after, take away their chat rights permanent. Why should it be tolerated? And people after that intent on ruining stuff for others, can be banned outright.
It can all be done on account/license key, IP and hardware ID.
Community servers did the same. People would just move server and do it again, enter shared banlists.
Big tech is more than able to fix this issue, they are just not willing. And the lack of consequences for the last decade just made the problem worse.
Like with corpos thinking the rules don't apply to them, the whole system and lack of consequences spawn stuff like trump.. and in the online "smacktalk" of days gone by has grown into something that needs to be stepped on.
I used to run around CS with a little spray that had a tent and "no camping sign" to smacktalk the sniping campers in their little corner. That was fun..
I think that crowd sourcing the stuff should be easy. Hey user xyz you have been added to the mutelists of 50 people now, this means your chat will be monitored by our chat monitoring system more actively. Hey user xyz you have been added to the Blocklist of 50 people, be aware your gameplay will be actively monitored by our systems and further reports could lead to a suspension of your account.
Etc etc.
Yeah and in no way would that EVER be abused. No way that the definition of what constitutes hate speech would ever be skewed or abused either... It's not that easy, man.