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Comment by slily | Hacker News Reader

> Support of Gamergate, racial supremacist groups, the redpill/incel movement, or any other hate group - including, and especially, hate groups that have gained political power such as the Donald Trump administration - is a direct challenge to the lives and well-being of other players and will result in a permanent ban.

I don't know man, I don't care about your TDS, this is just eyeroll-worthy. Pure political soapboxing.

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Setting boundaries or requirements for a community they manage is different from lecturing unwantedly on politics.

If a community intends to exclude certain political affiliations or classes of people, I’d want to know about it up front.

That's fair. If they make an arbitrary list of people to be excluded, well, it's their game, their rules.

Still, saying that "support of Gamergate ... is a direct challenge to the lives ... of other players" sounds a little bit hyperbolic to me.

But maybe that's just my privilege of having heard so many diverse opinions that their existence no longer feels like a direct challenge to my life.

You say it's hyperbole, but there's communities (like kiwi farms) who actively doxx people with the intent to cause harm. They are responsible for the suicide of at least three of their targets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms

No tolerance for intolerance. Your last sentence implies you've never been at risk or a target yourself.

That's a shame. I thought this much was progressive:

> Do not roleplay racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise bigoted characters in public-facing or semi-public areas (emphasis mine)

Too good to be true?

> hate groups that have gained political power such as the Donald Trump administration

That's not a hate group, that's the other half of the entire country that doesn't toe your party's line.

And it'll probably happen again because this sort of sophistry has made life an insufferable pain in the ass.

Like or hate Bush/Clinton/Obama, nobody was kicking you out of a community because of your political affiliation. I miss the inclusiveness of the 90s.

> That's not a hate group, that's the other half of the entire country

We have historical evidence from many countries that those need not be mutually exclusive categories.

So why add the unnecessary category?

> Like or hate Bush/Clinton/Obama, nobody was kicking you out of a community because of your political affiliation. I miss the inclusiveness of the 90s.

The 1990s weren't more inclusive, quite the opposite. But the groups you are talking about just all at least tried to work with the community. They actively sought out common ground and were willing to compromise. Today's populists, e.g. Trump, say the aforementioned community is not the real community, they are all crooks, or pests, and in fact only the populists and their followers are the real community and everybody else is the enemy and needs to be locked up, denied citizenship, or be exterminated. There can't be compromise. It is a big part of their sales pitch.

Witness how so called moderate Republicans are treated -- you know, the ones who seek to work within the community and are willing to compromise -- they call them RINO "Republican In Name Only", i.e. they are not _real_ Republicans. There are more examples you are probably aware of. I, for one, can see how this makes it really hard for all involved to find some common ground to work together, don't you?

The CoC doesn't ban supporters of specific political agenda or party line but it is a banned topic. Anyone who's been on the internet in the past few years knows how passionate these supporters can get. That's a magnet for heated political discussion that very quickly gets uncomfortable for everyone else. It's impossible to be inclusive to certain minority groups while allowing promotion of politics directly against them.

No tolerance for intolerance seems like a good rule to have. Eyerolling at it is an immature dismissal of their clearly cut-out boundaries.

they really listed "Gamergate" before "racial supremacist groups" lmao

I mean, it's not particularly surprising that it's a lot easier to manage a community if you just find every political split point, pick a side and then remove the people on the other side.

I think we used to call that sort of thing "gatekeeping"?

Gatekeeping is about group identity. You’re not a real A unless you x, y, z.

Choosing who you let in to your spaces based on criteria you choose is just the normal thing to do.

I don't think that's how the term has been actually used so far.

It's how I see it used.

There's even a large subreddit dedicated to pointing out and mocking gatekeeping and they pretty much all fit that definition.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gatekeeping/

Of all the things you could label as gatekeeping, I don't feel that excluding hate groups is one of them. We should never be tolerant of the intolerant, otherwise intolerance wins.

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