DHS to Spend Almost $700k Investigating ‘Radicalization in Gaming’
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I know some gamers wondered where Microsoft's firm insistence on chat reporting in Minecraft came from; the game became a runaway success without such a system and there were no major media scandals that seemed to prompt this change of attitude or priorities. I think this is the answer. There is a general push in the government and big tech corps (the line grows fuzzier by the year, a hallmark of fascism...) to consolidate and centralize control of digital discourse so it can be monitored and moderated by them.
Great! In my opinion, there should be no expectation that you can say whatever you want in in-game chat.
Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes here.
The change Microsoft made to Minecraft applies globally and once you are banned you are banned everywhere including all private servers.
I long ago gave up on the idea that online communication is ever private. The FBI started recording all internet traffic in 1997 with Carnivore after all. But I do believe it should be private and require a warrant for the government to see. There are just too many bad things that can come from government monitoring all communications. The government shouldn't get a pass just because we haven't quite figured out how our rights apply in a digital space.
Because it’s their game and I want to play it.
We are discussing whether it is right for Microsoft to police communication on private servers or whether behavior on public servers should prevent you from accessing private servers.
Many consider that private servers should be PRIVATE.
You've gone from misreprsenting things to suit your worldview (like you did in your initial message claiming "snitchware." Nothing in minecraft's moderation system is automatic - content must be flagged, first, by another user) to wildly unhinged "analogies."
Company A sells Apartment Building to Landlord. Company B sells software to Server Admin.
Landlord leases Apartment to Leaser. Server Admin allows Gamer to connect to Server Software.
Microphones installed by Company A in Apartment's walls catch Leaser saying Bad Word. Chat spy installed by Company B in Server Software catches Gamer saying Bad Word.
Company A bans Leaser from all Apartment Buildings they constructed. Company B bans Gamer from all Server Software they leased out.
Point to where this analogy is weak.
Not saying I disagree with your overall point, but the analogy is weak.
> So, what’s new? Minecraft moderators may ban players who do not follow our Community Guidelines when sending online messages using our services (Realms) or Featured Servers, and communicating online through signposts and books.
If you conduct yourself such that you manage to get banned from hosted / promoted servers, I have no problem with you being unable to participate in privately run servers. Nobody wants to be around people who act like that.
Furthermore, action only comes about from player reports - contrary to the grandparent comment's misrepresentations about "snitchware" and so on, Minecraft moderator action can only come about from player reports - and only in certain specific, defined categories.
There is no "right" to free speech in a private game. There is no "right" to play a private game.
If you get banned for bad behavior on those servers, then yes, you get banned from minecraft, period.
I don't think this is true. In particular, note that it's useful to install https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/no-chat-reports on regular servers.
It has got to the point where modders are actively warning people against the report system.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/06/microsoft-will-start-... https://fabulously-optimized.gitbook.io/modpack/readme/chat-...
I agree with you. There is no expectation that someone should be able to say whatever they want in in-game chat. If people really want to do that, they're free to create their own game and accompanying chat infrastructure.
The reason that what Microsoft did is so horrendous is that they're banning people from the chat infrastructure that individual servers owners are running themselves. Or are you saying that if you don't want to be censored, it's not enough that you run your own chat server, but that you write all of the code from scratch for it too?
This comments suggests a profound ignorance of the realities online services. I've seen a lot of doubt that the Minecraft chat monitoring system is actually catching bad people and may, largely, be used to ban people for innocuous online mischief. If that's true, it's a shame and a black mark on Microsoft - but it's irresponsible to run around pretending that abusers are not trying to use these platforms to get to people. I have not seen a collection of incidents in minecraft, but there was a good article posted on HN covering some of the issues Roblox has in this area[1].
I assume that, if one goes through collected Minecraft chats, there's some pretty concerning content in there. I assume that because I've been playing online games for years and I've always encountered concerning content. There are no perfect solutions, but it seems obvious that we can do better than no safety net at all and have an obligation to try. That means we should both push back on flawed, un-neuanced systems like this new one in Minecraft and on lazy critiques of the attempt that pretend there is no problem.
If you think that online spaces are a goodness and an important part of life, then I think you need to take seriously the need to setup controls that will let children and other vulnerable people use those spaces with greater safety while minimally restricting adults. It's not an easy problem at all, and as you note the authorities often start with a digital surveillance state, so we all have to be the change we wanna see in the world and advocate for solutions that are better for all the stakeholders.
I never had any political memes, but I was angry just the same. I want to say that there's something that is psychologically so commonplace in this development that it is borderline possibly genetic. Either that or our societies are a bit broken that teenagers are so angry.
Either way - the desire to censor and control, the calls for which appear to be coming from a mix of politicians and academics, I find "problematic" (an ironic technical term I've heard the academics use).
No one seems to have studied history: WHO decides what ideas need to be policed, monitored and such. Today it's someone you agree with, tomorrow it might be someone you don't.
I have a problem with people who call themselves ethicists who use studies to come up with correlations between ideas and behaviors, and then propose to tell us what laws or controls we need for a more just society. I call these people secular priests at best, and authoritarians at worst.
I'm not surprised this is getting investigated, those guys are the worst creeps, especially how they get kids involved.
The DHS has no responsibility to investigate what is most likely an edgy 14 year old saying edgy things in a game. The only thing that will come from this is, indeed people say mean things on the internet, therefore total censorship is the only answer. They will find a few real cases. Things like you pointed out. These will be use for a typical on-brand message about how widespread the phenomenon is. No one wants extremists in their country and all they will have to say is something like "first person shooters are a hot bed for white nationalists" and suddenly we are back to 1991 when we thought that first person shooters caused people to become violent killers. History repeating itself.
This is basically a solution looking for a problem. The particular flavor of radicalization "white nationalism" or whatever is being spammed in the media ahead of an election because it's the current party's boogeyman. It's scary, it sells ad space, and it drives campaign speeches. I'm inclined to believe that the population of these alleged "white nationalists" is a lot smaller. At least until they arbitrarily extend the definition.
I suspect the actual problem is rising inflation, lack of housing, lack of income to afford anything, and the 1000 mile wide chasm between the incomes of congress and the average citizen that are leading to the majority of radicalization. However, this will never be discussed because it implies the government is the problem. When the investigators investigate themselves they always find nothing wrong.
Arbitrary extension of definitions is a big part of it. For instance the way the definition of violence has been extended to include silence. This is particularly chilling since "silence is violence" is a flagrant reformulation of "If you're not with us, you're against us." They also like to talk about hateful statements of opinion being violence too, under theory that hateful remarks cause stochastic terrorism. But by the same standard, "silence is violence" is a call to arms against people who are simply trying to live their lives peacefully and not get swept up in a political movement. If being silent is a form of violence, that suggests a justification of violent "self defense" against those who are merely keeping to themselves. Redefining violence is an implicit modification to the rules of engagement.
It's a simple call to civility. Is that so hard to answer?
Not saying you're wrong but your experiences don't match my own. I'm open to having my mind changed but the idea of some conspiracy to influence kids by screaming naziisms at them at the end of video game matches just seems... hilariously ineffective.
It sounds stupid as hell because it is, but it's all part of a tactic of normalization. That's all they're after here.
I'm not convinced that most of this is anything but the current generation's version of Belsen Was a Gas.
Too bad some people stay mentally this age for most of their lives.
Many women for instance I know pretend to be men in these online games. Often the only people screaming and utilizing voice online seem to be of a specific demographic.
You can go after the bad apples and hope things will change but racism and all sorts of hate based ideologies are constantly touted by what I presume individuals with a lot of idle time.
I also see lots of talks of depression and mental health issues in the chats. I rather that they just remove the online chat feature and custom banners. Remove voice chat especially.
Really miss the days before voice chat because now its the equivalent of giving a village idiot a megaphone.
DHS doesn’t need to be involved but the answer shouldn’t be people who don’t want to be abused are the ones who have limits on what features they can use.
The people who are abusive in voice chat know exactly how to be abusive to avoid getting caught / identified.
In one game I play, there are several phases of the game when it is both impossible to mute anyone and you cannot see who is talking.
Guess when people spew racist stuff or otherwise scream into their mics?
It's a minority, and they never have anything useful to say - but it causes a lot of people to shut off voice chat entirely because it's so exhausting/jarring to an otherwise good time. And as a result, you don't get to meet the people who are friendly and good natured.
Essentially, by letting them run wild, we're allowing them to dominate the platform. Kick their asses.
So the option is learn how to deal with trolls or remove voice chat completely from games to protect the delicate sensibilities of players? I guess that's up to the company. I had no problem with this prior to company's controlling the servers for extra MRR. Don't like a server? Leave. Unless the entire game is filled with nazi LARPers you'll probably find a place more amicable to your delicate sensibilities. For me, I've had no problem blocking particular trolls and in particularly infested servers I can find a new one that's better for me. It's like the world has forgotten "don't feed the trolls". I'm willing to wager 99.9% of these people are just doing it to get a rise out of someone because honestly. People are so sensitive these days it's made it incredibly easy to say something and get a rise out of literally anyone.
The real issue is that these 12 year olds hold this mentality into their entire adult life.
reddit - at least w.r.t police.
The YouTube channel Innuendo Studios has done some interesting reflection on gaming in general (I really like "Adventure Games About Jesus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr5qgaasOYY ) and some specific stuff on cultural conflict and radicalization in gaming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ&list=PLJA_jUddXv...
Of particular note to NH readers with it's interest in surveillance, is that only one program has the word "monitoring" in it's brief, and that's the one mentioned in the article.
It may come in the form of a democratically elected council, company town, the church, a warlord, etc.
I'd rather it come in the first form.
Anyway, to loop this discussion back around to my point:
> Terrorism is a real threat.
It isn't. The threat of terrorism is massively exaggerated by the government, for the purpose of justifying the government acquiring even more power. You are many times more likely to be killed by the police than by terrorists. Government and the media want you to fear terrorism because that fear lets them control you.
I was making allusions to White Nationalism and Christo-fascism that are waiting in the wings to make their play.
Case in point: election workers being harassed until they quit is low grade terrorism, but it's real and it's effective.
Proud boys are a threat, and ironically are closely aligned with the police. It's messy and I'm not sure how to "fix" it.
> Federal judges rubberstamp every fishing expedition search warrant put before them
Is this in any way related to the investigations into a former president?
>> Federal judges rubberstamp every fishing expedition search warrant put before them
> Is this in any way related to the investigations into a former president?
I am talking about surveillance capitalism and government dragnets aimed at the general public. I'd be a happy man if Trump fucked off and died years ago. He was a willing and eager participant in all that I describe.
I'm talking threats of violence with a goal of taking power. One of many reports on this: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/21/1118669896/top-election-offic...
That's terrorism.
41,222 warrants requests submitted to a secret Federal court since 1979. 85 rejected. 0.2% rejection rate, they rubber stamp virtually everything submitted to them, and I don't believe for an instant it's because federal investigator and prosecutors are just that good.
This sort of shit is a greater threat to civil liberty than any sort of terrorism.
FISA warrants are bad and the regular federal warrants process isn't much better.
It starts with a "light" "off-color" joke here and there to "test the waters."
Over the period of a couple of gaming sessions, things get worse and worse until they're being openly bigoted, such as declaring a certain playable character in the game as "that dyke bitch". I've also had people get really mouthy about "illegals", stereotypes about welfare/crime and black people, and so on.
If there are bigots specifically fishing around in gaming communities for like-minded individuals, from what I've seen, it's a target-rich environment, at least in first/third person shooting games.